Before The Storm (5 page)

Mo must have the same feeling because he dives under the pillow along with my phone, allowing only his little black nose out for air.

“Come in,” I say.

I’m expecting my aunt, but instead a large man with a beard and dark brown hair enters. I would’ve thought someone was coming to take me back to the wellness center if he didn’t have such a huge grin spread across his face. Oh, and you know, the dark red shirt with the Bloomfield Suites logo in the upper right hand corner.

“Victoria? Mrs. Bloomfield sent us up with some packages for you.”

Did he say Mrs.? Had my aunt been married at some point? Was she still? She hasn’t mentioned a husband. She hasn’t even mentioned a boyfriend, or a sort of boyfriend.

“Oh, you can just set them down anywhere,” I tell him as I reach my hand slowly under the pillow to retrieve my phone, slightly touching Mo’s fur as I do. To my surprise he doesn’t flinch or cry out, probably because the thought of anyone else being in the room is enough for him to stay put.

“Great! I’m Mitch by the way!” the man says as he throws the door open and pushes his big body through the narrow doorway. “Right in here boys!”

Boys? Suddenly my room is filled with five men, all in Bloomfield Suites uniforms. They begin to drop boxes and bags everywhere, retreating out into the hallway for even more. Wow, when my Aunt Jenna said she ordered me a few things, I literally thought she meant just that, a few things. This was way more than a few. This was more like a hundred.

And then, just as fast as they enter my room they make their way back out into the hall and toward the elevator.

“Okay, I think that about does it!” Mitch says, looking down at the clipboard in his hand. “Oh, and Mrs. Bloomfield told me to tell you this envelope here is for you.” He points to a large manila envelope sitting neatly on top of a few boxes near the front of the room. “Are these things that got sent back from your vacation?” he asks.

“What vacation?”

“Um…” he looks down at the clipboard in his hand, seeming slightly nervous for the first time since he walked into the bedroom. “The vacation you just got back from?”

Oh, right, “the vacation.”

“Oh, right! Sorry,” I say, hitting myself over the head as if to say oops, what can you do, clearly I’m just a silly teenager who forgets things.

He looks at me kind of strangely but nods anyway, “Right, well you have a good day.”

“You too!” I call as he shuts the door behind him.

I jump up and grab the envelope as soon as the coast is clear, rip it open, and drop the contents on the bed. It’s the shorts and T-shirt I was wearing the morning that Mrs.

Newington and the others from the center dragged me out of bed and took me to “heal.”

Just looking at them makes me sick. I pick them up in one swoop, along with the envelope, and shove them into the trashcan next to the dresser. Just as I’m shoving them down as far as they can possibly go I feel something soft hit the bottom of my foot. The small frame of a shell strikes my vision and I immediately feel tears spring up behind my eyes. I bend down slowly and pick up the necklace, softly turning the shell over and over again in my hand.

Shell. Nathan’s nickname for me tugs at my heart. As does the day that he gave me this necklace.

I glance over at the mirror and watch myself as I fasten the necklace around my neck. It looks so perfect, like it belongs, like it’s meant for my neck. I never want to take it off again. I will not cry, I will not cry, I tell myself.

I grab my iPhone off my bed and compose a new text message to my aunt.

“Do you mind if I invite my friend Angelina over after she gets out of school?”

The response comes immediately. “Not at all! I should be back up in a little while.”

I pause for a second and then turn to look at Mo who’s now lying on his back on the bed, having a little rest. Okay, here goes.

I compose a new text to the number I learned so long ago. I make it simple and straight to the point.

“S.O.S. xox Tori.”

I then attach the address and room number of the hotel that I saw on the matchbook tucked inside the nightstand drawer next to my new phone. S.O.S. is something Angelina and I used when we were younger, anytime one of us was going through something we felt was awful. The message is clear and straight to the point.

Come, and fast.

I sigh and toss the phone nervously on the top of my pillow. I then turn my head toward the bags and bags of stuff my aunt sent up for me.

“Might as well try to unpack,” I say, looking at Mo who immediately springs his body under the pillow at the sound of my voice.

Jeez, bipolar much.

***

Twenty minutes later I’m sitting in the middle of the floor of my room with bags upon bags of clothes spread out around me. I was expecting maybe a few bags of things to choose from, but my aunt apparently got completely and totally carried away. There are jeans, t-shirts, dresses, tank tops, pajamas, skirts, and shorts in every color you could imagine. I even have some of the same in different sizes, like maybe she hadn’t been sure which size exactly would fit me right. There aren’t only clothes either. She also purchased various types of jewelry and hair accessories, not to mention tons of different shades of makeup, nail polish, a curling iron, straightener, and about seven kinds of hairbrushes.

In the past, I never bothered with my appearance unless I had Angelina’s help, or toward the end to impress Nathan. I’ve never really been a girl’s girl. Not because I’m against it or anything. I guess I’ve just never cared enough to put in that much effort, especially since my mom died.

It’s clear though that with my Aunt Jenna things will be different. She seems to like looking her best, even first thing in the morning. Not only that, but for the first time since my aunt picked me up I’m now realizing how much money she has. She has enough money to just waste. She didn’t even think twice about getting me any of this stuff. I mean she doesn’t even know what kind of clothes I like, yet it doesn’t faze her in the least.

Don’t get me wrong, like I said, my dad’s a well-known attorney, but he never spends money like this. He never just buys stuff because he can. The whole thing is making me curious, but also kind of uneasy.

Just as I’m pulling on a gray tank top and a pair of black yoga pants, I hear a knock on the door of our hotel suite. At first I’m not sure what I should do. I leap over to my bed and check my phone. No word from Angelina. It couldn’t possibly be her this soon anyway. School won’t be over for hours.

The knocking grows louder and I look at Mo for an answer. He yelps when I make eye contact with him, jumps off the bed, and runs under my dresser.

“Oh, thanks a lot!” I hiss.

Shit, shit, shit. What to do, what to do? My Aunt Jenna didn’t tell me what to do if someone knocked on the door. I mean I do live here, I guess, only I really don’t. It’s not like I feel like this is my home exactly.

Bang, bang, bang.

Ugh, whatever. I swing open the door to my room and jog down the hallway toward the main entrance. I mean, shouldn’t they have a doorman or something monitoring people who come in?

The first thing I see when I swing open the door is hair. Perfect, dark, curly hair, falling in natural spirals across Angelina’s face, just as it always has. And before I know it she’s in my arms and we’re hugging.

I hold onto her for dear life. I hold onto her so tight that I fear I might crush her. I can feel the strap on my tank top getting wet from the tears falling from her eyes. I can feel my emotions growing, starting to boil over, but I don’t cry. I stopped crying months ago, no matter what I’m feeling inside of my heart.

She finally pulls back and holds my hands in hers.

“It’s really you,” she whispers, looking me up and down as if she’s searching for any imperfection in me, any trace of evidence that this could all be a trick or a dream.

I nod. “It’s really me. And it’s really you.”

Neither of us says anything for a moment. We just stare at one another in silence.

We stare at each other like it’s the first time we’ve ever seen something so real and beautiful in our entire lives.

Angelina is the only real best friend I’ve ever had. She’s the only person, besides my mom, who has ever put my needs above her own, all without a second thought. Our friendship is completely unselfish, and if I didn’t realize it before, spending the last three months in a prison-like situation has proven it to me even more.

When we finally stop staring at one another she’s the first to speak. The look of bewilderment and awe leaves her eyes, she drops my hands, takes a step back, and throws her arms up into the air.

“Well what the fuck happened to you? I mean, what really happened?! And don’t bother feeding me that bullshit story your father and stepmom spread around! I mean, what do they think I was born yesterday? You would never just pack up and leave in the middle of the night to go live with an aunt I never even heard of!” She then bites her lip and tries to read my expression. “You wouldn’t, right?”

I laugh. I honestly laugh out loud at the expression on her face. “God, I missed you.”

“I missed you too. Now please, before I lose my mind, tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Well, what do you know?” I ask her.

“Nothing, I know nothing. I just know that one day you were gone. It was literally like you vanished off the face of the earth. One day you’re just not in school, and then your cell phone was shut off. So, of course, I went to your house, but no one answered.

After a week I went back and your dad and stepmom finally let me in and told me you had gone to stay with your aunt. They said you were having trouble dealing with what happened with your mom.”

My heart stings at the mention of my mom. Angelina softens her tone a little. “I just kept waiting, kept calling, but after a month I knew something else was going on, that there was more to the story. No matter what you were going through, or what you felt, you would never just not reach out to me for that long. I mean we’ve never even gone a day without talking since we met.”

Her voice is sad. I turn my eyes away from hers so I don’t have to see the look on her face a second longer.

“Tori, tell me.”

Tori. The nickname she uses for me feels almost foreign now. Almost unreal. But somehow, amazingly, it also sounds like heaven to my ears. And I realize that somewhere deep down inside of me I think maybe I’m never going to hear her voice say it to me again.

“We should make coffee. This could take a while,” I tell her, motioning for her to follow me.

“Fine with me, since apparently you own a hotel now.”

I laugh as I start going through the motions of making a pot of coffee. “I don’t own it, my aunt does.”

Angelina takes off her jacket and slings it over the side of one of the chairs at the table. “Not according to the guy who works at the front desk. He said ‘aw yes, all this will be Miss Victoria’s one day.’ Then he like motions his hand around in a swirl for dramatic affect.”

“Well, he’s clearly delusional, which only fits considering the way the past three months have gone for me.”

She makes her way to the other side of the counter with me. I study her as she walks. She’s wearing a pair of white leggings with a jean skirt and pink long sleeved shirt with a slight dip at the neck. She pulls it off with no effort at all. It’s the type of outfit that most girls dream about being able to pull off, including me.

I fill the two mugs on the counter up to the brim and we both start mixing our coffee just the way we like it, mine with lots of cream and Splenda and hers with lots of milk and sugar. We both take a sip to make sure it’s perfect and then walk over to the table to sit down. We look at each other for a few seconds as we silently sip our coffee.

“Okay,” she says, “spill.”

I take a deep breath and gather up all the patience that I can in my body.

“Well, it all started when, somehow, my dad and Missy found out about me and Nathan.” Angelina’s mouth drops open and her face becomes overwhelmed with shock.

“Oh, pace yourself. That’s nowhere near the most shocking part.”

And so for the next twenty minutes we sit there together and I fill her in on exactly how crazy my life has been for the past three months. I tell her about how I was taken from my bed in the middle of the night, how everything I did was watched and analyzed, about my group and individual therapy sessions, about how I wrote her but apparently my letters never got to her, about Eric, about the endless nights and days at the center, about the tears, and about my crazy roommate who is now blackmailing me. I tell her how my dad and Missy never came to visit me, not once, about how much I missed her, about how I have no idea what anyone thinks about where I’ve been, or what anyone was told about what happened to me. I explain the story about the blue bunny and how it led to the realization that I have an aunt I never even knew existed. And, even worse, how my father didn’t tell her that I never knew about her, and how I had to break the news to her myself.

And then I talk about Nathan. About how much I miss him, about how I can’t stop thinking about him, about how I pretty much had to lie to everyone at the wellness center in order to get out of there, about how everyone thinks I have all intentions of moving on with my life without him, but the reality is I know deep down I can never let him go. I can never give up on him, no matter what I tell anyone.

Angelina is perfect as she always is. She listens calmly to everything I say, taking it all in and processing it fully. She just lets me go on and on venting about each thing, never interrupting. That’s one reason why she’s my best friend. She knows exactly what I need, when I need it. And she always delivers with no problem.

When I’m finally done I feel so much better. Even though we’re in this strange place, and so much has happened to me since the last time we’ve seen one another, somehow it all feels right. Somehow I feel so much better.

Neither of us says anything for what feels like forever.

“Say something,” I tell her finally.