The Contradiction of Solitude(71)

I didn’t want his excuses. I didn’t want his well-intentioned words. Or his constant support.

I wanted him to let this be and let me do what was required.

Elian’s eyes were unreadable for the first time.

Not dancing.

Not dead.

Something else entirely.

“Well, I’m going to take a walk. I can’t just sit here and wait for you to go to see him. I’m crawling out of my skin.” He was so agitated.

He didn’t want to be around me.

Then I feared.

Was Matt right?

Was I making a mistake?

Was it even possible for me to go back to Brecken Forest and have a life with Elian? I knew the answer, why was I even questioning it?

Doubts were dangerous. They clouded the mind and dampened the soul with what ifs.

Elian stared at me for a while longer and I almost stopped him. I almost told him that we could leave. Forget about this ill-conceived trip into hell.

I almost allowed myself to forget about who I was and to embrace this world that he so easily offered.

But I didn’t.

I let him leave.

I was alone.

“Your dad’s a psycho!” Tasha was supposed to be my friend. We played together. We shared secrets. We had sleepovers and playdates.

But she looked at me like there was something wrong with me.

Daddy had gone.

The police had come to our house and taken him away. Mom had screamed and tried to stop them. They told her to stay inside or they’d take her away as well.

Matty hid upstairs, and I stood in the living room, watching my beloved father being put in the back of a police car.

Now there were reporters and cameramen outside our house all of the time.

Mom started sneaking us out the back door and through our neighbor’s yard.

“No he’s not!” I yelled in her face. Tasha curled up her lip and rolled her eyes.

“He murdered a bunch of girls, Layna. He’s a total nut job. What if you’re a nut job too?”

I ran away. Far, far away. I tried to hide from the taunts and the sneers.

But most of all I missed him. I missed my father.

And I hated the stars.

The stars named Stella. And Jessica. And Emma. And Elizabeth.

I hated Amelia. So much!

I hated them all.

Those stupid, stupid stars.

My daddy had lied. Those stars weren’t for me.

They were his.

And now he was paying the price for taking them.

I thought about the house. The one on the outskirts of Norton Hill. The place my dad had taken me when I was eight years old.

On that cold, cold night when everything changed.

When I felt the click inside of me and I knew that I was different.

All because of the man I called Daddy.

It came to me in flashes. Bits and pieces. Like a movie. Like something that happened to someone else in some other life.

I could never recall everything from that night all at once. My brain shut down. Refused to function.

Only flashes.

Parts.

Not the entire thing.

My subconscious knew I couldn’t deal with that.

Not yet.

But one day…

I got dressed and took my time with my hair and makeup. I wanted to look pretty.

Though I wasn’t sure why.

“Is Daddy a psycho?” I asked Mom after I got home from school. I had heard it all day. The ridicule.

My mother didn’t look up from her magazine. Since Daddy had gone away, Mom had been a lot worse. She used to ignore me before, but now it’s as though she wished I were never there.

I had known for a long time that she had stopped loving me. I could still remember being a young girl, and my mother putting bows in my hair. She had kissed me and hugged me and loved me then.

But as I got older that stopped.

And my father’s affection grew.

I had never felt the loss of my mother’s love because my father made up for it.

But now that he was gone, I felt the emptiness. The loneliness.

“Mom, everyone is saying Daddy is a nut job. Is he?”

Even though I had always been secure in my father’s devotion, I knew, with confidence, that there was something different about my daddy. He wasn’t like Tasha’s dad. He was something else.

I knew that even before the night at the house in the woods.

A night I had a hard time remembering. Only in chunks that my brain could handle.

I most certainly didn’t think of him as a psycho.

He was my dad.

“Stop asking me silly questions, Layna. Go to your room,” my mother answered dully. Never looking at me.

I hated her. So much. She was weak. She didn’t deserve my father.

We would have been better off without her.

I saw the pair of scissors lying beside her on the table and I thought about picking them up. About burying them into her neck. About watching the blood spurt out of her artery. Onto the floor.

We would be better off. Without her.

There was a noise behind me and I looked over my shoulder. Matty peeked around the doorway, peering into the kitchen.

“Layna? Is Daddy coming home?” Matty loved Daddy too. But not as much as I did. But enough. Enough to make me love my brother just a little bit. Enough.

“Come here, Matthew,” my mother called out, holding her arms open for her son.