Punk 57 (35 page)

I can’t believe it. He wouldn’t do this to me. He wouldn’t make a fool out of me and play with me like that.

Shooting up, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and glare at him on the screen. He finishes the final note, long and languorous, into the microphone, and from the distance in the crowd, I can see him dip his head as if still lost in the song after it’s over. People cheer, the last chords of the guitar ringing out, and I hear a couple girls call out for him.

Calling for Misha.

Everything is shaking, and the room is spinning as my mind races.

Masen. Mysterious, quiet Masen who no one knows anything about and who came out of nowhere. The guy who knew I’d loved
Twilight
, where I lived, and exactly what to get out of my backpack when I had my asthma attack without me telling him.

Oh, my God, how did I not know? I close my eyes, angry tears streaming down my face.

Misha, my best friend who got me into bed and fucked me with a lie.

You have a friend
, he’d said earlier.

“No,” I whisper to myself, rage building as I slam my laptop closed and leave the room to get my sister’s car keys.

I have no friends.

Everything is dark, not a single light shining through any of the windows. My dad has to be home, though. It’s pretty late.

I slip my key into the lock, always nervous that I’ll find it doesn’t work. Of course, my father wouldn’t have any reason to keep me out—he never told me to leave, after all—but I’m not really sure he wants me here, either.

Stepping inside, I close the door behind me and stick my keys back in my pocket. A pungent odor hits my nostrils, and I wince, gazing around.

Trepidation creeps in. The house is a mess. My dad was always a neat freak, and with my sister and me helping with chores, we kept a nice house.

But I look around, seeing mail and newspapers on the floor, some laundry on the stairs, and I smell something that’s a mixture of old food and dirty clothes.

Walking past the sitting room, I notice a light coming from the living room and peer in, seeing the TV playing. The sound is low, and my father is lying on the recliner in his pajamas and robe. A table full of coffee cups, napkins, and a barely-eaten plate of food stands next to his chair.

I walk over and gaze down at his sleeping form, guilt weighing on me. Dane was right. My dad is an active guy. Even after Annie, he still took care of things around here. But I can see the sallow tint to his cheeks and how rumpled his clothes are, like he’s worn them for more than a day.

My eyes start to burn, and I suddenly want Ryen.

I need her. I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do right now.

I couldn’t get back what I needed from Falcon’s Well, but I’m not sure I care anymore.

But I don’t want to leave yet, either. I want Ryen, but I also feel like if I walked out now and left my father for good, Annie would truly be gone. Any semblance of the life we had before would be a memory.

I lower myself to the ottoman, watching him. His head is turned to the side, and I spy a pill bottle on the table.

I don’t have to look to know it’s Xanax. My dad’s kept it around for years, something to take the edge off when raising two kids by himself got stressful. Honestly, though, I think he started taking it because my mother left. He’d loved her, and she skipped out. No notes, no calls, no contact. She left her kids and never looked back.

I dealt with it, my father buried himself in his kids, work, and hobbies to not think about it, and Annie waited. She always seemed to think our mom would come back and want to see us eventually. She’d be ready for her.

I still feel my sister in this house. As if she’s going to walk in the door, sweaty and out of breath from exercising, and barking orders, reminding me that it was my night to cook dinner and telling Dad to throw the clothes in the dryer.

“I miss her, Dad,” I speak low and quiet, despair overtaking me. “She called me that night.”

I look up at him, wishing he was awake but also glad that he isn’t. He knew she’d called me, probably only a minute before she collapsed on the road, but he wouldn’t hear any more. He’d fly into a rage, because he knew this was my fault.

“I didn’t answer, because I was busy,” I continue. “I assumed it was something little. You know how she always got on my case for not washing my dishes or stealing her chips?” I smile to myself at the memories. “I thought it was something unimportant, and I’d just call her back in a minute, but I made a mistake.”

I let out a breath and close my eyes. If I’d answered…I might’ve gotten to her in time. I might’ve gotten an ambulance to her before it was too late.

“When I called back she wasn’t answering,” I say, more to myself, reliving the night in my head as tears build. “I still wake up, frightened out my mind, and for a moment I think that it was all a nightmare. I grab my phone, scared that I missed a call from her.”

I bury my head in my hands.

In the weeks that followed Annie’s death, my father and I either fought or ignored each other. He blamed me for not being there when she needed me. She’d called me, after all, not him.

And I blamed him, too. If he’d just stopped pushing her and convinced her that our mother was never coming back, she might not have been destroying her body to try to be the perfect student, the perfect athlete, the perfect kid… And then her poor body might not have given out on her on that dark, empty road.

If he hadn’t popped Xanax when it was convenient then maybe Annie would never have gotten the idea to put herself on amphetamines to give herself the boost to do more than she should handle and be perfect.

Annie was going to be great. She fought for what she wanted in life. So much wasted talent.

“Sometimes I wish it was me instead, too.” I look up, seeing him still asleep.

He’d said that to me one night when we’d gotten in each other’s face, and I’d been hurt, despite how I acted like I wasn’t. I knew he didn’t mean it, but I do know he’d be happier still having the one child of his he had a good relationship with.

With me, what does he have?

But I can’t let him go. Annie is in him, she’s in this house, and we’re her family. We have to stay that way.

“We’re never going to have a relationship like you and she had, but I’m here.”

I stand up and quietly start clearing off the cluttered table, heading to the kitchen to do the dishes.

“Hey,” Dane calls, and I look up, seeing him walk back out of the gate at the Cove and head toward me.

“I’ve been texting you,” he says.

“Yeah, I saw.” I slam the truck door and reach into the bed of the truck, taking out some boxes.

After cleaning the kitchen at home, I’d opened some windows to air the house out while I threw in a load of laundry, sorted through the mail, took out the garbage, and cleaned up my bedroom. Which is pretty impressive, because I never do that.

I’d covered my dad with a blanket, and hopefully, when I bring groceries home tomorrow, he will be okay with me being back.

I guess I’ll find out.

“I’ve been going over this song you gave me with the guys. We were up until three last night,” he tells me. “I think we really got something.”

I nod, not really that invested in that right now. My head is in a million other places. I still have no idea how I’m going to fess up to Ryen.

God, she’s going to kill me.

Dane walks with me as I head through the parking lot for the gate entrance. “What are you doing?” he asks. “Are you moving back?”

“I’ll be home soon,” I say. “I just have some stuff to clear up here first.”

“Do you need help?”

I jerk my head over my shoulder. “Go grab more boxes if you want.”

He runs back and collects the rest of the boxes I’d taken from my garage at home, and we walk through the old park.

I didn’t bring much with me when I decided to hide out here, so it won’t take long to pack my stuff, but I’m not in a hurry.

I don’t really want to leave, but I can’t stay here as Masen Laurent anymore—a name I picked out of thin air a month ago when I asked my cousin to help me get my fake driver’s license and forge some school records. I just kept my same initials.

Once people—two people, in particular—find out I’m Misha Lare, the jig is up.

And I can’t lie to her anymore. Things were never supposed to get this far.

I don’t have any friends.
Hearing her words and seeing her eyes tonight, that moment when she broke, I hated myself. What is she going to think tomorrow when she finds out her best friend stabbed her in the back and looked her in the eye doing it?

Dane and I climb down the field house stairs, and I head over to the opposite wall, throwing some switches. Lights spark to life, illuminating the long hallways as we make our way straight, to the room I’ve been using.

“I don’t know how you slept down here,” he mumbles. “It’s like a horror movie.”

I give a weak laugh. It’s definitely creepy, but… “I wasn’t really thinking a lot back then.”

I figured because it’s close to Falcon’s Well, I probably wouldn’t be discovered—or so I thought—and I have good memories of coming to this place with Annie when I was a kid.

I swing into the room, Dane following behind, and I walk the short distance to the bed table and switch on the light.

“Whoa,” Dane says.

“What?” I look up and follow his gaze, but I quickly notice what he’s referring to, and I stop breathing for a moment.

Wha—

“What the hell have you been doing in here?”

I turn in a circle, seeing the flood of papers scattered over nearly every inch of the room. Posters are ripped off the walls, my clothes are strewn about, and a table with some candles is tipped over, all of my personals laying on the floor.

I suddenly feel the pulse in my neck throb like the vein is trying to punch through the skin.

“I didn’t do this.”

I lean down and grab a fistful of the papers off the floor, seeing my name at the bottom of every letter, a couple of them a year or two old, and one from grade school. I can tell, because I signed my name
Mish
during an asinine spell to sound less girly.