***
The shopping went great. If you consider sheer torture great.
Crystal had me trying on hundreds of dresses before I could protest. I wasn’t even able to look in the mirror. She’d judged all of them the second I’d come out of the dressing room.
“No” became a word I heard so much that it lost its meaning.
She’d say it, hang the dress back up, and return with another one. The process repeated for three hours until she found the one. According to her, it was perfect, but I still didn’t see it. I didn’t care enough to argue either, so I bought it, and she drove me home.
I opened the front door, attempting to bolt upstairs, but my mother was in her usual place—the kitchen—and she appeared before I could make it.
“How’d the shopping go, Jessie?” she asked, and I peered through the banister.
“Good.”
She beamed, and she flipped her blonde hair. “That’s great. Did you have fun?”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “Tons.”
“When can we see your dress?” she asked.
My father shouted from the kitchen, “Does it cover your knees?”
“Oh, shush,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. I wished I hadn’t held back. She smiled at me. “Ignore him. Are you going to try it on for us?”
“On prom night,” I said, and her smile faltered.
“Oh.”
I sighed, gripping the banister as I stepped up a stair. “I’m really tired, Mom,” I said. “I just want to go to bed, but I’ll show you tomorrow. Okay?”
She nodded, but she forced a smile that reminded me of bad Botox. “Good night, Jessie. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” I said, running away as quickly as I could manage.
When I got into my bedroom, I shut the door behind me and locked it, leaning against the wood for support. My legs were shaking, and I knew it was from Shoman’s medicine. It felt like it weakened everything inside of me when, in reality, it was healing me. I was only glad my outer cuts had healed. Explaining those injuries would’ve been impossible.
I had to talk to Shoman again.
Throwing my dress over my computer chair, I groaned and collapsed on my bed. The mattress creaked against the old frame, and I twisted around, laying my head down. Beneath my pillow, a paper crinkled, and I pulled it out.
I’d left the article about my parents’ car wreck there, and now it was wrinkled. The edge was torn, and my eyes watered. The only proof I had of them was practically ruined, and I only had myself to blame.
What was wrong with me?
The wreck, although I’d been a part of it, hadn’t seemed real until I was flooded with emotions. I’d lost them—my beautiful family—and I’d lost Shoman and the Dark with him. Everything I was born with was gone, even though I was still alive. It didn’t feel right. Without the only connection I had, I felt incomplete. I felt—abandoned—and I suddenly understood what Shoman meant about the Dark never accepting me.
I didn’t know enough to stand on my own. I couldn’t defend myself. I had known that the second Fudicia—whoever she was—appeared in front of us, ready to kill. I’d seen the commitment of danger in her eyes. She was dark—darker than the Dark could be—yet she was in the Light. The archetypal beliefs embedded in my everyday life, in literature and movies, were flipped, and my life was altered. It’d never be the same, and my parents’ article proved it.
I flipped it over and slammed it next to my pillow. I refused to look at it. Not tonight. I couldn’t stand it.
They’d betrayed me, not by death, but in death. They knew I was a shade, because they had to be shades if they birthed me. Yet they hadn’t protected me with a will. They hadn’t even bothered giving me godparents, a family within the Dark. Even I realized, they had been fleeing, because we would’ve been ostracized by the Dark anyway. I would’ve never known, and they knew all along.
How could they do this? I hated them. No. I didn’t understand them. But I wanted to.
During shopping, I’d finally managed to mention them to Crystal. I didn’t want to, but she’d kept pestering me about my depression, and I needed an excuse. I would’ve told her eventually. Wouldn’t I?
I didn’t know the answer to that, but it didn’t matter. Crystal was too young to remember anything. When they died, she was a baby, too. At most, she said she’d ask her mother, but I sort of hoped she wouldn’t and would at the same time.
I couldn’t even tell what I was feeling, let alone cope with it.
I flipped the article over, but I didn’t look at it. Instead, I closed my eyes and attempted to force my tears back. But I couldn’t. They came, and my chest heaved, sour and tight, until exhaustion took over, and I drifted away.