Her All Along

She scoffed. “I know.”

I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, doing my best to look comfortable, when I was anything but. The table between us was covered in books, candy wrappers, and markers. A hobby of hers was to find typos in books and boast that she’d do a better job. The fact that she didn’t have an English degree or had never worked in editing didn’t seem to matter.

I watched her highlight a paragraph in an old senator’s memoir.

“Imbeciles,” she muttered. “Seven typos in 260 pages.”

“Why did you want to see me?” I asked.

She made a haughty sound and lifted a brow at me. “You came to see me, Avery. Because you’re like a dog. Regardless of what I do, you come crawling back. You need a leader to follow because you’re too weak to stand on your own.”

I stared at her, forcing a casual expression. The fury I carried for this woman was putrid and all-consuming, and it’d long since taken control of my actions in my everyday life. It colored every opinion I had.

“I want you to stop contacting me,” I told her. “You have no place in my life anymore.”

She wasn’t going to wake up one morning and realize what she’d done. By the sound of things, she already knew. Either she lacked empathy for it, or she’d made sense of it in a way that absolved her of guilt.

My mother snickered and unwrapped a piece of candy. “Do you remember when we used to play hide-and-seek?”

I flinched, and that was it. I’d had enough. I had to get out of here before I threw up, but first, I had to get my hands on her motherfucking phone.

The crunching began. She watched me with amusement dancing in her eyes as she chewed on the hard candy, and it made my fucking skin crawl. There. I found her phone on the side table attached to her bed.

I wasn’t surprised to see that no pin code was required. She’d never remember it. Which gave me an idea.

“You weren’t as good at hiding as your brother, Avery,” she told me.

“Shut up,” I snapped.

I deleted my number in her contacts, then clicked down to see if Finn was in there somewhere. Luckily for him, he wasn’t. There were only two other numbers, neither of which I recognized.

“Not that tone with me,” she sneered. Crunch, crunch, smack, crunch. “It’s not my fault you weren’t good at hiding, boy.”

I ignored her. “How did you get my number this time?”

There was no forgetting the first time, because it was Angie who’d provided it. Along with my address and email. I’d since changed both, but I’d rather not change my number. Hundreds of students had access to it.

My mother waved a hand. “Nurse gave it to me.”

I clenched my jaw hard and pinched the bridge of my nose. Knowing how manipulative and convincing my mother could be, I didn’t trust the nurses to simply not give her the number even if I told them I didn’t want her to have it. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and change it. I could still tell the nurses I didn’t want her to contact me, and maybe if I gave them a fake number…

There weren’t enough precautions to take when it came to that vile woman.

“You were always in the closet,” she mused, and I screwed my eyes shut. Thankfully, with my back to her. “Every single time. You sat there under one of my coats, shaking like a leaf.” She found that funny.

I couldn’t stop the memories from washing over me.

Memories of pushing my brother under the bed, telling him to stay there and be quiet. On the days I sensed she was in an extra cruel mood, I hid Finn on the fire escape, no matter the season. And I took the closet, the place she searched first. If I heard Finn cry, I even left the closet door open.

Get out, get out, get out.

I gnashed my teeth and quickly set a pin code on her phone, then returned it to her nightstand.

“It’s not good to be so afraid, Avery. I tried to make you strong and resourceful. Instead, you pissed your damn pants.”

“Yeah, it’s baffling,” I replied, clearing my throat. “You told your sons that whomever you found first would suffer until they learned not to cry at a little bit of pain, and they got scared. I can’t believe it.” I took a slow breath and faced her one last time. She was smiling, perfectly at ease. “Don’t contact me again.”

“I’ll see you soon, son.”

“Die,” I said and marched out.

I felt like a contained animal as I stalked over to the nurses’ office and knocked on the door.

Fuck. I rubbed at my chest, and it took all my strength to force air into my lungs. My hands and forehead broke out in a cold sweat, and the nausea traveled higher, tightening a noose around my throat.