Hothouse Flower (39 page)

< 64 >

DAISY CALLOWAY

I need air. The kind that bursts your lungs. The
kind of jolt that sends your entire body reverberating with energy and
electricity.

I want to wake up.

I’m tired of being in a half-sleep. Of seeing the world
through a foggy lens.

I park my Ducati on a bridge that overlooks a murky lake. The
night air whips around me, reminding me that it’s almost December. The chill
awakens my bones, and I peel off my green cargo jacket. Just a thin tank top
and jeans left. I easily hoist my body on the old brick ledge, welcoming the
cold from up high.

I had to leave the house. When Lily relapses or has some
sort of emotional event, I feel in the way. Like a piece of furniture blocking
everyone’s path. It’s best just to be gone. And there’s nowhere I’d rather be
than here.

On a bridge.

Outstretching my arms, the air seems to pinch me, wake me
up, fill me with something
more
.

I love escaping to the roofs of buildings and shouting at
the top of my lungs, but my voice dries in my throat tonight, pushed too deeply
to retrieve. I just want to fly through the air. I just want to soar.

I peer down at the waters, nearly black in the darkness, the
crescent moon casting an eerie glow over the rippling surface. I’ve jumped off
this bridge before. It’s not too high, but the tree banks are shallow and muddy
tonight, and the water line looks low. Too low? I don’t know.

I can’t explain these feelings.

A pressure on my chest threatens to combust.

Just wake up, Daisy.

Jump.

I look around to make sure I’m alone. No lurking cameramen
who followed me here. But headlights beam from the left.

I focus back on the water, bumps dotting my arms as the cold
sweeps me in a sharp embrace. Half of my feet stick off the ledge. I brace
myself.

“CALLOWAY!”

< 65 >

RYKE MEADOWS

She looks over her shoulder, startled by my voice,
her face illuminated by the moon. She never anticipated on being found. Drawing
attention—that’s not her fucking ploy. Every time she runs off, she does it
alone, and I’ve always feared the one time where she won’t return, floating
dead on the surface of a lake, an ocean, a river.

Not tonight.

Not fucking ever.

I climb off my bike, anger darkening my features and tensing
my muscles. Her father has been paranoid since we arrived back in Philly. He
put a GPS locator in her bike. One call to him, and I found out she decided to
ride to Carnegie Lake.

“Hey,” she says like she’s window shopping at a mall. She
smiles and spins around so her back faces the lake, but she dangerously sticks
more of her heels off the ledge. “The question is: backflip or
frontflip
?” She wags her eyebrows.

“Neither,” I snap. “Get the fuck down.” I rarely tell her
no, but I remember when I chaperoned her sixteenth birthday. That cliff in
Acapulco. I screamed at her, veins popping in my fucking neck, telling her to
stop.

There are some things so dangerous that death looks more
probable than life. That’s when I’ll grab her. That’s when I’ll try to force
her down.

“I’ve jumped from this before,” she says with a shrug. “It’s
okay.”

“It’s not,” I tell her. “The water levels are fucking low.”
The only reason I know this is Connor Cobalt—a throwaway comment a few days ago
about the Princeton row competition being canceled because of shallow waters.

“The danger,” she says theatrically, her mouth curving
upward.

I climb onto the fucking ledge next to her, and she stiffens
at my presence, some of the humor exiting her face.

“What?” I snap. “You jump, I jump. That’s how this works,
Dais. So you want to break your leg, split open your head, you’re going to do
the same to me. Can you fucking handle that?”

Her eyes flicker from the water to me. And her voice turns
into a whisper, no more games, no more jokes, she says, “Just let me go.”

My body runs cold. “Do you want to die?” I question. I’ve
asked her this once before, after Acapulco. She never answered me, but I knew
it anyway. This light inside of her dims if you watch closely enough, and she’s
searching and searching for something to ignite her spirit, a power to keep her
alive.

She stares into my hard gaze, where I never go easy on her,
and tears well in her eyes.

“You know what you fucking are?” I ask, edging closer, my
hand dropping to her waist.

She shakes her head, and our boots knock together, but we
both maintain balance.

 
I reach out, and I
hold her cheek with the scar. “You’re a hothouse flower,” I tell her. “You
can’t grow under natural conditions. You need adventure. And security and
love
in order to stay alive.”

Her shoulders tense and her collarbones jut out from the
thin straps of her tank top, barely breathing. She is suffocating. And she’s
looking for a way to relieve that pressure. An adrenaline rush is a temporary
fix. She needs something more.

“Explode,” I tell her, still cupping her face.

She frowns at me. “What?”

“Let it out,” I say. “
Scream
.”

She shakes her head like that’s impossible, like
what will that help?
“I just want…” She
blows out a breath from her lips. I can see that pressure bearing down on her,
trapping her. She wants to fucking jump so badly. My hand tightens on her
waist.

“I can’t fucking hear you,” I growl.

Anger flickers in her eyes.
Good.

“Get fucking angry, Daisy. Be something. YELL!”

She opens her mouth but no sound comes out.

I push her harder by saying, “You can’t talk to your sisters
because you’re so fucking afraid of causing a scene, but there’s something
inside of you that wants to get out.” I point at her heart. “There’s something
in there, and if you don’t burst, it’s going to fucking tear you apart.”

She breathes heavily. “Stop.”

“It fucking hurts, doesn’t it?!” I shout at her.

She cringes, and her eyes start to redden.

“Why are you holding back? No one’s fucking here but you and
me!” My hand slides to the small of her back. “Stop pretending to be fine when
all you really want to do is fucking scream?!”

Her chest collapses. I almost have her there.

“Do it!” I shout, my blood pumping. I’m in her face, not
letting her dodge this, not letting her give up on herself. “Finally, for the
first time in your fucking life, let go!”

And then she grabs onto my shoulders, and I feel her body
before I hear her voice. How she has to clutch onto me, how she has to brace
herself to something fucking sturdy. Her scream pierces my ears, the most
powerful fucking thing in the universe. The pain and ache rip through her yell.

She jostles me, shaking me like she’s shaking the entire
fucking world. And I support both of us on the ledge, careful and attentive so
we don’t fall.

For another full minute, she releases everything she’s
buried inside, and then she crumbles into my arms. I hold her upright, brushing
the hair off her face. And her green eyes meet mine, drained but light. So
fucking light.

I don’t say anything.

I just kiss her, breathing more life into her body. On a
ledge. A shallow lake below. She responds by clutching the back of my head, her
fingers tightening in my hair. Her body curves towards mine, and I inhale,
wrapped in the heat of her skin and the beat of her heart, pounding against my
chest.

We’re not there for long before a car rolls to a stop in
front of us. A concerned stranger opens his door, but I keep kissing her. And
her lips rise into a smile, not breaking apart just yet.

“Hey,” the man yells, “the water is too shallow!” He squints
and gets a good look at us. “Are you two crazy?” He shakes his head and climbs
back in his car.

Daisy’s lips leave mine, and a gorgeous fucking smile
overtakes her face. Her light restored. Powered up and fucking charged.

My hothouse flower that I will always keep alive.

“We are pretty crazy,” she whispers to me.

I mess her hair with a rough hand, the blonde strands
tangled wildly, and I remember what Sully said awhile back about her being fun
and me being fucking moody. “Yeah? Maybe our kids will be crazy like us.”

She gasps playfully. “You want to make babies with me?”

I answer by kissing her with a strong force, and she runs
her hands through my thick hair. I lift her in my arms and bring her off the ledge,
to safety. And back home.

< 66 >

RYKE MEADOWS

Connor pours coffee into a Styrofoam cup since all
the mugs are packed in boxes. I sit on a bar stool next to Lo while the girls
talk alone in the living room, an archway from us. Some months ago, there was a
drooping banner hanging over it, saying
Bon
Voyage, Daisy.
Now this place is empty, bare, a house full of so many
fucking memories that we’re all going to leave behind.

I can’t see the couch from here or Daisy seated on the
cushion. I’m nervous
for
her, but I’m
also relieved that she’s finally going to get this shit off her chest. Before
we left the bridge, she said, “I don’t want to drag myself down anymore.”

There is no good time to release news that hurts people.

Lily said something like that tonight, and I think Daisy has
finally learned that too.
 

“Is she okay?” Connor asks me.

“She’s better. She just needed to scream,” I say, twirling a
fucking salt shaker on the counter.

“That’s not surprising.” Connor hands me a cup of coffee. “I
have to force Rose to scream every now and then. Must be a product of being
raised by Samantha.”

Lo shakes his head. “Lily doesn’t have that problem.”

We both look at him. He doodles fucking circles and squares
on a paper napkin, and his pen stops at our silence.

Connor tells him, flat out, “That would be because Samantha
didn’t raise Lily.”
Lo’s
best friend, his girlfriend,
his fiancée—she was pretty much the undesirable daughter, I’ve come to realize
over the years. She was the one Samantha let run off to the Hale residence, the
ugly fucking duckling, even though she is beautiful, just too shy for Samantha
to understand.

Lo doesn’t deny the claim, but he doesn’t say anything
either.

“You can’t control the past, Lo,” Connor adds. “And I raised
myself too. It’s not such a shameful thing.”

He resumes drawing on the napkin. I nudge
Lo’s
shoulder. “How you holding up?”

“Ask me again when it fucking sinks in,” he says.

“That you’re going to have a kid?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “And I already feel fucking awful for the
thing.”

“He may not have addiction problems, Lo,” I say.

“No, it’s not that.” Lo looks up from his napkin and points
the pen at Connor. “Our kid is going to have to compete with
theirs
. It’s already fucked and it’s not
even born yet.”

I can’t help it, I smile. Connor tries hard not to, hiding
his grin into the rim of his cup. “Connor’s kid is also going to be a snot, so
you can rest assured that yours won’t be totally fucked,” I say.

Connor opens his mouth, about to retort, but sudden sobs
come from the living room. I straighten up. Hell, we all do.

“Should we go in there?” Lo asks, gripping the edge of the
counter, ready to jump.

Connor’s the only one who seems at ease. “Five more
minutes.”

I hope I can wait that long.

< 67 >

DAISY CALLOWAY

Lily has started to cry and I’ve barely begun. I
sit on the hardwood floor while they’re bunched together on the couch. They
offered me room on the cushion, but I decided to face them directly, head-on.
No more breaks.

Rose gestures to me. “Keep going. She’s hormonal.”

“I am,” Lily nods and accepts the tissues that Rose throws
on her lap. “I’m sorry, Daisy. I just think I know where this is going. But
yeah, keep going. Please.” She nods again and lets out a slow breath.

First I explain how my sleep has been terrible for almost a
year. How I’ve had to see a therapist, and how all the doctors and sleep
studies concluded that I’m an insomniac. How I was prescribed Ambien with night
terrors attached. I skip over the
whys
and save those for last. They’re the most difficult to even admit.

Rose is quick to fill the silence when words escape me.
“You’ve been going through this alone, this whole time?” Her expression
transforms into regret and guilt. I try not to focus on the pain in her eyes,
or in Lily’s. I’ve only ever wanted to make people smile, not cry. But there’s
no avoiding this.

“I had
Ryke
,” I say. “He’s been
there for me.”

“But you didn’t have us, your family,” Rose says, clasping
the box of tissues with an iron grip. “You know you can come to us with anything,
Daisy, right? We love you.”

Lily nods in agreement. “Whatever it is, we’re here.”

I believe it, but they haven’t heard the
whys
yet. They just have part of the
story, but I know I have to paint a clearer picture. I describe the easiest
moments first. The ones that I’ve recounted to my therapist and
Ryke
a million times over.

The cameraman who broke into my bedroom.

The pissed off pedestrian that attacked my motorcycle and
then attacked me.

But the story that hurts the most is after all of those.
It’s the one begging to be released, pleading to be shared and let go. It’s
just a matter of starting.

Beginnings are the hardest because they’re the parts that
pull people in, that make them want the ends. And endings are the most painful,
the parts that can leave you bleeding out.

I don’t have any more time. I just have to begin.

I stare at my hands, unable to look them in the face. “I was
sixteen when your sex addiction became public, Lily.” I pause and take a deep
breath before continuing. “I remember the day I went back to school. My friends
asked all these questions.” At first I hesitate on repeating them, but I look
up and Lily actually nods at me, encouraging me to continuing.

She says, “It’s okay.”

My sister’s strength floods into me, and it propels me to
continue, like a gust of wind blowing me in the right direction.

Even if it hurts, I say it.

“My friends would ask:
Does
your sister just sit in a room and fuck all day? Does she bang girls?
” I
cringe as I remember more. “
How bad does
she want it? Would she fuck me? Would she fuck a homeless man?
” I swallow.
“And I didn’t have any answers for them. And I didn’t know if it was true, but
I defended you anyway.” I’d still defend her today. I’d do it all over again. I
can’t ever regret that. “The questions started to change though.”

“To what?” Rose asks with a frown.

I shrug. “They started asking me things. Like,
do you do it all the time too? Do you like
it in the ass, Daisy? Would you fuck me? Would you blow me?
”

“God,” Rose says, whipping out her cellphone. “Who are
they?”

Lily reaches for Rose’s hands and whispers in a small voice,
“Let her finish, Rose.”

My fiercest sister reluctantly turns off her phone and waits
for me to continue.

I rub my eyes and keep my gaze on the hardwood as the
seriously deranged part takes ahold of me.
Please
say it, Daisy. Please don’t be a coward.
I breathe deeply. “The entire
time…I thought my friends, Cleo and Harper, were still my friends. I mean…” I
let out a weak, tearful laugh. “I grew up with them. I knew Cleo since she was
six, and I thought childhood friends were the ones that last…like you and Lo,”
I say to Lily. My eyes drop to my fingers. I scrape the yellow paint off of my
nail.

I see the rest play out in my head. I see the scene like it
was yesterday. A flash bulb, a memory that surfaces to haunt me and to release
me from this hell.

Cleo and Harper had called me to go shopping with them, but
their breath stunk of booze. They’d been at a “brunch” party with a handful of
other kids from school. Hunch punch was served apparently. And they said that I
was talked about a lot, but they never said what. They just giggled and
laughed, in a drunken stupor.

I should have left, but I was worried they’d do something
stupid, like shoplift. So I stayed with them, and I rode with them up the
elevator to Cleo’s penthouse apartment—where she lived with her parents and
this pretty black cat named Shadow.

And then Cleo, with her silky blonde hair and coveted
Birkin
bag on her arm, did something…she pressed the
emergency stop.

I smiled at her devious grin, thinking they wanted to pull a
prank on maintenance. “What are we doing?” I asked.

“Seeing if it fits,” Cleo said, and she shared a furtive
glance with Harper. They both giggled again. Cleo wobbled in her heels, and
Harper dug her hand in a shopping bag, revealing a pink dildo.

My smile vanished. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Some of the guys wanted to know,” Cleo said, “how many
inches fit inside you. We told them we’d find out.”

I tried to laugh it off, charm her. She was drunk. Harper was
buzzed. They didn’t know what they were doing, right? “Very funny,” I said.
“Come on, let’s go up to your place.” I tried to hit the buttons, but Cleo
blocked me while Harper stood off to the side, the sex toy in her hand.

The hairs on my neck stuck up in alarm. “Cleo, come on.” My
voice was no longer joking. I wasn’t playing around. “It’s not funny.”

Harper waved the dildo at me. “You’ve probably had ones like
this in you
all
the time.”

“Yeah,” Cleo said. “You’ll love it.
Whore
runs in your family.” And then Harper grabbed my arms.

“Stop!” I screamed. I jerked out of her hold and
instinctively backed into the wall. I was frozen with this horrifying shock and
fear, and then Cleo made it even worse.

She said, “If you don’t do this, we’ll make your life a living
hell until graduation. Every day in the hall, every day in class.” I learned
that the guy who prodded Cleo to do this to me in the elevator was Houston
Boggs, a senior that she had a crush on.

She had to follow through, and if she didn’t she’d look bad
in front of him, all talk, a tease. And she wanted to show him that she could
play in the big leagues. She wanted to fuck me over, and I just wanted to be
left alone.

“Stop,” I said. “
Please
.”

The waterworks came the moment Harper gripped my wrist and
yanked me to my knees.

“Do it, slut!” Cleo yelled—as though I wasn’t even her
friend. She laughed, and Harper smiled. And I cried.

I started unbuttoning my shorts because I thought—
I can’t be tormented for the rest of prep
school.
I had six months left. Half a year. That was six months too many.

What was one moment compared to weeks and weeks?

But I cried.

I cried as I slipped off my shorts. I cried as I was forced
to make a decision that had no good end. The longer I hesitated, the more Cleo
threatened me—the more I feared. She said they’d break into my bedroom. She
said they’d watch me while I was sleeping. She said that the whole grade would
get behind her, rallying against me and my slut sister.

She said all of this with a slur, the alcohol glazing her
eyes. And then I thought—
I’ll get away.
They won’t remember this in the morning.

So in my panties with the sex toy by my knee, I made a
decision that would haunt me for six more months and counting.

I stood up and cried, “No.” I shook my head, my hair
tangling at my waist. I stepped back into my shorts, zipping them with
trembling hands.

And I pushed the girls out of my way. They were screaming
behind me, tugging my hair, but I got the elevator moving, and when the doors
burst open, I sprinted.

I sprinted, took the staircase back down, and I kept looking
back—terrified, haunted.

The next day at school, my locker was filled with condoms.

The next day after that, two guys cornered me in the hallway
and tried to give me a
titty
twister in jest and cruelty.

I always looked over my shoulder. I always locked the door.
And I prayed for the end.

Graduation may have come. But my fear always, always stayed.

I wish I could go back and choose the other option. I’ve
told that to
Ryke
before, and he said it probably
wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe he’s right.

“Daisy,” Rose says, her voice breaking.

I realize that I’m crying so hard. And both Lily and Rose
are kneeling on the hardwood beside me with tears of their own. My throat
burns, and it takes me a moment to recognize that everything swirling in my
head came right out of my mouth.

That story—they heard every little detail. All the bits and
pieces and the pain.

“It’s over,” Rose says, rubbing my back. “They can’t hurt
you anymore. We won’t let them.”

I nod, believing her words. I haven’t been confronted by
someone in months.
Ryke’s
made sure of that.

“Daisy.” Lily speaks, her voice surprisingly steady. She’s
the one that holds my hand tight. I finally look up, staring into her bloodshot
eyes that flood with tears. “I’m really
sorry
this happened to you. And I know…I know it’s hard sharing this stuff, but thank
you for telling us.”

My chest swells, and I nod a couple times.

Rose wipes some of my tears for me with the brush of her
fingers to my cheek, and she asks, “Have you told your therapist?”

“Parts,” I whisper.

Rose shakes her head. “Daisy, you have post-traumatic
stress. It’s probably why you aren’t sleeping.”

My tears just keep coming, silently.

“You need to tell your therapist the rest, okay?” Rose adds,
sniffing. She dabs a tissue under her eyes, careful not to smudge her mascara.

“I told
Ryke
all of it,” I murmur.

“And I told Lo about my problems,” Lily replies sweetly.
“It’s not enough.”

I stare at Lily’s hand in mine. Her nails unpainted and
bitten to the beds, but she has a beautifully strong grip, one that makes me
feel okay and safe.

“Boys are like pillars,” Rose tells me. “
Ryke
is something to lean on. But they don’t make you move. You have to do that for
yourself.”

“I want to be stronger,” I whisper. “I just don’t know how.”

“One step at a time,” Lily says.

“And you’ve already taken the biggest one.” Rose kisses me
on the head and Lily tackles me with her hug. I smile into these tears, this
sadness that is ready to leave.
 

I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much.

But it feels good.

I feel light. Airy. Like I can breathe.