Revelations » Michael Langdon

2

❝ Always hard to see past the surface when it looks so perfect but her eyes will disguise dirt on purpose. You listening? ❞

West Coast by The Neighbourhood

✢

"You know, you're gonna have to go to your room eventually."

I kicked my feet on top of the headboard, my arms splayed out across Candice's soft mattress. Reaching for her pillow, I childishly stuffed it on top of my face and groaned dramatically.

"Nope, I'm staying here forever." My voice was muffled by the polyester pillowcase. "Hope you don't mind sharing your bed."

I heard Candice scoff, yanking the pillow away from my face. She stood over me, one hand perched on her hip, and tossed the pillow back onto the mattress, out of my reach.

"Luce, I love you, but I'm not sharing a bed with you. You talk in your sleep and it creeps me out." I frowned and she continued. "Look, if this whole rooming arrangement is bothering you so much, maybe you should just talk to Cordelia about it."

I sighed, shaking my head. "She's got enough on her plate with the Hawthorne headmasters, I can't bother her about something this stupid."

"Maybe Madison can't, but I'm sure you could get away with it since you're like her favorite."

As much as I rolled my eyes dismissively each time Candice would claim that Cordelia's love for me somehow outweighed her affection for the rest of the Coven, I understood why she and the other girls would insist upon it. I had a connection with the Supreme synonymous to that of a mother-daughter bond, which was warmly fulfilling since I'd never been lucky enough to have such a figure in my life before I attended the academy.

My biological mother was not a person I cared to speak, or think about at all, if I could help it. She was only a mother by the most surface-level definition of the term, lacking all the warmth and kindness of a true one. Birth-giver was the term I preferred to use if she ever came up in conversation or my occasional thoughts, because that was as much as she deserved.

It had just been the two of us for majority of my life, slumming it in a one-bedroom apartment in San Antonio, Texas. My father died of lung cancer when I was about two years old, so the event didn't take much of an emotional toll on me as I hardly recalled his presence in my life. The only impact I suffered from the death came in the form of my mother's consequent alcoholism. There was a time, mostly documented in rare photos I would find in our apartment, when she was like the sun, lighting up the world with her friendly smiles and contagious positivity. After my dad passed away, that part of her died with him, never to be seen again.

It was like from then on, my mere existence served as a bitter reminder of what she had lost. That was the only explanation I had managed to conjure in regards to the poor treatment I was consistently on the receiving end of. During the times she was sober, she would neglect me, hardly caring about whether I ate that day or what I was up to. I'd sit in the living room after I came home from school, undisturbed while she stayed locked in her own room, taking care of work or sleeping the daylight away. Those were the good days. Being ignored was better than dealing with her head-on.

The bad ones were when she was day-drinking in our small kitchen or came stumbling through the door after a night at the pub down the block from our apartment. She would instantly set her sights on me, seeking me out even when I tried to stay hidden–I'd pretend to be fast asleep or burrow myself in the living room closet. Whatever the case was, my mother would track me down, her angry curses slicing the air and making me flinch with unease. Her long-nailed fingers would claw into my hair, yanking me to my feet. I'd protect my face the best I could, because it was the only area I couldn't efficiently cover up for school the following mornings. Nobody needed to ask any questions.