Page 8 of Merciless

“Clem, you know that eavesdropping is bad.”

“But you never tell me anything!” I pouted, but I knew she was really in a hurry and didn’t have time for this.

I loved Maddie. She took me shopping for clothes and shoes when I needed new ones, she made me breakfast on the weekends, and she always came to pick me up when mom and dad didn’t. I felt bad she would get in trouble because of me so I quickened my pace.

“Come on, Maddie. I’ll be faster.”

“Thank you,” she squeezed my hand.

A minute later a car slowed down and stopped right next to us. I recognized it immediately.

“Hey, girls,” our neighbor Elizabeth Cole smiled at us. “Do you need a ride?”

I wanted to hop in her car the second she asked. I loved Elizabeth. Sometimes I thought I loved her more than Maddie, but I knew I shouldn’t say that.

Elizabeth was not only our neighbor but also my friend Lucas’s mother.

I didn’t remember a day when Lucas and I weren’t living across from each other, even though Elizabeth once told me the story of the first time Lucas and I had met. She was the person to always talk to me and tell me all kinds of stories.

Lucas and I were still in diapers. We smiled, wobbled towards each other, and hugged.

“It was like you already knew one another.”

“Could you take Clem home, Mrs. Cole?” Madison asked and looked down at me. “I have to be there on time, Clem. I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t. I got to spend time with Lucas and his mom. Besides I knew that Madison’s ballet teacher would call mom if Maddie got there late again. And mom wouldn’t be happy about it. Or understanding.

“And where are you going?” Elizabeth asked my sister while Maddie was helping me climb in the SUV. “We could drop you off if you want?”

Madison shot her a look, then proceeded with my seat belt. She kissed my forehead, slammed the door, and moved to the open window of the front passenger seat.

“I have a ballet lesson in ten minutes.”

“Hop in.”

That entire year Elizabeth picked me up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She always repeated it wasn’t a big deal. Lucas and I were at the same school. We were living next to each other.

“No trouble at all,” she kept saying to everyone.

But it was a big deal to me.

I started staying at the Coles until Maddie came back from her ballet lessons. We played in the backyard. Elizabeth joined with us every time we asked her to. She always had home-baked cookies, a smile on her face, and some fun idea for the couple of hours I was spending there with them.

The grim look on Lucas’s face every time I had to go home was an exact image of the one I thought was on my face. But we sucked it up, sneaked upstairs to our rooms, and continued talking through the windows, mouthing words and using signs until his father made him go to bed.

No one made me go to bed on time. My brother Tyler, who was ten at the time, sometimes read me a bed-time story that was actually a comic book about superheroes with superpowers. I didn’t listen to the words he read. I was just enjoying the fact he spent half an hour with me.

Maddie always came to check on me before she went to bed. She promised to braid my hair the next morning or take me out on the weekend for chocolate waffles.

Dad came in too late at night. He always woke me up when he did, but I pretended to be asleep. He kissed me, rearranged my blanket, and left without a word.

Only one person never came to my room. My mother.

Chapter Four

Clementine

The present

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