Say My Name

Chapter Ten

There's a moment when you wake up, and for a few seconds, you forget where you are or what worries you had before you went to sleep.

Betty slowly opened her eyelids; the sun is the only object in sight as it burned her eyelids shut. She kept trying to force them open, but her lack of sleep and the blinding radiation piercing her skull made it extremely difficult to.

This was one of those moments.

She sat up on the itchy grass, her hand used as a shield to block the sun from her eyes. She saw a blurry figure standing a few feet in front of her.

"Are you okay?" The voice was feminine and unrecognizable. She widened her eyes, trying to adjust them and was finally able to see the woman standing in front of her.

She nodded hesitantly. "Oh, uh, yeah." She brushed the grass off her arms and legs.

"I was driving by, and I saw you lying in the grass. I just wanted to make sure you weren't hurt." The woman's voice was kind and sweet. Betty was surprised someone even stopped to check on her.

"I'm fine. I live here." She awkwardly smiled at the woman as she contemplated whether or not she should get up or continue sitting in the grass.

"Do you need help getting inside?" The woman asked.

"Oh, no! No, no, no." Betty finally rose to her feet, then patted down her dress, trying to locate her phone before she looked down at the ground and saw it lying there. She bent down to pick it up, then wiped it against her dress, trying to get the dirt off.

"I was just avoiding my mother, who is probably sitting in her bedroom, worried sick about me, so..." She started walking to the brick sidewalk that led to her front door, then stopped to turn back to the woman. "Have a good day." She smiled at her before she reached her front door. She knew the woman was still standing there and was probably waiting for Betty to head inside. She couldn't back out now. She had to face the inevitable and walk inside. She slowly started to turn the doorknob, noticing her mother had left it unlocked for her. She cracked it open and peeked her head inside. There was no Alice in sight. Thank God.

She sneakily walked inside, and shut the door quietly behind her. She took off her heels so that they wouldn't make a loud sound on the hardwood floor; then she tiptoed to the staircase. She made it up one step before her body jolted back in surprise when she heard someone clearing their throat. She immediately rotated her head and saw her mom standing in the kitchen with her arms crossed at her chest, giving Betty a disappointed look.

She exhaled, trying to release the anxiety that just crawled upon her. "Mom..." She said in a low voice. "I... I can explain."

"Oh, sure, Betty." She threw her arms up in the air dramatically, then let them fall back down. "I know you probably have some kind of explanation that you think will ease my mind, but there is no explanation that will justify you being out all night."

How about the fact that I was kidnapped by some gang members because the boy you desperately want me to marry owes them fifteen hundred fucking dollars? Is that a good enough reason for you, mom?

Of course, she couldn't tell her mom the real reason, even if she wanted to. She knew if she told her the truth, then her mom would try to get involved somehow by either going to the sheriff or telling Archie's mom and dad, so they would have to go to the sheriff. And Betty knew those Serpents would most likely come after her knowing she disrespected them by yammering her mouth.

She tried to force an excuse out, but nothing even remotely convincing was coming to her brain. She thought about a million reasons as to why someone would be out all night. None of them seemed to be better than the actual reason. She thought about Archie and why he would be out all night, as well. She thought about the thing she knew her mother frowned upon. The one act Betty liked to imagine inside her head--the image of her and a faceless boy, together, because in her imagination, the boy wasn't Archie. She had always turned her nose up at the realistic aspects of her life, so why build her own fantasy to be realistic too?