Page 72 of Starve
I can’t fault him for being an hour late. That would be stupid of me. Things come up, thingshappen, and I can’t assume that a disaster’s afoot just because he’s not back by when he said he would be. If I go driving up to Bluebone Ridge now, wild-eyedand crying with my wolf dog in the passenger seat, I’d be the stereotype of the overbearing, controlling girlfriend.
Or rather, soon to beex-girlfriend. I couldn’t blame him for never wanting to see me again if I acted like a helicopter parent instead of trusting him to be the adult cryptid that he is.
While I don’t need to shower, there’s something familiar in the routine. The water is hot and helps melt away some of the tension in my shoulders, along with the chill in my fingers from being outside with Moro. I definitely take longer than I need to, and even though I’m doing my best not to count the minutes, that’s exactly what I’m doing in my head while I wash and rinse my hair with shampoo, then with conditioner, and finally scrub my skin with my body wash. My fingers trail over the places Cairo left marks. My hips are now mostly free of bruises, save a few faded yellow splotches just above the tops of my thighs. But I wrap my hand around the base of my throat, even though it doesn’t give me the same feeling of possessive protection as it does when Cairo does it.
Still, it helps me remember the feeling of his touch, and his purrs in my ears while he calls melittle bird.
It hasn’t even been a day, and yet I know I’m too wrapped up in him for my own good. The feeling is like a hunger in my body, hollowing out my chest and stomach with no way to fill it without him. God, I’m pathetic, I realize as I’m toweling off my hair and glaring at myself in the mirror. Lovestruck for a monster I haven’t even known for a month.
“Sad,” I sigh to my reflection. “You should be ashamed of?—”
My phone vibrates again, and I look down expecting to see Dr. Radley’s name flashing across my screen. But I instinctively pick it up when I see it’s my mother, pressing the phone to my ear once I’ve tapped the screen to answer. “Hey, Mom, what’s?—”
“You cannot act this way.”Her voice is impatient and irritated. In the background, I can hear the noise ofconversation, so I know she’s not at home.“What is wrong with you, Fern?”
Her words cause my chest to tighten, and suddenly I’m a teenager again, afraid of her wrath and trying to find a way to connect with her to avoid getting lectured for what she considered my bad behavior.
“I…” I trail off with my fingers tightening around the phone and my eyes wide on my reflection, like she can do something other than stand there looking dumb. “What are you talking about? Did I miss your call earlier? I just got out of the shower, and?—”
“Your therapist called me. You’re ignoring her calls? She’s worried about you. She told me you’ve been showing some worrying patterns recently, and that you’ve started falling in with some people who want to hurt you.”My mom sounds mad instead of worried. But that’s always been her thing.
“So much for HIPAA,” I mutter petulantly, only half-joking. But it’s the wrong thing to say.
“HIPAA?”my mother hisses.“You’re going to make a joke about privacy laws now? I’m glad she called me. You tried to kill yourself a month ago, and now you’re trying to go off the grid.”
My eyes narrow in the mirror, and frustration wells, burning in my throat. “That’s not true,” I say, almost cutting her off. “I didnottry to kill myself, Mom. I told you I was dissociating. It wasn’t?—”
“Same thing.”I flinch back at her words. I don’t know why I’m surprised, when she’s never been interested in understanding my issues before.“Whatever your mental issues are, you need help to get them under control. Call her back. Now. She brought up having you move back in with us.”
The words catch me off guard. “No,” I say flatly. “No, I don’t need to move back in with you. I have a house, a job, and adog.You’re allergic to dogs,” I remind her, looking for any excuse.
“Then it can be an outside dog, or we can look for a better home for it. Call her back, but I think this is something we should talk about more, Fern.”While I’m sure she’ll get over this, and technically she can’t make me, her threat still sends a rising wave of panic to burn through me.
“Yeah, umm…yeah. Okay. Look, I didn’t mean to ignore her calls. My phone was off until I went to shower. I’ve been?—”
“I’m not looking for your excuses. I’m out with Nathaniel and the kids, and this isn’t what I wanted to happen today.”She sighs, obviously looking to guilt-trip me for ruining her outing with hernewfamily.“Just call your therapist back. She also brought up scheduling an appointment for me to be there as well, to start. I think that’s a great idea.”
I don’t.
But I won’t cry, so I blink back the hot, angry tears that threaten to escape while I look at myself in the mirror. HowdareDr. Radley call my mother? How dare she look for reasons to get me away from Whippoorwill Gap?
Away from Cairo.
It dawns on me that that’s her real angle here. She thinks getting me back to my mother two hours away will ‘save’ me from the cursed Cairo’s attachment to me.
I’m not like Dr. Radley’s sister, however, and now I feel stupid for feeling guilty at the idea of her being killed by Tyler. “Yeah,” I say stiffly, barely registering the woods. “Yeah, I’ll…I’ll call her back. Talk to you later, Mom.”
“The weekend,”my mom insists.“You’ll call me by the weekend so we can discuss next steps.”Her voice softens, but I can hear the effort it takes for her to make it sound somethingother than annoyed.“I’m only doing this because I care about you, Fern. You’re my daughter, and I love you.”
“I love you too.” But the words are hollow on my tongue, and when I hang up on her, there’s not an ounce of love in me for the woman who gave birth to me and raised me until I could feasibly move out and get my own place. Even if it is a small, older house in the middle of the woods that needs some work. That’s never mattered to me, though. All I wanted was a place to call my own, and this house fit exactly what I needed.
Now, though, I’m realizing I’m less attached to it than I was before. With Moro and Cairo, I don’t need a house to hide in to escape my mother.
The realization makes the bathroom feel cold, and I hurry through brushing and drying my hair. I barely notice what clothes I grab from the closet, just that they’re warm against the chill of my empty house. Finally, staring down at my phone with blank eyes and an empty feeling, I press play on the message from Dr. Radley.
“I know you’re ignoring me, Fern. I know you didn’t like what I had to say yesterday.”Here she sighs, almost regretfully, but I don’t believe it.“You’re young. You don’t understand what it looks like when a monster is trying to take you. That’s what he wants. That’s all he wants. You’re vulnerable, and you need help. I’m going to help you however I have to. You probably won’t like me for it, but I won’t let you die the same way my sister did."
There’s a long pause, and I look up at Moro, who’s stretching and shaking herself like she knows we’re about to go on an adventure.
