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We probably would be for a while, until we were certain where this path was going to take us.
The one person who didn’t seem stressed was Mom, ironically.
Music played through the house as I stepped inside after the boys dropped me off, loud and echoing off the walls. She was singing.
“You’re home, Cordelia,” she said, humming as she… cleaned?
Confusion pulsed through me even more strongly than the beat of the music she played while she moved about, sweeping and dusting, of all things. I had never seen my mom clean anything in my life.
I set my school bag down on the table, blinking at her slowly.
“Yeah… what are you doing?”
“Oh, you know. Just getting the place tidy.” She waved her hand. “A good mood will do that to you, Cordelia.”
I had no idea where this new attitude came from. First, the car, now she was singing and cleaning?
Better than being depressed and ODing on sleeping pills, I guess.
I couldn’t begrudge mom her good mood. I had wanted her to try to find the good in this new life we’d been thrust into, to look on the positive side and take control of her life again—and now she had. It wasn’t her fault I couldn’t share the good mood with her, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about what’d happened with Flint.
There was so much about my life she didn’t know these days. She didn’t know I was falling in love with three beautiful, dangerous, wild boys. She didn’t know I had almost lost my life last night.
And she could never find out.
As much as I loved my mother, I couldn’t trust her not to turn the Lost Boys in if she got even the slightest hint of what’d happened. She’d made her dislike of Bishop quite apparent, being rude and cold to him when he’d come to the house—and that was when she knew nothing about him. I was sure anything I might tell her now would only solidify her opinion of him as “trash.”
So I didn’t say anything. I didn’t question her good mood. I put a smile on my face, trying to make it appear as authentic as possible.
“Hey, how about I help you?”
She smiled at me, seeming thrilled at the idea. “Of course, sweetheart. That would be wonderful.”
No. It won’t be.
That thought made my smile flicker, almost extinguishing it entirely.
It wasn’t what I wanted, and the realization that what I wanted—what I needed—right now was a mom that I could turn to for help and support, stung me. Even if I could tell her about everything without risking the boys’ safety… I wouldn’t. I had never even spoken to her about the innocent crushes I’d had on boys in middle school. There was no way I could tell her about the feelings growing inside my heart now.
She knew so little about me, and I so little about her, that even something as simple as helping her clean the small house we shared felt hollow.
Because it was a lie.
All of it.
Four
“Hey.” Jessica threw a small, wadded up piece of paper at me. “Has Mr. Tyson seemed weird to you guys lately?”
I sat on her floor, textbook on her coffee table, notebook and pen out, taking notes and answering some study questions for an upcoming quiz for history. My mind went to the last time the history teacher had spoken to me directly.
I shook my head.
“No weirder than usual for a teacher at Slateview, really,” I said with a shrug.
We were studying as early afternoon sunlight cut through the streaked windows. Jessica’s mom was pulling a double at the diner she worked at, since Sunday was their busiest day.
Jessica and Liam kept up good grades, working their asses off, which had surprised me at first, although it shouldn’t have, honestly. Nothing was ever as it seemed. And although I had found the classes at Slateview pretty easy compared to the curriculum at Highland Park Academy, I’d let my grades slip a bit as I had gotten distracted by other things.
