Again
1230 Words
Amy's POV
It started the morning after Sandra's visit.
Mark came down to breakfast and sat across from me at the kitchen table, and for a long moment he just watched me eat. Not the cold, distracted way he usually looked at me this was deliberate, and measuring.
"Those people from next door," he said finally.
I kept my eyes on my bowl.
"I don't want you spending time with them."
I said nothing.
"Amy." His voice dropped just slightly the specific register that meant he was not asking. "I said I don't want you near them. Any of them. You don't talk to that girl at school, you don't wave at them on the street, you don't open this door to them. Do you understand me?"
"Yes," I said.
"Good." He picked up his coffee. "Make sure you do."
He left for work twenty minutes later and I sat at the empty table for a long time, staring at the wall.
I understood the instruction. I even understood why he was giving it, Mark had always worked that way, cutting off anything that might give me a foothold, anyone who might notice something they weren't supposed to notice. It was how he kept things tidy.
I understood all of it but understanding didn't make it easier.
.......
The first few days were the hardest.
Lia fell into step beside me on the way to first period on Monday and started talking about something, a show she had watched, something funny Mia had said, and I kept my eyes forward, and my mouth shut and after a few minutes she trailed off.
"Amy? You okay?"
I turned into the classroom without answering.
The look on her face as I walked away was something I chose not to think about.
By Wednesday she had stopped trying to walk with me between classes. By Thursday Mia had started watching me from across the cafeteria with a small crease between her brows that she hadn't had before. I ate alone near the window, quickly, and left before either of them could cross the room.
I told myself it was fine. That this was how things had always been before them, and that before them I had managed, and that I would manage again.
It was fine. It was fine.
I said it enough times that it started to sound like a different language.
.......
At school I had Leo to deal with on top of everything else.
He noticed the change in me almost immediately or rather, he noticed that his usual taunts weren't landing the way they used to. I wasn't flinching, wasn't cutting back, wasn't doing anything at all. I just looked through him like he wasn't there, and for some reason that seemed to irritate him more than any reaction I could have given.
"Did someone turn you off?" he said one morning, dropping into the seat behind me in biology.
I opened my textbook.
"Clumsy. I'm talking to you."
I turned a page.
He leaned forward. "Okay, this is actually unsettling. Say something. Tell me to leave you alone. Give me the death glare. Something."
I read the same sentence four times and absorbed none of it.
He sat back after a moment, and I could feel him watching the back of my head for the rest of class, trying to work out what had changed.
I didn't give him anything to work with.
Rio was more careful about it. He didn't approach me directly, he just made sure to be somewhere in my general orbit during the day, close enough that I knew he was there, far enough that I couldn't accuse him of pushing. Once, in the corridor between fourth and fifth period, he fell into step beside me for about thirty seconds and didn't say a single word. Then he peeled off at the next junction and was gone.
I didn't know what to do with that either.
.......
A week became two. Two became three.
I got good at the new routine. Eyes down in the hallways. Lunch alone or not at all. Home immediately after the bell, always the long way round so I didn't risk walking into Lia on the street. I kept the house clean and dinner on the stove by six and stayed out of Mark's way as much as the square footage allowed.
Some nights were worse than others. Some nights he didn't come to my door at all and I lay awake waiting for it anyway, which was its own kind of exhaustion. Some nights I heard him on the stairs and my whole body locked up before I remembered to breathe.
I stopped sleeping well. I stopped eating much. I started wearing two hoodies layered over each other because the heating in my room had started going out at night and I couldn't ask Mark to fix it.
I was fine.
I was always fine.
.......
It was a Tuesday afternoon, three weeks after Sandra's visit, when everything cracked.
I came home from school to find Lia sitting on the low wall outside her house, like she had been waiting. She stood up the moment she saw me, and something in the way she moved quick, decided, like she had made up her mind about something and wasn't going to let herself back out made my steps slow.
"Amy."
I kept walking.
"Amy, wait. Please."
Something in her voice made me stop. Not a command, she wasn't the commanding type. It was something quieter than that. Something that sounded a lot like worry.
I turned around slowly.
Lia crossed the short distance between us, and up close I could see that she looked tired too like she hadn't been sleeping either, which felt both terrible and completely unreasonable. She had no reason to lose sleep over me. She barely knew me.
"I'm not going to pretend I don't notice," she said. Her voice was steady but her hands were twisted together in front of her. "You've been avoiding me for three weeks. You won't look at me in school, you cross the street when you see me coming, you—" She stopped. Took a breath. "Did I do something? Did Mia say something that upset you? Because if we did, I need to know so I can fix it."
The knot in my throat pulled tight.
"You didn't do anything," I said.
"Then why..."
"Lia." I made myself look at her. Made myself hold the eye contact even though it cost me something to do it. "I just need some space. That's all. It's nothing you did."
She searched my face. I kept it still.
"Okay," she said finally, quietly. "Okay. But Amy if something is wrong. If there's something going on that you need help with. I'm right there." She gestured at her house. "Literally right there."
"I know," I said. "Thank you."
I turned and walked to my front door before she could say anything else.
I got the key in the lock, pushed the door open, stepped inside, and stopped.
Mark was home.
He was standing in the hallway, jacket still on, keys in his hand, which meant he had just arrived. Which meant he had seen.
I knew from his face that he had seen, and I was going to pay for it.
- Writer
