“Listen to your mother,” Lee said. He grinned at her.
“I’m listening.” Daisy waved to her family, rushed out goodbye’s to everyone individually, and closed the laptop.
Oxygen filled her lungs as she sucked in a deep, deep breath. She held onto it until it burned, until she could no longer keep holding it, and let it out as slowly as she could, savoring the unspooling tension under her ribcage.
Family was family, and her family was close, the closest kind of close. She’d been told by friends in high school and college that she was lucky to have what she did, a family full of complicated oddities willing to go anywhere and do anything for each other.
Her junior year of high school, the year that changed everything, Vance had sat beside her on his bed and asked, “What’s it like to have people actually give a shit?”
Daisy hadn’t known how to answer.
Aiden had been snorting a line of coke off the cover of an old Bible.
“I wouldn’t know,” Daisy had said, because when she’d thought of people she’d thought of Vance and Jon and Aiden, not about her family, and back then she’d been bitter enough to say things like that without feeling bad.
“Wow, fuck you too,” Aiden had said, tipping his head back to glare at her from across the room. She remembered the shape of the hickey on his neck. She remembered knowing where it came from and pretending not to.
Mercy jumped on top of her laptop and sat down. Her tail swished across Daisy’s legs, her beady eyes blinked, and her pink tongue stuck out from her mouth.
“What’s it like to have people give a shit, Mercy?” Daisy asked, scratching behind her white fluffy ears.
“Mrow?”
“Yeah, I know. I need to let it go, huh?”
Keys jingled in the door. Daisy swallowed hard, pushing memories away, along with her mother’s voice and the look in Liko’s eye. She glanced up when Aiden walked in, carrying two plastic bags in his hands and a small book in his mouth.
“Hey,” he said, muffled by the spine of whatever literature was between his teeth. “Hungry? I got you red curry from the Indian place.”
Everything inside of her cracked, but she didn’t show it.
“You okay?” Brows furrowed, Aiden spit the book onto the kitchen counter. “What’s wrong?”
She did show it, apparently. Or Aiden knew her well enough to smell her discomfort, to taste the memories even as she tried to shoo them out the window.
“I’m starving,” she said, rolling her eyes at him as if hunger was the culprit. “Thanks for grabbing food. Did you get jasmine rice?”
“Yeah, and chili paste. Did you see Charm School today?”
“No, I haven’t seen her since the beach, but we’ve been texting. Did you see Abercrombie?”
“No, he’s still working, which is fucking ridiculous, but whatever. Karman texted me about my brother’s birthday, which isn’t for weeks, but apparently, she needs help picking him out…” Aiden stopped. He sighed through his nose and watched her. “You’re lying, there’s something definitely wrong. Tell me.”
Sometimes she hated having Aiden Maar, who could see the workings of her organs if he wanted to, as a best friend.
“My parents want to meet Chelsea,” Daisy said, trying to steer her thoughts away from things that would start a fight.
Aiden laughed, gathering the takeout boxes in his arms. He handed her one, sat next to her, and forked rice and curry into his mouth. “They’re the coolest people ever; you don’t need to be worried.”
“They are pretty cool, huh?” Daisy grinned and mixed her container of rice into her curry with chili paste and peppers.
“Yeah, you have an awesome family. I wish they liked me more,” Aiden said, offering a playful grimace. “How’s your pack doing? The girls are… what, six now?”
“Seven,” she corrected. “They’re good. The boys are good too, but Liko’s failing gym for the second time. He isn’t comfortable with people seeing him without his shirt on.”
“Understandable.” Aiden kicked off his boots and pulled his feet onto his couch. He sat cross-legged, shoveling food into his mouth. She studied him. The fullness of his cheeks was a reminder of how close to dying he was all those years ago. She remembered the skeleton he used to be, all angles and hollow sockets and purple veins under his eyes. He looked back, tilting his head. There was brightness where she used to see shadow, life where she used to find emptiness. “What is it?”
“I know this is one of those we-don’t-talk-about-it things,” Daisy started. Aiden froze; his fork dropped into his container. “But when you and Vance—”
“There was never a me and Vance,” Aiden snapped.
“There was.” Daisy stared at him, catching first fear, then anger, stitched across his face. “We need to talk about this, Aiden.”
“Does it even matter anymore?” He set his container on the table and stood up. “I didn’t— It wasn’t a big deal until…” His shoulders tightened. His jaw flexed, sliding back and forth. “And I didn’t mean for it to hurt you. I was trying to—”
“Hurt him? Who else would’ve been hurt besides you and me?” Daisy heard the tone of her voice change. The rasp deepened; the growl got stronger. She felt Vance’s teeth sinking into them both all over again. “I’m sorry, this is stupid,” Daisy said, exhaling a short breath, “it doesn’t matter anymore; you’re right.”
Aiden didn’t touch his food. His gaze was on the two walls filled with artwork. She tried to look at him and saw his jaw flex again, but his eyes were calculating and tender.
“I was ready to die,” Aiden said.
Daisy’s stomach tightened.
“I hated myself and I was trying to make sure everyone else had reasons to hate me too. I was nothing to him,” Aiden said. He bit down on nothing as if it was rock candy. The word crystallized and broke. “Trust me; he made me believe it.”
“You and me both,” Daisy whispered.
Aiden left his food on the coffee table. He got up, fed Mercy, grabbed his helmet, and left without saying goodbye. Daisy sat alone in the apartment. She looked through old pictures on her laptop, forced herself to look at Vance, to look at Aiden, to look at who she used to be: pictures from The Hollow, pictures from parties, pictures from school, pieces of an awful puzzle she couldn’t stop trying to figure out.
She scrolled through her phone, hovered over Aiden’s name, and then kept scrolling.
Daisy Yuen 7/16 6:43 p.m.
What do you do when you can’t stop thinking about things that don’t matter? Bad things? Old things?
A picture looked back at her from her computer screen. Daisy and Aiden with Vance between them, standing in front of the rusty car at The Hollow. Vance, taller than them—tan and handsome and horrible, with his lips on Daisy’s cheek and his hand clamped around Aiden’s waist. Daisy smiling, Aiden not. Daisy hurting and not showing it. Aiden hurting and broadcasting it.
Chelsea Cavanaugh 7/16 6:46 p.m.
I make myself think about good things. Why?
Daisy Yuen 7/16 6:47 p.m.
What if that doesn’t work?
Chelsea Cavanaugh 7/16 6:48 p.m.
Then I remove whatever is making me think about the bad things
Daisy Yuen 7/16 6:48 p.m.
What if it’s a person?
Chelsea Cavanaugh 7/16 6:50 p.m.
You have to talk to him, Daisy. You have to put the past in the past or it’s never going to get better.
She looked at the picture for a long time. At the Daisy she wasn’t anymore. She looked and looked, right-clicked the file, and deleted it.
Aiden came home at three in the morning. He stood by the couch with his hands in his pockets while Daisy looked up at him.
“Are we okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Daisy said, but she didn�
��t know if she believed it or not. “Course we are.”
He nodded and walked into the bedroom, leaving Daisy alone with her thoughts.
She opened her laptop. The brightness made her squint, but she couldn’t help it. Being barely awake was like swimming through fresh snow, cold and soft.
In the file labeled ANCIENT, amongst her abundance of old pictures, she found a document labeled research_1. She double-clicked it, revealing links to medical websites and quotes from how-tos, passages from recovery books, and tips straight out of self-help forums.
When dealing with depression, try to remind yourself that the person with/directly affected by mental illness doesn’t know why/how they do what they do sometimes.
Disassociation can cause a person to act out of character, to do/say things that could potentially hurt those around them.
Depression and Anxiety are forms of psychosis. A person with manic tendencies may find themselves in situations they didn’t want/ask for. A person in a manic state will: Lash out / Act out / Cry out
Daisy closed her laptop.
She walked down the hallway and into Aiden’s bedroom, where he was awake, because of course he was.
He puffed on a joint and watched her carefully, lounging on his bed with one foot dangling off. He patted the spot beside him. She crawled in and flopped carelessly on her back.
“Shannon says hi,” Aiden whispered. He held the joint out to her.
She pinched it between her fingers and took a drag. “Tell him I say hi.”
It was quiet for a long time, long enough that Daisy started to feel eyes peering out from the corners, waiting.
“I wasn’t okay either,” Daisy said. She passed him the joint. “But I had to be. I’m… What he did to you—”
“Don’t do that,” Aiden interjected. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. “It wasn’t what he did to me; it’s what he didn’t get from me. Don’t make it into something it wasn’t.”
“Call it what it was, Aiden. Vance tried to…” She shook her head when he offered her the joint. “Will you look at me?”
He opened his eyes and fixed them on her.
“What happened to you is the same thing that happened to me.” When Aiden opened his mouth to protest, Daisy held her hand in front of him. “Yeah, it is. Me and you. It happened to both of us, whether you, hey…” She paused until he closed his mouth. “… let me finish. Whether you hooked up with Vance before, whether he was my boyfriend or not, whether I said hi to that guy, whether I let him buy me a drink or not. It’s the same.”
“It’s not,” Aiden snapped. “What you went through—Daisy, that’s different, that’s real… You don’t— I never should’ve let Vance touch me, but I did, and that makes it—”
“You didn’t deserve it either,” Daisy said.
Aiden’s entire body quieted.
Daisy found the crack, the break, the fissure in his armor. “I know you, Aiden Maar. I know you better than I know myself. Did you fuck up? Yeah, you did. But that doesn’t justify what happened.”
Aiden’s lashes fluttered. He swallowed hard. “I knew you weren’t okay, but I couldn’t deal with it. None of it. Not him, not you, I couldn’t deal with myself,” Aiden whispered. “I wish you would’ve told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That you weren’t okay. That you aren’t okay. I’m not blind, Daisy. We’re fighting this shit, me and you, but you said it yourself, our battles aren’t the same.”
“How could I tell you that? We were kids. My boyfriend was sucking on you behind my back; you were trying to…” She refused to say it, to give weight to the love letters he’d written to death. “I couldn’t. And I came back, and we didn’t talk about anything, and that shit happened at 101, and it was almost April, and…”
“And nothing,” Aiden said. “Fuck April, Daisy. You’re more important than my mental bullshit, okay? You went through something terrible and you’ve been carrying it this whole time, this whole time,” he hissed, “and you have nightmares and panic attacks, and you still don’t say anything to me?”
“I didn’t know I had to say anything!” Daisy snatched what was left of the joint and took another long drag. She coughed; her voice was raspy and smoky. “It’s not like we didn’t talk about it, we did. But getting you to talk about Vance is like pulling fucking teeth, and I didn’t want what I went through to unbury old shit that you went through.”
“It’s not the same,” Aiden insisted.
Daisy grabbed Aiden’s chin with two fingers and pinched. “Did you say no?”
His jaw flexed, teeth grinding down.
“Did you?” Daisy pinched harder.
“Yeah,” Aiden whispered. “I said no.”
“Ask me the same question.”
“Daisy,” Aiden’s voice cracked.
“Aiden, c’mon.”
“Did you say no?”
The word burned in her mouth. “Yes.” Daisy felt as if she weighed a thousand pounds.
The eyes in the corners of the room blinked. The shadows they were attached to skittered across the walls. Silence filled the chasm between them, and when no one apologized, Daisy realized this wasn’t a night for apologies. It was a night for confession and truth, hidden scars and fresh wounds. It was a night to dust off the skeletons in their closets, new and old.
“I love you,” Aiden said gently. “You know that, right?”
“I know that,” Daisy said through a sigh. “I love you too.” Her phone vibrated where it sat atop her stomach.
Chelsea Cavanaugh 7/16 3:56 a.m.
What do you think about when you can’t sleep?
Daisy Yuen 7/16 3:57 a.m.
Things that matter and things that don’t
Chelsea Cavanaugh 7/16 3:57 a.m.
I miss you
Daisy Yuen 7/16 3:58 a.m.
I miss you too
She turned to look at Aiden and found Aiden looking back at her. He touched her septum ring with the tip of his finger.
“You always deserved better,” he said.
She turned on her side to face him, only to have Mercy waddle between them and roll on her back. Daisy grinned, scratching Mercy’s belly. “We both did.”
“No, I meant me, you deserved a better friend than me,” Aiden choked out, painfully, mournfully.
Daisy placed her palm gently over his mouth. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
They fell asleep with Mercy between their faces and their pasts watching them like ghouls from every corner of the room.
When Daisy woke up, Aiden was making coffee, and it was as if the witching hours had never happened.
17
Chelsea’s sunglasses slid to the tip of the nose as she peered over them, watching the sun dip below the horizon. Shapes took form in the distance. The silhouette of a Ferris wheel turned slowly against a navy sky. Stars blinked awake the higher she looked, dimmed by the fairground’s neon lights. A pendulum ride lined with yellow bulbs rose up and up, swinging to and fro. A rollercoaster snaked its way next to a free-falling-drop tower.
“Parking is always a mess,” Daisy said through a groan. Her hands gripped the steering wheel; her fingers were decorated in an array of crystal rings. She thumbed one of them—a cluster of purple in the shape of a crescent moon.
Chelsea tapped the ring. “Shannon wears a necklace like this. What is it?”
“Amethyst,” Daisy said, arching a brow. “Did he not tell you about that? Aiden made them both necklaces for Christmas last year.”
Her stomach clenched, and Chelsea shifted, trying to cover her bitterness with a smile. “Oh, no, he never mentioned it. It’s nice, though. I’ve always admired it; guess it’s my fault for not askin’.”
Chelsea didn’t want to believe it was her fault for not asking, but as time went on, it became clearer
and clearer that Shannon saw their friendship differently than she did. Something that small—a necklace, a gift, a tiny, miniscule nothing—made Chelsea feel things she hadn’t felt since high school.
Why didn’t he tell me battled with he doesn’t have to disclose everything.
She envied Daisy and Aiden’s friendship, despite what lingered in their past.
“Have either of them texted you?” Daisy parked at the back of the parking lot. “They said they’d meet us here at eight, and it’s eight-thirty, which means we’re the late ones.”
“Not a word,” Chelsea said. She tilted her head back against the seat and shrugged. “Doesn’t mean we can’t start our food tour now, though.”
“This is true. Can you hand me that purse?”
Chelsea handed Daisy her purse, and they slid out of the car to be welcomed by the sound of squealing thrill-seekers and the smell of kettle corn. She adjusted her old cowboy boots and pulled at her socks until they folded over her knees. Jean shorts climbed high on her waist, buttoned above her navel, and were met by a billowy, white cropped blouse. Daisy looked like her shadow—decorated in black shredded jeans and a charcoal top buttoned to the very center of her throat. Her usual platform boots were replaced by red sneakers.
They did not match. If someone were to look at them—if Chelsea would’ve looked at them months ago—they’d assume the girls were waiting for their other-halves to collect them.
Daisy cocked her head, bird-like, and a quick, a half-smile quirked on her black-painted mouth. She held out her hand, “You ready?”
Chelsea smiled. Shadow or not, she took Daisy’s hand. Cold silver rings rivaled warm skin as their fingers linked. “What’s first on the list?”
A clipped laugh edged into a purr, and Daisy said, “Fried Twinkies, obviously.”
Aiden Maar 7/23 8:56 p.m.
Where you guys at
Daisy Yuen 7/23 8:57 p.m.
Game section next to the haunted house ride at the Mexican corn stand
Curved Horizon Page 13
