And I hate her for it.
She rubs her temple as if she has a headache. “This isn’t how I planned this conversation.”
“Oh, really, Mom?” I say, flinging a hand in the air. “Was the plan to write it on a cake? So sorry to ruin your going away party.”
She turns her face away from me as a tear slips over her lashes. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Addie. Your dad and I—”
Her words cut off in a gasp as her hand shoots out and slaps my chest, the way it used to when she was little. My heart leaps into my throat when, past her, I see the other car.
Too late.
“Addie!” she screams.
I spring to a sitting position in the bed and gasp for air that I can’t get, my wide eyes seeing smoke and blood that only exist in my memory.
The last word my mother ever spoke was my name.
My heart gallops in my chest as I peel away the sheet stuck to my body with cold sweat. I rub my eyes and open them wide, forcing away the last remnants of the nightmare and bringing myself fully back to the room. As my shaking slows, I look at the clock. Three. I flick on the light and reach for the book on my nightstand, because there’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep any more tonight. I never read when Mom was alive and I know it really bothered her. Which was the reason I did it. It was my passive aggressive protest to her choosing her imaginary friends over her family. But when I can’t bear to be in my world, losing myself in someone else’s is the only escape, so I read now.
Three hours later, when the sun comes up outside my window, I remove myself from James Joyce’s world and stick my toe into mine. The dark cloud seems to have lifted, so I sink back into my body and drag myself to the shower. By the time I’m ready for school an hour later, I have my “normal” mask fully back in place.
Chapter 7
Marcus
All I can do is close my eyes and pretend I didn’t just see Corinne’s entire left boob as she pulls herself up on the pool edge.
“Whoops!” she says, lifting the strap and tucking it back into her Speedo.
But there’s no way that strap would have just “fallen” down. It had help.
When I open my eyes, she’s standing right in front of me, a self-satisfied smirk on her face as the rest of her teammates swim warm-up laps. “Why so shy, Marcus? I’m sure you know your way around a woman’s body.”
“Why aren’t you swimming?” I ask.
“My shoulder’s been hurting,” she says, rolling her shoulder in a circle. “Could you help me stretch?”
I look up to see Addie walk onto the pool deck. It’s half an hour into practice and I’d been worried she wasn’t going to show. I breathe a sigh of relief. This team is short on offense. A left-handed shooter with her skill on right wing is going to make all the difference.
“Get Melanie to stretch you,” I tell Corinne as her teammates finish warming up and gather near the edge of the pool.
She gives me a pout, but then heads back to the pool.
Once we’ve worked through offensive and defensive drills, I set them up on a five on five scrimmage, then head to where Addie is sitting with a book open in her lap.
“How’s the head today?”
She looks up from her book and gives me a shrug. The hollow under her left eye is nearly as dark as the shiner under her right, and her fair skin is missing its normal glow. She looks exhausted. “Still attached.”
I pull myself up onto the bleacher next to her. “So, everything’s okay?”
I let the question dangle, knowing it has multiple meanings and letting her decide which facet of it to answer. “Everything’s fine,” she says, her eyes lowering to her book.
So, not anything she’s willing to talk about, then. I take another tack. “What number are we up to?” I ask with a nod at the book.
She turns it so I can see the cover. Ulysses by James Joyce. “Number sixteen.”
“Wow. You’re really tearing through the list.”
“Not really,” she says. “I read Brave New World and about half of A Day No Pigs Would Die over the last few weeks. The Harry Potter series was number thirteen, and fourteen was Catcher in the Rye. I’d read those already. Skipped fifteen, so…” She trails off and holds up Ulysses with a shrug.
“Harry Potter is controversial?” I say with a shake of my head. “Who woulda thunk?”
“Filling kids’ heads full of black magic…” She taps her index finger on the bandages above her ear. “Pure evil.”
I scratch my head and grimace. “I have to admit seriously wishing I could play Quidditch after I read the first book.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “You probably would have been ridiculously good at that too.”
I can’t stop the grin. “I would have killed it.”
She smiles back and her expression lightens with the gesture, which stirs something in my gut. “Which HP book was your favorite?”
I think for a second. “The Prisoner of Azkaban. Yours?”
“The Half-Blood Prince,” she says decisively. “Least favorite?”