Existing (10 page)

“Don’t think
I don’t know what you’re doing,” she hisses.

I sigh and scrub at the kitchen
counter tops with a blue and white rag and feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve started this new school and have somehow managed to trick these other stupid girls into being your friends. No one wants to be your friend
, Roisin. You’re stupid and pathetic, and you’ve ruined my life. And I’m sick to death of hearing you moan like a stupid baby to your Father about this fucking ghost. You’re a little freak. You’re ridiculous. Your Father and I laugh about you sometimes when we’re in bed, listening to you whine and thrash around in your room. Did you know that?” She laughs deeply and I can tell by the way the air skims the back of her throat that she’s thrown her head back.

I turn arou
nd and watch her drain the remains of her third glass of wine.  I can feel all the years of pent-up anger bubbling away in my veins. My muscles tense in anticipation for a fight, but I know she won’t dare when my Father is in the house. “Maybe you should leave if I make you so miserable.” The words fall out of my mouth with so much hate behind them that they make a sort of hissing sound.

She waves her hand in front of her. “I know that’s what you really want. That’s what you’ve wanted for a long time
, and I know that me simply being in this house and married to your Father kills you more than anything. You’ve got me for life, honey, so you better get used to me.” She winks and pours herself another glass.

I roll my eyes
, shaking my head while trying not to laugh at her and how pathetic she is. She’s forty-one years old and yet she’s the one acting like the teenager out of the two of us.

“Don’t
roll your eyes at me, you little brat. Do you want another bruise on your face? Just think how that would ruin your plans for your little party.”

I narrow my eyes at her. I don’t believe a word she’s saying about my Father
, but I do believe she’s telling the truth when she talks about how much she hates me. I’ve always known. It’s always been there in the shadows of her face whenever she looks at me.

I lean forward against the breakfast bar where she’s sitting and sigh
. “Hallie, I’m getting far too old for you to hit me. You don’t like me and I don’t like you. Let’s just stay out of each other’s way.”

She pushes her pointed nails through her hair and laughs uncontrollably. “It’s not that I don’t like you
, Roisin. It’s that I can’t fucking stand you. I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anything in my whole life.” She stops for a moment and I watch her eyes flick to the top of her head as if she’s thinking about something really important. She nods, “Yes, probably more than I hated the other person, if that’s at all possible.”

I feel my face wrinkle up as
I try to work out what she’s talking about, but she leans forward on her elbows and continues.

“I tried to get your Father to send you to boarding school
but, no, you’ve got your Daddy wrapped around your ugly little finger.”

Something snaps inside of me. I
suck in a deep breath and am about to finally tell her exactly what I think of her when my Father walks into the kitchen, smiling.

“
Ava’s asking for you, Rose.”

I turn back around and try to compose my face
, reeling my anger back in. I continue wiping the counters down without answering him.

“Leave that,” he says, “Hallie can do it. Can’t you
, Hallie?”

She turns and laughs in my Father’s face. “
Er, no Lance, I can’t do it.” She refills her glass before picking it up and grabbing the bottle with her other hand. “I’m not your maid, Lance.” She shakes her head and laughs again before walking out of the room.

My Father sighs and holds his hand out to me. “Give me the cloth
, darling. You go see Ava.”

I pass him the cloth and glance toward the door that Hallie just walked through.

“Don’t worry about Hallie,” he huffs, “she’ll be passed out in five minutes.”

“She’s always drinking
, Dad,” I whisper.

He lowers his head and sighs. “Just leave Hallie to me please
, Rose. I’m dealing with it.”

I open my mouth to say something more but think better of it. My Dad may seem to be annoyed with Hallie right now
, but I know he’s still so completely overwhelmed and absorbed in her that he will forgive these bouts of drinking. I’ve often wondered if she’s not human at all and is in fact a witch, one who has a magical spell wrapped so tightly around him that he can’t see anything other than her.

I walk into
Ava’s bedroom and watch the cute little fairies fly about on her ceiling that her night lamp is projecting. I find myself forgetting all about Hallie when I see Ava hiding under the covers, curled into a tiny little ball.

“Are you hiding from me
, titch?”

I hear her soft giggle from under the covers and creep over the blanket with my hands as I try to distinguish where exactly her head is.

“Rose,” she says in between giggles, “have you had a nice birthday?”

I smile and sit down
, making her soft mattress dip in the middle. “Yes, thank you.”

“What’s this party that you’
re going to? Will there be cake there?”

I jump when she suddenly bobs her head over the covers
, making her laugh. “Parties for older girls are a little different than parties for little princesses like you.”

She frowns and p
ulls her favorite cuddly toy, Mrs. Bunny Rabbit, in toward her. “How are they different?”

“Well,” I say
, brushing my hand over her silky hair, “the party I’m going to is in a house on the beach. It’ll start late, maybe when you’re already fast asleep, and there will be loud music that you wouldn’t like and people drinking and playing games.”

“What sort of games?”

I think for a second. “Maybe they’ll play a card game, or even a truth-or-dare sort of game.”“Will there be boys there?”

“Yes,” I say
, tucking her covers in at the side of her mattress to stop them from falling off her during the night. I’ve never known anyone to move about the bed as much as Ava does. “But enough about my party, how did your first day at school go?”

Her face lights up and a smile
stretches so far across her face that her eyes wrinkle up. I feel a huge breath of relief escape from me. I’m glad she’s happy at school. She
needs
to be happy. I need her to have something fun and normal in her life. “It was fun. I made seven new friends.”

I force my eyes wide as if I’m surp
rised. “Seven?” I say. “Wow, that’s a lot!”

She grins. “I know. They liked me. A boy even asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend
, but I said I would think about it.”

I fight the laugh that’s threatening to escape me. I wish I could remember a time when I was so innocent and carefree.

“Being boyfriend and girlfriend is a big decision,” I say, trying to sound serious. “I don’t think you need to worry about it too much though, Ava. You’ll have plenty of time for boyfriends when you’re older.”

“Will I
, Rose?” she asks, blinking at me with her serious little face.

I nod. “Yes. Trust me.”

“Good,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Boys sort of smell and get dirty all the time. I don’t like dirty, smelly things.”

I laugh again and stand up. She tucks
Mrs. Bunny Rabbit into the crook of her arm and snuggles down so her head isn’t on the pillow. I don’t know how she can sleep with her head on the mattress like that. I bend down and kiss the top of her head. “Night, Ava. Love you.”

She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. “Night
, Roseyposey. Love you too.”

“Sweet dreams,” I whisper as I le
ave her door ajar to let a sliver of light in.

I walk down the hallway and stick my head around the door. My Father is s
itting on the sofa with Hallie’s head on his lap. He’s staring at the television like a zombie, stroking her hair as if she’s a faithful dog sitting on his lap.

“Night
, Dad.”

He glances up and blinks. “Night
, Rose.”

I walk
into my bedroom and pull out my homework planner. There’s nothing in there. My life is so empty and sad that I don’t even have any homework to do to keep me busy. I stare at my phone and think about texting Ashley back, but I don’t want to talk about my eye. The fact that he’s texted means he’s thinking about it and I don’t want people thinking about it.

I pick up one of the ne
w books that arrived in the mail from Amazon on Monday and turn the book over. The synopsis on the back looks promising, but I learned a long time ago that you should never judge a book by its cover.

Cabe

Riley throws his head back and laughs at me.

“She beat you?” he asks again. “A girl swam faster than you? Really?”

“Yeah,” I sigh. “Now shut up about it
, will you?”

He laugh
s again and then flicks an elastic band at me. “Ah man, you’re never gonna live that down.”

“I’ll just say that I let her win or something.”

“Yeah, and no one will believe that either. If you say you let her win, then they’ll say you only did it because you want in her panties.”

“I do not want in
her knickers,” I tell him.

“They’re not knickers. You’re not in England anymore,
matey
.”

“Whatever,” I grumble. “They’re still the same thing
, and I don’t want to get anywhere near her fo-“ I stop myself when I realise what I was about to say. Unfortunately, Riley, for once, was paying close attention to what I was saying.

“Anywhere near her what?”

“Nothing.”

“Go on,” he laughs. “What do you English boys call a girl
’s pussy?”

“Stop winding me up,” I tell him.

His eyes widen in his head. “And what the hell does that mean?”

“Winding up?” I ask, wondering if that’s really an English phrase that he’s never heard before.

“Yeah. Oh, hang on a second there, mate. Let me just grab my little English-American slang book and check out what you’ve just tried to say.”

“You’re doing my head in.”

“That’s another one,” he laughs.

“You’re an arse.”

“Even better.”

“You’re a douchebag.”

“Ah,” he smiles. “Now I’m understanding you.”

“Fuck off,” I say. “I don’t care what you say about that one, I know for sure that’s universal.”

Riley fires five elastic bands at me in quick succession and laughs again. “Okay, come on,” he says, “let’s get this sorted out, once and for all.”

I take a swig of my beer and shrug. “Sort what out?”

“Are you gay?”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “What do you think?”

“I’m gonna go with no, but come on, Cabe. You can’t actually blame anyone for thinking that, can you?”

“Have they ever seen me kiss a bloke?”

“Bloke?”

I sigh.
“A man.”

He shakes his head. “I guess not.”

“Then why have they any reason to think that I’m gay?”

“Because,” he says, “all the girls want you. I’m not gay either, but I can safely say that you’re an attractive guy. I don’t understand why you’re not a little bit interested in women. The only thing I can think of is that you’re gay.”

I drain the remains of my beer and lean across his sofa to retrieve another one from the bag that we’ve dumped in the middle of his living room floor. “I’ve never said I’m not interested in them. Just because I’m not humping a different one every single weekend like you, doesn’t mean that I’m gay.”

“You’re not humping anyone.
Period. That’s the problem.”

“So I don’t want to fuck every girl that I talk to. What’s the big deal?”
I ask.

“There isn’t a big deal. I’m just curious as to why you’re not doing it as often as you can.”

I shake my head. “Just leave it, Riley. I’m not in the mood to go through the inner workings of my mind with you.”

“Whoa,” he says, holding his hands up. “I don’t wanna know what’s going on in that tiny head of yours. I’m just asking if you fuck guys. That’s all.”

“No, I don’t,” I clarify.

“
So you find girls attractive?” he pushes.

I take a deep breath. I’m not sure how deep I can go into this with him without hav
ing to explain my reasons. “Yes,” I finally answer.

He grins at me.
“Who would you do at school then?”