Page 16

Lacey’s confession.

At that, the pounding in my head thumped louder. That—I remembered. But this? I looked around at myself, at the placeI’d apparently spent the night. Maybe I’d been abducted by foot fetishists.

Every confused moment I spent there was another chance a classmate might drive by and see me—and was another year on the grounding I was gonna get from my mom.

Shit.

I started limping quickly for the trailer park as fast as I could.

There was no way around it. I was going to have to go in the front door. I inserted my key into the door quietly, hoping beyond hope that my mother’d just come home and gone straight to bed and wasn’t up yet—what my key did to the lock could rightfully called ‘making love’—and I turned the handle in almost complete silence.

When I opened the door I found a cloud of cigarette smoke waiting for me—my mom hardly ever smoked inside, trying to preserve the ‘resale’ value of our trailer, but faced with my insolence she’d apparently given up.

I stepped in and closed the door behind me. She didn’t turn for a long moment, long enough for me to wonder if I was a ghost, if I was dead—and then she turned, and the look on her face made me wish I had been.

“Where the hell have you been?” The table beside the couch was littered with beer cans—my mother hadn’t stayed up all night without company.

“I, uh—” In my long hustle here, I hadn’t thought of any acceptable alternatives, I’d been too busy panicking. So I went with the truth. “I woke up by the side of the road.”

“You—what?” Fear fought with the anger on her face, but then anger re-won. “Really. That’s your story? You chose last night of all nights to sneak out and then you think you’re going to pull one over on me?”

“I went to the hospital. To see Lacey.” There was no point in lying on that front, it’s not like she was going to take me there now. “Then on my way back—I don’t know. I slipped and fell or something. Knocked myself out.” I stood on the small patch of linoleum by our front door, shivering.

“Allie told me about the hospital. They’re lucky they don’t have a lawsuit on their hands.” She stood up and inspected me with bleary eyes. “Where’d you go afterwards?”

“I didn’t. I was coming back here.”

“And it took you, what, eight hours to get home? Allie was crying when I got home, you know that? She was so worried about you, she’d stayed up.”

I inhaled. I felt awful about that, I really did, but— “I’m home now. Nothing happened. It’s fine.”

“You disobeyed me. There’s nothing fine about that.” She lurched upright. “Until you tell me where you were—whose house you were at, so I can have a word with their parents?—”

“But I wasn’t anywhere! I was by the side of the road! Look at me!” I demanded and spun so that she could see the state I was in. “I hit my head or something—I’ve got a terrible headache—I don’t know?—”

“You’ve got a terrible headache?” she asked, taking a step toward me. It was moments like this that I thought that maybe, just maybe, she actually cared. But then she made a snorting sound and turned to go into the kitchen, returning shortly with another can. “I am too old for this shit, Jessica. You’re grounded until you can tell me the truth.”

I inhaled to tell her the truth all right—about how she was an alcoholic and the worst parent ever—but caught myself in time. “Fine. Can I go to my room now? Please?”

My mother didn’t answer, just shook her head gravely, and walked back to her bedroom, beer in hand.

I peeked into Allie’s bedroom first. My sister was asleep in a tangle of sheets and stuffed animals—it wasn’t worth waking her up to tell her I was okay. After that, I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and cranked the water up.

I was cold—freezing—so cold I could feel my bones inside myself, like they were carved from ice. I pulled layer after layer of clothing off, putting all of it in the sink to drain, before ducking behind the shower curtain.

The water stung. I placed my hands on either side of the faucet and let it rain down. It was just like last night, only this time the water was sizzling.

What had happened? Why had I passed out?

Was this how Lacey’d woken up? Not knowing and sore?

A wave of nausea ran through me. There was nothing in my stomach, so I crouched down and gagged. What if I’d been like that on the side of the road and that white four-door’d come back again?

I stayed in the shower, curled into a ball, feeling my own skin. Nothing bad had happened to me. Just some freakish fainting thing. I was in one piece. But, Lacey—when would she come home? Or come back to school? How could she go back to school, not knowing who—another wave of nausea, and then another, and I clapped one hand over my mouth to muffle the retching sounds.

I stayed crouched over for so long my knees hurt, then carefully stood, reached for the soap, and tried to wash myself without thinking.

Twenty minutes later—long enough that my mother had beaten on the door twice, shouting about bills and hot water—I stepped out of the shower and wrung out my hair.