Page 11 of Make Me Scream
“Perhaps having her here when the conversation is so sensitive might not be the best idea,” Elise says, directing her statement at Bill and Bill alone. Her tone is cold and sharp, and her posture is stiff, but her hold on me is softer than ever.
My skin is burning and crawling with their touch. I’m repulsed by it and want nothing more than to burn their skin cells off of mine, but the longer they hold on to me, the more I realize I think I need it. Because without it, I might leave. And if I leave, I’ll never know, and I think some part of me—a part buried so deep I forgot it even existed—needs to know why she’s here.
Why now… when I’m almost eighteen and she won’t have a say-so anymore?
It just doesn’t make any fucking sense.
“Lucy… would you mind stepping into the other room for a few minutes so we can talk first?”
I can’t look at her. I won’t. I don’t want to…
My eyes move of their own volition to find mirrored silver staring back at me. The replica perusing me is so similar, close enough to a mirrored image twenty years down the road if I ever take on the life of an addict, and that thought is so fucking terrifying—to know that I could look likethat…
I swallow the bile pushing its way up my esophagus and turn my back to her. Both Elise and Peris drop their arms, and the burning in my nose returns.
This can’t be happening. Not so close to the end. Not when I’m so goddamn close.
“Yeah, of course,” she says, never taking her eyes off me, which I know because I can fuckingfeelit—the way her gaze burrows into my flesh like maggots on a week-old corpse.
Her retreating footsteps reverberate in the kitchen, slowly fading out into nothing. We know the conversation won’t be private, but not having to look at her fuckingface… a weird, weathered version of my own, makes a difference.
“Well,” I say, turning back around and facing everyone again. I sink my teeth into my bottom lip until I taste blood, needing the anchor of something familiar. “When are you taking me out of the house?” I ask, keeping to the point because what’s the sense in dragging it out?
Bill winces, and I just fuckingknow.
“Two weeks,” he answers plainly.
“Two weeks?!” Peris shouts, slamming his hands down on the table with a resounding crack. “Are you fucking kidding me!”
“Bill, what is going on? Why wasn’t I informed of this sooner? It seems… a bit rushed, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yes. But Lucy’s been sober for months. She was in a three-month inpatient rehab program, and after she got out of that, she’s been going to NA meeting’s five days a week for six months. She’s been sober nearly a year and has proof—proof she brought directly to the judge after she talked to Child Protective Services. She didn’t come to me—not that she would’ve known to since I didn’t meet her until the other day. But it all happened very quickly, from what I’ve been told.”
Everyone’s so tense, I can feel the strain crackling like electricity in the room. “Abel.” He turns toward me. I swallow and close my eyes briefly, but the second my lashes graze my cheek bones, the burning is back, and I can’t blink it away, and I can’t fucking hide it.
Water floods my eyes and spills over behind my closed lids. It burns hot with my shame. Humiliation because this is yet another thing out of my control. Chagrin for letting myself fall for the scam.
Guilt. Because no matter how hard I try, I’m not meant to fucking change.
I’m Abel Silver. Child of an addict. A whore. A nobody. And I’ve grown up to be just the fucking same.
CHAPTER 6
PERIS
“He’s not going anywhere,”I snarl, jaw clenched tight enough the bones click with every word I spew.
“Unfortunately, Peris, the judge made her decision and has granted Lucy her parental rights given four positive supervised visitations over the next two weeks.”
“What does that mean?” Ma asks, voice sharp with pain. I can hear it, and it makes my chest ache.
“It means that a couple times a week, Abel has to have visitations with Lucy. They will be supervised by either me or someone from CPS over the course of a few hours. As long as they go well, everything will move forward as planned.”
“And if they don’t go well?” I mutter through a snarl.
Bill lifts a thick brow. “They will.”
“This is fucking bullshit.”
