Page 43 of Stone: The Precursor

“Washing off your bearded dragon hands! I’ll probably get salmonella!”

“There’s my dramatic bestie. Stop acting like you haven’t been feeding him extra meal worms and baby-talking him! I’ve heard you.”

She exits the bathroom, wiping her hands on a towel. “I’m not hard-hearted. He was looking thinner. I felt bad. Anyway, how’s the gallery?”

“Great. I have a ton of work to do, but it’s going to be great once I get it started.”

“When do you move into the upstairs apartment?”

“Another month.”

She starts to tear up. “That is going to suck. You’re leaving me.”

“I will never leave you, King. I’m probably going to harass you a few times a week and sleep over. My new place is run down and I’ll miss your expensive ass guest bed.”

“Why not just get a bigger place?”

“Because I want to do this. I want to build something of my own. I want to do it by myself. I want it to mean something.” I can see that the meaning behind my words is not lost on her. She offers me an understanding smile.

“Well, I’m proud of you.”

Her praise warms me. “Thanks.”

“Of course. You’re my sister from another mister.”

I smile at her phrase. It’s something she said just a week after we met. “How’s the world of fashion?” I ask, watching my best friend since I was nine years old, pull out her suitcase. I slump on her bed, reaching for the bag of pretzels on her night table, nibbling on a handful.

“Good. I’m leaving Australia to meet up with an up and coming fashion designer.”

“That far?”

“I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity. I’ve been eyeing her socials for over a year. She does these amazing prints of the indigenous people of Australia and I want to collaborate with her. It’s a chance to have my sustainable clothing line become more global. And it offers me a change to get a break from allthe bullshit going on with the campaign for my dad’s reelection. I feel so hemmed in all the goddamn time and there is no escape in sight! Two weeks away is exactly what I need.”

Her being gone for two weeks won’t be fun since I hate being alone, but I remind myself that I need to get over the feelings of abandonment from my father, my mother, and yes, even my brothers.

“Then like the good dutiful daughter I am, I’ll jump right back into the fray and smile pretty for the camera.” She gets up and puts her right hand on her chest. “I pledge allegiance to the Shearer family. New York’s All American Black family.”

She giggles and returns to throwing clothes into her suitcase.

King’s words bring me back to the present and not the past of being left alone for weeks while my father was away and my brothers were in college. If it wasn’t for Maria and her husband, I would have been even lonelier. “Just tell him, King.”

My friend looks at me and brushes her tight curly blond hair off her brown forehead. Frustration is written all over her beautiful pixie face. “Tell him what, Cam? That I hate his guts? That I hate the pretense that we are some sort of loving family when in reality he is a cruel asshole who talks down his wife and child and keeps me hostage because he knows my mother’s mental health is precarious? That I don’t give a flying fuck about his campaign and his business cronies who want to slip me notes with their hotel rooms numbers? Or should I tell them to fuck off too?”

“Well, yeah.” I’ve been there. The memory of all the times I dodged lascivious looks from my father’s friends.

“I’m not brave the way you are, Cam. He rules with an iron fist and I’m too used to the bruises.”

I scoff so hard that it sounds like a grunt. “Brave? Bullshit. I’m a fucking coward who needed her brother and soon to be sister-in-law to defy my father.”

Two peas in a pod are King and I. Two women, running from their overbearing fathers, unsure in which direction to flee.

“But you did it,” she argues, and I see the moment her walls crumble. She slumps on her bed, tears leaking down her face. “I know I’m running away, but with mom back on her medication and doing better, I don’t feel so trapped.”

I crawl over to her and kiss her head, feeling her pain. We are both women who are caught between duty and a desire to forge our own lives.

Growing up, I always liked her mother, Audrey. She was soft spoken and very shy, almost too shy to be with King’s father, who was domineering and cruel in private, but plastered on a charming smile while in public. For a long time, King’s mother was in and out of medical hospitals. Her father told the public that she was suffering from chronic health issues. The truth was too embarrassing for his career. Audrey Shearer was suffering from depression. Plagued with suicidal thoughts. My mother was alive. Mine was dead, but in a way, we were both motherless. Her mother was lost inside her mind, while I lost mine to a brain aneurysm. It’s what bonded us from that first day in boarding school.

“So go. Take a break. Cut off ties. Call me if you need to when you’re there.”