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“This is me. Thanks for walking me.”
“No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow at school?”
“Yeah. Night, Lilly.” I turned to head up to the house, popping in a piece of gum. Mom hadn’t minded me having the occasional drink back in Montecito, but that was when I hung around at the country club or my friends’ pool houses. Somehow, I didn’t think she’d approve of me drinking in Jay’s garage bar on a school night.
“Hey, baby, is that you? I’m in the kitchen.” Mom’s voice greeted me as I stepped inside.
“Yeah, I’ll be right there.” Checking my reflection in the mirror, I slid the beanie off my head. Tucking it into my bag, I smoothed my hair out of my face. It was only just past ten. Mom didn’t go to sleep early anymore, not since that night. Just another thing I had to feel guilty over.
“You want tea?” she asked as I entered our small kitchen. In Montecito, we had a big open-plan kitchen with high-gloss counters and a breakfast counter where I sat every morning before school. Looking around, all I could think was at least Mom had the oven.
“No, thanks. Where’s Dad?”
“He went up a little while ago. He has to be in the office early for his first case.”
“Anything juicy?”
“He didn’t say too much, client confidentiality.”
“Bor-ring,” I sang, smiling at her.
“Good time tonight?”
“We just hung out. Studied a little.”
“With Scarlett, right? The girl you hung out with the other night?”
I nodded, feeling the guilt coil around my heart. I hated this—lying to her—but she wasn’t ready for the truth. Mom preferred to look at the world through rose-tinted glasses.
When Dad decided we couldn’t stay in Montecito, he’d meticulously planned to make sure our move out of town was seamless, and Mom had gone along like it was some big adventure. But I already saw the cracks appearing.
“Yeah and a few other kids from my class.”
“Maybe you should invite them over this weekend so your father and I can meet them? It always was so lovely having the girls over.”
My eyes fluttered shut. We didn’t talk aboutbeforemuch. It was better that way. Easier for me to forget and Mom to pretend.
“Me and my big mouth. I’m sorry, Becca. I didn’t mean—”
I opened my eyes and smiled. “It’s fine, Mom.”Everything is fine.
If I kept telling myself that, then maybe one day it would be true.
CHAPTER9
Scarlett avoidedme for the rest of the week. I tried to heed Lilly’s words that maybe she had stuff going on, but I couldn’t shake the thought it was me. That I was the reason she didn’t come and sit with us at lunch, or why, when Friday rolled around and everyone was talking about The Vault, I didn’t get invited.
Even Lilly avoided being alone with me. She waved hello and invited me to sit with them at lunch, smiling and asking me how my day was, but she was guarded. Part of me wanted to ask them what their problem was. The words lingered on my tongue, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. But the other part—the part that had spent two weeks roaming Credence High like a social outcast—wasn’t sure I wanted to know the truth.
Scarlett had said it herself—I was different. Maybe they’d realized I wasn’t worth getting to know, after all. Maybe an enemy of Kendall O’Hare’s was too much of a burden to bear.
By the time I got home from school, my mood had taken a turn for the worse. Just when I finally felt like things at Credence High might be okay, everything had gone to shit again. And instead of being with my new friends, I was here, alone in my room, listening to music and trying my bestnotto think about my old friends back in Montecito and what they were doing right now.
Music, like dancing, was something I used to love, but I hadn’t listened to much since the move. The lyrics reminded me of what I used to be. My old life. Like, right now, it was Friday, which meant they were probably at Laura’s house since she had an indoor pool and her parents usually let her invite a bunch of us over to swim.
As I lay there, staring up at shadows dancing across the ceiling, I couldn’t help but wonder if they thought about me. Where I was? What I was doing? I’d left without so much as a goodbye. Dad thought it was best, especially after I’d spent three months off the social radar, recovering from my ‘breakdown.’ The façade wasn’t that hard to keep up. Dad had insisted I return to school initially. It would look too suspicious if I just dropped off the face of the earth. I’d been shell-shocked, hardly able to look anyone in the eye. It wasn’t an act. I was sick—scarred from that night—but my friends thought it was signs of the ‘fake’ condition I’d kept from them. I walked the hallways of Montecito Prep barely holding on by a thread, and it had been no surprise when Mom and Dad whisked me away to a private facility for emotionally unstable teens. No visitors, that was the rule. I kept in touch with Laura and a couple of the other girls, at first, but eventually, I was the girl whose life got too much for her, and I became just another thing to add to the gossip mill.
My phone bleeped, and I sat up, wondering who it could be, since the only person’s cell phone number I had was avoiding me.
