Page 154 of Under the Waves
The only reason I returned was because child services came sniffing around, and god forbid somebody in this miserable town found out just how fucked up my life was.
Hanna and Milla…they never apologized. I could see those two little words drowning in their eyes every time they stood and watched in silence.
Part of me wanted to believe that they couldn’t speak up, for whatever reason that might’ve been, just so the reality wouldn’t hurt as much. The reality that they saw, theyknew, what Miya did to me…and just didnothing.
They weren’t bad people. I knew from lazy hallway gossip that Milla worked part time as a play-pretend princess for the children on the cancer wards at Hawthorne Hills Hospital. Giving them hope. A reason to smile. And that Hanna hung out at the old skate park, helping the kids on my street with their homework because no one else was home who could help them with it.
I just wished that their kindness could’ve extended to me too.
What was so horrible about me?
The only reason I barely survived each day in high school was because they all went to Hawthorne Hills Elite Academy whilst I was thrown into the deep end of Hawthorne Hills High. It was then that I started learning to defend myself. On the waves, I was ruthless, but in those hallways…I knew that if I wanted to survive, I had to pretend to be that girl. If I didn’t, I’d get eaten alive. And I knew, I never wanted to be prey again.
Ruthless. Bitter. Insensitive.
Every synonym of those three words had been thrown at me ever since.
I’d become the Orca, both on and off the waves. I had to do what I needed tosurvive. Why was that such a horrible thing? I’d never hurt anyone, never done half of the things the world had bestowed on me…yet, somehow,Iwas the one to blame. I was vicious. I was cold. I was unlovable. I didn’t deserve to live. Ididn’t deserve to breathe. The list, their words, went on and on andon.
Yet, all along, I was just a child trying to survive.
Except, now, we were all still here, yet Milla wasgone.
Disappeared one day and never returned the next.
I’d lost track of how many years she’d been missing for now. Most people believed she was dead, for there was no way she could’ve survived this long held captive. I should’ve felt good about it, a sense of justice after all those years she stood by doing nothing. Yet, I didn’t feel like that at all. I hoped, deep down, she was okay. Whether that was here or in a better place. I wouldn’t wish anything like that on anyone.
Hanna had spiraled after the news broke.
Miya, however, cried for the camera’s and then reapplied her mascara afterwards. It took her a day,one day, to find a replacement for Milla. Part of me wondered if she even cared about the little red head at all. If she did, she could’ve fooled me.
The whole case gave me shivers. This feeling ofsomething elseprickled my skin every time I thought about what happened. There were too many unanswered questions, too many loose ends…
I shook my head, clearing it of those thoughts. I wasn’t a detective. I knew shit.
“Pack your bags, Poppy, we’re leaving.”
“What?” I questioned, silently begging for my breathing to settle down before she caught onto it. My lips hung open.
“Your father, he wants us to try again, Poppy! He wants us to be a family again, like we were before…”
“Before your son died? Before he abused us both? Before he broke this family the second he took off without even casting a single glance back at us?”
She slapped me and I took it.Again. And again. And again.
“Stop being so ungrateful! Your father is making an effort to reunite us all together again, so stop acting like a childish brat and be grateful that he’s chosen to come back to us.”
I exhaled, shaking my head in disbelief. “Grateful? You want me to begratefulthat the man who ruined my life decided that his new family isn’t good enough punching bait so he’s decided to come back home to his usual meat? You are fucking messed up in the head, mom.”
Picking up the letters, I began to rip them up into tiny little pieces. One by one. I ripped and I ripped and I ripped. I tore apart the words of a liar, who still, to this day, had an iron fist around my mom’s throat. I saw through his promises. His bullshit.
“Stop it! Stop it!” she gasped, throwing herself at me in an attempt to salvage any of his words that she had cared more for in the last five minutes than she ever had my entire life. “Poppy, stop it!”
“He islyingmom! How can you not see that?” I gaped as she crumbled to the floor, trying to salvage all the broken pieces in her lap. “How can you not see that all those words are lies that mean absolutely bullshit to him!”
“He is your father!” she sobbed, “he loves us. He does. Iknowhe does.”
“No, hedoesn’t!” I yelled, trying to get her to see sense. “He doesn’t even know what that word means yet alone how to feel it!”