by D. K Lake
I spin the note around and let out a deep breath. My little night adventure had gone unnoticed. I make myself a peanut butter sandwich and go up to my room and give it a little clean, then I work on my history assignment which is harder to do without my laptop. I might have to actually go to the library and turn pages. OMG. I'm used to scrolling down the page. I hear my mom come home but I stay in my room and turn my music on to drown out the sound of the vacuum downstairs.
At 5 o'clock I take a long hot bath, wasting time until dinner. Mom and Paige are downstairs preparing dinner. I spotted Mom coming home with groceries so I'm hoping she bought something good for dinner and not another microwave meal. My sister calls me down for dinner and we all sit in silence and eat. We have chicken breast in a smoky sauce with jacket potato and some green beans. It's actually pretty good. For dessert, it's a choice between yogurt or some flapjack thing my sister made. I don't like yogurt so I try the flapjack thing and I'm impressed with my sister's cooking skills. Mom and Paige chat about school and all the after-school clubs Paige is in. She's like the nerdiest person I know. She even goes to a chess club.
After dinner, I help Paige load the dishwasher while Mom sits on the couch with a glass of wine. She hasn't really spoken to me and is still giving me the cold shoulder, and my sister doesn't really speak to me anyway.
I head upstairs at 7.15 pm with nothing to do. I decide to phone Nessie, at least she will talk to me, even if it is relaying what's on TV. I really need to get my own TV in my bedroom. I open my bedroom door and walk inside, and close the door.
And jump out of my skin when I see Mitchel sitting on my bed. Again!
I gasp and drop my glass and it thuds on the carpet.
OMG! Second drink stain on the carpet. Mom's gonna kill me!
She still hasn't seen the chocolate drops that splattered on the beige carpet the other night.
But I can't even think about the carpet right now.
"What are you doing here?!" I ask angrily, not caring if my mom hears me.
I don't want him here. I want him gone.
He gets up off the bed and walks toward me with his hands up as if I'm about to bolt. Maybe I should.
"Get out of here!" I growl.
"What's wrong?" he asks, reaching for my hand but I take a few steps back. "I woke up and you were gone. Again." he says, watching as I retreat away from him.
He didn't know I knew about the messages and that I had spoken to JT about them.
"Kelse, what's wrong?" he asks, confused.
"What's wrong?" I spit. "What's wrong is I asked JT about the messages and he had no idea what I was talking about."
Mitchel looks pissed off and he rubs his eyes.
"Fuck! He's lying, Kelse, I swear it!" he pleads, stalking over to me and I end up pinned to the wall.
He places one hand beside my head and the other on my waist to hold me there.
"He's lying. He sent those messages but he doesn't want you to know."
"Know what? What are you talking about?"
"I can't tell you. I just need you to trust-"
"No! I don't want you here. I don't want to listen to your lies anymore. Get out!" I yell, pushing him away from me.
He staggers back with his mouth parted in shock.
"Kelse..." He tries to grab me but I slide along the wall. "Kelse, please." he begs.
I shake my head and point to the window.
"Leave!" I scream. "I don't want you here. I don't want anything to do with you!"
My heart is thudding and I feel weirdly dizzy. I suck in a breath and try to calm down. He looks at the floor near my feet and runs his hand through his hair.
"You need to stay away from me." I tell him and I mean it this time.
"I can't." he says in a low tone.
"Well, you need to try!" I cry just as the door bursts open and my mom storms in, nostrils flaring and eyes wide, she looks like a frigging bull.
I cross my arms and lean against the wall. I know there's no point in explaining to her that he broke in, she probably thinks I was hiding him in the closet or something.
"You again." she says, recognizing him from the car the other night when he showed up at my house on Sunday looking for me.
"You need to leave!" my mom tells him in the best authority voice she can when she's even shorter than I am, and Mitchel towers over her. She glares at Mitchel but he completely blanks her.
"Kelse, " he whispers, trying to get my attention.
I don't even look at him and stare at the floor.
"I said you need to leave. If you don't leave I'm calling the police!" Mom says, raising her voice.
"Come with me." Mitchel says and that gets my attention and I look up and meet his eyes.
I love his dark blue eyes, they're so deep and mesmerizing, and I get lost in them. I thought we were the same in some way, but I was wrong about him, so very wrong. He's just like all the other boys at school, only after what he can get. I'm not quite sure what it was he wanted from me, though.
Since Mitchel arrived at school my emotions have been all over the place, up and down more times than my neighbor's dog at the fence.
I know I'm falling for him. But that's bad. Very bad. I've never had these kinds of feelings for anyone before but I know they're real, and I need to cut him out of my life before he causes too much damage and I can't put myself back together.
We stare at each other and I am very aware of my mom breathing heavily just a few feet away, I know she's about to blow if he doesn't leave.
"Kelsey, come on, let's get out of here." he says calmly.
I stare at the window, contemplating jumping out and running away.
He doesn't know how much I want to go with him. How much I want to run away from this place, my mom, everything, and never look back. But that only ever happens on TV and in books. I can't leave with him. I have to go back to school on Monday if I want to graduate, and I can't just stay at his again, I would have to come back at some point and Mom would lose her shit all over again.
And he lied.
He lied.
I have to remember that. No matter how much he messes with my head when he looks at me the way he is right now, with those eyes that look sincere and desperate.
Nope. He lied. He has to go.
"I think it's time you left." Mom says.
I can see a small victorious smile on her lips that she hides as she holds the door open for him. I can still feel his eyes on me but I've zoned out and I'm staring at the horrible yellow curtains.
He walks slowly toward the door and I do something stupid and look at him and catch him looking at me over his shoulder. His eyes look sad but they soon change into something else, something angry when he looks at my mom as she stands at the door ushering him out.
"What's going on? Wh-how did he get in?" Paige asks, walking up the stairs and moving aside for Mitchel.
"He's a nobody and he was just leaving." Mom says, following him down the stairs. "Kelsey, stay where you are!" she calls up to me.
Paige walks into my room with her mouth open in shock. She's probably in shock a boy was in my room in the first place let alone Mitchel.
"What was Boston's friend doing in your room?"
"It doesn't matter, he won't be coming back." I mutter.
I pick up my phone and turn it on. I can hear my mom arguing with Mitchel downstairs and he's shouting...something about him being here has nothing to do with me. Like that makes sense. I'm the reason he climbed through my window. I think he meant it's not my fault but I can tell he's pissed and yelling whatever pops into his head. I hear another voice and recognize Boston trying to calm him down.
"Is that Boston?" my sister whispers, tiptoeing to the top of the stairs.
Then I hear a lot of..."Fuck" and "I'm gonna kill JT!"
And my mom keeps saying..."You need to leave!" like some annoying parrot.
My phone beeps with thirteen messages, some from Nessie, but most are from Mitchel.
And three voicemails.
The door slams shut and I hear Mom making sure the door is locked and she even puts the chain on. She stomps up the stairs and Paige moves out of her way as she marches into my room. Her face is flushed and her jaw is tight. She puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. I want to run away but I have nowhere to go. My phone starts ringing in my hand and I dare to look at the caller ID and see Mitchel's name flashing across the screen. After he broke his last phone he got another one and I saved the number this time. My mom holds her hand out and I surrender my phone. Any social life I had just went out the window.
"Kelsey, get your things together." she says calmly and Paige and I share a look.
"What? Why?" my sister and I say at the same time.
"I want you to change rooms with Paige."
I actually let out a breath. I thought she was about to ship me off to my dad's. I'd take Paige's room over my dad's any day, and on the plus side, it's bigger.
"Why are we changing rooms?" Paige asks confused.
"So we don't have any more uninvited guests. It's just until I get that tree taken down."
"What has the tree done wrong?" I blurt and Mom looks at me.
I look away and pick up a few things I want. I had grown up climbing that tree and now she wants to destroy it.
Just like my fucking life.
Mom stalks out of the room and Paige gets all huffy and walks back to her room and I hear the door slam.
She keeps a journal under her bed and she's probably going to find a new place to hide it, not that I want to read it, she has one friend and likes a boy she can't have; sounds a lot like me come to think about it. We are like each other in some ways then.
I'm still gathering my things and putting them in my school bag when Mom walks back in with a large plank of wood, a handful of nails, and a hammer.
She's fucking insane.
I leave mom blocking out the natural light and knock on Paige's door.
"Open the door!"
Paige flings the door open.
"I hate you! This is all your fault. Why do I have to be punished because of her?" Paige yells, stomping into my bedroom.
I walk into Paige's room and sit on her queen-sized pink bed, there are fluffy pink pillows and cuddly toys everywhere.
It's my worst nightmare.
After Paige and Mom have a heated discussion about my behavior and how I can't be trusted and how this is only temporary, Paige finally settles down and comes back in and grabs a handful of teddies and marches back to my room, then she returns for the bedding and pulls it off and drags it into my room and slams the door and I'm left with a fluffy pink throw and a pink crocodile for a pillow.
Could things get any worse?
30
I walk into school on Monday and feel as though everyone is staring at me. I try to ignore the weird feeling of being watched and grab my books from Nessie's locker and head straight for the bathroom and plan to wait in there until the bell rings.
My mom hasn't said a word to me, and Paige is ignoring me. I spent Sunday in her room reading anything that looked half decent on her bookcase, but she's obsessed with vampires and I ended up reading Twilight.
All day she found an excuse to keep coming back to her room...I left a book in here. Do you know where my pen is? I need socks!
She was keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn't read her diary that she had hidden in an air vent above her dresser. I only know this because I got really bored and was being nosy and happened to stumble across it.
I stare at myself in the mirror. My skin actually looks good this morning. I have no bags under my eyes because I went to bed at nine from boredom and woke up at the crack of dawn and decided to do my makeup. Just the usual, a little mascara and some eyeliner. I had even had time to do my hair and had braided the left side with three small braids close to my scalp and loosely curled the rest. I was so bored at home, no cell phone, no laptop. It was like living in the middle ages.
The bell rings and I pick up my bag and hear Amber laughing just outside the door. Crap. Fudge. Shit bucket. I quickly hide in a bathroom stall at the back and lift my legs up.
"Do you have any lipgloss? I left mine in JT's car." Amber says.
"Here, you can use mine. It's raspberry ripple."
Here, you can use mine. It's raspberry ripple. I mimic Phoebe's annoying high-pitched squeaky voice.
"So how did your double date go last night?" Mia asks.
Double date?
"It was ok, we went bowling, but JT got into a fight beforehand and turned up with a black eye." Amber tells her.
"Do you know who with?"
"No idea, but he said he dealt with them."
"So how did you and Mitchel get on?" Mia asks and my mouth falls open.
"It was fun." Phoebe giggles.
What the actual fudge?!
"Did he kiss you?" Mia asks.
"Just once at the end of the night when he walked me to my door."
"And??" Amber and Mia say at the same time.
"It was amazing! He does this thing with his tongue."
Mia gasps and Amber says, "JT likes to use tongue too."
I want to block it out but I left my iPod at home, one of the few things Mom hasn't taken from me, that or she forgot I have it.
"So do you think he's going to ask you out?" Mia asks.
"Well, if that kiss was anything to go by last night, then yeah." Phoebe says smugly.
LIAR. LIAR. LIAR. I HATE HIM!
"Anyone else have any juicy gossip?" Phoebe says and it sounds as though she's applying something to her lips.
"Actually, yeah...I was talking to my sister last night and she said Paul's ex, you know Kelsey/Feta cheese's mother, well she had been on the phone with him, telling him how Kelsey had some boy in her bedroom and that she's been sneaking out with him." Amber says and the other two gasp dramatically.
My mouth drops open again.
Paul...as in my dad!
"Who do you think she had in her room? Probably some loser, like her." Mia laughs, and my opinion of Mia drops.
She's always the shy and quiet one and now she's bad mouthing me. Bitch.
"The rumor is it was Zeke Tellerman." Amber says and I hear her gasp at herself.
Did she just make that up? Zeke Tellerman, really? I don't think I've ever spoken to the guy.
The girls hurry along their makeup routine and leave the bathroom and I push the door open, feeling like crap. I had planned to spend the day avoiding Amber and her crew, but no such luck.
And Mitchel and Phoebe are hooking up, well, no surprise there.
I already knew Monday would be horrid, now with the new information I had just heard had made the day ten times worse. And now I'm late.
I should have stayed in bed and pretended to be sick again. I'm sure if I told Mom I'm pregnant and had morning sickness she'd believe me. She has such a low opinion of me. After all, I am a monster slut, and now I can add Zeke to my list of guys.
I exit the bathroom and head to my first class. Nessie gives me this look like she knows I know about Mitchel and Phoebe and their amazing date. I hate today and already want it to be over.
On my way to my next class, Stephen loops an arm around my waist and pulls me to the side of the corridor.
"What do you want, Stephen?" I sigh.
"Nothing. Do I need a reason to talk to you?"
"Yes, when I'm running late to class."
"Did you hear about Torres and Phoebe's date?"
"Um...yeah, so?"
"Oh, it's just they looked like they had fun."
"That's what you wanted to tell me?" I grit my teeth.
"Well, I was at the bowling alley last night and I happened to see them there...and um," He pulls out his phone and shows me multiple photos of Mitchel with his arm around Phoebe's shoulders, and JT and Amber are in the background.
I stare at the photos. It's like a punch to the gut.
"Why would you sho
w me these?"
"I know you have a thing for him but I wanted you to see this, to see what he's like. He uses girls. You should stay away from him."
I'm not sure whether I should slap Stephen or thank him. I know he's enjoying every moment of this.
"Ok, Stephen, you've made your point."
He slips his phone into his pocket.
"I'm only looking out for you. Just stay away from him, ok?"
"Yes, all right, I get it." I say, trying to push him away before any more rumors start flying around.
"And whatever you do, don't sleep with him." he says and I shake my head and push him out of the way and head to class.
Boys are such jealous creatures. And as for sleeping with Mitchel, is Stephen mad? There is no way I would even get into the same bed as Mitchel after what he did. Phoebe can have him.
The day goes by quickly, mainly because I engross myself into my school work and block out everything else, and before I know it, I'm sitting in my last class of the day which happens to be biology.
I barely talk to Boston in biology, but he doesn't talk to me either. I know he hasn't done anything wrong but I'm in a horrible mood and will probably snap if he says the wrong thing. Mitchel keeps looking over his shoulder at me and I pretend not to notice.
Nessie and JT start to squabble but the teacher intervenes and separates them and sits them on opposite sides of the classroom. The funny thing is even after they have been separated they can't stop looking across the classroom to see what the other one is doing.
"So how's Boston?" I finally decide to talk to him.
"The same as usual, bored of school. How's Kelsey?"
"Not great. Mitchel's a lying dirtbag and now my mom hates me a little more 'cause he broke into my house."
Boston doesn't say anything on the matter and scribbles something down.
"Did you take a date to the bowling alley last night as well?"
"Do I look like the type of person that takes a date to the bowling alley?"
"Well, no...but..."
"I was playing on the arcade games the whole night. I don't know what went on." I see his eyes flicker in JT's direction and I catch JT scowling back at him.
What is that about? Is Boston not allowed to talk to me? JT's eye is all swollen and it looks like he's got three or four butterfly stitches on his eyebrow.
