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“You can’t fight my battles for me,” Sky mumbles.
“Oh, I know. And I won’t. But that doesn’t mean you have to go at it alone.”
“Thanks.”
“You got it,” Daisy replies lovingly.
The instant I hear their footsteps drawing near, I know that’s my cue to leave. My steps only falter when I hear Daisy's last remark.
“Sky, just stay away from Noah from now on, okay? He's not good for you. He's broken, and broken things are only happy when everything else around them is just as broken as they are.”
Chapter 13
Skylar
Seventeen years old
Daisy’s wrong though. The school doesn't forget. Although the taunts slow a bit, for the next few months, the life I already thought was hell, is even worse. Notes are slipped into my locker calling me an “incest whore”. One day, I came to find that someone had plastered pictures in the hallway of me getting out of the pool that night, and you can see almost every inch of my body through my waterlogged clothes. Guys and girls cough "slut" as I walk by, and I'm sure that I've never been so humiliated in my life.
Soon, the taunts get so bad that I can't take it anymore. I leave school in the middle of the day and take a cab to the ferry. I get on, no one questioning why a high schooler isn’t in class, and I take it all the way across the bay.
When I get there, it only makes me feel worse. Because unlike Daisy, who would have a million people to call when she visited home, I have no one. Just a few acquaintances that certainly wouldn't leave school to come get me. I take another cab to the mall and walk aimlessly around the stores, remembering the day I bought my homecoming dress. More despair floods my veins, because I can’t even call my dad. He's disappeared again, on some trip, somewhere. No surprise there. He’s never been around when I needed him. Except for my sister, no one ever is.
I've never felt so alone.
I decide to catch a movie even as my phone rings with a call from Daisy.
I don't pick up.
I buy a ticket to whatever movie is next, and then a large popcorn, and then I sit in the theater for the next hour and a half, staring blankly at the screen as tears stream down my face. There's only a couple of other people there, some alone, some with one other person. There's a woman in her fifties a few rows down from me. She's calmly drinking her soda as she watches the show. She's drab, dressed in a pair of oversized gray sweats, her mousy chestnut hair in a ponytail. Like me, she’s also alone but she looks like she's okay with that. Content even.
Is that my future, I wonder. Am I going to find myself alone? Always going to the movies alone, going out to eat alone, sitting at home with my cat alone.
It all feels…hopeless.
Someone's head explodes on the screen, and I think, for the first time, that maybe…the world would be better off without me.
My mind starts to spiral. I start to think about how I could do it. I could slip away like this, take some prescription drugs and then let myself sink into the water. Just drift away like I feel I'm drifting through life.
But then Daisy's face fills my head, and I see her standing at my grave side, tears streaming down her face, her spirit broken. I see my mother sobbing into Curt's chest. A snarky voice inside tells me "they’ll recover, maybe they'd be even better off without my baggage”, but I try to push the thought away.
By the end of the movie, I'm disgusted with myself…and I’ve realized…I might need some help.
It's midnight by the time I get home. I've walked all the way from the ferry stop in the rain, and I'm completely soaked. There's a police car in the front of my house, and I brace for what's to come. All the lights in the house are on.
Taking a deep breath, I walk up to the front door and knock, because I left my keys in my backpack at school. The door flies open and there's my mother, looking at least ten years older than she had this morning.
"Skylar! Oh my God!" she cries as she flings herself towards me, throwing her arms around me.
I can see inside the house. There's a policeman standing there next to Curt, both of them staring at me with frowns on their faces. Noah is also hovering in the back of the room, his lips pursed and his arms crossed in front of him.
Daisy comes flying down the hallway, practically pushing my mom to the ground in her hurry to get to me.
"Where the fuck have you been?" she growls, squeezing me so tightly, I’m finding it hard to breathe.
I realize I’m shaking then, and the tears that have been on and off all day are streaming down my face. Again.
I'm dragged inside, everyone staring at me incredulously when I tell them I had gone to the mainland all afternoon and that I just lost track of time.
