If there's anything Evie Barrett has learned in her sixteen years of living, it's that there's a lot more to family than blood. She's stuck by that fact since the day her mother turned her back on her so many years ago, suddenly sharing nothing more...
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EVERYTHING FELT LIKE A BLUR. I could vaguely remember stepping inside the tiny apartment as I stared blankly at the wine stains in the carpet, packing the few essential belongings I had into a bag, and watching the cars outside as we drove to the police station. That was all I'd done lately, was observe my surroundings. But as I sat inside the station, it felt like my life was completely on autopilot, and all I could do was sit there out of touch.
I should have been sobbing. I should have been screaming, broken, absolutely destroyed. My mother was gone, forever, and not just in the metaphorical way. She was the dead kind of gone. Except no matter how hard I tried to get myself to cry, I couldn't. I tried to remember her best moments instead of what she turned into, all I could do was sit there stoic and numb. I tried to picture her from before when she was still 'Mom' to me instead of Whitney. But that mother had long since been dead, locked away in the back of my mind and hiding behind the other, worse memories. Maybe that was why there was no mourning or tears. I had already been grieving that version of her for years now.
But knowing that didn't stop the pit of guilt at the bottom of my stomach from growing. I couldn't even cry at my own mother's death. The pit just grew larger and larger and larger and larger until before I knew it, it consumed me entirely.
TJ's leather jacket was still engulfing my tiny frame, the material almost drowning me. I had never felt so small before, especially when a worker there asked me if I was willing to be questioned about her. I'm assuming that it was concerns due to the bruise, but I silently refused and stared down at the jacket's sleeves. TJ said he found it at a pawn shop a long time ago, and while it was roughed up from years of consistent wearing, the original patches still remained. I traced the letters on one of them with my thumb, the movement slightly pulling me back to reality. Familiar voices were talking with another new one, and I lifted my head up to the see none other than Niko and TJ discussing something with the lady behind the counter. They saw me looking at them and hurried over to my seat in the cushion chair.
"Hey, we came as soon as we could," Niko said and rubbed my shoulder, sympathy in his voice. It was clear that this was taking almost as much of a toll on him as it was me, and I immediately felt a surge of guilt. "Ma and Pa were tied up at the diner, and Theo had to get home, but they're really sorry—"
"Please tell them not to worry about it, I didn't want them to see me like this anyway," I said, shaking my head. They obviously just cared, but they didn't need another reason to lose sleep over me. I had a feeling that I looked almost as awful as I felt.
Worry was evident in their eyes as they looked at each other. "You holding up okay?"
That was a question that I would have loved to know the answer to. I couldn't even think of her without feeling like so was going to be sick, and all I really wanted was to crawl in my bed and sleep off the rest of the exhausting day. Some would say that I was in denial or ignoring the truth, but maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. It sure seemed like the easier option.
