AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Georgia clears her throat as she looks back up at us, interrupting my mini freak-out/Barbie Fantasy Dream Wedding. I hope she doesn’t see the insane gayness in my eyes, because I don’t know if I can shield it. She doesn’t smile. I choke on my tongue as I think of a ring sliding over my finger.
The doorbell rings.
I jump up immediately, wondering if that is God saving me. “Don’t know who that could be,” I say, still trapped on a beach, Otter whispering “I do” somewhere in my head. “No one ever comes over here. Er, I mean, we have people over, we’re not like some crazy shut-ins.” I laugh, and it comes out sounding like I’m a crazy shut-in. “People come over here all the time.
Wait, that didn’t sound right, either. I know what I just said sounds like. It’s only people we know that come over here. We’re not drug dealers or anything.” Oh, God, shut up! “I don’t even know any drug dealers. Otter works for a photography studio, but I only think it’s fashion photographers that get hooked on cocaine, and he doesn’t do that anymore. Fashion photography, not cocaine. I don’t even think he knows where to get any?
Otter, do you know where to buy cocaine?” He shakes his head, his mouth quirking at the sides, obviously not going to speak. I wish I could do that.
The Kid has his face in his hands. “So there’s that,” I tell Georgia, who is watching me with a badass stoicism that chills me to the bone.
I get up and start walking toward the door as the bell rings again. “I’ve never even seen drugs before,” I continue for some odd reason. ( Not so odd, it tells me. You just like to hear yourself talk, apparently. Are you trying to make this worse? ) “Except on TV and in movies. I’m sorry. I just lied to you. I saw a marijuana joint once when I was sixteen. I didn’t touch it, though. It was just kind of… around me. Okay, so they smoked it around me, but I refused to partake because users are losers, you know? I would never put that in my body, because my body is a temple. Wow, that sounded conceited. I’m sorry. I’m not conceited and I don’t do drugs and I talk a lot when I’m nervous and why haven’t you said anything about the tea?”
I open the door. Dominic is there. And Anna. And Mrs. Paquinn. Nope.
Not God saving me. God jerking me around. Again.
“Hi, guys!” I say loudly. “It’s so normal for you to stop by like this in the middle of the day. And none of you do drugs, either!”
“Not since the sixties!” Mrs. Paquinn says just as loud, like she thinks we’re playing a game. “But then everyone did drugs in the sixties! Free love, wouldn’t you know. I remember this one time I took two drops of acid off a sugar cube and somehow ended up in Wyoming, after having followed what I thought was a pink koala across state lines for six days. I couldn’t believe it when I finally came down and saw that there wasn’t a koala, after all, but a group of frightened Japanese tourists who thought I was stalking them for their yen! To this day, I still haven’t figured out why the Japanese would want to go to Wyoming. It’s not exactly a hotbed of Asian activity.”
“Ha, ha! That’s quite the story, Mrs. Paquinn,” I say through gritted teeth, sure my jaw is going to snap in two. “I don’t know if we need to discuss that in front of the social worker who is here right now for the first time.”
“You’re just as subtle as the Kid,” Creed says. From somewhere.
“Creed?” I whisper, looking around. Where the hell—
Anna rolls her eyes and shoves her phone into my hands, Creed on the other end on speaker phone. “You totally thought I was invisible, didn’t you?” he accuses me. “Dude, are you on Pink Koala Acid today or something?”
“I didn’t think you were invisible,” I snap at him, even though I sort of did. “Not that I do acid or anything,” I call back into the living room, wanting Georgia to know I’m not tripping balls right now. “What are you all doing here?” I hiss as I turn back to the three in front of me.
“Ty texted me and said the social worker was coming over and that you needed all of us here to keep you from going insane,” Anna explains, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “Looks like we may be a little too late.”
“Did he?” I growl.
“I did not!” he shouts from the living room. “Please don’t put me in the bad closet tonight, Bear! I promise I’ll be good!”
“That was a joke,” Otter explains hastily to the social worker. “Tyson and his brother have a very… selective sense of humor. You have to kind of get used to it.”
Georgia’s reply is to type something else on her computer.
“Well, of course it was a joke,” the Kid says, sounding offended. “But it’s not funny when you explain it’s a joke. Thanks, Captain Ruins All My Fun of the Suck The Fun Out Of The Room Patrol.” (This causes me to laugh quite loudly, only because it sounds exactly like something I would say. It’s these little moments when I’m reminded he belongs to me that make everything we’ve been through worth it. Even if I’m thinking of putting him in the bad closet, wherever that is.)
“How do you know Dominic?” I ask Anna and Mrs. Paquinn, once I’ve stopped yipping like a hyena.
“We just met!” Mrs. Paquinn says, looking fondly down at Dominic.
“He was walking up to the door when we arrived. I was so happy to see he wasn’t a figment of Ty’s imagination! I was worried because I had an imaginary friend once too. My parents eventually had to have an exorcism performed on me.” She shakes her head sadly. “Happy Clown Charlie never came back after that, but at least my bed stopped shaking and no one else died.”
No one else?
Dominic snorts before looking back at me. “Ty texted me too,” he says in that quiet, gruff way of his. “I know a thing or two about—”
“Dominic?” Georgia says from behind me. “I thought that was you. I was going to stop by after I finished up here, since I was in the neighborhood.”
“Hey, Georgia,” Dominic mutters, looking down at his feet.
Uh, what? “You’ve got a social worker too?” I blurt out.
