Til Death Do Us Part

chapter three ~ let me be

"So it was okay?"

I looked up at my dad from my plate, where I was picking at a slice of takeout pizza. And I shrugged nonchalantly, indifferent.

"Nobody was mean, nobody was rude? Did you make any friends?"

There he was, worrying again. I almost felt bad for him. I knew that I had to be as convincing as possible, in order to calm his nerves.
Even if I had to lie a little.

"I made a few friends, nothing huge. Everyone was nice, Dad. It's just school." I replied as calmly as I could, biting into the now-cold margarita slice.

An awkward silence settled over us before he tried again, "Did you get something for breakfast this morning?"

I blink a few times before blurting out, "I forgot."

Dad narrowed his eyes slightly, "Faye..."

"It won't happen again!" I assure him, feeling panic rise in my throat.
I couldn't go through that again.

But I felt his eyes burning into my face as I picked at my pizza, and forced myself to bite into it.
"Has the place really has such an effect on you already?" He asked quietly.

"It hasn't had any bad effects on me. I just forgot to grab breakfast because I was distracted by the car, and I'm not so hungry now because I had lunch late!" I declared, nearly just throwing the pizza box flat onto the floor.

Dad eyed me, yet again, before biting back into his pizza, "Well if I see you starting to lose weight -"

"God, Dad, I got it! Okay!" I snapped, slamming my palms onto the tables.

We both sat and stared at one another for a few seconds before I stood up, picked up my plate and put it on the side, still full, and went back to my bedroom.

•••

The rest of the week fell in a similar pattern, with politeness and faces growing more familiar, yet I couldn't bring myself into making friends.
I had friends back in Houston, before I moved. But I hadn't seen them since before Jess died - we all planned to meet up after her wedding, as we'd finished school and I was dedicated to helping her with it.

Since then we hadn't been in touch, excluding my best friend, Kaitlin.
We'd been in the same classes since first grade, and the only thing we didn't have in common was a hair colour. She'd been like my fraternal twin, snatched at birth and sent off, and then we were reunited years later.

And all we really did was FaceTime each other - she kept asking when I'd come back to visit her. That was before I'd even left.
But now it felt empty without her, like I didn't know what to do with myself. I'd always depended on her to lead the way in social situations and I could follow suit.

But now I was truly alone.
It was for the best, but it still sucked.

On the Wednesday last week, I'd gotten all my bedroom furniture, and put it up on Saturday after I painted my new walls a baby blue. I decided to leave my bedroom floor as it was, with oak floorboards and added a soft round grey rug, and then put up white furniture - a wardrobe, cabinet, desk, vanity and a bedside table.

Dad had brought a silver lamp from a DIY store somewhere in the town, and plugged it in in the corner of the room, and then he'd hooked a grey lampshade onto my light.

The dark grey curtains I needed for my window-doors were supposed to arrive on Thursday but they had been dispatched late, leaving me to wake up to blinding sunlight on my face for the past week at half past five in the morning.