THE THIRD P3RSON

•Chapter 24•

I heard her before I saw her.

"That's so cute!" Christina strode past us to take a crystal necklace that was hanging on the wall.

Maxwell was right behind her. I backed away from him and hid behind Ryan again. Thank you, tall people. My instincts told me that if I spoke up now, I wouldn't have much to say anyway. Ryan started walking away, noticing that Christina wasn't paying attention to us, and I turned around to follow. As I was turning, I tripped over air (haha. same.) and Ryan turned around to catch me.

This caught Christina's attention. How? I don't exactly know. One theory people (moi) have come up with is that, by tripping, I set off a ripple effect in her thick cloud of Channel and she knew I was there. That or my chakra wasn't centred or whatever.

You know the feeling when you don't want someone to see you but you do something stupid that gets their attention and you curse using all the magical words you could think of? That was me at this moment.

"There isn't anything there for her to trip over." I heard Christina's laugh behind me.

I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of laughing at me, so I gave her a laugh of my own. "I heard you had a lot of fun yesterday. What happened? The hangover went away that quick?"

"Nice one, Ryan. Bonding over me. Miss me that much?" She calls over her shoulder.

I was still facing Ryan so, with a hand on my arm, he walked with me back to his car.

About a month ago, maybe two, I would be the outsider to a similar situation. Besides the project, I'd have no reason to talk to Ryan. I'd still be sitting back watching Ryan and Christina fighting in the back of the class. Who knows? Maybe if it weren't for the project, and Christina with her lack of effort and/or participation, she would be the one in Ryan's car right now. Again.

With the floodgates already opened, I was now in deep thought. Woah. What if I did walk out of Grey's office that day and said no to the project? What if Christina didn't call me out to tell me she wasn't going to work on it? What if Ryan never heard me talking to Grey in his office or seen me have a panic attack?

Things would've been so different.

Ryan had a hand on the wheel and the other was looking for something. I looked out the window but felt Ryan's hand touch mine. I opened my palm, smiling at a passing tree, and felt his hand hold mine.

---

The weekend passed as fast as I thought it would. Yes, the thought of hitting my head against the wall was an idea that was a lot better than heading back to school but school means we're close to graduation, right? College decisions should be updated soon and I have never been so scared in my entire life. My insides felt like they were being turned inside out and it was making me extremely nauseous.

If worrying about acceptance letters wasn't enough, I had Amy push me over the edge yesterday. I replayed it all back to Ryan when we got to school on Monday. I finally couldn't take it anymore. He nodded and listened while he pushed his hair out of his eyes. I ran my fingers through his hair and he sighed. Doing so seemed to help calm Ryan as much as it was keeping me in check too.

Asking Amy if she could hold her meetings somewhere other than my lovely oasis was the highlight of the whole weekend. The trip to the ice cream shop on the boardwalk of Ocean City ended up fading like a memory after I talked to Amy. I had told her to get her fake Gucci and cheap Prada out of my house. While doing so, I was once again reminded that I could be an orphan on the streets if I'd keep it up.

"Really? I'm turning eighteen in two months, Amy. " I told her. I'd like to see her try to throw me away like I'm worthless. "You dump me in an orphanage and I'll tell Gabriel how horrible a person you are and an exclusive scoop on the "Dahling" line."

Amy, her posture ever perfect and with her nose as stuck up as ever, gave me a look with her wrinkled eyes. "You spill anything about my latest projects you are done for, Julianna."

I gave her a smirk of my own and waved my phone at her. "Nuh-uh. You even think about kicking me out before I leave for college and your entire line is done for. Night, Amy."

I felt a surge of pride gather at my chest that made me almost cry in joy. I made my way up the steps to my room smiling, and actually being happy for once, when the Wicked Witch of the West spoke up.

"Julianna." I turned around, twiddling with my phone and not looking up at Amy. I was doing what she had done way too many times to me. "If you do happen to find a way to communicate with Gabriel, your life as you know it will end. You won't go to your dream college- which might happen when I'll tell your father about this- and your precious art room will become my new sewing room."

"You think you can sprout nonsense like this to me and I'll have to believe it? You think I'm going to give you any chance of leverage on me like that? I cleaned out that space a long time ago." I was devastated on the inside but on the outside, I was fuming. I have never, in my entire life, loathed someone as much as I do to Amy at this moment. "You can't do this to me, Amy, because I won't let you. Call Emily, your real daughter, and control the way she acts. She's the only one you have power over. Not me."

"It's amazing how naive you are, Darling. You think I only have a say in Emily's life? Did you forget I married your father? He loves me. More importantly, he loves his daughter Emily too." She gave me a wicked smile and I was shaking. I'm pretty sure I possessed enough strength to break my phone. "What's sad is that Emily isn't even his own blood and she still has Dad and Daughter brunches at the campus with him."

"I know," I told her. I let the poisonous venom seep into every single letter in those two words. "I don't think of him as my father anymore so he's all yours. I just can't wait for the day he sees another bimbo cross his way and pick up everything only to be gone the next day. Because, lemme tell you something Ames, Josh may be my father but that only means I've known him longer than you have. How many dress-up Barbie dolls do you think I've seen around the house before you came, huh? And you think being a professor at a college is going to stop him? Yeah, right." I laughed bitterly before I turned and slammed the door to my room.

It has been almost five years and I finally found the words to tell Amy. I wasn't going to leave this house, leave the place where I grew up with the memories of my real birth mom, without a fight. I kept repeating that as I threw yet another one of my mother's old hoodies into a moving box. I looked around my room and wondered how it went from the castle of my happiness to the Sahara Desert. When a college accepts me, I'm moving faster than the speed of light.

I kept saying I wasn't going to leave without a fight but, boy, was I leaving soon.