“Between the time we originally moved out of my grandparents’ house until the time I took off and went back, my mom left me alone a lot. I learned to fend for myself. It was up to me to get myself up and to school, up to me to try to find something to eat.
“That’s when I met Blanca. She and I became best friends, and she began to notice that I never had anything to eat at lunch. She must’ve told Tee-Tee, because soon after that, Blanca started bringing two sandwiches instead of one, two bags of chips. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked.”
I reached over and held her hand. She took it as if it were a lifeline.
“Fast forward to me graduating from high school. My mom showed up, surprisingly. By then it was just me and my granddaddy. My grandma died not long after I moved in with them. Cancer.”
She blinked at tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks. The pain of losing her grandmother obviously sat very close to the surface of her emotions.
“My mom looked good. Better than I remembered her ever looking. Later, I learned that my grandfather had managed to get her into rehab.”
Rebel took a deep breath. “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
“You don’t have to do this, sweetness. I’m willing to listen, and I want to know more about your life, but I don’t want you to feel forced to tell me things you’re not ready to talk about.”
“I need to do this, Edge. It’s already eating away at me. If I don’t tell you the whole story, I think it might consume me.”
21
Rebel
I got up from the bed and grabbed the photo of my mom and me that had been taken right after my high school graduation.
“We had four, almost five, great years. Mom was clean, and I got to know her. Blanca died when we were both seventeen. It was the same age my mother was when she started using. I always found that significant somehow. My mom had long stretches where she was clean, like when she was pregnant with me.”
I looked into Edge’s eyes, wondering what he must be thinking about me. He was from England; I was the illegitimate daughter of a meth-head. And I hadn’t even gotten to the bad part of the story yet. Should I even continue?
I already knew the answer to my own question. I had to. Even if he wanted nothing to do with me after I told him, what I’d said about it eating me alive, I meant. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“The night you pulled Possum off of me…it was no accident that I was with him.”
That didn’t come out right, but it was accurate enough.
Edge looked into my eyes and squeezed my hand. “Tell me the rest of the story, Rebel.”
“I was waitressing at the Barton Creek Diner. So was my mom. She’d actually gotten me the job. We were living together in the apartment where I
lived before I was arrested.”
His gaze stayed steady on mine; it was unnerving.
“I came home from work one night. It was late, almost midnight. Mom had the night off. I parked in the same place I always did, where we found Susan the day you got me out of jail.”
He nodded but didn’t press me even once to hurry it up.
“As I walked up to the building, there was a man coming out. There was something about him, like I could feel the evil coming off of him in waves. There wasn’t much light, but as we passed each other, our eyes met. I’ll never forget his. They were almost all black, hardly any white around his pupils at all. I remember feeling sick to my stomach. I just knew something was wrong. I raced up the stairs and into our apartment.”
I let go of Edge’s hand and wrapped my arms around my waist, feeling just as sick as I did that night.
“Do you need to take a break?”
I shook my head. “Let me get this part out.”
“Go ahead.”
“I burst into the apartment and didn’t see my mom anywhere and then noticed the bathroom door was closed. I called out to her, and as soon as she answered, I knew she was high. The door was locked, and I pounded on it, yelling for her to open it.”
I covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t tell him the rest. I’d said it out loud only once in my life, and that had been too much for me.