Five Steps | Chaelisa

Chapter 5

Lisa's POV

I try to refresh the Cereal Killers Instagram for the hundredth time today, but my data speeds have been reduced, and the picture they just posted refuses to load beyond an amorphous blob of shapes and colors.

Fuck.

I wanted to get the Wi-Fi password from Heather this morning, but she's been giving me the cold shoulder since the boner incident with Jackson yesterday, glaring angrily in my direction every chance she gets.

I thought I was maybe being a little paranoid, but when I got back from a Target run this afternoon to buy toiletries and a sheet set, she made a whole show of turning off the TV and storming into her room like an angsty middle schooler.

Sighing, I roll onto my back and send a check-in text to my mom, since she didn't reply to me this morning.

I try to fight the nerves that inevitably follow, but they get the better of me and my thumb swipes into my contacts. I hesitate over the cell number for our next- door neighbor, Heejung, holding my breath as I stare at the green call button. Somehow I manage to stop myself from pressing down.

She already agreed to check in on her twice a week, and I don't want to bug her too much.

I toss my phone down next to me and stare up at the ceiling. The empty room feels somehow incredibly crowded. Itchy. The longer I lie here, with absolutely nothing to distract myself, the more my ears begin to ring. I can feel the weight of it all, tightening its grip on my lungs, until it's so heavy it's hard to draw even a single breath.

Even though I'm finally gone, it suddenly feels like I'm right back in the house I left behind. Just waiting. Waiting for Mom to come home.

My mind would always get the better of me. I couldn't stop obsessing over where she was. Who she was with. How much she was drinking. How much she was spending when we had a whole stack of bills on the kitchen table.

After our electric shut off one night, getting a job at Tilted Rabbit three summers ago was the only way to silence all of it. The only way to take a little bit of control back. I convinced the owner, Stew, to let me do dishes until I was old enough to work behind the bar.

But now that's gone just like I am. And I don't know what she's going to do.

Add in this mess with Samantha and the fact I'm officially starting college tomorrow, and I can literally feel all of it crushing me, getting heavier and heavier by the second.

I need to get out of here.

I jump up and grab my wallet off the desk before sliding into my white Converse and heading down the hall as fast as I can. I throw open the apartment door and jog down the steps, feeling the pressure slowly give way with each floor.

By the time I'm outside, I feel like I can breathe again. I inhale slowly as I glance up at the sky, the color a deep, dusky blue, the sun just disappearing below a string of houses-turned-apartments, lopsided porches and worn brick and Pitt flags pinned to crooked windows. I turn left and head down the street, dodging around girls in tiny black dresses and boys with water bottles filled with vodka, screaming their way to some party. And it's this sight, of people with a purpose and a place to go, that makes me realize... I have no idea where I'm headed.

Back in Philly, this night would look completely different. Yeah, I'd still leave home with no idea where I was going, but I'd always end up exactly where I needed to be, at one of Samantha's concerts, working an extra shift at Tilted Rabbit, or flirting my way past a bouncer to get into some club.