Page 46 of The Games We Play

I push back awkwardly and pull away from Mr. Collins. He appears to look everywhere but at me and clears his throat.

“Thank you,” I say with a tight smile and slip past him to go find Ryan and try to shove down whatever the fuck just happened.

***

“Mine,” a deep voicegrowls. I roll to my back and blink at the dark room. A moment of confusion washes over me.

Where am I?

I quickly sit up and look around. Recollection of yesterday comes rushing back in and I breathe heavily. Roxy whines at the foot of my bed and does her tapping dance on her paws, telling me she needs to go outside.

I check my phone. “Seriously? It’s three a.m. Why?” I get out of the bed and wrap a silk robe around my body. Light filters in from the hallway through the cracked door and I pause. I never sleep with the door open. Not even a crack. As a kid, I did it to drown out the shouting and fighting coming from Mom and Dad’s room.

My brain is muddled as I try to navigate through that distant memory. The room spins and I brace myself on the wall. Screams fill my head and I squeeze my hands over my ears, hoping to drown them out. But they grow louder. Pain. There’s so much pain.

“No! Stop!” I whimper and fall to the ground on my knees.

Roxy licks my face and pushes her head to mine. Her whines tangle with the rush of…memories…the kind I have suppressed for years. Mom stands with mascara running down her cheeks, screaming at Dad in thekitchen. She throws a liquor bottle at him and it shatters against the wall. I grab her arm, begging her to stop, but she slaps me and I land on my hands and knees amongst the broken glass.

I throw myself into the wall and I’m snapped back into the dark room at the lake house.

My parents aren’t here. I’m not a little kid anymore and she doesn’t have control over me.

Roxy lies on my lap, and I run my hands over her fur. She whimpers and her ears perk up at me.

“Just a bad dream, girl.”

It’s been a while since I last thought about what life was like before mom passed away. I was barely thirteen when I took my life into my own hands.

Glancing at the cracked door, I anticipate the wave of screams to hit me again, but nothing happens. My mind is quiet.

“Puppet.”

I push to my feet and spin around the room, searching for X. He was the reason I woke up. I heard him.

He’s here.

My breath quickens and the room spins around me. I’m not moving, but everything else is. Like the tunnel at the clown house.

Roxy barks and I reach down to pet her head to tell her it’s okay, but I miss and everything is off kilter. Is this what being drugged feels like? The ground rushes up to my face, but there’s no pain. I’m suspended in inky blackness.

***

The smell of bacon,eggs, and syrup pulls me from my dreamless sleep. My body hurts and I roll to my back on the floor.

The floor? What the fuck?

I groan as I get up and make my way down the stairs. Mr. Collins hums a chipper tune while he flips a pancake perfectly in the pan.

“How’d you sleep?” he asks without turning around.

My head is full of things I’ve long since forgotten. Things I wish would have stayed buried.

“Tess?” Mr. Collins asks again, only now he’s turned around and facing me. “What the fuck happened to you?” I startle away from how quickly he’s standing in front of me.

“What?” I ask, lifting a hand to the side of my face where he’s staring. I wince at the pain shooting across my skull. “Oh, um, I fell.”

“When? This is already bruised.” He gives me a disapproving dad look and I shrug. “Sit,” he orders, and I slide onto the barstool.

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