“Wow.” DeeDee stays quiet for a second. “And your mom? What happened with her? Did you keep going to auditions?”
I shake my head. “I stopped after Youssef left. I just told her I wasn’t doing it anymore and there was nothing she could do about it. I just felt so...so empty, and so pissed, because it was like she was right, you know? She always told me men would use me and let me down no matter how much they seemed to care about me. I hated her for being right. I hated her so much I didn’t care about what would happen if I refused to do what she wanted.”
Everything changed after that. My whole life was built around this idea of ‘just get through high school,’ but when Youssef left, I realized I’d never thought all that much about what I actually wanted from life after high school—other than freedom.
And him.
So I patched up all the holes left in my life plan with music. I wove it like a thread through everything I am. I stretched it out in front of me as one giant piece of fabric and stitched a map that led to everything I wanted to become.
I decided I’d do it my way—not my mom’s, not anyone else’s. Mine. I wouldn’t need men or my looks or dates with creeps carrying roofies. If that meant keeping my head down and my hood up and putting a mile of emotional distance between me and the rest of the world, I’d do it.
I’d become something greater than anything she could have imagined for me. I’d prove her wrong. I’d prove to myself that she was wrong.
DeeDee shifts to face me, blinking up at me from her seat on the floor, and settles herself into a cross-legged position.
“What about your sister?”
Right. That.
I close my eyes for a second and hunch over so I can rest my elbows on my knees. I can still smell the fresh-cut grass of our front lawn the day I left to start graphic design school in Toronto. I was sweating from the effort of packing the car full of boxes when I went inside and found Isabella in her room with the blinds down, the fan cranked up to full blast as she laid on her bed watching a show on her laptop.
We’d been growing apart for years. It was like the farther I drifted from what my mom wanted, the more her grip on Isabella increased. When Iz sided with her on the whole ‘using roofie guy for publicity’ thing, we had a huge fight. She told me she’d never speak to me again if I didn’t listen to our mom.
That’s pretty much how it’s gone since.
The day I moved away, I told her I’d always be there for her. I told her she could call whenever she wanted, and I’d come back and get her. I told her she could trust me.
She didn’t even take her eyes off the TV show.
“We grew apart,” I summarize for DeeDee. “She’s some Instagram socialite in Toronto now. My mom is still her manager.”
“Câlice,” DeeDee swears.
I nod and push myself to my feet. Now that I’ve gotten the story out, I can feel my heart picking up and my skin getting clammy with nerves. The only person I’ve ever told that much to is Youssef.
“Sorry,” I mutter with my eyes on the tile floor. “I know that was a—”
She gets up off the floor so fast I don’t realize what’s happening until her arms are around me.
“Paige, I—Attends. I’m messing up your hair.” She steps back enough to adjust her masterpiece and then places her hands on my shoulders. “You are brave. You are a very brave person. I thought you just didn’t have a fashion sense, but now I see you were protecting yourself.”
Her brown eyes stare straight into mine, fearless and full of understanding. I don’t trust myself to speak around the lump that’s risen in my throat, so I just nod.
“Everybody finds a way to do that. Everybody wears that stuff that...ah...You know the guys on horses wear it? Like with the castles and stuff?”
I squint at her for a moment. “Do you mean knights? Like, knights in armour?”
She snaps her fingers. “Yes! Armour. That is it. Everybody wears armour. Everybody protects themselves, but take it from a girl who learned it the hard way,ma belle: you don’t have to lose yourself to protect yourself, okay?”
She squeezes my shoulders tighter. Her eyes are fierce, her mouth set in a determined line.
She’s been through something too—maybe not the same thing as me, but something like it. As we stand facing each other, just two girls in the tiny bathroom of a tiny apartment in a huge, glittering city, I realize what the lump in my throat and the burning in my chest are: trust.
“Come on.” DeeDee reaches for an eye shadow palette. “Let’s make you look like even more of a badass.”
