Burn Before Reading(41)

No, the mirror-me said. It’s just like he said – he was once you.

My eyes fixated on Dad’s pill bottle. Was it really so bad? I was being a good daughter – this is what any daughter would do. I loved Dad. I wanted him to get better. Was I wrong for wanting that?

That night, Mom came home late from the hospital. She and Dad had a fight, a quiet one, the sort of fight I could only half-hear. Their furious voices echoed dully through the walls, and then Mom started sobbing. I watched the ceiling of my childhood bedroom and listened to the sound, taking it in this time instead of running away by burying my head in my pillow. Mom cried. Mom was fed up. Dad was quiet. Dad felt bad. I could read them, even though I wasn’t in the room with them. I knew what they were feeling.

Or did I?

The best psychiatrists probably knew what people were feeling. I always thought I was good at knowing that, too. I secretly thought I was perceptive and understanding of people. Or was that stupid to assume? Was that, like Wolf said, childish of me? Was it stupid of me to assume I understood what any human being other than myself was feeling? I wasn’t Mom. I wasn’t Dad. I was just…me. I was just Bee – and Bee didn’t know what to feel anymore. She was confused and tired and sad – so, so sad. So sad she started crying, too, into her pillow. She wanted posters on her walls, friends in her phone, smiles on her face, books in her hand and in her heart. She wanted a scholarship – she wanted a good college that could teach her to make people okay again. But she couldn’t have both. That was selfish. That wasn’t how the world worked – you sacrificed something to get something.

She wanted Dad to be happy, Mom to be happy – she wanted everything.

She wanted everything to be okay again.

Was that so wrong of her?





Chapter 10


WOLF


I don’t remember how I got home, after the fight.

I remember Burn pulling me and Fitz apart, shoving Fitz out the door and leaving me in the room. I remember furiously uncorking the bottle Bee brought up and downing half of it, and then? Blackness. Utter emptiness where my memories should be.

I stare up at the white ceiling of my room and touch my lip experimentally. Everything hurts. Again. Everything hurts and I’m dying and what the flying fuck was I thinking, fighting Fitz over something he said? He says dumb stuff all the time – what about this time was so different?

Her.

I knew the answer before I could blink. It was her. Again. She was always there when I flew off the handle, like some sort of catalyst for a chemical explosion. What about her set me off so badly?

Everything. Everything about her puts me on edge.

I groaned and sat up, the morning sunlight like murder straight to my eyeballs. I hate drinking. I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. My stomach wouldn’t stop dancing with nerves, so the brilliant muscle that was my brain decided booze would be the correct solution to make me calm. All it did was make me hot and woozy and – The image of Bee’s face flashes through my mind, so close and so flushed, so pretty – Pretty. I force myself out of bed, like I can leave that thought there and move on with my life like it never happened.

I had to apologize to Fitz, I knew that much. I staggered to his door and knocked on it. He answered, all smiles.

“Well well, if it isn’t the star of the night,” Fitz drawls, his hand on his hip. He looks as fresh and dewy as a blade of grass, minus the faint purple bruise in his eye socket.

“How do you not have a hangover?’ I croak.

“Not all of us slam three bottles of wine in two hours, my darling brother.”

“You’re not….mad?”

“Why would I be?” Fitz smiles. “I tried to set the mood for you two lovebirds without your permission. Of course you’d want to hit me. I’d want to hit me.”

I lean against his doorway, my body too heavy for me to support on my own.

“Why in God’s name were you trying to set a mood? I don’t like her like that.”

Fitz puts on a simpering smile and pats my head. “Wolf, you are the dearest thing to my heart, but you’re also a giant idiot. Now if you could please move, I’ve got a Hot Pocket downstairs with my name on it.”

“I seriously don’t like her.”

“Uh-huh.” He tries to dart under my elbow, but I put my leg there.

“Fitz, look at me. I’m not lying.”

“Sure.”

I narrow my eyes. “You don’t believe me.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve just got a lot of evidence to the contrary, and I’m a man of science at my core.”

“What evidence?” I snort.

“You mean other than the endless film reels of you staring at her like a doe-eyed milkmaid?”

“I don’t –”

“Oh yes you do. Constantly. Literally any time she and you are together within a hundred yards. Now, please, my pepperonis need me.”

I’m too stunned to stop him this time, and he ducks under my elbow and escapes downstairs. Do I stare? I don’t stare. Do I? When I regain my composure, I follow him into the kitchen.

“I don’t stare.”

“Saying something out loud doesn’t make it true,” Fitz singsongs as he puts his Hot Pocket on a plate and pours himself a glass of milk.