Page 10 of Chaos

“Six months,” I repeat—I clarify.

“Aftera thirty-day programme.”

I grit my teeth. Seven months. Seven fucking months. Over half a year of my life gone just to prove that I’m not a mess, a lost cause, whatever else she thinks of me. Half a year in exchange for the whopping sum I left in the bank account I lost access to the same day I lost everything else.

I… I can do that. Surely, I can do that. If I can’t, then fuck, maybe Lux is right and I do have a problem.

“Fine.”

3

She’s not even a little bit like what he expected.

He thinks she might be worse.

I waseight when my mom lied to me for the first time.

That I can remember, at least.

I’ll be right back, she’d said, and I swear I still remember the feel of her hands gently smoothing my hair away from my face, I still remember a wild, miserable gaze skittering over the features I only partly inherited from her.I won’t be gone forever.

Even then, too young to know better but somehow capable of it anyway, I knew it wasn’t true. I wasn’t surprised when a year passed without her presence, then another, and another, and another.

Abandonment issues—that’s what I got from my mother. Not her eyes or her smile. Just the bone-deep anxiety that no one is ever going to want me enough. That I’m not wantable at all. It’s why I reject before I can be rejected. Why I’ve never really had any friends let alone any relationships. Why I don’t trust a damn thing anyone’s ever promised me.

Why I’ve been sitting on the steps outside Bright Horizons Rehabilitation Center for all of two minutes and I’ve already convinced myself that Lux isn’t coming.

Fussing with my shiny new red chip, I refuse to stare at the empty driveway. If she doesn’t come, she doesn’t come. That’s fine. It would be great, actually. A fucking relief. Then, I don’t have to go home, I don’t have to see my family, I don’t have to stay sober.

Not that I can’t. I could, if I wanted to. If I thought I needed to, if I thought I actually had a problem. Which I don’t. Ididn’t. I had the shakes the first week here—big fucking deal. It was anxiety and frustration and a whole lot of dread at the prospect of being trapped in another hellhole with more people who smile all the time and speak inthatvoice, the slow, lilting one that makes me feel like a fucking child.

Lux probably changed her mind. That’s why she’s—I glance at the cracked screen of the phone that didn’t receive a single message in the thirty whole days we were separated—four minutes late.Ichanged her mind for her. We didn’t exactly part on excellent terms; I believe the last thing I said to her, as she was dropping me off at this phony utopia that looks more like a luxury spa and is such a far cry from the state-run facility I attended last time, was something along the lines of ‘I’ll never forgive you for this.’

A touch dramatic, sure, but I was pissed. I was stuck in the past, remembering my first stint at rehab, remembering meeting Ricky and everything shitty that came from that. I was in pain. I still am in pain, considering it’s only been four of the advised six week recovery time for my grade two sprain and I really should still be wearing that damn boot, but fuck if I’m wobbling onto the ranch like some kind of wounded prey.

I already feel vulnerable enough. I alreadydreadenough, dread what’s to come, dread returning to the home I left.

For a reason—I left for a reason. A very good one. It wasn’t a good place for me. I wasn’t a good person. Not that I’m a particularly good one now either, but I don’t hurt anyone anymore. I don’t constantly disappoint everyone. I don’t have to live with the weight of that disappointment, just like I don’t have to live with secrets and half-truths and not just my anger, but everyone else’s too, because I always thought we deserved to be angry. I could never understand why it was only ever me that was enraged by the shit hand we’d been dealt. I still can’t.

God. This is already shit.

By the time I hear the rumble of a truck approaching, I’ve bitten my nails right down to the quick. Frowning at my throbbing fingertips, I wait until the engine cuts out before slipping the proof of a single sober month into my back pocket and standing. Only when I hear a door open do I glance at the truck idling at the bottom of the concrete steps, and quickly, I discover I was right.

Kind of.

Lux hasn’t come. She sent a different person in her stead—a better option, probably, I can acknowledge once I check my hurt feelings.

“Oh my God.”

As a perpetually excited pitch attacks my eardrums for the first time in two years, I wince. And again when it’s confirmed that my baby sister is still incapable of holding grudges—and of comprehending that not everyone loves physical contact as much as she does.

As Eliza wraps her arms around me, I do my best to reciprocate. I don’t do a great job, but she doesn’t seem to mind, grinning widely when she finally pulls away, and abruptly proves that there’s not muchbabyabout her anymore.

She’s nineteen now. She’s got blonde highlights in her chestnut hair and artfully-applied makeup on her pretty face.She still looks like my little Eliza though. She still smiles like a kid, wide and unburdened. Sounds like one too, like the clingy, codependent kids we all used to be, as she hugs me again and murmurs, “I missed you.”

Despite the lump in my throat, I manage to croak, “Yeah, you too.”

Linking our arms, Eliza starts to tug me down the steps, towards the unfamiliar parked truck. “Lux wanted to come,” she tells me as I try to peer through the windshield at whoever’s behind the wheel. “But something came up.”

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