She screamed.
Moet covered her ears.
She threw plates.
Moet ducked.
She called her ugly names.
Moet ran.
She chased after her.
Moet ducked into a bathroom and locked the door.
She screamed her lungs out and tried to kick the door down.
Moet crawled over to the toilet and retched.
And then…
Moet had a terrible, terrible idea.
Goofily smiling to himself, he closes and locks the door behind him right before a disembodied voice floats down the stairs, scaring him half to death.
“Where have you been?” Leighton turns the lights on and sees a rumpled-looking Ella standing in the doorway on his right that led to the kitchen.
Rolling his eyes, he reaches out to ruffle her hair in a playful manner before replying, “I went to a friend’s dance recital. Remember? The one I told you about? You said you didn’t want to come. Although, you should have—it was quite the experience.” Leighton shrugs off his jacket and starts making his way towards the stairs, checking his watch. Wow. It was almost eleven o’clock already.
“Who?” The sudden change in the tone of Ella’s voice made Leighton turn around and arch an eyebrow in suspicion.
“Moet.” He answers simply. “It’s pretty late, we should get to bed--”
“Moet?” Ella’s eyes widens. “Moet Holmes?” Her voice was shaking a little by now.
He decides now was as good a time as any to confront her about this blatant dislike she had against the Holmes family. “Look, Ella, if you have a problem with Moet or something—”
“Have a problem? I fucking hate her!” Ella screeches at her brother. Shocked at the sudden and completely uncharacteristic change of character in his sister, he just looks on with his mouth agape. “The face, the hair, the voice, I can’t take it anymore! They’re all the same!” Clamping her hands onto her hair as if trying to rip the roots out of her skull, she lets out another strangled screech and dashes up the stairs and locks herself in her room. Out of his temporary stupor, he sprints up the stairs after her and immediately starts banging on the door and turning the knob in vain.
“Ella, open this door. Open this door now.” He was starting to panic, this has never happened before. Ella’s never acted like this. Ever. “Open this door right now, Ella! I mean it!” If only their parents were here, they’d tell him what to do. He’s still so new to being a guardian of a fourteen year-old girl while he was still just a kid himself. And the only contact they’d ever had with their real guardian was through blue, neatly-handwritten checks sent in a monthly envelope to their address. He tries again, this time landing his whole body weight and attempting to break the door down out of desperation. “Ella!”
Moet felt hungry.
It had passed the merely peckish, slightly uncomfortable feeling. Now, it was full-blown pain. She’d hardly eaten anything for the past two days and wasn’t sure to be proud of that or disgusted by it. It was lunch again. Nothing special happened in her classes, as always. Her thoughts weren’t exciting enough to distract her from this gaping hole in her stomach. Clutching her arms around her body and pulling her knees up to her chest, she rests her forehead on her legs and quietly moans. Suddenly, she feels a presence above her. Taking a second to lift her eyes up to the visitor, her face tries to smile at the gray-eyed boy with glasses, but it probably turns out as a grimace.
Seeing her countenance, Leighton immediately inquires, “What’s wrong?” He sits down beside her and observes for a moment.
Biting her lip, Moet was surprised that she felt a bit embarrassed to admit that, “I’m… hungry…”
One of his eyebrows rose in response and he immediately hands her a brown paper bag. “I noticed.” Of course he did, Moet thinks. How could she ever think that the infamous boy-genius of the school could oversee anything? Not wanting to seem like a pig in front of him, she naturally unwraps the homemade sandwich in a graceful manner and takes extremely tiny bites instead of swallowing it whole like her body wanted to. Shut up, she snaps at herself. This is the only food you’re getting for a while. Deal with it.
“So,” Leighton begins, tugging on his hair in a sort of frustrated manner and pushing up his glasses. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something; something that happened after yesterday night.”
The mere mention of last night makes Moet’s appetite almost vanish. However, it also brings back to light her terrible idea which was… a good thing? She wasn’t sure anymore and nods her head to Leighton in a “go on” sort of gesture.
“Ella’s getting even worse.” He begins in a sort of angry tone. “Yesterday, she had a sort of breakdown. It was crazy. The moment I mentioned your name, she started going berserk and shouting and crying…” He rubs his face with his hands and sighs. “I don’t know what to do. I was hoping that you’d have something to tell me.”
“What do you mean?” Moet asks. She’d met Ella probably once in her lifetime. Ella’s face was just a blur in her mind.
Leighton sighs again. “I trust you, Moet. I don’t know why, but I do, and I’d like to think that you’d answer me honestly if I asked you a very important question.” She nods her head in affirmation. Lying wasn’t her thing. She only did it when she had to, which included lying to Quinn about Dakota’s state of being. But that was for the best. “Have you ever… bullied Ella before? Called her mean names or something like that?”
Moet was shocked. “Of course not.” Leighton, sensing the truth behind her words, nods back in response.
“I thought so… but it’s just so weird. The way that she reacts to your name… It’s just driving me crazy.” Before the two could say another word, the bell rang. Gathering up their bags, they say quick “good-bye”s to each other before heading off on their separate ways.
She did it. Her plan. The moment she flushed her lunch down the toilet, she knew she had done the right thing. Her body felt instantly lighter. It was wonderful. But then why was there such a feeling of disgust lingering in her mind? Shaking herself, her hand reaches up to turn the lock, but she hears the girls’ bathroom door slam open.
“God, I feel so sorry for Quinn.”
Moet freezes. They were talking about Dakota’s Quinn, she just knew it. Quieting her breathing, she puts her arms back at her sides and lingers in the stall, suddenly interested in their conversation.
“I know! His girlfriend’s been missing for, what? Three months? And the police can’t find shit on her? That’s gotta be hard.” The second girl answers. Moet hears the clicking of compacts being opened and presumed they were touching up their makeup.
“She could be dead for all we know.” The first girl murmurs, probably half-focused on the conversation and half-focused on re-applying her lip gloss.
“Why should we care? She’s a fucking drug whore.” This girl’s voice was new. And it angered Moet. Dakota was not a drug whore. Sure, she got involved with some illegal business her senior year, but she promised Moet that she quit.
“What are you talking about?” One of the original girls asks in a curious tone.
“I should know. I was involved.” Moet recognized the cold, toneless voice now. It was Kimberly, Dakota’s past best friend while she still attended the school. “That girl. She was trouble. She messed with some deep shit. It was terrifying.”
“What did she do?” Another girl asks in the same curious tone as the one before did. Moet didn’t know which, though. They sounded the same to her now.
Kimberly pauses for a second. “She was into really hardcore drug use. Every time she wanted to try something new, she asked me about it first. And every time I told her no. But she wouldn’t fucking listen.” Was Moet imagining it or was Kimberly’s voice getting a bit choked up at the end? “Last time I saw her was at this hotel with her meth supplier, Dylan. I hated him so much for screwing her life up like that. And you know what he did? He used her. And she let him.”
And that was all that Moet could take.
She bursts out of the stall, stunning the three girls as they all turn their heads to look at the pale girl with the shaking hands enter their conversation. “That is not true!” She points an accusing finger at Kimberly. “She would never do that, I know her; she wouldn’t!”
Kimberly just shakes her head as her face starts to scrunch up the way faces do when people are about to cry. “Open your eyes, Moet. She’s not what you think she is.”
“No!” Moet was nearly raising her voice now, completely disregarding the other two girls in the bathroom. “My sister was not a whore. She never sold her body for drugs.”
“You’ve never seen the things she did! She kept it all from you because she wanted her little sister to worship her like some sick idol! Did she ever tell you about the little girl she used to push around? Did she?” Kimberly screams back.
With her lower lip trembling, Moet storms out of the bathroom, out the school, and towards home. Dakota was not a whore. Dakota did not use drugs, she kept repeating to herself on her walk home. And each time she said it, the quieter the voice in her head would get and the less she would believe it.
That night, Moet waited patiently right next to her windowsill after she winded up their music box. Tonight, she’d ask Dakota some real questions and get some real answers. The girls were lying. Right?
However, as soon as Dakota tumbled in through the window, Moet gasped at what she saw. Dakota’s face was marred by a single, red hand-shaped mark that was beginning to swell and her eyes were glistening with unshed tears.
“Dakota!” Moet exclaims, and immediately leads her older sister to rest on her bed. The older pale-haired girl was wearing her usual ensemble of a mini skirt and low-cut top with heels, but for the first time, Moet notices how revealing her outfit was and the ugly word “drugwhore” crossed her mind again.
“Hey, sweetie,” Dakota greets her younger sister in a cracking voice. Then, Moet notices the bandages wrapped around the crease of her elbow. As soon as Dakota settled on Moet’s bed, the two fell into an unusual awkward silence.
“What’s up?” Dakota asks cautiously. Her blue eyes flickered with suspicion. “Is something wrong?”
Moet bites her lip and wrings her hands a bit. “It’s just… something that these girls were saying today bothered me.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Dakota’s voice immediately warms up. “Are they giving you a hard time? You know you’re more gorgeous than all the girls there, right? Don’t listen to them--”
“They called you a drugwhore.”
Dakota’s mouth forms a little “O” of surprise at Moet’s blunt out burst. The younger sister waits anxiously for her to vehemently deny it, announce that it was a ridiculous thing for them to say, that it wasn’t true.
But she did none of those things.
“I think… that I should go now,” Dakota replies in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. She gets up, wobbling a bit in her high heels and makes towards the window.
“Dakota, tell me it isn’t true.” Moet pleads.
Slowly turning around to face her younger sister, the tall girl by the window gives her one of the saddest smiles she’d ever seen and says, “It isn’t true.” Then, she disappears into the night as she always does.
Moet sits there stunned.
Dakota had lied to her.
She lied to her.