Chapter Seventeen
Floaters appear before my eyes, which I shut. It doesn’t drown out the conflicting thoughts slamming around my brain like a pissed-off gorilla in a cage.
Your mom hates you.
Your mom doesn’t hate you. She was just sick.
Your dad left you.
Your dad is a hero, who nearly died trying to take down a supervillain.
It’s too much.
Make it stop.
I barely feel it when Grace puts her arm around me, pulling my head onto her shoulder. I let her do it, this woman I’ve known all of an hour. I should feel guilty, being almost intimately close to a not-unattractive woman, but I have too many emotions churning in my gut to throw guilt into the soup.
“‘I wish I’d never had children,’” I mutter.
“I beg your pardon?” she replies.
“My mom said that to me yesterday. Not those exact
