Page 21 of Mommy

Mom never cooks, unless⁠—

A sinking feeling settles in my stomach like a stone. It drags my mood to the floor and squashes every bit of joy I might have felt earlier in the matter of a second. The second it takes my mom to notice that I’m here.

She bustles out of the kitchen with a beaming smile on her face.

“Ebony, sweetheart, you’re home. Come on in, I made dinner.”

Nausea creeps up inside of me at the name. The wrong name. The name that is not mine. A chill I can’t explain.

My heart launches into overdrive, pumping adrenaline into my blood.

I don’t wait for her to turn back around before I grab for the door handle behind me and stumble back out of the house.

The cold wind outside helps clear my head and I shuffle onto our lawn, frost making the grass crunch under my sneakers.

The street is empty. Derek must have gone home after he dropped me off.

Because he did drop me off. In a police car.

But he’s gone now. I’ve never been more relieved and disappointed at the same time.

Sure, it would’ve been embarrassing to have him witness this, but the warmth of his car would be like a dream from where I’m currently standing, alone in the cold.

The walk back to the shelter is long, and by the time I reach the locked metal gates my toes are numb and my face feels like it’s on fire. The lights in the shelter are already out, only darkness beckoning to me from behind the gate.

Shelly went home too.

Looking up and down the street I check for another person before I reach the metal gate before me. My feet barely fit between the bars, but I manage to get up high enough to make my body move over the top. Gravity takes care of getting my body down the other side. My right hip takes the most of my fall, a stabbing pain shooting up my leg as I get back up with a groan.

Suppressing a sob, I limp in the direction of the main building.

I know that Shelly hides a key under one of the planters next to the main entrance. It’s there for emergencies and she has made it very clear that no one was allowed to use it unless there was an emergency at hand.

This is an emergency.

Even as I remind myself of that, I feel guilty about fumbling for the key under the third planter and unlocking the door.

The shelter is dark and quiet, and I don’t waste time waiting around. I know where I want to go, I know where I need to be.

Viv lifts her head, some of the pups stirring in their sleep when I quietly open the door to her kennel.

They are all piled on top of each other at one end of the mattress, so I lie down on the other side.

I curl myself into a ball, facing the dogs, so I see exactly when Viv gets up and robs over to me. She inches so close to my face that I can feel her warm breath on my skin.

The first tear slips free from my lashes, running past my nose and seeping into the mattress beneath my face. Viv just watches. Her splotchy white fur, so clearly visible even in the dark I can see her expression as she watches me cry.

So Vivid.

Every blink and every pull in her chaps has so much character, so much soul.

Shelly allowed me to name her when she was brought into the shelter, and that’s how Vivid got her name. Even when we all just call her Viv instead.

Names names names.

“I am not Ebony.”

The words are a whisper, pressed and full of tears. They clog my throat making me want to sob to be able to breathe past them.