ToniAge 16 - 5 years ago
We had been running from my father for months. But running when you have no money, and no help doesn’t get you very far. It doesn’t even really get you out of town. The only saving grace was how big Barrett Hills was and how far apart the east and west sides of town were. Not just geographically.
Our big house in West Barrett was just like all the other big houses, expansive front yard, long, winding driveway where father’s luxurious town car and Mom’s SUV sat in front of our multi-million-dollar property.
East Barrett, on the other hand, wouldn’t know what a sports car looked like with all four of its tires.
The only ones around here were ones that had been obviously stolen, looted for any bit of value and left to rot atop concrete blocks in the road.
Everyone in East Barrett was too busy just trying to survive to give a single fuck when some random woman with her two kids rocked up in this part of town.
Honestly, the whole area was already home to too many women with kids they couldn’t afford and no husbands or fathers in sight for anyone to give us a second look.
That, combined with the fact that Mom made us get rid of any and all signs of our old life, helped render us invisible.
First, we sold my car. The funds from that sale were what kept a roof over our head for months.
Then, she set fire to our passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses and every piece of ID we had sporting the name Barrett.
We used the last of Mom’s cash, the last holdover of our old lives, to buy new, fake driver’s licenses and birth certificates.
All with our new surname, Hillis. The last step in our transformation from members of Barrett Hills royal family to invisible nobodies, was to change our appearance.
We swapped our luxury brand names for thrift store clothes and bought boxed hair dye.
Mom even went so far as to chop her long hair to a sharp pixie cut before colouring it.
Still though, we didn’t stay in any one place long.
We moved from one by-the-hour motel to another, and then another, and then another.
It wasn’t until after the world’s shittiest Christmas, where Francis freaked out at Mom, grabbing her by the throat and choking her against a motel couch, that she found somewhere more permanent for us.
A nice, if a bit small, apartment on the border of East and West Barrett, and a job sweeping up at a hair salon.
Me, I didn’t care where we went. I was too busy trying to find my feet at a new school and trying to keep Francis’ anger contained to give a single fuck where we lived.
But then he found us. The great and fucking terrible Franklin Barrett.
And the whole mess started over. We moved again, this time to an apartment deeper into the east side.
It was a lot less nice than the last one.
There were always creeps hanging around outside for no reason, and half of our neighbours look like they’re either strung out or recovering from their last high.
Mom got a different job, we switched schools again, to one that was half school, half juvenile detention centre.
Or at least it felt that way. And that’s where I finished out the school year.
In theory, Francis did too, but I never saw him attend any classes and he was always home, sitting on our crappy couch like he’d been there for hours when I got home.
He’d smile at me, and it just didn’t look right.
Anytime Mom wasn’t home lately, he’d been trying to get me to come sit next to him or go into his room.
And he was fucking pushy about it. More than once, I’d had to make up fake projects or after-school plans to get away.
Then, I’d spend hours alone, just walking the streets of East Barrett.
Not great, but better than being caged in with the brother I didn’t recognize anymore.
Thank God I found a summer job lifeguarding at the local pool.
One, because I knew Mom’s current one was barely covering our rent.
Two, because I no longer had a trust fund to fall back on as a way of paying for college, so I needed to start saving, like, yesterday.
And three, because it would keep me out of the house and away from Francis until school started again in September.
I started the week the pool opened for the season.
But my mind was over six hundred miles away, much farther north, in a big wooden lodge beside a lake.
The same week I started work was the same week camp started.
Every night that week I’d gone to bed crying, homesick for Agonde and my boys.
Every night, I dreamed of them. That is, when I wasn’t having nightmares about Nick, or my father, or Francis.
Worst of all, some twisted combination of all three.
But even on those nights, when thoughts of Xavi, or Brennon, or Coley didn’t keep the nightmares at bay, I’d wake up and reach for the Agonde sweatshirt Cole had curled around my shoulders on our last bus ride together.
I missed them so badly my chest ached. My heart lurched every time their faces sprung to mind.
The more I dreamed of them, the more I missed them, wanted to hold them, wanted to kiss them.
The more I realized, I never had a crush on Nick at all.
I was just a stupid girl who didn’t know what the hell to do about the fact that she was actually, totally, eight thousand percent in love with her three best friends.
And once that little nugget dawned on me, well, then I started writing.
I couldn’t exactly call, since I couldn’t afford a phone yet.
And we didn’t have internet or anything, no provider would service our shitty part of town.
So, old school letter writing it was. Stamps weren’t free, but they were cheap.
Letter after letter, I wrote to each of them.
Sometimes, I wrote them one great, big, super-letter.
In my head, I pictured them gathered together at Throw, taking turns to read it out loud to each other, or wrestling for the chance to read it first. But the more I wrote, and the longer my letters went unanswered, the more I realized I’d been fucking kidding myself.
Either they hated me for all the lies I’d told or maybe I’d been an idiot this whole time.
I was operating on the assumption that we were all obsessed with each other, like we couldn’t get enough.
But clearly not we. Just me. So enthralled with our friendship that every other part of my life was blotted out, and now, without them, I was left with nothing but dark spots after so long staring into the sun.