Page 23 of Chaos

Grouch follows me home.

She follows me into Finn’s truck, she follows me back out, she follows me inside the A-frame, and I’m about to follow her upstairs when a masculine voice stops me.

“You’re a Jackson?”

Eyeing the meager few steps between me and the staircase to the first floor, I sigh. As I slowly turn around, I sigh again at thefour people peering at me inquisitively from the other side of the room. “Am I?”

“I knew it.” Yasmin slaps Theo gently. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“What, you’re like a cousin or something?”

“No,” Adam answers for me, and now he’s looking at me likethat, like Yasmin was looking at me earlier, all knowing and suspicious and unsettling. “You’re the other sister, right?”

Yeah, I’m not doing this. Not only do I not want to answer a barrage of questions about my personal life, I can’t. I’m familiar enough with the growing itch beneath my skin, making it feel like it’s stretched too tight over my bones, to know it’s a warning sign. Detonation imminent. Clear the area, establish a perimeter, get the fuck away.

So I do just that. Without another word, I toe off my boots and head upstairs, finding Grouch waiting impatiently at the base of the ladder that leads to the attic. Somehow managing to scale it with her tucked under my arm and my ankle threatening to give out with each climbed rung, I shoulder my way through the trapdoor and haul both of us onto solid ground.

Despite the bone-deep fatigue weighing down my every limb, as I watch Grouch curl up amongst the pillows messily strewn across my unmade bed, my stomach turns at the thought of joining her. And it turns again as I push to my feet and let my gaze wander around the small attic, with its low, sloping ceilings and an entire, exposing wall made of windows that flood the room with the orange light of a setting sun, and not enough floor to adequately pace.

I need to pace. I needspace. I need air and privacy and a fucking drink—I need them,that, bad enough to make my hands fucking shake.

The first two, I find when I spot the latch on one of the window panels, and I realize that the sturdy beam outside, running from one side of the roof to the other, creates a littlealcove in the structure that’s just wide enough for a body. The latter, there’s fuck all I can do about except rifle through my unpacked bags until I find the lighter I use sparingly, the half-empty carton of cigarettes I ration even more, and indulge a different craving. It’s counter-productive, I know, to curb one addiction by feeding another, but fuck, I’m only human. Something has to give. I need some kind of mindless distraction to numb my whirling thoughts, and since I’m pretty sure no one in this house would be willing to fuck the anxiety out of me, I’m shit out of options.

There’s nothing to do but clamber out the window, settle on my precarious perch, and suck in alternating lungfuls of smoke and fresh, Serenity air until the ache behind my eyeballs recedes.

It takes a while. So long that darkness sets in, the room behind me becoming pitch black. The never-ending land stretching out before me is much the same, except for the patch of grass illuminated by the light spilling out of the back of the A-frame.

The back door must be open because voices bleed out into the night. My roommates. Their laughter and chatter, and clanging dishes. Eyes closing, I rest my temple against the window frame, and I imagine them down there. Moving in familiar synchronicity as they cook dinner together. Debriefing their day, maybe. Calculating who mucked out the greatest quantity of horse shit.

Talking about me.

My gut rolls at the thought of that. But aloud, because even in private I’m too proud to show any weakness, I huff, “Who the fuck cares?”

“You’re not gonna jump, are you?”

I almost fucking do.

I almost slip right off the damn ledge with how hard I jolt as that familiar, deep voice scares the shit out of me—luckily forthe man directly beneath me, it’s only my lighter that falls to the ground. I curse as it drops, and again when I lean forward as much as I dare and realize how high up I actually am, and three times is the damn charm when Finn emerges from the shadows he’s been lurking in for who knows how long.

Cast in artificial light, he drops to his haunches and picks up the lighter. Flipping it between his fingers as he straightens, I hear the exact moment he reads the block letters printed on one side. I hear the splutter of choked laughter, and I quip, “Hope I haven’t offended your delicate sensibilities.”

Tuckingmylighter in his back pocket, Finn tilts his face up towards me. “Are you gonna be that charming when I catch you next?”

No. I imagine, if I suffered the same fate, I would probably spout something a hell of a lot fouler than the single word decorating the lighter my twin bought me years ago, long before I ever started smoking, simply because she thought it was funny. Because Grace saw the bright pinkish-red cylinder labelledCUNTand thought of me.

“You didn’t catch it,” I point out, pushing away the thought of the only sister I’ve yet to reunite with. “And I don’t remember asking you to catch me.”

“I’m heroic like that.”

A dull laugh leaves me as I take another drag of my quickly dwindling cigarette.

“That’ll kill you, y’know.”

“What?” I gasp, daring to peer downwards once more. “Since when?”

Shaking his head at my sarcasm, Finn changes the subject.

Slumping against the window again, I blow out a mouthful of smoke. “Why do you care?

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