23. Poppy Wells

23

Poppy Wells

“ W here have you been, you little slut?”

The slurred voice of my mother echoed through the darkness, woven between the creaks of the wooden floorboards and entwined through the shadows of the family that used to flourish here.

The house wreaked of alcohol and smoke. A scent that used to make me gag but now just served as a reminder of just how much I was trapped here.

I tentatively closed the door behind me and tucked off my shoes by the old, worn-out doormat that was coming undone, thread by thread. My eyes stayed low to the ground as I navigated my way to the kitchen counters, taking out a bowl just as her voice grew closer.

“I’m talking to you, missy! I can’t have you running around town like a whore. People thinking I made that —” her eyes surveyed me in disgust. “Such an embarrassment,” she tutted, disappointingly. “And what do you think you’re doing? Eating all the cereal like a pig. Honestly, Poppy, I thought you wanted to win.”

“You told me I would never amount to anything yesterday, do you remember that?” I snapped back before clamping my lips shut.

It was better not to say anything. I knew that, but sometimes, I just snapped. If I didn’t say anything, she won, and if I did say something, she also won. There was no winning in this scenario. All I could ever do was lose . I was outnumbered by her depression. I was lost.

I was going die in this house. I could see my future as clear as daylight. With surfing out of the equation, I was never, ever , getting out of here.

Putting the bowl back in the cupboard, I pushed down the angry growls of my stomach. I’d eat later when she was knocked out again from the alcohol or the pills, or maybe even both.

“Well, the electrics cut out again,” she huffed as a cloud of smoke left her lips. I coughed, waving it out of my face as I walked down the hall to my room. I couldn’t do this right now, I just couldn’t.

“You need to work more shifts, you hear me girl? Can’t have the neighbors getting annoyed about us using their Wi-Fi again, can we?”

“No, we can’t.”

“That’s a good girl.”

Numb. I was completely and utterly numb to her now. Everything seemed to blur. I nodded, I smiled, I cleaned and cooked and washed and dried. She smoked, she drank, she threw back her head and swallowed the pills. Her words came out and strangled me, their tight grip nothing I wasn’t used to by now. Each letter pierced my skin like a needle, each sentence another slap that echoed throughout the empty house.

I HATE YOU.

I HATE YOU.

I WISH YOU WERE NEVER BORN.

Numbness settled over me like a blanket, or maybe it was like a wall—a fortress built around me. Soon it would crumble, soon it would be nothing but a pile of bricks on the floor. Maybe I would be down there with it, a lifeless body among the wreckage. A cigarette on the couch, flames overhead. Smoke creeping out the gaps in the windows, a Midas touch on the wooden door…

Breathe .

I used to know this girl. When the shouting got too loud, she would run far away inside her head. She hiked across mountains, roamed through forests, swam through oceans. Hidden away inside a world that was only ever a thought away. No one shouted there—no one hurt, no one drank, no one slapped and screamed and ruined . Birds chirped as they flew overhead. Saltwater tainted the air. Light waves crashed against the shore.

She laid down in the water, pressed up against the familiar touch of her board. Stars stretched out overhead, their silver glow kissing the sky. Her beautiful hoax; a daydream stolen from time. The stars smiled sorrowfully down at her hollow eyes that had seen too much and cracked lips that had been a war front of nerves. But here, inside her mind, she laid in peace, comforted by the rocking of the waves underneath her.

I knew her once, but she was lost now.

She grew up.

Learned that she was too old to run away and hide under the bed until the darkness seemed quiet. No matter how far she traveled inside her head, the ghosts would always be waiting right there, right where she left them.

The world didn’t deal in pinkie promises anymore.

It never had.

I placed a new trash bag in the bin.

Washed my hands with soap, scrubbing under my nails so hard that it drew blood, but that too was washed away like it was never there to begin with.

Everything in this house seemed to get washed away.

“My precious little boy,” she sobbed, running her fingers along a jagged picture frame.

There was nothing inside it.

She ripped the photo to shreds two days ago.

“My sweet little angel, mommy will be with you soon.”

Scrub. Scrub. Scrub.

Her eyes pierced into my back, and I wished I was invisible.

I wished I was anywhere but inside this house with her.