And we all just sort of freeze.

I’m not even sure why we do. It’s not like we know who’s calling, or maybe we do. Maybe there is some sort of silent forewarning we all picked up on, like the silent alarm inside me.

I can tell Dylan doesn’t want to answer it, but he does. And within thirty seconds, his skin pales. Whatever it is, it is bad.

He seems lost for words, tugging his fingers through his hair as he nods and slumps back in his chair. ‘Uh. Okay.’

I’m watching him like a hawk, waiting for him to show a sign that will let me know what the f**k is going on.

‘Kayden, why don’t you come help me move the sofa,’ Liz suddenly says, pushing back from the table. ‘I’ve been dying to rearrange the living room and could use an extra pair of strong arms.’

I don’t bother pointing out that it’d be easier if Dylan and I moved it since clearly she’s trying to get me out of the kitchen and away from Dylan and the phone call.

‘Okay …’ I hesitantly get up from the chair and follow her out of the kitchen and into the living room.

‘So how are you doing?’ she asks as I reach down to grab the side of the sofa.

‘Good, I guess.’ I give a glance over my shoulder to the kitchen before I raise my side of the sofa up, intentionally bearing most of the weight because, like Callie, Liz is short and slender. But she seems to hold her own as she lifts her side up with almost the same ease as me.

‘Just good?’ she asks as she spins us in the opposite direction.

I shrug, letting out a loud exhale as we set the sofa down. ‘It’s been fun visiting you guys.’

She wipes the sweat from her brow. ‘I don’t mean with this trip,’ she says. ‘I mean this thing with your mom and dad.’

I’m not sure how to respond and thankfully, I don’t have to because Dylan comes walking into the living room. He’s got his phone in his hand and covering the receiver. ‘Um …’ he struggles, ‘she wants to talk to you.’

He doesn’t have to say who she is. I know it’s my mother and I jerk back like he hit me. ‘N-no,’ I stammer weakly. ‘I don’t want to talk to her.’

He looks torn by how to reply, but I think it’s because arguing with my mom is the worst thing possible since, in her eyes, she’s always right. ‘Um …’

‘Dylan, you shouldn’t even ask him,’ Liz hisses. ‘Just tell her no.’

Dylan blinks like he snapped out of a trance then quickly puts the phone to his ear. ‘He’s not going to talk to you.’

I’m not sure what she says to him, but his shoulders look heavier with each second that ticks by. When he finally hangs up, he looks like a hunched over old man as he slumps onto the sofa Liz and I just moved. He lowers his head into his hands and presses his palms to his eyes.

‘What did the evil bitch want now?’ Liz asks, sitting behind Dylan. I decide right then and there that I like Liz.

‘She wanted to tell us that’ – he lifts his head and looks at me – ‘Dad’s probably not going to make it through the next week.’ He presses his lips together and I can’t tell whether he’s upset about Dad or having to talk to Mom. ‘She wants us to go to North Caroline and say our goodbyes.’

I swiftly shake my head, flexing fingers, fighting the urge to pierce my nails into my flesh. ‘No, I can’t do that.’

‘I know you can’t.’ His expression softens. ‘And that’s exactly what I told her.’

My muscles untense slightly. ‘What about you? Are you … going to?’

Liz looks about as eager to hear his answer as I do.

‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘I said my goodbyes the day I turned eighteen.’

Shutting my eyes, I nod. I feel like I’m on the verge of crying, thinking about how I never did get to say goodbye. That the last real exchange my father and I had was when he looked down at me with hateful eyes as I bled out on the kitchen floor. I wonder if he thought I was going to die. I wonder if he was happy because of it. I want to stop wondering about all this. I want to say goodbye like Dylan did, but not to my dad, to the past. And I want to go to my future.

‘I need to go home.’ I don’t mean to say it aloud, but the moment I do is the moment I realize just how much I need it.

Thankfully, Dylan sees it, too, because he stands up and crosses the room, giving me a weird, awkward, but welcomed hug. ‘I know you do. And I think I have an idea.’

Chapter 21

#162 Have a Mad, Crazy Snowball Fight.

Callie

Before Jackson and I head to Laramie, he and my dad loaded up the truck with some furniture my mom decided to give me that was in the guestroom – the one that still isn’t finished. It consists of a queen size bedframe and mattress, a dresser and nightstand, along with a couple of barstools for the kitchen. She also threw in some of her old cooking supplies even though I told her I don’t like to cook. I think I actually broke her heart when I said that, but so did me leaving earlier. She cried the entire time she was hugging me goodbye and then while Jackson and I were pulling out of the driveway.

‘Thank God that’s over,’ Jackson remarks as he drives toward Laramie. He’ll only be there for two days, but he keeps insisting we’re going to, ‘Snowboard like pros and party like rock stars’ while we’re there.

‘She means well,’ I say, taking my laptop out of a bag to get some work done for my internship, since I haven’t done anything since Thanksgiving break started.

‘She may mean well,’ he says, pulling into a gas station so he can fill up the tank before we hit the highway, ‘but she comes off crazy.’

I laugh, but don’t go too much further into the making-fun-of-Mom. She may be a little intense, but deep down I do believe she means well and that her overbearing attitude lately is coming from what happened to me. I think she feels she needs to make up for it by smothering me, so instead of fighting her, I’ve decided to let her be. Of course, telling my brother this will only get me teasing remarks at being a mama’s girl.

When Jackson gets out to put gas in the truck, I get in the backseat with my laptop on my lap. But even when he gets back in and starts driving again, I’m still staring at that damn cursor and I swear it’s begging me to write something else. So even though I know I shouldn’t, I switch to my fiction-yet-kind-of-non-fiction story and suddenly my fingers come alive.

This monster wasn’t in disguise like the one she’d met so many years ago. He snarled his fangs and raised his fists, ready to break everything in his path.

Knowing that she would only get one chance with this, the girl rushed forward before she could back out.

‘Stop.’ Her voice was as small as she felt, and when the monster turned to look at her, she wanted to run. But honestly, she was sick of running, so tired of monsters winning.

‘Can I help you?’ the monster asked, his fangs disappearing, his eyes softening as he shape-shifted into his misleading form. He thought the girl couldn’t see anymore what lay beneath the disguise, but she could.

The monster.

In his eyes.

‘You’re needed inside,’ the girl lied, her voice surprisingly steady and her feet firmly planted on the ground. She glanced at the boy, who was standing so still she thought he might be frozen.

The monster looked back at the boy, too, and she couldn’t see his eyes anymore, but by the way the boy cowered, she knew the man had shown the boy a glimpse of the monster waiting for him when she left.

When the man turned back to the girl, his disguise was back up as he smiled and nodded before he started inside. The girl held her breath as he walked by, afraid the monster might jump out and attack her.

He never did.

He must save it for the boy, she thought sadly.

Once the monster was in his palace, which looked more like a dungeon hidden beneath fancy walls, tall towers, and bright lights, she finally faced the boy.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked tentatively. It’d been forever since the girl had spoken to a boy – to anyone really – and she was nervous.

‘I’m fine,’ the boy said, the iciness in his tone startling her. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe the boy really couldn’t see the monster living inside the man.

‘O-okay.’ Her voice quivered as she lowered her head and turned to go back home and back though the vines that surrounded her own torturous palace.

‘Wait,’ the boy called out before she could get too far.

The sound of his voice calmed her, and when she faced him again, she was almost smiling for the very first time in six years.

The boy kept his distance, as if he feared the girl and was afraid to get to close. But that was okay; she feared his closeness as well.

‘Why did you do that?’ he asked, wrapping his arms around himself.

‘Because …’ She considered what to tell him. The truth? It seemed too terrifying to utter her secrets aloud. Maybe she could be vague, though. ‘No one ever did it for me.’

‘You know a monster, too?’ the boy asked, and this time he took a step toward her.

The girl was afraid.

But she was also curious.

So she stayed.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do.’

‘Does he … hurt you?’

She wanted to run, but found herself nodding. ‘He did.’

The boy seemed sad and in pain as he moved toward her again, this time more quickly and with his hand stretched out. ‘I’m sorry that he did.’

The girl looked at his hand, unsure what to do. She was afraid to touch him, afraid the boy could be wearing his own disguise and that suddenly a monster would appear in his place.

The boy must have read her mind because he pulled away and wrapped his arms around himself again. ‘Thank you,’ he uttered softly.

‘For what?’

‘For scaring him away.’

Again, the girl almost smiled and she could have sworn the boy did, too.

‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, then the two of them stood there in the darkness, the distant lights from the castles seeming far away, but for the first time within reach.

I end up writing until my fingers ache and my eyes and brain feel like they’re bleeding. It’s the most tiring and satisfying feeling ever. By the time I’m getting out of the backseat to show Jackson my apartment, I feel high and can’t help but think, This is what I want forever. Just my computer, my tiny little apartment, and Kayden. I just wish I had him here with me right now.

‘So, who were you talking to on the phone the whole drive?’ I ask Jackson as we trudge up the stairway. It’s around noon, but the stormy sky makes it seem like it’s much later, along with the quiet of the apartment complex.

He shrugs, scratching at the back of his neck. ‘No one.’

‘It was your girlfriend, huh?’ I tease as I take my keys out of my bag.

He gapes at me. ‘How’d you know?’

‘Because of the way your voice sounded. All swoony.’ I clasp my hands together and make my best swoony impression. Jackson actually blushes and it’s so funny that I bust up laughing. ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe I’m just learning about her.’ I find the right key on the chain as we reach the door. ‘Do Mom and Dad know?’

‘No,’ he says quickly. ‘And I’d prefer it if you didn’t say anything for now. I’ve just started seeing her and I don’t want Mom to get too attached to the idea yet, considering how she is with that stuff.’

‘That doesn’t seem fair for me to do that, considering how much you teased me about Kayden in front of them the entire week.’ I stick the key in the lock and turn it, excited to be home.

‘Callie, please,’ he begs, which he never does.

It’s super funny, but I decide to be nice. ‘Fine. Mum’s the word.’ I push open the door and step back to let him in. ‘But lay off on the teasing me, okay?’

He nods as he steps inside.

‘So, this is where you live?’ my brother states as he makes a small circle around the living room. There’s not much to look at; a small suede couch we bought at a second-hand store, along with an entertainment center, and a brand-new television – that was the splurge. ‘It’s a good thing Mom let you take all that shit with us, huh?’

I breathe in that fresh home scent as I shut the door behind me. ‘Yeah, it was really nice of her.’

‘I’m just trying to figure out how we’re going to get all that furniture up here.’ Jackson glances at the window as he rubs his jawline. The window is webbed with frost and snowflakes are splattered against it. ‘Because the tarp’s not going to hold up if it keeps snowing like this and there’s no way I can carry it up here with you and your tiny, little arms.’

I pull a face, but then it go because he’s kind of right. ‘It’s been a really rough winter, hasn’t it?’ I plop down on the couch with the phone in my hand.

‘I wouldn’t know, since I live in sunny, awesome Florida.’ Jackson grins conceitedly as he sits down on the armrest. ‘When’s Kayden supposed to be here? He and I could probably get all that shit up the stairs. I’m just super f**king relieved you’re not on the third floor, although you should have picked the first floor.’

‘Kayden’s not going to be here until Monday evening,’ I tell him, opening my contacts to text Luke because he’s the only other strong guy I know. ‘And I didn’t pick the floor. Or the apartment really.’

He raises his eyebrows at me as he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his tan cargo pants. ‘What do you mean?’