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Panic seizes me, rattling my bones. “Please. Can we just go back to L.A.? We can sort this out from there. I just…I can’tbehere anymore.”
“I don’t care if you want to leave here. I really don’t. You wanna get on this plane and head back to L.A.? Fine. But is that really what you want?”
“I—” I screw my eyes shut. “There’s no moving on from this. I can’t just return to my life like nothing happened. There’s still so much left up in the air. There are still so many secrets, I know there are.”
“Then you know what you have to do,” Ruth says, grim. She looks so strange in her blue jeans and sweater, her hair all done up so nicely, that it’s hard to hear these words coming out of her mouth. “Stay and figure everything out. This is your chance for some closure. You won’t find any back at Falcon House. That’s not something I can give to you. You need to figure it out for yourself.”
I’ve never liked the idea of disappointing Ruth. And that’s how she sounds: disappointed. That same old need to please her settles over me, and I feel that necessity leap to life within me—to do whatever it takes to win her approval. Stay here. Spar with Theo. Tolerate this shit. Handle it somehow and make my peace with everything that happened to Rachel. But for the first time since I met her, my need to please her is overruled by my anger. She left me to deal with this alone.
She wasbusy?
Fuck that.
This woman’s heart is shielded by a twenty-foot-high wall, a meter thick, and none of her wards have ever penetrated it. The only emotion she’s ever publicly displayed has been anger. Never kindness. Never sadness. Never empathy, or happiness. She’s the coldest, most clinical person I’ve ever encountered. And, for once, I needed more from her. I was desperate for some kindness, and all she can say is, “I wasbusy?”
Rachel deserved more than that.Ideserve more.
I take a step back from her. “I’m just an inconvenience to you, aren’t I?”
“Sorrell. Don’t be ridiculous. You know that you’re important to me.”
“Why am I important? Why do I matter to you? What happens to me if I leave this place, huh? Am I out on my ass, the second I return to Falcon House? What does my life look like after I get on this plane?”
Ruth’s eyes bore into me with a frank harshness that cuts me to the quick. She shrugs. “You know how it is. You’ve been with us for a long time. You’re practically an adult now. It’s time for you to figure things out for yourself. Falcon House is a sanctuary for girls who are too young to make their own way in the world. Girls who have nowhere else to be—”
“You mean girls who still bring in a government check every week, right? I’m eighteen soon. Aged out of the system. This cash cow has ceased to be financially beneficial, am I right?”
She shakes her head, and there it is again, even worse than before—her disappointment is a living, breathing thing, a monster lurking behind those unfeeling blue eyes. She could turn a heart to stone with that look of hers.
“You know how it is, Sorrell.” That’s all she can say: a statement that bears repeating in her mind. She thinks I should have expected this. I should have seen it coming. I’ve been so blinded by what happened to Rachel that I really didn’t. I’ve been the golden child in Ruth’s house for so long that I never considered I might fall from grace.
“Stay here, Sorrell. Figure out all of the mysteries that are plaguing you. Get the closure you need over what happened with Rachel. Make that boy pay for what he did if you need to. Forgive him if you need to. Forget he ever existed if you need to. Don’t come back to Los Angeles until you’re ready for what comes next. Once you are,thenget on the plane. Come back to us and we’ll help get you set up somewhere—”
“Fuck you. Seriously. Just…fuck you.”
Rachel saw this coming, I think. She always said we were a commodity to Ruth. I was so fucking naïve. I turn from her and do the only thing I can right now; I make a beeline for Principal Ford. She doesn’t even seem surprised by the hollowed out look on my face.
“Guess I might just be finishing up the semester after all,” I tell her.
“Oh. I see. Well, I can’t say I’m sorry to hear it. We’re lucky to have you at Toussaint—”
“Why?” I rock my head to one side, glaring at her. “Why areyoulucky to have me, Principal Ford? I can’t think of a single reason why you’d want me at your academy. I’m hardly the smartest student. You’re just as bad as her, cashing another check for my scholarship, aren’t you?”
Principal Ford watches me evenly, letting me rant. I have a thousand and one other accusations I’d love to hurl at her, but I’m so tired all of a sudden, so exhausted and stunned by what’s just happened, that I completely run out of steam. Fifteen minutes ago, I’d never thought I’d find myself thinking this, but right now all I want to do is to go back to my room and hide. Amazing how everything can change in the blink of an eye.
“I don’t think that was very necessary,” Ford says stiffly.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just gonna go back up to the school.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to say goodbye to your aunt?”
Yeah. Right. I forgot. In this fiction we’ve created, Ruth is my aunt. I wonder what I’m going to have to tell Ford in the coming weeks. Ruth won’t be coming back here ever again. I’ll have to fake kill her off or something. Good thing I’m so practiced at lying these days. “No,” I reply. “I’ve said everything I need to say to her.”
I walk away, heading back to the car. I’m about to get in, when a figure comes tearing around the stand of trees, running full tilt down the slope toward the lake.
Oh.
Fucking.
