This chapter is dedicated to Uwigi, with thanks for supporting me on Patreon.
"If you liked the person I used to be, you shouldn't have tried so hard to get rid of her!"
The words had come from my heart; but I wasn't sure how much of that was my anguish about losing control of myself, and how much was Anti-Lorna's generalised anger at the world, and willingness to lash out if she didn't get her way. I didn't even know what had triggered the screaming match today. It might have been my fault, telling Walt to get out from under my feet when I was preparing to go out, but it could just as easily believe that Dad had been looking for any tiny infraction, any excuse to tell me that I was a disappointment, that they'd helped me grow up as such a good girl and now I was letting them down, or that he hated the person I was becoming. I wanted to believe that he would have gotten mad no matter what I said or did; but if I wanted to hold on to all the things that had made me me, I knew that I had to own it when something seemed to be my fault.
Those words should have cut him deeply, I knew. He had tried to kill his little girl so that this outraged rebel could take over and tear my life apart, and he must know how much that was hurting everybody in my life. I hadn't even needed to yell those words; a whisper would have gotten the point across. I hadn't needed to scream my opposition and then go straight out, slamming the door in his face. And there had certainly been no excuse for punctuating the words with a slap. That wasn't like me at all, I couldn't just take it back.
Now I was walking through the streets, head down, not even sure where I was going. I'd been intending to get some fresh air in the hope that exercise would improve my mood. Maybe some window-shopping with my friends. But I didn't want to see anybody when I was feeling like this. I was fast turning into the monster who nobody would want to spend time with. I felt like I should hide myself away, or at least deal with it myself, until I could rein in the vicious, animalistic voices coming from the fancy nanotech in my lizard brain.
It was getting dark now, but I was afraid to go home. I didn't want to see who I would turn into if I had to face Dad again, when he would still be in a rage over my behaviour before. He'd already tried to call me, about two minutes after I left the house. Mum had called ten minutes after that, and I'd turned my phone off. I couldn't face them. I couldn't deal with them, so I knew that for tonight I was on my own.
I couldn't work out what to do with myself, though. Somehow, I had ended up on the far side of town. I must have walked at least three or four miles, and I was no closer to anywhere that I could stay the night. I could have tried to go home and beg forgiveness; but I knew that it would only take one disparaging or judgemental word from Dad to send me into a rage again. I could have gone to Serena's house, but I didn't want her to see me like this. Elspeth would probably understand better than anyone; she'd often landed herself in trouble through not being able to control her temper. But if I went there, I was sure that it would be only too easy to get some pills to help me calm down; and that was a path that I absolutely didn't want to start down. If I started relying on drugs to deal with something that wasn't a chemical problem, it would make it even harder to stay in control when they wore off; and I was sure that Anti-Lorna would love the chance to experiment with stuff like that, no matter what it was.
I tried to think of some other solution, but nothing came to mind. Before I knew it, the sun was setting and neon lights were starting to flicker into life over the doors of the establishments that could afford to maintain them. Half the shops along here would remain unlit; and for the ones without visible windows into the interior, there was no way to know which businesses were just empty shells. The customers here would probably know what to find where, in any case.
As the sun sank lower in the sky, I dreaded the thought of having to turn my phone back on and find out how many messages they had sent. What had started as an impetuous impulse, walking out into the night, became a need that I couldn't fight. There was no option of going back now; I was determined that I wouldn't let myself give in and show weakness. I had no other options, but that didn't matter. I hated my parents for what they had done to me, and I couldn't imagine ever finding forgiveness. I had to find somewhere else to go, somewhere I could reinvent myself, even if I had no idea where to start.
I stared down at my feet, not wanting to see the shops around me becoming more and more derelict. There was no self-service in this neighbourhood, I knew. There were metal shutters to knock on, where you could pass money through and be presented with what you needed to buy. The fear of crime was more important than any need to present an appealing façade. I should have thought about that; this was a place down by the waterfront, where some gang would trash a shop just because they were bored. If there were no rivals in the area for them to hate on. Of course, I wondered how many of the horror stories told by my parents were actually true; maybe it was just a dig at different cultures; different ways of dealing with abject poverty. But this evening, it didn't seem to matter. I wasn't afraid of random acts of violence as I walked the unfamiliar streets; I was hoping for somebody to fight. I knew it was insane to feel like that, and I was sure to be hurt. But anything would be better than the emptiness and self-loathing that filled my veins.
I watched my feet, changing colour each time I passed the tiny well of light from a neon sign. I waited for another shadow to cross mine; daring the city to give me any excuse so I could feel something other than this frustration. I could hear a clatter, the clang of metal against some solid surface. I didn't know the sound, and I didn't care. Somebody was around here, so I wasn't alone. I didn't need to know who they were.
"Hey!" A voice, masculine, but quavering. A hand on my shoulder, and all that bravado turned into terror. This was what I had wanted, which just went to show how stupid it was to let Anti-Lorna make the choices. "Hey, you okay?"
I spun around, and my heart almost stopped. And then I saw where I was; I'd passed right through the dark heart of the waterfront; to places where there was no business because the docks had gone long ago. Where there were burned out buildings and occasional, futile, attempts at rejuvenation. Projects that went nowhere because nobody cared. Dark streets where you wouldn't be mugged because nobody in their right mind would expect to see somebody with money. Paths I knew because I'd once found joy in photographing the view over water; or the desolate skeletons of a city that nobody cared for.
"Hey," the shadow-shrouded face repeated again. "What's wrong? Why are you out here so late? You know there's..."
"Clint?" I croaked. My voice felt as weak as my body; exhausted by holding onto my anger for so long. But somewhere beneath my consciousness, something in my mind had made a rational choice. I'd come to the skate part where I first spoke to Clint. Where I'd taught him that you should never stand by and watch somebody get hurt. He still remembered, and he was exactly the person I needed to see now. All the tension that had been building up evaporated; the adrenaline rush that had kept me going vanished. All the fear and the anger was gone, and there was nothing left in its place. Maybe I blacked out, or maybe I was just in a daze, not really sure where I was.
I just knew that I was going to be okay now. Whatever happened, I didn't have to face it alone.