Then Came You (17 page)

“She raised me like her own, and in a way
a
was
her own. She loved me and I loved her, and that was the way it was always meant to be. Ma always had high expectations for me – not in a bad way – she just wanted me to be the best I could, and I’ve tried, I really have. I never wanted to let her down, and I lived to see that proud look in her eyes and the smile on her face. It was like I’d really done something right.

“But I couldn’t do everything right, and I did make a few mistakes. I guess that’s why I felt like I was letting her down.” She looks up and her eyes meet min for a split second, tears running down her face. “I’m the girl you’d probably cross the street to avoid, and I admit I’m probably not the best person to be around sometimes.

“But Ma made me want to be a better person. And I’m never going to stop trying, because I’m going to make sure she’ll be proud of me with everything I do.” She turns to the coffin and chokes slightly as fresh tears run down her face. “I love you, Ma. And I will never forget you.”

Twenty Four

We’re walking out the church when all of a sudden Remy squeals, and dashes to a rusty truck that’s parked outside. A tanned guy with light brown hair and faded jeans tucked into cowboy boots steps out and she throws herself at him.

“That’s Ben,” Joey tells me, just when I’m about to ask why Remy is hugging a stranger. They get in the van and drive off without looking back, leaving us behind to watch in shock. “And
that
was rude: she’s always ditching us for him, but since they hardly ever get to see each other, we let it go.”

Tyler sneaks behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, swaying me from side to side. “Have you spoken to Dana yet?” He asks me after kissing the side of my neck. I shake my head slowly.

“I’ll go find her in a minute.” I notice Joey watching us wistfully and sigh. “Couldn’t Cam make it, Joey?”

He shrugs, “He lives over an hour away, Darcy. And he does have a life of his own, too.”

I hear someone gasp – Dana. Turning around, I see her standing shock-still and staring at a black haired guy with snakebites and an awkward smile as he rubs the back of his neck. He steps towards her and she stumbles forward.

“Alex…”
she whispers in pain, before slowly making her way towards him. We watch as they talk quietly together, before she wraps her arms around him and starts to cry. He strokes her hair back and whispers in her ear as he comforts her.

“Bloody hell,” Joey says in shock besides me. “I didn’t think
that
was ever going to happen.”

I smirk at him. “Well, maybe now things are going to get better for her: hell, for
all
of us.”

I watch glumly as Dana packs her bag and heads downstairs: she’s going to stay with a close friend of her Ma – one with normal coloured hair. She sighs, turns around at the front door, and pulls my in for a tight hug.

“Thank you for be here for me, Darcy.” She breathes into my necks. “You’re a true friend.”

I wave goodbye as she drives off and close the door with a sigh. I feel empty all of a sudden, and tears begin to roll down my face. The last couple of days have been horrid, and I’m glad things might start getting better. The air in my lungs is shallow and I struggle to catch a breath as I stumble into the livingroom and fall onto the couch.

I’m crying for no reason. I’m crying for everything.

Without me realising it, the front door closes shut and standing at the doorway is my dad, looking like the alcoholic he is with bloodshot eyes, a few days stubble and the stench of alcohol rolling off him like an aura.
So much for trying to change.

“You’re in my seat,” he forces out through gritted teeth, pushing me out the way to make room in his dent.

I sniffle and stand up to leave the room, but his mocking laugh makes me freeze. “You
still crying
over
her
?” He begins to cough painfully, hacking into his fist. When he’s finished, he scowls back up at me. “She doesn’t deserve it, you know.”

“I-I don’t understand,” I mumble, refusing to look at him as my eyes stay downcast.

He snickers at me gruffly once again, and it sends shudders down my spine. “She didn’t love us. She couldn’t stand living with us. She hated us.” A thick tear rolls down his face, his bloodshot eyes angry and hurt as he vents in a drunken rage.
“She despised us.”

“No she didn’t,” I mumble. “Mum loved us both, remember? We were a family; we were
happy.
Don’t you remember that, dad?”

He laughs bitterly and shakes his head. “You were a kid, and you still are; you have no idea what she was really like. She didn’t love us, and she wasn’t happy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He sighs and rubs the stubble on his face in thought. “Let me tell you a story,” he says, grabbing a beer from besides the couch and uncapping it with his thumb before knocking it back greedily. He looks back at me and his face is void of emotion as he swings the bottle between his legs. “It’s about the real woman your mother was.”

“What if I don’t want to hear it?” I whimper, scared of the way he was acting. He scoffs and eyes me until I slowly sit on the couch as far from him as possible, making him smirk.

“That’s what I thought,” he says before belching loudly. His eyes meet mine and he begins to talk. “Your mum was the love of my life; we were childhood sweethearts, but of course, she’s already told you this story so many times. We met when I moved schools and we fell in love straight away: but it wasn’t that simple.

“Your mum was a cheerleader, and she was a whore.” He says simple, shaking his head in anger. “And she just couldn’t stop sleeping around all the time we were together. Eventually, she stopped when she got pregnant, because she wanted us to be together as a family.

“She was silly, though, and she wouldn’t stop cheerleading. One day, she fell, and she lost the baby. She changed after that, got real depressed, and we didn’t talk for over a year. We ended up sleeping together at prom, and that’s when she got pregnant with you. We stayed together because of you, and I went to college whilst she stayed at home.

“We fell back in love eventually, but mostly for your sake. When you were born, she loved you to bits, but she could never forget her first pregnancy, and questioned why you lived and that one didn’t. She tried to be a mum, a wife and a family woman, but when you started high school and she realised you were the age she was, she changed once again.

“She kept up the act for the both of us, but I saw the pills she would take every day. She became obsessed with them, and she wouldn’t stop when I begged her to. Eventually, she gave up, and she dived into the water and she made sure she didn’t come back up for air. She killed herself, Darcy. She killed herself because of us.”

I’m trembling and crying as my heart is shattered again and again with each word of his story.
“No,”
I whisper hoarsely.
“
You’re lying.
You’re lying!
” I stand up to leave the room and start to back out, but he stops me with a low, dark laugh that sounds nothing like the man who raised me. There’s no happiness or love in that laugh: there’s no life.

“She committed suicide, Darcy.” He growled at me, and those red eyes look up to glare evilly at me. “She
hated
us.”

I run out of the room and out of that house, heading to the one place I can take solace: the lake. I push my way through trees and leaves, gasping for air as pain wracks through my body. My mind is screaming at me, my heart is thumping to fast to be comfortable as I fall to the ground near my tree. I don’t care that there’s dirt on my face and that my body is sore as I stare at the water.

I feel sick that I need the one thing that killed my mum: water is a monster, and yet it takes care of me, it makes me feel safe and wanted.
Is this how she felt before she killed herself?

No, no
no
no
no
,
I gasp out loud. I can’t let myself think like that.
I won’t.
My mum was happy, she always smiled.

I think back to the times when she would laugh like an angel, making me smile up at her. Her eyes would light up and her head would tip back like she couldn’t control the happiness inside her. She wouldn’t go a day without smiling.

The woman my dad described – that wasn’t my mum. That’s not the mum
I
know. Because if it is, then that means I really am like her. Haven’t I thought of killing myself before?

Yeah, but I’ve never actually done it.

I begin to drift off to the sound of calm waves, my whole body heavy. My eyes shut and the last three words I hear before I fully succumb to sleep are the words my dad said to me before, the words that I couldn’t forget.

“She hated us.”

Twenty Five

I wake up to the sound of quiet voices, and when I look up I see two blurred figures whispering to each other. I can’t make sense of what any of them are saying, and I can’t move my aching body to get a better look at who they are.

They stopped talking, and the bigger blur makes its way over to me, the colours blending and changing shape to form the image of Tyler, his face filled with concern as he takes my hands in his.

“Darcy, you’re awake: how do you feel?” He asks me softly, moving a hand to stroke the hair out of my face.

I clear my throat before speaking. “I feel like shit,” I say honestly, before looking down. I really didn’t want to go into details. I hear a shuffle, and I look up to discover that the second blur had been Dana, and she had a similar expression on her face as Tyler as she stood next to him.

She smiled gently. “Hey you, how was the camping trip? You know you’re supposed to take a tent, right?” She teases me, trying to make light of the situation. I roll my eyes at her, knowing full well that she’s worried about what had me crying and passed out in the woods all night.
Which reminds me-

“H-how did I get here?” I ask them both.

“I found you,” Tyler says, sighing. “I’d tried calling the house that night to see how you were, and when you didn’t answer I went round to your house. Your – um, dad – told me you’d ran out and I knew straight away where you’d gone.” His eyes look up to meet mine. “You were unconscious and your clothes were ripped, you had mud on your face with tear marks and you looked so
sad
it broke my heart.”

Dana nodded. “He called me after a while, from his house. Told me he’d found you and carried you back. We didn’t know if you’d want to see anyone.”

“I’m not made of glass, guys: you can be honest with me about the last part,” I scoff. They blush and look down awkwardly, before Dana groans and meets my eyes.

“We want to know what’s wrong with you,” she says honestly. “We’re worried and we know that you don’t have a great past. You have so any walls and it’s driving us crazy.
Please
open up to us,” she whispers the last part with tears in her eyes, and Tyler nods his head slowly.

“Fine,” I mumble. I take a deep breath, before telling them half of my life story.

“My mum died over half a year ago, she drowned.” I gulped. “She was the light of my life and after it that life kinda fell apart. My dad became empty and grey – he started drinking and working all the time. We moved about a month or so after that because we just couldn’t live with her ghost anymore: she was everywhere we went.”

Tyler squeezes my hand tight, and I remember him telling me about his dad. I smile at him and kiss his cheek in thank you, before carrying on. “My dad’s an alcoholic – a really bad one. He’s never around, he can’t stand to look at me and he – he gets arrested quite a few times, meaning I have to pay the fines, because he got fired from his job.” A single drop of salt water rolls down my cheek and Tyler reaches up to wipe it away, making me smile sadly.

“You’re strong,” he tells me.
“So strong.
I love you.”

Darcy starts mock-coughing, making me laugh as we turn to look at her. “What?” She asks us innocently. “I just thought it was getting
way
too lovey-dovey in here for the best friend. I
am
in the room, remember.”

“Yeah, we heard,” I tell her. She hits me on the back of my head gently, and I laugh.

“You’re such a mean friend,” she pouts. “Why aren’t you nice to me?”

“One,” I tell her. “I’m not your friend, I’m your sister. And two: sisters don’t always get along.”

She scoffs at the last part. “Yeah, I remember Remy and Patricia.”

“Did somebody say my name?” The pink haired unicorn skips into the room dramatically and rolls onto the bed next to me, a twinkle in her eyes.
“Why, hello my good friend.
Did you enjoy your night with nature?”

“Remy, don’t exhaust her: she’s had a rough night,” Joey scolds as he walking into the room and wraps an arm around me.
“How ya doin’, Darce?”

“Just appley,” I mumble into his shoulder.

He pulls away to give me a funny look. “Don’t you mean peachy?”