Meet Me Past the Stars

Chapter 6

I stretch my tired bones and begin to grab myself something to drink. I was so tired from last night that I forgot to change into pajamas. The back of my neck was itching so bad for some reason.

"You don't smell like the beach." Mom popped out of nowhere, which made me jump.

"I was at the beach, but a friend of mine was there. He-"

"He?" She looked at me disapprovingly. "I've never heard you having guys as friends, so I'm assuming it's some random person. Random people are dangerous." She places her hand on my shoulder trying to move me around. "You never know how random people are going to do. He could manipulate you and hurt you because you are a potion seller." She releases my shoulder.

Mom was always so suspicious of other people. Hell, she was so hesitant to send Trent and me to school because she thought we would get bullied, or something.

I close the fridge door. "So you want me to live a life being so stressed out about what other people might do to me?" I walk over to the table and place the eggs on the table. I itch the back of my neck again.

"Why does it even matter if I 'don't smell like the beach? You literally make me leave the house every weekend just because you don't want me to watch as you make specialized potions. Hell, you won't even train me to become a potion maker, I don't know why it's important to you for me to be a potion maker when I'm already heading to be 23 and still don't know jack shit." I place the eggs back into the fridge. I decided I wasn't going to eat breakfast here.

"Your time isn't right yet-" She says in a rush while rubbing her knuckles.

"Yeah, you always say that." I was already done with this conversation. We always had this talk every so often and she says the same thing. I continued to walk away and get ready for the day.

"You think it's easy?" She looks at me, and I stop in my tracks and turned around to see her almost about to cry. "You think it's easy to see you walk outside and not know what is happening when I kick you out of the house? What if you were hurt? What if someone attacks you because you are my daughter?" Tears started to roll down her eyes.

"I- I'm leaving," I say as I go upstairs to take a shower. If she cared about me, she would tell me what was actually going on. Why does she have to be so secretive around me when it seems like I've done something bad, which is almost all the time to her, she wants to know about everything that happened.

She makes a funny face when I pass her.

"You smell like The Woods. I told you to not be over there. If people find out that either of us is close over there, we will be sent away." I ignore her as I keep going upstairs, but was stopped as she held on to my wrist.

"You don't understand. Potion makers are close to magic but never step into the whole thing except for some basic things. Don't you forget that." She released my hand but I didn't say anything. "Don't go near those Woods. I already got shit on my back."

I ignore her and go upstairs. I don't know why she acts like she hasn't been saying the same thing to me when I was a kid. I look into the mirror as I itch the back of my neck.

My neck is irritating me so bad, I have to see why. I go into the bathroom and grab another hand mirror to check what was happening to the back of my neck. I really hope that I don't have a tick or even worse, poison oak.

At first, I thought it was a burn mark from when I straightened my hair the other month but when I moved the hand mirror closer, it looked like some type of star tattoo.

I wanted to panic and scream, but I feel like Mom would've rushed into the room.

I tried scrubbing it off, with everything and anything I could think of. I mean, it wasn't irritating me anymore, after I finally settled and took a shower but that could only mean one thing.