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Amber nudges my arm. “No, weirdo. Look. That’s Paige’s username. Wolverine6699. She’s online. Nope. Wait. Now she’s off. I bet she’ll be back on soon, though. This is one of her favorite porn sites and it has chat rooms. It’s where we first met.”
Though my heart leaps at having some kind of connection with Paige, I frown. “Is this where you cam?”
“One of them. But that’s not important right now. Focus on Paige. I’ll wait until she’s online again and then send her a message. I’ll be able to see right away if she reads it. Go rest and I’ll wake you. I promise.”
“Can’t. I took an energy drink.”
“You look tired enough that it won’t matter. Lay your head down, at least.”
“Fine.” I rest my head on the table.
Amber is right. The energy drink doesn’t matter.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Paige
I TAP ANOTHER LINK. I now have ten tabs open on my phone’s search browser with articles like Childhood Emotional Neglect: How It Can Impact You Now and Later, How to Recognize the Signs of Mental and Emotional Abuse, and Enmeshment: Why You Can’t Save Your Mother.
I roll onto my stomach on the bed. I’ve been looking at stuff like this all afternoon. I’m queasy and flushed and I keep getting dizzy. Maybe it’s the eye strain. Maybe it’s denial. All these articles mean I have to rethink my entire life—everything my mom did, every way I reacted. All my feelings. This creates so many feelings. Anger. Shame. Guilt. Sadness. Resentment. Blame. Regret. The list is so long. I found an emotion wheel online and wrote down everything I feel and it’s twenty-one feelings.
What am I supposed to do with twenty-one feelings?
I can’t think about emotional neglect or what’s thrashing around inside me anymore. Later. I’ll think about it all later. I open a new browser so I can work on my porn movie list. That’s a list I can handle, and it’s now up to a hundred titles. I log onto the site I use for research and type ‘beefy man+gym+nerd girl’. A chat message pops up, and a jolt zoops up my spine.
Amber.
I stare at her words a moment, my mind blank. Her message isn’t angry or mean, which I deserve for leaving so suddenly. It only reads: I miss you and I hope you’re okay. If you want to hear about the hot counselor I flirted with in rehab, we can totally talk about that. He wasn’t my personal counselor, so I think it was fine. And his ass was fine. So, so fine.
I smile. Just a regular chat? She’s not upset? We can just go back to how it was when we talked online every day about girl stuff? I wonder if Brody told her what happened between us while she was in rehab. Probably not if she’s so chatty.
I respond: How fine was it?
Amber: So fine he could crack a walnut in those butt cheeks.
Paige: Lol no one can do that.
Amber: There’s probably a Guinness world record or something.
Paige: Hah I looked it up. There is! It’s 43 nuts in one minute :)
Amber: LMFAO see? I told you. Did you get a new number? Your old one doesn’t ring.
Paige: Yeah. I have a new phone. Not new. It’s very very used.
Amber: So what are you up to right now?
Paige: I’m cooking chicken in the oven and picking new movies to watch. You?
We chat for a bit about her rehab and random stuff and, for a moment, everything else fades. Life is how it used to be when I didn’t have all this new knowledge and these new experiences floating around my brain. I kept to myself, asked people online about female orgasms, and talked to Amber. That’s how I passed my days.
Thinking about that life makes me sad because I was so naïve, so stuck in a bubble. But that life was also simpler. I didn’t have twenty-one feelings to deal with. Only two: loneliness and fear.
The titles from the articles cycle through my mind, joining the nagging thoughts Brody put in my head on the beach. I can’t find relief, and the more articles I look up, the more my uneasiness grows.
I chew my bottom lip and tap letters on my phone screen.
Paige: Can I ask you a question?
