CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ten Years Ago
No one was happy with me that I’d lied about my parents being dead, especially not my parents. But in my defense, they were dead to me. Grams had been my legal guardian for five years, but I was fourteen when she died and the idiot judge thought that I had to live with someone. He picked my mom.
Mom and Dad had divorced after the trial and Mom tried to force me to live with her. Grams had been stronger then and stood up to my mom. Mom cried, but I just kept my thoughts focused on all the lies she’d told. Grams had been as hurt as I was, because Mom was her daughter. I might have only been nine during the trial, but I understood a lot more than people thought. I told Grams not to blame herself, that Mom made me live with the consequences of my bad choices, like when I thought the Jacuzzi would make a good bubble bath or when I went over to Jared’s house to play his war games after Mom said I couldn’t play any games rated M. I was grounded for a month.
Mom and Dad made bad choices—it was like that FBI agent said; some bad choices have unforeseen consequences. That doesn’t make it okay to lie.
Grams and I had a tacit agreement that day. We could talk about Mom or Dad or what happened to Rachel, but we’d remember only the fun things, like when Grandpa taught Rachel and me to fish or when Grams taught us to bake.
And then Grams was gone, just like Grandpa and just like Rachel, who I remembered more than I wanted.
It was my second week back living with my mom, the day I started high school, and Mom drove me to the campus. As if being a freshman who was shorter than everyone else as well as notorious wasn’t bad enough, Mom had to pick a fight.
“You need to forgive me.”
“For what?”
“For what happened to Rachel.”
“You didn’t kill her.”
“Don’t talk about it.”
“You started it.”
I’d never have talked to Grams like I spoke to my mom, but I loved and respected Grams.
I looked at my mom. Pilar McMahon. Forty-five. Dyed her hair and wore too much makeup.
“Do you know how sorry I am? Do you know how much I have suffered these five years? Knowing what happened to Rachel, knowing that you never wanted to see me again.”
And if Grams was still alive, I wouldn’t be having this conversation now.
“Peter, please.”
Mom didn’t know what I knew. That in the last week I’d heard the front door close in the middle of the night. That even when she thought she was being quiet her bed hit the wall. I might not have known had I not been raised to the same sounds.
“Are you still a slut?”
She slapped me. I got out of the car and didn’t look back.
The first day of high school wasn’t the worst day of my life, but it was in the top ten.
It was the end of the day, when I went to my locker to get my things, that bad went to worse. I found a note.
I’M WATCHING YOU.