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Most people felt a sense of relief when they left the hospital. All I felt was dread.
“The car’s over here, sweetheart.” Zara smiled and hooked an arm in the crook of my elbow. “Can you make it?”
I glumly nodded. “I’m fine.”
Zara’s once-warm ‘motherly’ touch now felt cold and unfamiliar. The truth of her identity was lingering over my existence like a black cloud, filling me with despair.
I couldn’t help but think back to my first day in Vanderwild Bay, when I worried that everything here was too good to be true. I should have listened to that tiny voice in the back of my head. Should have known everything would be ripped away from me eventually.
I swayed slightly on my feet, feeling nauseated and dizzy. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Zara asked, voice laced with false concern.
I clenched my teeth. “Yes. I just slipped.”
Truthfully, I wasn’t ready to be out yet, but I was desperate to return to school so I could see Jensen and receive the burner phone he’d promised to obtain for me. Until then, we couldn’t speak freely.
I made it to the car, legs feeling strangely wooden, and climbed into the passenger seat. As Zara clipped in her seatbelt, she glanced over at me. “We need to discuss some new rules,” she said. “Ali and I don’t want to send you to rehab, so we’re hoping these rules will help us keep everything under control.”
I almost snorted with laughter at that. Zara and Ali were working really hard to keep up this ridiculous lie about me being an off-the-rails drug addict, despite the fact that I’d never touched anything stronger than Tylenol in my life. “Okay. What are the new rules?” I asked.
Zara reached into her handbag and pulled out my phone. “You must have your phone on you at all times,” she said, handing it over to me. “No exceptions. That way we can check in on you whenever we want so we know you’re safe.”
So you can listen to me whenever you want via the bug you’ve stuck on my phone, you mean, I thought, suppressing the urge to roll my eyes. I pursed my lips and nodded. “That makes sense.”
Zara turned away to start the car. “Rule two. You now have a curfew of eight-thirty. We can make exceptions for school events that run late on a case-by-case basis.”
“Okay.”
“You must be in your bedroom by eleven o’clock every night. Your door and windows will be locked from the outside.”
I knew that rule was coming. I also knew I had to argue against it a bit. If I just meekly accepted it like it was nothing, that would look suspicious. Like I was expecting it. Then Zara might realize that I’d remembered everything from our cave conversation.
“Seriously?” I said, twisting my face into an exasperated frown. “You’re locking me in?”
Zara kept her eyes on the road as she replied. “It’s not like your room is a prison, sweetie. You have everything you need in there, and you’ll only be locked in at night when you’re supposed to be sleeping,” she said, drumming her nails on the steering wheel. “It’s just to make sure you aren’t sneaking out and getting up to anything with unseemly people. For your own safety.”
I let out a sigh. “I guess that makes sense,” I grumbled.
We returned to the house fifteen minutes later. I stared up at the grand old Victorian as I exited the car, wondering how I ever could’ve loved such a place. It used to seem so elegant and otherworldly to me, but now it just seemed oppressive and sinister.
Zara helped me up the stairs and followed me to my room. “Oh, no!” she said, eyes widening as I opened my door. “Look what’s happened!”
My laptop was lying on the floor with several large cracks in it.
Zara stepped over to the balcony door. “This is all my fault,” she said. “I left the windows open to air the room out. I keep forgetting about that stupid cat.”
“What cat?”
“Haven’t you seen it?” she said, turning to me. “It’s that gray one that roams around the neighborhood all the time. Whenever I leave a window open, it sneaks in and knocks things over. It managed to smash my iPad once. Little bastard.”
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes again as Zara rambled on about the fictional cat. I knew she was the one who knocked my laptop off my desk and stepped on it.
“I hope you didn’t have any important schoolwork on there,” she said, forehead creasing.
Nope, just my Rosmerta notes, but you already knew that, I thought, shoulders slumping.
“It’s fine,” I muttered, stooping to pick up the cracked remains of the computer.
“You know, when that idiotic cat smashed my iPad, it actually managed to delete a lot of stuff off the cloud,” Zara said with an injured sniff. “I have no idea how. It must’ve stepped on something on the screen that automatically deleted everything. I hope that hasn’t happened to you.”
