Page 21 of Malaise
EIGHT
Den’s bed hasbecome my favourite place to hide out when I’m home. Mum and Dad seem to stay the hell away from his room—maybe out of self-preservation? Either way, it gives me somewhere to get away from their lifeless stares and pointless conversations.
I don’t want to talk about who’s winning the latest hit talent show on TV.
I don’t want to discuss what we’ll have for dinner tonight.
And I don’t want to talk about how pretty the fucking flowers are this time of year.
So I hibernate. I stay holed up in Den’s bed, that smells a little less like him each day, and listen to music. Mostly his playlists on Spotify, and sometimes mine when the memories become too real and his absence hurts too much. It’s all I can do to keep him with us, because Lord knows my parents don’t want to talk about him.
Made that mistake at breakfast yesterday when I dropped the lid of the milk bottle into my bowl of cereal.
“Remember how Den used to always do this too?”
“If you haven’t got anything useful to say, I’d rather you kept quiet, Meg.”
So I spent the day out and about again, anywhere but home. Wandered the streets, ate a muffin at the café on the main drag, and bought another litre of vodka to chase it down on the riverbank. Fair to say I was lucky I could walk the straight line that is our path to get to the door last night. Also fair to say Mum and Dad were none too impressed when their least favourite child arrived home drunk on a Sunday night, and with grass stains on her leggings.
But what did they do about it? Nothing. Didn’t say a damn word. Two days now I’ve drunk myself to a state of confused bliss where I can’t make out what’s a memory and what’s my imagination at work, and do they intervene?
No.
Should I blame them for my choices? Definitely not. But fuck, their daughter is screaming out for somebody to pay attention, to care and give a shit, and they turn their backs on me.
Literally.
So I drink a little more. I’m contemplating taking up smoking to see how much that’ll rile them up. All I want is my fucking caregivers to do exactly that: care. “How have you been sleeping, Meg?” is all it would take. One sign that they’re concerned about what goes on in my head these days.
Forty dollars in my pocket and I know how I’m going to spend it today—buying two bottles on the way home: one to drink, and one to stash in Den’s room for the inevitable after-dark funk.
First—I have to get through the fresh hell that is school on the half week before exams.
The quad’s stacked with people when I arrive at the gates; we find out what our exam schedules are today. The dean fusses with his things at the bench that lines the outer wall of the science rooms, papers stacked in copy boxes to his left, and the principal to his right, talking on her phone.
I hear the bitch-pack approach before I see them.
“Here she is—Clutzerella.”
“How’s the arm, Hollywood?”
“Bitch can’t hold her drink.”
“Heard she was making moves on Jasper all night.”
I glare at the perfect princesses as I walk by, envisioning all the ways I could rip out their faultless hairstyles and smear off their overly shiny gloss. Beats me how Cassie can be the one who got dragged off unconscious by the boys’ school football team, and yet here I am, the person who’s being ridiculed by her. What kind of fucked up logic is that?
“Meg!”
I turn away from the whispering bitches and spot the dean cutting a path through the students to where I am in the centre of the quad.
“Do you have a minute?”
Does he honestly expect me to say no? “Sure.”
He comes to a stop before me, standing an easy head and shoulders taller, but hardly intimidating given his slim runners’ physique. “We’ll just duck into the principal’s office, okay?”
I nod like the good little doggie I am and follow as he leads us in the admin building, cringing at the fact we have to pass the bitch-pack again to get there. Four pairs of eyes track my movements as I follow Mr Beale. I stumble when Amelia shoots out a hand and shunts me on the back of the shoulder, hissing “Weirdo.” But I don’t pay mind, and I sure as hell don’t show a reaction. Acting out only eggs them on. Fuck them. They aren’t worth any more time than I’ve already given the bitches.