"Where the hell have you been?" I hadn't even fully shut the front door when Leighton came barreling towards me from the sitting room to my left. She was still wearing pajamas, half of her short hair pulled into an elastic at the back of her head, baby finger-smudged glasses over her bloodshot eyes. She looked as if she hadn't slept, and judging by the time stamps on the multitude of missed texts and calls from her, it was even more obvious she hadn't.
"I was with Isaac," I sighed, forcing myself to keep my tone even despite my entire body going on edge at her attack. As I leaned back against the door to click it into place, Dan emerged from the back of the house, catching my eye as he lingered in the hallway. I wasn't surprised that he was around, or that he opted out of intervening. Leighton and I had hardly spoken all week, since our fight about the boy's birthday party, and Dan had always found himself available when necessary to be the middleman between us, simultaneously catering to our refusal to talk to each other while prompting us in solitude to be the first to call a truce.
Leighton had tried, more than once, including her out of character allowance of letting Isaac into my room to kidnap me to the marshes, but our interactions remained minimal. I couldn't bring myself to forgive her for the insinuation she made about my last night with Nolan, and I had a sinking feeling that, after the impending fight between us, it would be even harder for me to do so.
"You couldn't call, or text? Dammit, Loren, I know you're nineteen, but I still need to know where you are!" She had continued before I could even try to explain why I was with Isaac, launching right into the lecture I knew I was in for.
I was sure, from her perch in the loveseat, she had watched Isaac drop me off anyways, and her question was more rhetorical than inquisitive. Knowing where I was had taken the worry from her voice and expression, leaving her with anger that I hadn't let her know myself.
"Look, Leighton, I-" She didn't give me a chance to finish. Her voice rose over mine, and I bit down on my lip to attempt to stop myself from yelling back at her, feeling us rapidly falling back into the vicious cycle of arguments we had been having all summer about my behavior, my relationship with our parents, my friendship with Isaac.
"And with Isaac, of all people? After you've promised me for the last five weeks that you wouldn't get involved with him, now you're spending nights at his house."
"Leighton, I-" My attempt to explain once again went interrupted, Leighton's voice pitching over mine. I shot a pleading glance at Dan over his shoulder, begging him to intercede before I lost my rapidly depleting temper and made the situation worse. He stepped closer to us, watching closely, but still stay tight-lipped.
"That family has enough going on, Loren, they do not need their son getting in trouble on top of everything else they're dealing with." I was momentarily too stunned to say anything, my mind working to unpack the multiple revelations Leighton had just dropped while still somewhat listening to her berates, listening for what I needed to defend myself. "I thought this summer was about you moving past everything that happened last semester, about you starting over and doing better, but you haven't changed, Loren! You're still drinking, you're still smoking and you're still-"
It may have been the look on my face, or maybe it was the words that Leighton had already spewed, or something that she was getting ready to say next that had been hurled at Dan all night in my absence, but he finally stepped forward. He reached for Leighton and wrapped a hand around her upper arm, pulling her away from me, quietly asking her to calm down. She shot him a hard, deadly glance, but still pushed her lips together anyways, crossing her arms tightly over her chest as she turned back to me.
"Wait, so you know about Isaac's parents?" I asked, my eyes focusing on Dan. If either of them had the information, it would be Dan. Working so closely with Isaac's father, it shouldn't have been so surprising to me that he knew there was something going on.
"Yes, we do," Dan responded calmly, still keeping his hand on my sisters' shoulder. "Gabriel called me early this morning when he stopped at home to check in on Isaac."
"So then you already knew I was at Isaac's last night," I said pointedly, crossing my arms over my chest. The furious, disappointed expression mixed onto my sister's face was impossible to ignore, slowly filling me with anger of my own. "And you know why. Leighton, you of all people should understand, you know how hard it was when Dad left." Mentioning him still left a bitter taste in my mouth, but it seemed to soften Leighton's eyes for a moment before she snapped back, eyelids narrowing over her green eyes into a glare. "Isaac was upset, and yesterday was his birthday. He didn't want to be alone, so he asked me to stay. Nothing happened." The fibs fell out of my mouth easily, but the few sips of Andie's drink that I took at the restaurant were not worth mentioning, nor were the kisses that passed between us.
"This isn't just about Isaac," Leighton continued, her words starting off steeped in anger before Dan squeezed her shoulder lightly, and they transformed to clipped through a clenched jaw. She looked as if she wanted to continue, but I was long past the point of letting her scold me for this she still didn't understand.
"Then what is it about, Leighton?" I interrupted her, unable to keep myself from raising my voice. "The fact that I drink sometimes? Cause we haven't fought about that enough this summer. Or the weed? Cause we all know that I'm just a huge drug addict, right? That's what this is really about, isn't? What happened New Year's Eve with Nolan, because you don't actually believe me, right? You don't actually believe that those drugs weren't mine, and that's why you warned me to stay away from Isaac!" My body urged me forward, an involuntary step towards my sister. "That's why you get made if I stay out or come home late and you don't know!" My arm came away from my chest as I pointed my finger at her, my entire body tense with rage as the words spilled violently from my mouth. "That's why you care so much about me talking to mom! Because you believe her, and you think that all of this is my fault!" Somewhere in the house, I heard the boys start to cry. For once, neither my sister nor Dan moved.
"Well you know what, I guess it is!" I threw my hands up as I screamed. "It's my fault that Nolan blamed the drugs on me, cause I guess I'm just an easy target! And it's my fault that everyone believed him, cause I was so much of a fucking screw up that it was so easy to believe that I'd do something that stupid! And it's my fault that Carl left mom, cause my supposed drug habit was just too hard for him to handle! And it's my fault that I wrote to Dad and begged, begged him to help me, and all I got was a fucking email saying that he was too damn busy with his new family to remember his first! Is that what you want to hear?" My voice cracked in the air between us, my voice burning raw as I yelled as loud as I could. My cheeks were red with anger, hot tears pricking at my eyes and tracing patterns down my cheeks. I choked on the air that I tried to inhale as the last words left my lips and hung in the space between us, my chest heaving with my effort to calm myself down.
Dan, who had taken his hand from Leighton's shoulder, was watching me with a deeply sympathetic expression, his eyes more broken than I had ever seen them as he peered down at me from behind my sister. My sister, whose mouth hung open, whose own wide eyes pooled with tears along her lower lashes, whose shoulders slumped as the anger faded from her body at my tired, remorse etching itself into every aspect of her face and body.
"Loren," she exhaled, so quietly that I could barely hear it over the pounding in my ears and the scratching of my breathing. When she stepped towards me, raising her arms, I recoiled.
"Don't you dare touch me," I hissed at her, watching the dejected expression twist its way across her features.
"It was hard enough trying to make it through this last semester with the way Mom was treating me, with the way my friends exiled me because they couldn't give their parents any reason to believe that I wasn't actually the low-life they all said I was, with Dad scorning me for his new wife and kids, but I thought, I at least thought that I still had my sisters. I thought that I still had you."
"You do-"
"No," I snapped, cutting her off when she tried to reach for me again, a frightened expression raising her eyebrows. "All summer you've been treating me just like everyone else who doesn't believe me, just like everyone else who wants to take all of our problems and dump them on my shoulders. I don't have you, Leighton. I never did. You've made that very clear."
Leighton's mouth hung open, her eyes flashing between Dan and me, but I knew that, at least for now, Dan wasn't going to intercede anymore. He seemed to understand better than Leighton that what I really needed right now was space, because when I started to back away, reaching my hand out for the door, he gently put a hand on my sister's shoulder again when she made a move after me.
As soon as my hand landed on the cool metal, I yanked the door open around me. Pulling my eyes from Dan's solemn expression and my sister's heartbroken eyes, I turned from the house, slamming the door shut behind me before fleeing down the stairs.