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CHAPTER TWELVE:
❝ The Mortal Cup ❞
Esme didn't remember when she reached back home. She didn't remember when she didn't greet her mother with kindness. She didn't remember her mother asking her what had happened. She didn't remember when they had started fighting, nor how nor why. The only thing she knew was she was screaming and her throat was aching.
"Oh, you," her mother said with the same viciousness she had passed on to her. "You don't understand."
"I've been taking care of you more than half my life," tears were burning at the edges of her eyes, "what don't I understand?"
"I don't want you staying here," Hope said as it were the most natural thing, "locked in this house with this sickness - "
"It's not a sickness," Esme protested softly.
" It kills me that I don't go out. I can but I don't. I sit here all day and it kills me. You're going to die too, someday. How will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for?"
"Mom," Esme choked on the word. It felt alive, like an organ - bloody and mangled and hard to swallow. "Mom, mom." The word was familiar and it hid a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side whether I'm right or wrong. But this was the most her mother had acted like a mother in the longest of times. She meant to say: You. I'd die for you, but the words wouldn't come out. She felt a heart attack coming. "Why are you saying all this?" she asked like a child.
"Because I love you," her mother reasoned patiently. "I want you to go to college. I love you."
The words awakened the killer in her - savage and cut-throat. "Do you? How? Will you throw me to the ground as you stink of alcohol? Reach inside and twist it out of me? Take out my organs and sew your name on them? Because that's what my father taught me! That's love! Do you love me mother, do you really?"
Her mother was quiet after that. Maybe it was because Esme didn't wait to listen. She turned and yanked the front door open and ran out to the road. Great, she thought, she'd managed to alienate herself from everyone. As she felt the beginning of a breakdown come over her, she remembered Simon. Her hand was already reaching for her phone. She slowly shuffled around the perimeter of the yard, watching the sky being overtaken by thunderclouds. Her phone was to her ear, ringing, twice, three times, and then: "Hello?"
He sounded boyish and ordinary. Esme asked, "Did I wake you up?"
She heard Simon fumble for and scrape up his wireframes. "No," he lied, "I was awake."
She sniffled. "Can I come over?" she asked. "I'll keep you company. We can sulk together."
"I'll have to check my calendar," he said, but there was amusement behind his voice. "But I'm sure we can squeeze this sulk session in." A pause, then, "What happened?" Now his voice had changed. She'd never had a sibling, neither wished for one. But she hoped this is what brothers sounded like.
