Summer's Desire Vol. 1 (Complete)

Part 2: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I'm in my second week at Rockford High and I'm a wreck, mentally and physically.

At the house, Jessica keeps sticking me with her poisonous barbs whenever she sees me. I try to stay out of her way as much as I can, but I do have to eat, unfortunately. So at breakfast and dinner at least, Jessica manages to get her claws into me.

Lately she's even upgraded to coming into my room so that she can continue tormenting me. I can't stop her from entering since my door doesn't have a lock. Even though I begged Greg for one, he told me that he doesn't believe in locking doors inside his house—not even the ones attached to bathrooms, I might add. Un-freaking-believable, right?

Meanwhile, I've become well acquainted with Jessica's fearsome arsenal of weapons: from the in-your-face slicing insult to the subtle, just as cutting, innuendo. All of which she wields brutally. But her most powerful weapon of all is Seth. I don't know how, but she's somehow guessed that I care for him. So she takes great joy in telling me how pathetic I am, aiming so high above me.

She tears me to shreds verbally every single day, and there's no escape from her because we're living under the same roof. I'm desperate to find a job so that I have a valid reason for getting out of the house at least in the afternoons, but I haven't had any luck so far.

The first couple of times Jessica ripped into me, I gave her as good as I got. But then she went to Louise with faked tears and repeated my words, evidently leaving out the fact that she had been the one to harass me into losing my cool in the first place. Then Louise tore into me as well.

It hasn't been difficult for Jessica to turn her mother against me. Louise hadn't liked me from the start, but at least she was civil to me. Now, her civility has turned frigid. Even laid-back Greg hasn't been able to remain completely impervious to the antagonism weighing down the atmosphere in his house, all of it directed at me.

It drives me crazy that I can't face off with Jessica as I want to and as she darn well deserves. But unfortunately, she's the daughter of the house while I'm only an interloper. If I fought back against Jessica, it wouldn't matter that she had provoked me. I'd just be giving her ammunition against me. Which I'm afraid she'd use to convince her parents to send me away.

And I really want to stay in Rockford. I want to keep seeing Seth. I want to let myself enjoy the tentative friendships I've developed to Marcie and her group. I want to keep seeing Seth. I don't want to change yet another school. And yes, I want to keep seeing Seth. After years of living in an emotional wasteland, I've found something that I can't bear to give up. This frustrates me because of how vulnerable it makes me, but still I want to keep it. Even if the price I have to pay is putting up with Jessica.

All the same, the state of things with Jessica and her mother is really affecting me. The house has become some kind of hell dimension in my mind, and I'm sleeping less than ever. The five hours I used to accomplish at night before coming to Rockford are a thing of the past. I'm so tired all the time that I fear I'm going to lapse into a coma and lose my mind when the nightmares come and I won't be able to wake up.

My night terrors are hounding me with a vengeance, as if feeding off my emotional instability these days. I'm terrified that I'll start screaming in my sleep. As bad as it is living here, I don't want to leave. Therefore, I can't risk letting the Andersons find out the truth about me, about my awful nightmares. They'd be as horrified as all my other fosters before them, and ask my social worker to remove me from their home. Then I'd almost certainly be sent to a different city.

I can't allow that to happen. Not now, when I'm finally close to Seth again.

Truthfully, he is the first and foremost reason for my wanting to stay here. I see him every day in school, and my heart rejoices. Even my all-encompassing veil of tiredness lifts a little when I look at him. I never approach him, though, and he never speaks to me, not even during the World History class we share.