I'm With You

Chapter Seven: Marcella

Chapter Seven: Marcella

An icy silence had fallen over Ash and I by the time we were on the road.

I didn't question him when he appeared exactly five minutes after his departure with only a black duffle bag in hand.

I didn't complain about the fact that I hardly had time to clean myself up, only managing to scrape my messy blonde hair into a high pony tail and wash my face and teeth of overnight grime.

I didn't even voice my surprise when I realized the empty house we were leaving was in fact Ash's home, the one he never complained about my hesitance to enter. Now I can see why. It'd be a little questionable if I had walked into my boyfriend's house, only to find it completely void of furniture or any appliances that would hint at a normal human being living there.

It was Ash who finally broke the chilly tension building between us.

"Here." Looking over, I see Ash holding my phone out to me. Until now, I hadn't even thought of the fact that it wasn't in my possession. Nothing like two near death experiences and a startling revelation to keep a teen's mind off her phone.

Taking it from him, I can't help but notice he hasn't glanced my way once. Telling myself I shouldn't care and reminding myself I'm still furious with him, I look down at my iPhone in question.

"Call your parents," Ash says with all the emotion of a robot. "We'll be passing your house in a little over four minutes. Say whatever you have to, but don't tell them the truth."

Feeling my heart beat quicken, I look at Ash. His jaw is clenched tightly, and his hands grip the steering wheel in a white knuckled grip. He's doing an amazing job of drilling a hole with his glare into the road before us rather than look me in the eye.

Letting out of breath I quickly dial my home number.

Anxiety turns my stomach, and it's the same feeling I experienced the one time I convinced Xi to lie to our parents and drive with me to a carnival three hour away that they had clearly told us we weren't allowed to go to. We were sixteen and it was a school night.

When we came back home, my parents grounded me for three weeks, but her mom merely yelled at her for taking the car.

But this feeling is so much worse. I know that I'm not going to be gone only a few hours and then back safely-if not in trouble-in my bed.

"Hello," the deep, gruff voice that answers is unmistakably my father's, but there's an underlining of stress that usually isn't there. "Hello? Who is-"

"Dad," I answer after a moment of hesitation. My voice comes out small and meek like when I was a little girl and had to admit to something I did wrong.

"Marci?! Oh, thank God! Where have you been? We've been looking-wait," his voice becomes distant and I can imagine him leaning from the phone as he calls for my mom. "Maria, it's Marcella! Come here!"

"Dad," I try and get his attention back, but he interrupts me with a tirade of questions.

"Where the hell have you been?" I can hear the unveiled anger in his voice and it only makes the sickening feeling in my stomach worse. I try to remind myself that he's worried about me. "Do you know how worried we've been? I wanted to call the police, but your mother..."

My dad continues his tirade, but for what I know is only a couple of seconds but feels like long minutes, I close my eyes and images flash through my head.