I swiftly shake my head, flexing fingers, fighting the urge to pierce my nails into my flesh. ‘No, I can’t do that.’
‘I know you can’t.’ His expression softens. ‘And that’s exactly what I told her.’
My muscles untense slightly. ‘What about you? Are you … going to?’
Liz looks about as eager to hear his answer as I do.
‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘I said my goodbyes the day I turned eighteen.’
Shutting my eyes, I nod. I feel like I’m on the verge of crying, thinking about how I never did get to say goodbye. That the last real exchange my father and I had was when he looked down at me with hateful eyes as I bled out on the kitchen floor. I wonder if he thought I was going to die. I wonder if he was happy because of it. I want to stop wondering about all this. I want to say goodbye like Dylan did, but not to my dad, to the past. And I want to go to my future.
‘I need to go home.’ I don’t mean to say it aloud, but the moment I do is the moment I realize just how much I need it.
Thankfully, Dylan sees it, too, because he stands up and crosses the room, giving me a weird, awkward, but welcomed hug. ‘I know you do. And I think I have an idea.’
Chapter 21
#162 Have a Mad, Crazy Snowball Fight.
Callie
Before Jackson and I head to Laramie, he and my dad loaded up the truck with some furniture my mom decided to give me that was in the guestroom – the one that still isn’t finished. It consists of a queen size bedframe and mattress, a dresser and nightstand, along with a couple of barstools for the kitchen. She also threw in some of her old cooking supplies even though I told her I don’t like to cook. I think I actually broke her heart when I said that, but so did me leaving earlier. She cried the entire time she was hugging me goodbye and then while Jackson and I were pulling out of the driveway.
‘Thank God that’s over,’ Jackson remarks as he drives toward Laramie. He’ll only be there for two days, but he keeps insisting we’re going to, ‘Snowboard like pros and party like rock stars’ while we’re there.
‘She means well,’ I say, taking my laptop out of a bag to get some work done for my internship, since I haven’t done anything since Thanksgiving break started.
‘She may mean well,’ he says, pulling into a gas station so he can fill up the tank before we hit the highway, ‘but she comes off crazy.’
I laugh, but don’t go too much further into the making-fun-of-Mom. She may be a little intense, but deep down I do believe she means well and that her overbearing attitude lately is coming from what happened to me. I think she feels she needs to make up for it by smothering me, so instead of fighting her, I’ve decided to let her be. Of course, telling my brother this will only get me teasing remarks at being a mama’s girl.
When Jackson gets out to put gas in the truck, I get in the backseat with my laptop on my lap. But even when he gets back in and starts driving again, I’m still staring at that damn cursor and I swear it’s begging me to write something else. So even though I know I shouldn’t, I switch to my fiction-yet-kind-of-non-fiction story and suddenly my fingers come alive.
This monster wasn’t in disguise like the one she’d met so many years ago. He snarled his fangs and raised his fists, ready to break everything in his path.
Knowing that she would only get one chance with this, the girl rushed forward before she could back out.
‘Stop.’ Her voice was as small as she felt, and when the monster turned to look at her, she wanted to run. But honestly, she was sick of running, so tired of monsters winning.
‘Can I help you?’ the monster asked, his fangs disappearing, his eyes softening as he shape-shifted into his misleading form. He thought the girl couldn’t see anymore what lay beneath the disguise, but she could.
The monster.
In his eyes.
‘You’re needed inside,’ the girl lied, her voice surprisingly steady and her feet firmly planted on the ground. She glanced at the boy, who was standing so still she thought he might be frozen.
The monster looked back at the boy, too, and she couldn’t see his eyes anymore, but by the way the boy cowered, she knew the man had shown the boy a glimpse of the monster waiting for him when she left.
When the man turned back to the girl, his disguise was back up as he smiled and nodded before he started inside. The girl held her breath as he walked by, afraid the monster might jump out and attack her.
He never did.
He must save it for the boy, she thought sadly.
Once the monster was in his palace, which looked more like a dungeon hidden beneath fancy walls, tall towers, and bright lights, she finally faced the boy.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked tentatively. It’d been forever since the girl had spoken to a boy – to anyone really – and she was nervous.
‘I’m fine,’ the boy said, the iciness in his tone startling her. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe the boy really couldn’t see the monster living inside the man.
‘O-okay.’ Her voice quivered as she lowered her head and turned to go back home and back though the vines that surrounded her own torturous palace.
‘Wait,’ the boy called out before she could get too far.
The sound of his voice calmed her, and when she faced him again, she was almost smiling for the very first time in six years.
The boy kept his distance, as if he feared the girl and was afraid to get to close. But that was okay; she feared his closeness as well.
‘Why did you do that?’ he asked, wrapping his arms around himself.
‘Because …’ She considered what to tell him. The truth? It seemed too terrifying to utter her secrets aloud. Maybe she could be vague, though. ‘No one ever did it for me.’
‘You know a monster, too?’ the boy asked, and this time he took a step toward her.
The girl was afraid.
But she was also curious.
So she stayed.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do.’
‘Does he … hurt you?’
She wanted to run, but found herself nodding. ‘He did.’
The boy seemed sad and in pain as he moved toward her again, this time more quickly and with his hand stretched out. ‘I’m sorry that he did.’
The girl looked at his hand, unsure what to do. She was afraid to touch him, afraid the boy could be wearing his own disguise and that suddenly a monster would appear in his place.
The boy must have read her mind because he pulled away and wrapped his arms around himself again. ‘Thank you,’ he uttered softly.