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My mom and Curt apologize to the police officer and thank him for coming, and he gives me some sort of lecture about never doing this again before he disappears into the night.
I'm still feeling numb though, still trying to fight off the blanket of melancholy draped across my shoulders since that moment in the theater when I first started thinking about ending my misery.
"What were you thinking?" my mother shrieks as soon as the door’s closed. "You realize how worried we've all been? I would've never expected this type of behavior from you." She's ranting and raving, her face turning red as she gestures, and I just sit there, like a lump on a log.
Finally, my mother realizes that her screaming isn't getting through to me. She murmurs something to Curt and he leaves the room, snapping at Noah to follow him. Noah reluctantly follows him, and I feel the loss of his gaze the second he's gone.
Daisy refuses to leave though. She’s standing there with her arms crossed, her hair uncharacteristically unkempt like she's been running her hands through it all evening.
My mother sits down on the couch next to me and takes one of my hands in hers. "Skylar, help me to understand."
"She's being bullied," Daisy blurts out, finally shocking me out of the fog that I've been wrapped in.
My mother's mouth drops. "Bullied?" She stares at me, concerned. "Why haven't you said anything?"
Again, Daisy inserts herself before I can say anything, not that I have anything to say.
"Would you even have cared if she did?" Daisy spits sarcastically. "When was the last time that you even spent some quality time with us and asked what was going on in our lives? Sorry to burst your bubble, Mom, but since we move here you’ve been so far up Curt’s ass you’ve forgotten about us completely. You've been acting like Grant and that shit is saying something.”
Shock and guilt is written all over my mother's face as she stares incredulously at the both of us. She opens her mouth, to defend herself I'm sure, but Daisy waves her away, not wanting to hear it.
"Sky, you should've said something tome. You scared me. Not knowing where you were all day, scared me. If all you wanted was a break, I could’ve gone with you to Falmouth."
That does get my mom speaking again, because she starts lecturing us both on the fact that we are, under no circumstances, allowed to play hooky from school, and how this whole instance has damaged her trust in me.
She seems to skip right over what Daisy’s told her, or the accusation that Daisy’s levied about just how interested in her daughters’ lives she's been over the last year.
After another thirty minutes of lecturing, I'm sent to my room, grounded for the foreseeable future. Daisy tries to follow me inside, but I tell her I just need some space, and reluctantly she gives it to me.
* * *
I'm lying listlessly on my bed, staring up at the ceiling when the door opens, and I don't have to look over to see who it is this time.
Noah walks inside and closes the door behind him, clicking the lock. He stands there by the door, so long that I have no choice but to glance over at him. The look on his face is inscrutable. He’s just staring at me…almost blankly.
Finally, he walks over to the bed and sits at the foot, reminding me of that moment we shared. It almost feels like another lifetime at this point.
“Where did you go?" he finally asks.
I don't bother answering him.
I don’t owe him anything.
In this moment, it feels like he's won, like all the fight’s been wiped out of me. Who was I to think that I had enough in me to go up against someone like him?
I was a fool, that's what I was.
“Skylar!” he snaps, frustration thick in his voice.
I stare at him.
He looks…wrecked. There are dark circles under his eyes and his hair is all over the place.
“I hate you,” I whisper to him, and he leans back, his face stunned.
“What?—”
“I hate you.”
