Lavender Haze

Chapter 27

You know those montages in movies, that time-lapse cropping of events to show how someone's health deteriorates because of a disease, or guilt or pain?

Well, that is how sickly I look as another day ticks by and I'm nowhere close to make a decision. I've avoided telling Rafael Mila was in the office, doling out threats like candies at costume-clad kids at Halloween, and this secret is consuming me.

Thankfully, my best friend thinks my ghostly looks have something to do with my broken heart (he's not wrong, that majorly contributes to the bags under my eyes and my lack of sleep), while my brother thinks I'm still recovering from the incident in mom's room. I know that every time he meets my eyes, his gaze skitters to the still-healing cut on my forehead, and additional guilt shoots through me, thinking what a bad sister I've been to him, wanting him to be in as much pain as I am whenever I spend time with Fading Mom or Ghost Mom at Sunset View. I've also been a shitty sister for other reasons, but I have no time nor energy to dwell on those, not with Mila's countdown looming brightly over my head.

When I close my eyes, in bed, Kat curled on my stomach, almost depriving me of oxygen, all I see is Mila's devilish smile, then the invisible clock over my head marking down another hour, brining me closer to my sentence.

It has been three days now since Mila showed up unannounced demanding I resume my work, and I'm only more torn every day, the solution farther and farther away, so out of reach it would take me an intercontinental flight to catch up with it.

Useless to say, if I was unable to perform to my usual standards before, now work has been totally forgotten. I've put on hold Malika and Kylee and devoted my strength to finding an alternative solution to what Mila proposed, but I've failed.

There's not option C.

It's either A: plan the wedding of the man I love to a selfish, cruel yet smart and totally badass woman.

Or B: flush my hard work down the drain, become jobless, consequently homeless, and find a bridge to live under, feeding off pigeon carcasses and lake water.

Neither is appealing.

By the time the dawn of the fourth day bursts through the open curtains of my bedroom, I've accumulated thirteen hours of sleep in the span of five nights. Not ideal. I wash off my greasy hair, put on music to distract myself but only end up down a deeper depression when All Too Well (the ten-minute version, nonetheless) starts on shuffle. I open a can of cat food and feed Kat, moping in time with the song, and only smile briefly when the Smile Song, from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic start playing unexpectedly. This is my brother's fault, messing up with my Spotify playlists, a game we've been playing for fifteen years (though it used to be messing each other's iPods, and before that, mixing up our CDs, placing them in the wrong cases). For however stupid the song, it lifts my spirit temporarily.

Kat even lets me pet her and hold her for seventeen whole seconds as I mutter along with the song, before squirming and jumping away, more interested in the salmon feast in her scarlet food bowl than my mental and emotional state.

Because it's pointless to head to the office if all I'm going to do is stare at my laptop with swelling panic engulfing me, I dress up, make the effort of putting makeup on, and head to Sunset View.

I've avoided mom as much as I've avoided my own thoughts, and Dan has been willing to pick up the slack, but that ends today.

It's not even that I didn't want to see my mother. I still have so many questions about my dad and mom and Kelly and what went down in this odd love triangle I didn't know existed. But I was too upset to visit my mom, petrified at the idea of facing Ghost Mom. Also, I was scared my shitty mood would rub off on her, and I couldn't be the cause of Mom turning into Fading Mom, only to find myself in a room with Ghost Mom.