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With one last big push from Ariel, and using every muscle in my body, I manage to make it up and over the windowsill, falling into a heap onto the hardwood floor of the dining room. The thumping noises of my arms, legs and hip hitting the floor sound as loud as a shotgun going off in the quiet room. I wince while holding my breath and remaining perfectly still, hoping to God the noise didn’t wake my dad.
“I BROKE A NAIL, YOU ASSHOLE!”
Ariel’s shout from outside has me scrambling up on my knees and quickly flinging my head out the window to look down at her while she continues cursing and staring at her hand.
“Will you keep it down?! You’re going to wake the neighbors and my dad!” I whisper yell back to her.
“I don’t give a shit who I wake up! You broke my nail and you gave me a black eye. The entire neighborhood needs to know that the STRUGGLE IS REAL!” she screams at the top of her lungs.
“ISABELLE MARIE READING! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
I let out a surprised squeak at the sound of my father’s angry voice, jumping up from the floor as Ariel looks up at me with a scowl.
“Is that your dad?! Pull me through the window so I can give him a piece of my mind. That old-ass motherfu—”
I cut off Ariel’s shouting by quickly slamming the window closed and whirling around to face the man across the room, whom I have never seen looking so angry. He’s wearing a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a rumpled T-shirt, his salt and pepper hair all askew on top of his head, and the sight of him makes me visibly wilt. I feel like the worst daughter in the world.
To say things have been strained between us lately is an understatement, and I hate it. I hate that I’ve been lying to him and I hate that I haven’t been honest with Cindy and Ariel about the state of my relationship with him. He’s always been the most important person in my life, but some things you just can’t discuss with your own father, regardless of how close you are, and that’s taken its toll. How am I supposed to tell him that he’s smothering me when he’s spent his entire life taking caring of me, being a father and a mother to me since my mother died a few years after I was born? How am I supposed to tell him that I want to spread my wings and fly, have fun and make stupid choices like a normal woman in her twenties—and, most importantly, fall in love? How am I supposed to explain to him that I can’t fall in love unless I kiss a whole bunch of frogs, and I can’t exactly kiss those frogs, or do any other naughty things I’d like to do with frogs, if he’s constantly monitoring everything I do, afraid I’m going to get taken advantage of or hurt? I need to live my life and do something different and exciting.
I’ve tried so many times to tell him that I’m a grown woman and I need to do grown-woman things, but it never comes out right. It’s caused me to be short with him lately, and it’s resulted in more than a few arguments between us. I’ve never behaved like this in my entire life. I’ve always been the quiet, respectful daughter who does as she’s told and whatever she can to make her father happy. It’s all just gotten so exhausting lately.
I’ve lived my life in black and white, content with being the shy, quiet wallflower who does nothing but read, just waiting for something exciting to happen to me like it does for the heroines in my books. When the colorfulness of Cindy and Ariel burst into my life, I realized that being content wasn’t making me happy anymore. I realized I couldn’t sit around waiting for something exciting to happen to me. If I wanted to have fun and experience real life, I needed to get out there and make it happen on my own. I needed to take charge and find the excitement, instead of waiting for it to come to me. And after seeing Cindy find her knight in shining armor, shed her uptight PTA-mom persona, and move on with her life to something bigger and better, I now want that for myself more than anything in the world.
I want the fairy tale. And I can’t exactly figure out how to get it by sneaking out of this house every time I want to do something that hasn’t been preapproved for my safety and security by my father.
“Isabelle! Answer me! Did you sneak out of the house tonight? And what in the world are you wearing?!”
