Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
“No.” Mia let out a shaky sigh. “Yes. It’s just… for the last two weeks, all I wanted was for her to be here. I wanted us to be together, and I was disappointed that we weren’t. And today I found out that she’s disappointed too, of course, but she’s also angry. We had a plan, and it didn’t work out for her—but I’m still following it. I’m living the dream we both had. And she’s mad.”
I started to say something, but Diego shook his head, and I waited.
“She said some awful things,” Mia continued. “I feel like I let her down. She’s my only real family. So why am I here, going to classes and watching reality TV?”
She gave me a look that was almost accusatory, but I knew she didn’t mean it.
“I should be with her.”
“You can’t,” Diego said in a quiet, measured voice, “even if you weren’t here. She’s in rehab, they have rules about contact with the outside world. This was the first time they let you call, right?”
Mia nodded.
“Even if you were camped out on the center’s doorstep, you wouldn’t be able to see her. Not yet.”
“She thinks I chose myself, and my education, over her.”
“It sounds like you didn’t have a choice,” I said softly.
“I should’ve chosen her. We’re supposed to finally be together. She was just so angry…”
“Sara’s still detoxing,” Diego said gently. “She’s probably still reeling. What she said isn’t necessarily how she truly feels.”
“She sounded pretty sure of herself to me.”
“That happens, with family,” I said, before truly thinking it through. “I was taken in by a very large family, and I love everyone in it, but sometimes, when I’m upset, it’s my family that bears the brunt of it. That’s just how it works.”
Mia was quiet for a moment, still hugging her knees to her chest. “She’s all I’ve got.”
Guilt hit me—hard. It had just been the luck of the draw that I’d ended up with the Fowlers. I could’ve very easily bounced from foster home to foster home, like Mia had. Like Diego had.
Sometimes I wasn’t even sure that I deserved to live in this house. I’d already won the fucking lottery in terms of family while everyone else here had been through so much.
Diego’s expression was sympathetic as he watched her. “Do you want to tell us about your dream?”
“Your nightmare,” I amended, because it clearly had been bad.
She didn’t answer for a long time, but when she did, she sounded younger.
“I… we were back in middle school. It was my first day there, and after our foster mom dropped us off, Sara told me that just because we lived together didn’t mean we were friends. Then she ran off, leaving me to find the front office on my own.”
Mia sniffled, and I wished I had a tissue or handkerchief to offer her. My grandfather always carried a handkerchief.
“That all really happened, but not like in the dream. In the dream, I walked the hallways, but I was an adult, like now. Everything looked smaller. The receptionist gave me a class schedule, and I was relieved to see that Sara was in three of my classes.”
“Was she in real life?” I asked.
She bit her lip, her eyes unfocused as if trying to remember. “At least one that first semester. It took us a few months to become friends.”
“And then true sisters, right?” Diego asked.
“Yes. But then the dream changed. It skipped ahead, and I was trying to find Sara so we could eat lunch together, but she wasn’t in her classroom. No one was, it was completely empty, but I was only worried about Sara. I looked in the next room and the next, and they were all empty, and I couldn’t find her. And sometimes I’d hear her voice calling from down the hall, but I could never find her. And… and it got scary. Something was chasing me, but I knew it was after her and I kept running, and the hallway was endless—”
A fresh tear traced down her cheek.
I patted her hand. “That would’ve made anyone scream.”
She blinked. “I screamed?”
“Yes,” Diego said. “I would have too, after that nightmare.”
Mia stared at him for a long moment before nodding. I got the feeling that it meant more, having him say that. I was her friend—at least I hoped we were friends. She was probably smart enough to know how desperate I was to make her feel better. But Diego’s words were always measured and thoughtful, and that’s probably just what she needed right now.
“It felt like losing her for the third time,” Mia said quietly after a long moment.
The third time… so once when they were sent to separate foster homes, and just recently when Sara got kicked out of school.
Fuck, I wish I had the power to make her feel better. To do something—anything—to take her mind off the feeling of abandonment. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to climb up in the bed and pull her into my arms. But would I be doing that for me or for her? It would be pretty egotistical to imagine she’d been thinking about me as much as I’d been thinking about her lately.