Crazier

Skinny Love (16)

"And if all your love was wasted,

Then who the hell was I?"

-Birdy, Skinny Love

It'd been 36 days.

36 days since I woke up alone in the hotel room. 36 days since I'd been taken from my life. 36 days since I'd moved into the Cate house.

And honestly? I couldn't say I was having an awful time.

After the Halloween Riot, after my near-death-experience, after Tessa and the truck, after a package addressed to Shane Walter arrived in the mail from an anonymous sender (it was Evan and the boys. The box was filled with letters, more clothes, five twenty-dollar bills, and a bottle of maple syrup), after Tessa had forced me to take Sadie to some horrible movie that turned out being not-so-horrible after all, after about six make-out sessions with the quiet girl (one of which would have gone further if James hadn't been a cockblocker and opened the door); after everything, I couldn't bring myself to hate the place anymore.

Tessa and I had become friends. Better friends than we had been before. It wasn't as if she knew all of my secrets, but she understood me, and it was fun when she'd barge into my room and ask if I wanted to go somewhere with her and the group. Lev and I were now considered friends, which was pretty cool, I walked in on Zeke and Carter making out in Tessa's basement when Emma sent me to get pickles from the cellar; life wasn't awful anymore.

Was I happier? Yes.

Did I miss the boys? Yes.

Were Jackson and Katie alright? Yes.

My mom? She was a psychopath, but when Richard let me use his phone to call Jackson he told me that having Aunt Maddie around was really helping her out. They still didn't know about the whole episode where I nearly froze to death, and I was planning on keeping that way.

All things considered, I was pretty happy. I had grown used to living in the Cate house, I had friends, I was starting to feel like I had a family in the Cates...life was good again.

But, of course, like I'd known for so long, nothing good can last forever.

It was at dinner time when I got the call. I was in the middle of spooning soup into my mouth and flinging bits of corn at Skylynn with Tessa when Emma wasn't looking. The sun was just beginning to set, the sky tinged a light red, faint wisps of cloud tinted pink across the sun. Zeke was setting up a fire over in the pit, and Carter had driven to the store to get marshmallows and hotdogs to roast.

Richard was in the middle of describing his day at work, where they had to arrest two teenagers who were high on shrooms. He was laughing hard, describing how one boy had been chasing an invisible dog while the other had been talking to a tree, convinced it was an incredibly tall man, and the rest of us were listening, amused.

When the call came, he glanced at the contact and smiled, handing his cell phone to me. I had smiled, knowing it meant it was either Jackson or Evan, who called occasionally to make sure I hadn't died yet. I grabbed the phone from him, hopping up to sit on the railing next to Tessa.

"Hey," I answered cheerfully, snickering when Skylynn wailed at a piece of corn that hit her in the eye. Tessa was laughing, Zeke was singing off key and cheerfully to himself by the fire pit, Richard was still amusing the others.

The sobbing that came through the line was unexpected, to say the least.

I instantly stiffened, recognizing the wails as my sister's. Katie had never been a delicate cryer. She went hard and for a long time, and trying to calm her quickly was like a fat man running a race against Usain Bolt. By the sounds of it, she had been crying for a long time, but wasn't ready to stop yet.