It felt like a double betrayal, since Gram was in on it. Did Gram like Tiffany now, too?
How long before they both preferred her to me?
I couldn't stand it. How insecure I felt, how completely Dante disregarded my feelings out of consideration for someone else's.
I didn't even confront him. I just walked away. He followed me to my class, then to my desk.
I sat down, looking straight ahead.
"You're upset," he said, and had the nerve to sound annoyed.
"Go away," I said stiffly just as the bell rang.
Dante's class was across campus, nowhere close, so he had no choice but to drop it. "I'll be back before practice. Don't take off," he said in a tone I found insufferable. He'd have had more luck ordering me to take off. "We're going to talk before you blow this out of proportion."
I glared at his retreating back with absolute murder in my eyes, waited a beat, just long enough for him to leave, and stood.
My history teacher, Ms. Banks, called my name once, then again.
"Not feeling well," I told her. "Going home." She didn't try to stop me, though I'd probably regret it later. My attendance was always a problem on account of me hating school and loving to leave it before it was over.
I made my way home almost blindly, looking down at my feet, following the trail, my mind somewhere else. Several places in fact, but mostly on Dante's reaction when he realized I hadn't stayed put. He'd be pissed. He'd likely even skip practice to confront me right away.
Pathetic as it was, I hoped he would. I needed, over and over, like a broken record, for him to show me that he'd never get sick of me, no matter how flawed I was. How insecure. How unlovable.
I had never made peace with being abandoned. I was certain that I never would. I still looked the reality of it in the face every day, wondered why I was so worthless, wondered when I'd be abandoned again.
My response to that was to unleash my helpless rage on the one person who would take it. Who wouldn't leave me. Who cared enough to chase me when I ran.
I was deep in thought as I approached the creek. There was a longer trail home, with a bridge over the small body of water, but when it was this nice out, it was never worth taking when you could just hop the rocks on the shorter route. It was tricky, but I'd gotten the balancing act down years ago.
It was an unseasonably warm day just a few weeks into the school year, and so I'd worn shorts. The sun was shining, a teasing breeze drifting through the forest. My mood was starting to improve the more I had some time and space away.
I poised myself to take the first big lunge. Once you started, it was best just to skip straight across, no stopping.
It happened fast, so fast that more of it was processed in retrospect than real time.
The creek was small, but it was loud. Loud enough to drown the sounds of even a large man moving directly behind me.
It happened fast, so fast, all of it. Something hard struck me in the back of the head. I saw stars, and my world took a turn for the darker.
*****
It was hours later and I was still pissed. I'd been shuffled from the police station to the hospital. I was in a patient bed now, and they wouldn't let me leave. All I wanted to do was go home, shower, and curl up into a ball, but I had a bad concussion so that would not happen until tomorrow at the earliest.
And in the meantime, two cops, one male who'd introduced himself as Detective Harris, and one female who'd introduced herself as Detective Flynn, were asking me the same questions, over and over again. They didn't seem to want my answers, because every time I answered the same question the same way, the female cop looked increasingly more disgusted.
I took a strong disliking to both of them almost right away.
Her first and it started the moment she spoke to me. There was just something in her voice I didn't like, some undercurrent of hostility. No, it was more than hostility. It was judgement. Cold and final. This woman had an opinion about me and it was set in stone.
I wasn't sure why I didn't like Harris at first, but I didn't. Perhaps my instincts were trying to tell me from the start that something was wrong with him.
Looking back, it's easy to think so, but if it was so in the moment, I can't honestly say.
And worse than all of that, they wouldn't let Dante in to see me. I'd heard him, several times, making a fuss about it, getting himself into trouble somewhere in the hospital, trying his best, I knew, to make it to me, but so far he was losing.
I needed him to win. I needed to see his face, feel his hands holding mine, absorb his presence comforting me.
One upside: the detectives seemed as over it as I was. Finally, Flynn pulled the male officer to the other side of the room, the side with a second, currently vacant bed, shutting the curtain behind them.
The detectives started talking to each other about me, voices pitched low, but not low enough.
Flynn had made clear early on that she thought the whole thing was a colossal waste of their time.
"She's the daughter of Renee Theroux and Jethro Davis," Flynn was saying. "Can we really believe any story she's spinning? What do you expect? Who knows what kind of trouble she got herself into, and with whom. Should we just take her word for it that some homeless guy that's been living in the woods just walked up and attacked her?"