Page 68 of Lessons In Grey

I looked around my apartment. Small, temporary. I hadn’t yet found a good place to live in this city yet. The only thing in this place of any real substance was sitting on my table, staring at me through large, golden eyes. Here I was, telling Malachi that I wanted to stay, but I couldn’t make that jump.

Sirius tilted her head to one side, her large ears folding ever soslightly. I sneered. “I have to go.” I hung up and called her.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Come on, Snowflake, pick up.

Ring.

Ring.

Ri—

“Leave me alone, Rags,” she snapped and hung up.

I pulled the phone away, looking at the picture I had taken of her that day she was leaning against her car. What thefuck? She had been crying, it was all I had gotten from it.

I called her again, but this time, it went straight to voicemail which she hadn’t set up yet.

I worked my jaw. She was shutting down, which meant the conversation with her father hadn’t gone well.

I sent her a message as I fell into my couch, Sirius meowing behind me.

Grey: Deep breath.

Sirius jumped up onto the couch beside me and threw herself down against my thigh.

With a sigh, I scratched her belly and took a swig of my water. “You’re a good kitty,” I mumbled, staring at that picture for a few seconds before I locked the screen. She was fine. I trusted her. She would be okay.

19

Emily

November 3rd, 2021

Icouldn’t help but wonder how angry they were going to be.

I ghosted all three of them and Syn never texted me.

They probably had trusted me not to do anything stupid, not to let Jordan do what he needed to do.

Stupid.

It was sostupidof me to let my guard down, because that’s exactly what he had been waiting for. For me to start acting like there wasn’t something to be feared in that house.

Hope was a painful, useless thing. I could have laughed at hope. If I were standing in front of the 11thDoctor right now, I would have laughed at him. I might have even cursed at him.

There isn’t ‘surprisingly always hope’, as he had once said to Vincent Van Gogh, there was nothing.

Jordan had knocked the sense back into me.Of that, I was sure.

But now it was Monday, and I was walking into school using every ounce of effort not to limp, sunglasses covering half my face, my arm in a sling, covered in so much makeup, my pores would never be clean again.