Page 56 of Distortion
Jesus. What was I thinking?
This whole thing is so fucked up. We’reterrorizingthis girl. She could have died on the river today. And for what? So Shade can tell his daddy that he needs to send her home?
Fuck. There’s gotta be a better way to get what we want.
I pull out my phone and start researching her diagnosis again, but this time it’s not to mess with her. We need her gone, but not likethis.
7
DAISY
Istay in the bathroom for as long as I think I can get away with it, and I’m thankful when no one else comes in.
I try to avoid seeing myself in the mirror as I wash my hands, but I finally succumb. I look as exhausted as I feel.
I can’t help but burst into tears.
I’m cold and wet and my clothes feel awful against my skin. My toes are squelching in my shoes and my hair is plastered to my itchy head. My throat burns from the tequila and my arms hurt from trying not to die on that horrible river. I’m so thirsty and frazzled and overstimulated?—
I freeze.
They’re doing it on purpose.
As soon as I think it, I know it’s true. But why? Why would they do that?
Because Shade doesn’t want you here. He made that clear.
He wants me gone from the house, maybe from Richmond altogether, and the best way of doing that is to get John to send me back to The Heath. He knows at least some of my old triggers. How many times did I lose it at schoolloudly and semi-violently when things got to be too much for me?
I let out a long breath. That’s what today has been about. They’re trying to make me act out. Make trouble. Do the things that John warned me I’d be sent back for.
Shade’s idea to take me to the house he knows I hated early this morning when I wasn’t feeling well, the surprise rafting that I had no way of preparing for, ensuring the aftermath is a cold, wet sensory nightmare, and then bringing me here to this crowded bar that’s so loud it’s taking all of my strength not to curl up and cry.
They’re trying to break me.
Publicly.
The irony is that John always said my reactions were just attention-seeking affectations ... until Mike Larson. He made Mom and his sons believe it, too. I thought Shade still did. He’s said things that his dad used to say before they found Mike, that mystuntsare for attention, and my being upset is pretend.
And then there’s what he said at the river. I shake my head in anger. As if my half-drowning in dangerous water was deliberate!
Fuck him. Fuck. Them.
They can’t win. It’s not fair.
I stare at myself in the mirror and I find the inner strength to lock it up. I wash my face and I straighten and I put everything I’m feeling and all of my discomfort far, far away. The misery I turn into fury, fueled with their torments. They probably made sure I got wasted last night so that I’d feel even worse today.
Cunts.
I’m not going back to The Heath because my spoiled stepbrother and his dickhead friends don’t want me living with them. I’d rather die.
The last thought has me freezing and staring into my reflection again.
Fuck ... is that true?
Yes, I realize, it is. After a taste of life in the real world, I won’t live like that again. Not ever.
I straighten my clothes and my hand brushes something in my back pocket. With a sinking feeling, I carefully take out the card I put there earlier, my fury spiking again.
