Authors: Ally Derby
At page thirty, I already don’t like it. It’s not even a sixteenth as good as
THG
,
PJO
, or
TMR
. Blah, blah, love, blah, blah, ghost sighting, blah, blah, depression and insanity is all I get out of this story. I toss it aside then lie back, looking at the ceiling. I can get enough of this in real life.
Pulling
The Hunger Games
out of my duffel, I start reading it again. Prim cries, Rue dies, and I read it all with a blank expression. This is sappy, too. All love in books is fake and unrealistic, but it’s good to read about, I guess. I’m up to chapter eighteen when I am called down to dinner, which I’m not really up for.
Walking down the stairs, I then sit in the only empty chair. I don’t eat anything, and none of the Cruzes notice. I’m excused and go back to the room I was assigned.
I look up when there is a knock on the door.
“Can we chat?”
I sit up. “Yeah.”
I guess I saw this coming.
chapter twenty one
Headphones
“I got a message from Paxton Jamison today. He wanted to know how your first day back was.”
“What did you say?” Is it okay that he did this? And is it okay that I actually feel warm inside because he did?
“Told him it was probably hell. He said he was gonna come home. I told him no.”
I look down at my hands.
“I know everything he did to get you out. I know his father is livid with him for turning his back on his family and demanding they drop the charges—”
“I didn’t ask him to do that. I—”
“I know you didn’t, but I know he is kind of crazy about you, and—”
“He is not.” At least, I hope he’s not. He is so much better off without someone like me.
“Hadley, I know he was here the other night.”
“I didn’t ask him to come, Bee. I—”
“Okay, but you need to pick a side. Either be on his or don’t.”
“A side? I don’t understand.”
“He’s going to throw away medical school and a life that could afford him—”
“He can’t. I’ve ruined enough lives. I—”
“You haven’t, but if you love him—”
“Love him?” I gasp.
“Hadley, Pax thinks he’s in love with you, and heck, he may be, but if it’s just that he feels badly about everything you’ve gone through—”
“I never asked for that, either, Bee,” I snap.
“Fine.” She slaps her hands on her legs. “Here’s the way I see it. You are attracted to Pax, and who wouldn’t be? He is beautiful. The entire past two years has been wrapped around you for him. It’s easier to help someone than bring back the dead, which is impossible. He’s doing what feels right because he’s Pax, and that’s what Pax does.”
“What Pax does?”
“People like him. Nice people. Kind people. They want to do well, so he will make a good doctor.”
I begin to grow angry. “He doesn’t even want to be a doctor, Bee.”
“He did before he met you.”
“Wow, okay. Just wow.”
“I’m just speaking the truth.”
“I want to be alone.” I stand and walk toward the window.
“I am leaving my phone on the bed. Call him. Either tell him at the ripe old age of sixteen you love him, and you’re worth throwing away his dream, or tell him you don’t feel that way about him.” With that, she leaves.
I feel like the weight of the world is again placed on my shoulders, and it is.
I look back at the phone, then walk over to the bed. I pick it up and scroll through until I see his name. Then I press call.
“Bee?” he answers, sounding out of breath.
“Pax?”
“Hadley?”
“Yeah.”
“Bad day?”
“No. It was actually easier than I expected.” It’s not a lie. Well, not a total lie. I didn’t get lynched.
“Hadley, is that the truth?”
“Yeah, it is. Listen, the other night—”
“I crossed a line. I’m nineteen, and you’re seventeen.”
“Sixteen,” I correct since technically I still have a month before I do turn seventeen.
He groans, “Okay, but when you feel—”
“Pax, I feel confused, overwhelmed, and I am trying to get my life back.”
This time, he says nothing.
“Pax?”
“Yeah, Hadley?” he says softly.
“I need you to breathe, but I need to not be confused. I need to focus on me, and you need to focus on you.”
Again, he’s quiet.
“Pax, please say something.”
“I can’t think of anything to say right now, Hads. I wasn’t proposing. I didn’t think I was coming across as if I was”—he stops and clears his throat—“trying to be anything more than a friend.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, but you have to stop trying to help me and let me figure it out from here.” My voice waivers. “I may never be able to repay you for what you’ve done.”
“I don’t require repayment, Hadley, truly. Regardless of what you feel or think, I did it because it was the right thing to do.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeats.
“Pax?”
“Yeah, Hads?”
“Have I told you thank you?”
“You have.”
“I hope you know I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I hope you know that I—” I stop because I want to tell him I only smile when I’m with him or laugh or feel alive. “I have to go.”
“Okay,” he says in a tone barely above a whisper.
“See you on Christmas Eve?”
God, why did I say that?
It takes him a few minutes to answer. “That’s a really long time from now. Can’t promise anything.”
I hear doors slamming and then a louder slamming noise.
“Okay. Thank you.”
“ ’Kay, take care, Hadley Asher.”
He doesn’t wait for me to say a word, only hangs up.
I walk to the door, set the phone by the wall next to the door in the hallway, close my door, and lock it. Then I walk back to the bed in this temporary home and lie down and cry.
~*~
I go through the rest of the week at school wearing blinders and ear buds. Well, not real blinders, but definitely real ear buds when I am in the hall or at lunchtime. I listen to music on a playlist purposely selected for times like this: Owl City, The Script, Eminem, Jason Derulo, Maroon Five, JayZ, Nelly, and a few more.
I am in homeroom the day before my home visit, sitting in the back, away from the rest of my peers, minding my own business when I hear, “Hey, Hadley.”
The girl is wearing a black, leather jacket, torn, denim, skinny jeans, black combat boots, and a white, tight T-shirt. Total Dauntless. If Thalia from
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
had a doppelganger, she just introduced herself. But she doesn’t need an Aegis; her keen and cunning eyes seem to do the trick.
She plops down next to me while I pull out my ear buds. This girl obviously doesn’t know my story.
“I’m Ash, the new girl. From the whispers I hear around this ultra-conservative town, you are gonna be happy to have me around. As soon as they have more than five minutes to judge me, the fact that you got screwed by a whole lot of people, who still have nothing better to talk about, will become old news. So, basically, you and I will become fast friends.”
I look around the room, seeing them all staring. Then I look back at her.
“Well, all right, then.” Apparently, she
has
heard about me.
“We have a few classes together, too.”
“I didn’t see you in any.”
“Let me ask you something. Would you really have noticed with your head in the book and ear buds shoved in your ears?”
I almost smile, almost.
“So, what are we doing this weekend?” she asks, as she puts her feet up on the chair in front of her.
~*~
“Are you sure?” I ask Dad as I sit down on the couch.
“Yes. I have another home visit lined up for February first. If all goes well, you’ll be home by your seventeenth birthday.” He smiles proudly at himself.
I want to be happy. I look around the house, finding it’s pretty clean. This may actually happen.
“Paxton Jamison called,” he says, bringing my attention back to him.
“Oh?” I try to act unaffected.
“Yeah, wanted to tell me the house next door sold. New family, closing in two weeks.”
“Oh,” I say, as I pick up the paper plates we used for pizza.
“Asked about you, too,” he calls from behind me.
“Cool,” I toss back.
“He said you needed space from him, felt like he may have crossed a line. Something about Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve?” He walks past me with the pizza box, smirking.
“It’s not like that.”
“Good thing. You’re too young, and he’s a college boy. I’m not supposed to like that at all.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about Pax and me. We’re just friends.”
We spend the weekend cleaning and sorting things. Cleaning up Mom’s closet is the last thing we do. It hurts, and we cry, save way too many of our favorite things, and bag up the rest.
“She had a lot of clothes,” I say as I haul the last bag out to his old pick-up truck.
“She saved everything.” He smiles as he holds the worn, beige cardigan she wore all the time.
“Yeah.”
Dad and I drive to the thrift store and unload seven lawn size garbage bags, donating everything of hers. It’s hard, but necessary.
On Sunday, I tell Dad I need to go for a walk, something Mom and I did often. He offers to come along, and I accept.
We walk and talk about her and all the good times before his issues began. The way he speaks about her brings a new light to those memories. Everything is more vivid and real.
“You know your mom’s parents died in a car accident when she was ten, right?”
“She didn’t talk about it much.”
“They were killed by a drunk driver.” He clears his throat. “When her grandmother passed, she was eighteen. The first time I saw her, I was running, just got out of the Army. I saw some action, and the thing I did to relieve stress was run. She was walking in a park in Buffalo, and I was in my head too damn deep, running while not paying any attention. I literally ran her over.”
“She said you did, but she never told me the whole story.”
“I literally had to carry her home. She sprained her ankle. The place was full of Helen’s things. She had boxes scattered all over. She cried when I asked her what the hell happened to her place, and that killed me. That weekend, I did pretty much the same thing we did today, but I did it while she sat on the couch with a box of tissues, crying.”
“Mom was crying?”
“Yeah, believe it or not, I was the strong one back then.”
“I believe it, Dad.”
“I took good care of your mother, Hads. I didn’t leave her side until she stopped crying. Three days, three entire days.” He smiles. “Then I left and couldn’t get her out of my mind. I went back a week later with a duffle bag full of clothes and told her I couldn’t explain it, but I needed to take care of her. She blasted me with a hundred watt grin, and I never left her again.
“When I got laid off, then got in the accident, she was angry. Didn’t talk to me for two weeks. Once she finally did, she told me how sick it made her that the man she loved could have been as selfish as the man who took her parents away from her. It killed me. That and the pain from the accident.
“When I got hooked on the pills, she pushed me, started taking care of me, and it made me feel like less of a man that she could take care of this family better than I ever could. She told me over and over it wasn’t true, and she never kicked my sorry ass out. Your mother was the love of my life, always will be.” He stops and looks at me. “I’m feeling like the man she fell in love with more and more every day. I’m doing it for her, for you, and for me.”
“I’m proud of you, Dad. I’m sure she is, too.”
When I leave that night, I do it with a feeling that everything will be all right. That is, until I walked into the Cruz’s house and see Bee, remembering we haven’t really talked since the day she told me Pax called.
“Bee?”
“What’s up?” she asks, as she looks up from her book.
“I told Pax I needed space.”
“Do you?”
God, she confuses me. “Yes.”
“Good,” she says, looking back at her book.