The covers are ripped off me and Dad seethes, “Sit. Up. Now.”
Mom gasps. “Zandor, I think she’s tired. Maybe we could discuss this in the mor—”
“Love you more than my next breath, Bekah, but this gets dealt with now, because our daughter obviously has a drinking problem.”
I roll to my back and cross my heels as I clasp my hands behind my head. “Let’s have it, Zandor.”
He hits himself in the chest, pretty hard, too. “I’m Dad. I’m your father.”
“No denying that, huh? We share the same kinks.”
His face starts turning red. “If I had the foresight to know what seeing that very private photo album would have done, I would have—”
“You would have burned it,” Mom interrupts him, which isn’t at all normal. “You wanted to, and I stopped you. It was my fault, and—”
“No, Bekah, it—”
“I never liked myself much. I didn’t have a family like this. I had a controlling father and a mother who left that situation.”
“And she left her kids in it,” Dad hisses.
“Your father wanted me to see myself differently than I did.”
He looks at her almost sadly. “See you how everyone but you did at the time. See you how I see you. A stunning woman, then and now.”
I can tell she still struggles with her poor self-esteem, and it pisses me off, but so does this whole damn nightly intervention.
“Look, I get that you two are being dragged into your ‘uncomfortable place’ because of me, and I apologize, even if you think it’s insincere or whatever. But here’s the truth, I would have eventually seen porn, the same dirty little desires would have opened the proverbial box, and my freak side would have cartwheeled out of it. So, let yourselves off the hook. I’m going to be eighteen soon, and then this—”
“You’ll always be our baby,” Mom whispers.
“And if you think for one minute that I wouldn’t—”
“What do you want me to say? I have a drinking problem? If so, then I also have a pill problem. Oh, and I’ve done coke, too, because slamming five-hour energies was making me sick to my stomach.”
He sees red. Hell, he sees it so much that he’s turning a deeper shade of it. “I know that all makes some sort of sense to you, but dumb it down for me. Now.”
“The pills you basically force-feed me—”
“To help with your depression,” he states as Mom sits beside me and takes my hand.
“Yeah, well, they make me more depressed. And I read the labels and side effects; it’s not an excuse, Dad, it’s not in my head. It actually happens to a lot of people.”
He sits down as I roll over and open the nightstand, pulling out my little clutch. Then I sit up and continue as I dump out all the pills that I have cheeked in the past few weeks.
Mom sniffs back what I assume are tears.
“They make me depressed and tired and unable to feel anything.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Dad’s concern is evident.
I run my fingers in circles through the pile and tell him the absolute truth. “Because you would have made me try something else, and I like being on the stage more than I like sleep.”
“Why can’t you sleep?”
I shrug as I mess with the pills, in all variety of bright colors, not wanting them to know what my body, mind, and the internet are telling me I am, yet the shrink won’t, and they will trust her. “Because, after I’m on stage, it takes hours and hours to come down from that high.”
“Coke?” Mom whispers it like saying it softly would make it less real.
I hold up a finger. “Once, and I got busted by Zoey, and she won’t shut up about it.”
“And Zoey didn’t tell anyone?” Dad huffs.
“Dad, I’m almost—”
“I don’t care if you’re fifty-seven, if—”
“Zandor,” Mom cuts him off, which is, again, rare in situations like this, “she’s telling us now. And she has never flat-out lied to us when she’s asked a question.” She looks at me. “She tells us when she feels she can.”
“Or when I’m forced to, like now. And if you say a word to Zoey, who definitely wasn’t okay with it and certainly rides me about it, I won’t. They don’t know I’m a shitshow, and I’d prefer they just think I’m a recluse over that.”
“Have you told your therapist?” he asks.
“No way in hell. She’s an idiot.” Because even she can’t see what I am.
“Then she’s done, and you start seeing Marley, Brisa’s therapist, tomorrow.”
“Brisa is—”
“Shit.” Dad runs his hand through his already worried hair.
“Oh, hell no. She knows I’m crazy. Only fair—”
“You asked us not to tell anyone about the—” Mom stops and shakes her head. She can’t even say the psych ward, even though she was there when Dad basically pumped my stomach, via a hand down my throat, and freaked out, telling them to put me in one so I didn’t die.
“She feels everything deeply, and it’s caused her some issues.”
“Empath.” I scoot back against the head of the bed and lean against it. “Of course she’d have an issue that was enduring.”
Dad arches a brow. “Wasn’t enduring when she lost a bunch of weight and we thought she was anorexic. Isn’t enduring when she can’t sleep or focus because she’s worried about—”
“Me.”
“Not just you, Tris. Everyone.”
God, I wish I could scream at them, make them see that she’s not the only one who worries about others, so do I. Then I name my monsters and label myself, and they continue being miserable, because I am.
“After tomorrow’s show, I swear I will take them. And about four days before you have to swear you won’t force me until after RFC. I need to be able to feel when I’m up there.”
“You also need to sleep, Tris, and you need to do it without getting drunk and having someone carrying you back to the room.”
“And I’ll figure it out.”
I see the doubt in his eyes. Can’t blame him.
“When you and Mom go back to the States for Brisa and Amias’s last few weeks of school, and Momma Joe is here, I’ll be fine. I swear it.”
“We can stay.”
“No, you freaking can’t. They need you, too.”
“You’ll start talking with Marley then, immediately,” Dad says sternly.
“Three days a week, if necessary,” I agree because, if I don’t, I’m fucking things up worse than I already have for them.
The hardest part of this “issue” that I have is the guilt that drags me back three steps for every one I take forward.
“Momma Joe is getting older, Tris, and—”
“Dad, I’m not suicidal, and I’ve never been disrespectful to her. The only reason you even see this”—I wave my hand in front of me—“is because I had an issue with Marcello. I’m over him. This new life has gotten me over him. No part of me wants anything to do with him.” Except to make him hurt, like he did me.