Page 110 of Not Fooling Anyone

She rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t want to play stupid games. I saw what was in your room.”

My room? What in the world could she have seen in there to make her this mad? To make her cry? What am I missing here? “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her brows narrow. “Don’t play dumb with me. On your nightstand. You’re using.”

What? “Using what?”

“You think this is funny?” she shouts, uncrossing her arms to clench her fists at her sides.

“No?” I’m seriously lost.

“I saw the syringe. The pills. What are you doing? Cocaine? Ecstasy?”

I finally make the connection. She saw my emergency diabetic supplies. “No, you don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly.” She’s worked up now, pushing off the door to pace the short length of the room. “My mom ruined her life doing that stuff and dragged me down with her. I’m not going down that same path with you.”

“No, Lexie—”

“No, you listen to me,” she screams, voice louder than I’ve ever heard, her face reddening. I’ve never seen her like this. “Nobody listens to me. Dad didn’t listen when I told him I hated living with her. No one at school listened when I said I didn’t sleep with the baseball team. And you don’t listen when I tell you I want to be left alone.”

My heart thumps in my chest, excruciatingly heavy. “I’m listening,” I tell her quietly, afraid to set her off more. If she’s finally opening up to me, I have to listen.

She stares at me, calming a bit. “I ended up doing everything for my mom,” she explains, urgency in her voice. “But it still wasn’t enough. She wrecked everything she touched. Every job. Every relationship. Every dollar bill that crossed her path. It all got sucked up by heroin. She’d dabble in other things, but it always came back to that one.”

She sniffs, running a hand under her nose. “And meanwhile, it was me cold at night because there was no money to fix the heater. Me hungry having to wait for school the next day to get something to eat there. And once I was old enough to work, you think that would solve the problem, right? But she was a thief, too. Anything to get her next fix.”

She paces again, talking like I’m not even in the room anymore. “What was the alternative, though? Dad didn’t want me. And if I reported her, I’d go into foster care. Who knows what kind of abuser I’d end up with there? Or, you know, I could run away from home. Nothing bad would possibly happen on the streets.”

My stomach turns at the thought of the choices she faced, a second wave of dread stealing over me as I realize she’s been referring to her mother in the past tense this whole time. “What happened to her?” I whisper, half afraid to hear the answer.

She gives me a feral smile, all teeth and no warmth. “She died, Ethan. I came home one day and she had overdosed. And you know what the worst part is?” A tear slips down her cheek but she doesn’t seem to notice, letting the droplet sit there by her chin. “After the shock of it was over, I didn’t care. If anything, I was happy.” She wraps her arms around herself in the middle of the room. “I’m a monster because I was happy my mother died.”

She starts sobbing then, hunching over, and I get up, catching her before she falls, holding her tight. She clings to me, a wet spot forming on my chest where her tears soak into my shirt. That’s fine, though. Whatever she needs from me right now, I’ll give.

“I can’t watch that happen to you,” she chokes out. “It would be so much worse with you. I actually care about you. I can’t be there when you ruin your life.”

“Shh.” I stroke a palm down her hair, cradling her to me. “That’s not happening.”

“I meant it when I said you could hurt me,” she continues, as if she didn’t hear me. “It would destroy me.”

“Lexie.” I pull back, taking in her tear-stained face and puffy eyes. “I’m not on drugs. What you saw were diabetic supplies. I have diabetes.”

She blinks at me, some of the wildness in her gaze retreating, only to be replaced with anger. “Don’t bullshit me. I know what I saw.”

Yeah, I goof around a lot with her, but I try to convey every ounce of seriousness I can muster when I tell her, “It’s the truth. The syringe was for my insulin. And those were glucose pills. I keep them there in case I crash. I have my go-kit in my car if you want proof.”

She steps away, no longer crying, and covers her mouth with a trembling hand. “Are you being for real?” she mutters behind her hand.

“I wouldneverlie to you about something like that. Here.” I pull out my phone, bringing up my last test results from my endocrinologist. “These are my latest fasting blood sugar numbers. And my glucose tolerance test the time before that.”

She stares at the screen, but I don’t know how much she comprehends, looking back up at me blankly. “But you’re in such good shape. And you eat so bad.”

“It’s Type 1. The kind you can’t prevent. And I just found out a few weeks ago. Justin was actually the one who told me I should get tested. He saw something weird in my urine sample.”

“Oh my God.” She moves her hand to her stomach, gripping it. “I accused you of so much. I thought the worst of you. I—”

She lurches forward, rushing into the adjoining bathroom to kneel next to the toilet. I follow her, holding her hair back as she retches until there’s nothing left to come up, painfully dry heaving.

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