Chapter Three
Feralyn
Eighteen Years Ago.
“Do you have to leave right now?”
Holding the heavy plate real careful, about to walk into Helios’s bedroom even though I wasn’t supposed to ever, ever go in there, I stopped just outside his door when I heard Ares’s question.
“Why fucking wait?” Helios replied.
My eyes got wet.
Ares’s voice turned real quiet, like it did when he was mad. “She made you a cake.”
“Never said I wanted one.”
The sound of Helios’s bag being zipped made me flinch, but his angry tone made me step back.
“Don’t be a dick. She’s upset, and she did this for you.”
“So fucking what? She’s been upset since she was old enough to realize she didn’t win the fucking parent lottery. None of us did. You don’t see me losing my shit over it.”
Tears came.
“That’s not why she’s upset, and you know it,” Ares argued.
My arms shook.
“What the fuck do you want me to do, Ares? Stay here and take care of your asses? Not fucking leave this bullshit? You gonna tell me next that I shouldn’t have enlisted, that I don’t have a right to live my life?
All I goddamn do is take care of you two.
Man the fuck up. You know how to drive. You fucking take care of her now. ”
Tears landed on the frosting I’d made all by myself.
“I do take care of her,” Ares snapped. “And I never said not to leave. It’s one cake.” He raised his voice. “The least you can do is have a damn piece!”
I dropped the cake.
The platter broke, frosting landed on my bare feet, and I clapped my hands over my mouth.
Two blond heads popped out of Helios’s doorway.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Helios muttered. “Are you goddamn kidding me?”
“It’s okay, Feralyn.” Ares pushed past him. “I’ll help you.”
I was already running.
Down the main stairs, through the living room, past the kitchen and TV room, up the back stairs, and to my room over the garage. Slamming my door shut, but not bothering with the lock because Helios had broken it, I shoved my dresser as hard as I could.
The heavy wood slid halfway in front of the door.
Then I rushed into my closet, dropped to the floor, and hid.
The awful tears were falling so fast, but now I was also sobbing, and I couldn’t stop.
Helios hated me. He hated me, and he was leaving, and I made him and Ares fight on the day he was going into the Army, and this was all my fault.
Stupid, stupid cake.
I hated the Army.
I hated the military. I knew what enlisting meant. Daddy had left Mommy when he went away with the Air Force, and now Helios was going away, and I wouldn’t see him for a long time.
No one would.
And his mom wasn’t even here to say goodbye.
Both her and Daddy were gone on another trip, and Helios wouldn’t even get to say goodbye to her, and I’d never gotten to say goodbye to Mommy, and I’d messed up everything.
If I’d been better, if Helios and Ares didn’t have to take care of me all the time, maybe Daddy and their mom would be here now. Maybe they would—
“Feralyn!” Helios yelled, making me jerk backwards. “I’m not doing this shit with you right now. I’m fucking leaving. Get your ass down here!” Hollering from the bottom of my stairs, his voice was much deeper than last summer. It was deeper than even a month ago, and now he yelled even louder.
Holding my hands over my mouth, trying to make my crying silent, I pushed back into the corner of my closet.
“Don’t make me come up there,” Helios warned.
“Helios,” Ares snapped.
“What?” Helios demanded in a tone that said you better not mess with him. And no one did, not even his mom or my daddy. Except sometimes Ares did, like just now, but it was always because of me, and that made me cry harder because they were real brothers, and I was just… me.
“Don’t yell at her.” Ares’s tone took on a warning I’d never heard.
“I’m not fucking yelling. This is yelling. FERALYN!”