Page 77 of Paint the Town, Dove
“Too close to home?” I finished for him.
Before he could say anything, I picked up my backpack and headed for the door. “Be nice to your mom, Ryden,” I said, “I would’ve killed to have a parent that loved me in the only way she knew how.”
As I walked down his driveway, I saw his mom in the car. Her dyed, blonde hair was pulled back, and she was applying makeup to the bruise on her neck. Our eyes locked, and she shut the compact, wiping away obvious tears, waving goodbye.
I let mine flow the entire way back to Sinead and Flack’s.
Because all I could see when I saw Ryden’s mother’s face was a reflection of my own, twenty years from now, unable to escape the abuse of a lovelesshuman…
Convincing myself it was home.
***
We were all going to Rebecca Crayfish’s house for Halloween.
Yeah, Crayfish.
“Do you think it’s her real last name?” Emory mused, using Ryden’s soccer ball as a makeup palette.
“Em, can you not put that stuff onmystuff?”
“Oh, come on Ryden. I’m just painting your past life.”
“I could’ve been a good soccer player, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” I rubbed my finger into some of Sinead’s old eyeshadow. “With those giraffe legs.”
“You could be a model,” Emory flirted, and I threw a death stare. I don’t know why, it was a pure instinctual reaction.
Ryden caught it.
Ryden smiled.
I glared at him, digging my finger into the half empty pot of expired makeup, and threw out the rest.
“What even are you for Halloween?” Ryden asked me, lacing up his combat boots. He was cosplaying as a pirate. Argh? I guess?
“I’m going as myself,” I said, painting on some red lipstick that Emory let me borrow.
“You can’t go as yourself,” he laughed. “The whole point of Halloween is to dress up, to be whoever you want to be.”
“My imagination doesn’t stretch that far,” I jibed.
“You’d be surprised,” he walked closer, “what a little wonder thinking outside the box can do.”
Now I blushed, turning away. “Fuck your wonder.”
“Scarlett discovered swear words last year and now it’s every other sentence,” Emory teased, pinning up her brown hair. She was dressing up as some Disney princess. I’d never watched any of them growing up.
Something about a beast and a magic library. Or a rose. Or talking candlestick. I don’t know.
“I look like the ugly stepsister,” I said to our reflections, standing behind her. “That’s part of Disney, right?”
“Yeah,” she laughed, “wrong movie though.”
“Not much of a childhood, that one,” Ryden added.
“I’m way more mature than you idiots!” I clapped back.
