The Dollhouse

Chapter 16

THANKFULLY, I didn't receive any punishment whatsoever for going to the Dawson's without permission. My father had taken Arabella to some ritzy restaurant in Philadelphia, just the pair of them. Who knows, maybe the spontaneity and romance was enough to make them forget about the fights they had been having recently. They sure had the knack when it came to throwing money around.

My father would lean long in his armchair, ingesting tobacco through the pipe he only smoked when he was winding down. He looked far more tired than a man should. Our lives became so uneventful, I almost started to believe the dullness of the Dollhouse had got to our brains.

"He doesn't seem to be rushing off in secret anymore," I whispered, as soon as I cornered Violet in the bathroom.

Violet was fixing her hair into a set of rollers.

"You think it's over?" she asked flatly.

"Maybe... he made a mistake."

"A mistake? You think him cheating on his second wife was a revolutionary one-time thing? Like he'd never done it before? We shouldn't have the burden of worrying about all this."

"But Dad–"

"Lord, you're like a broken record. Dad, Dad, Dad. Why don't you just shut up?" Violet muttered. "Now tell me, is the left side even?"

"What do you care, it's not like you have any friends to impress." I hated it when she made me sound like a whiny child.

Even with Rudy and Violet, I still held a shred of hope that I had hallucinated the entire thing. The concept of what they did was... vulgar. Was it a one-time thing? Had they done it before? Was it one of those things you never mention again? If the whole thing made me uncomfortable, what were they thinking? Poor lonely Rudy, who had probably never touched a girl in his life. But what did I know? Maybe I just pretended to understand him.

Maybe - and this was a massive maybe - I did have some sort of weird crush on him at first. But never in a million years would I make a move. Violet, who had never had a proper boyfriend but plenty of experience, had a habit of getting bored.

She didn't care about Rudy or his mathematics trophies, his books on Monet, or his cleverness. She wanted him like she wanted every other boy, like Johnny and Casper back home, or even the shirtless neighbor. To prove they liked her. To be honest, I was sort of disgusted that Rudy of all people had fallen under what was rather a translucent spell.

Summer was approaching. The days were saturated with even more afternoon heat than usual. Bugs started to spring from the depths of some east coast hell-dimension, making their way through windows and biting to death. In my little room, the forget-me-nots started to crumple under the sheer effort to stay alive.

The remaining school days began to drag. My friends still kept dropping hints about a prank war.

"We can't do it over the holidays," Danny strode past the lockers like he owned the halls. "Too complicated. Are we meant to show up at Daisy's house every day or what? I think that would be classified as stalking."

"Heck," Nick sighed. "It'll have to be this week."

"I'm not sure if I should get involved with this," I chipped in. "My, uh, parents would be so mad if I got in trouble again."

"They can't kick us out of the last week of term, so who gives a shit," Danny elbowed me, trying to make me smile. When he turned towards Betsy, his gaze lingered, slipping from her eyes to her lips. "What do you say, Dawson? Any plans?"