A Whole New Crowd(68)

I felt dead inside. Mandy saw it and the fa?ade fled away. She wasn’t going to deny it, but I saw the storm beginning to brew inside her.
I added, “Those are your bags.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, her voice low and deadly.
I stepped closer and lowered mine to the same pitch. “Those are your bags. They’re packed because I’m taking you to a rehab facility. Unlike your parents, I give a shit. You’re lying to yourself every time you take a pill and you know it. You’re so full of lies, I don’t think you know what’s right anymore. It’s right to leave a boyfriend when he cheats on you. It’s right to be angry when he cheated on you with your friend. It’s right to demand better friends, better relationships, better parents who give a damn. Those are the right things to do.” Jeezus. I stopped and forced myself to calm down. Anger was coursing through me, setting me on edge. I wanted to rip into someone and bleed them dry. I realized that I was saying those words to myself as well, to the little girl in me. The one who wanted to be loved, who wanted a mother like all the other girls had in their lives, who wanted a regular home and didn’t have to be locked inside her room since she was a flight risk.
I had been lying to myself too.
Closing my eyes, I turned away. I hung my head and forced myself to see the truth. I wanted that so much that I hadn’t acknowledged the truth. Shelly and Kevin were never home. They were polite, but that was it. They didn’t care. They didn’t want me there. They weren’t the family I thought I had been gifted. Gritting my teeth, knowing this was all a lie forced on me, I whipped my head back up.
Mandy fell back a step. The color drained from her face.
“I love you,” I said, forcing my tone to soften. “Because of that, I’m taking you to a facility. None of your bullshit will work on me. I’ve gone this route too many times with Brian. I won’t go through it again. Because you’re not fighting as much, I know you’re early in the process. You can be helped, and you have to be helped. Mandy, you have to be.” She was my family. “With this f*cked-up situation, you became my sister. So I’m here and I’m fighting for you. Take the bags, Mandy.” Please. I mentally prayed. She needed to go of her own choice. I couldn’t force her to go so I pleaded. “I’ll drive you and I’ll help you.”
“Taryn?”
Her voice cracked and a tear fell down her cheek. I saw the shame. It flared over her face and then she hung her head.
That was when I knew she wasn’t going to fight it. I stood there, shocked. Brian always fought. He denied. He yelled. He threw things. Then he would cry and he would plead and he would beg me not to leave him. Mandy did none of this. She went straight to crying, and she crumbled on a chair by the table.




CHAPTER TWENTY

I was still in shock at how easy it had been to convince Mandy to go to rehab. She didn’t say much on the car ride there. She sat, slumped down, and cried most of the way. As we filled out the paperwork and sat in the lobby, she still didn’t say much. The counselor came out for her assessment and she followed him into the office without a backward look to me. After that, she was admitted. As they led her through a back hallway, I could still see where they were searching her bags. That was when she looked up and I saw a frightened little girl staring back at me.
The counselor spoke her name, but Mandy looked haunted. I narrowed my eyes, wondering if she was more scared of herself than of going into rehab. Then he touched her arm and she looked away. The small window she had given me to see inside of her closed up. Taking her bag, she followed him and I couldn’t see them anymore.
When I left, with a doctor’s note to give to the high school administration, a ball of emotion was in the bottom of my stomach. It wouldn’t move. How I drove home, I had no idea. I was on autopilot and I stayed like that for the rest of the day. Tray texted to see if things were fine. I told him to expect Austin and me that night. I waited for my little brother to get back from his tournament. When he did, I picked him up. When he saw my face through the car’s window, he stopped walking. He was dressed in low-riding, baggy athletic pants and a large jersey with his earbuds in his ears. Someone yelled goodbye and he lifted his hand, but it was an absent-minded farewell. As he came closer and got inside, he didn’t say anything for a moment. He tugged his earbuds down and then asked, “Where’s Mandy?”
I studied him before I replied. He was fourteen. I could tell he was popular. He was athletic. His friends were good-looking and wealthy. He was jaded. He didn’t have the innocence most others did at his age. Weighing all of those factors together, I knew Austin wasn’t dumb. “I took Mandy to an in-house treatment facility.”