your best american girl ✓

23 | prearranged fire

"Faye," I call, frantically scrambling down the back to the bathroom, where Faye and Kassie are currently busy scrubbing some of the vomit off of the black and white pentagon tiled floor. "Faye!"

On her hands and knees, Faye looks up as I stick the cracked screen of my phone and now bent photo to her face. Chewing on her slightly chapped lips, she takes a moment to read the whole text exchange. She freezes once she finishes reading. "Holy shit. Is that...is that who I think it is?"

"Yup," I confirm, anxiously rubbing my palm with my thumb. "What the hell should we do? Can we even trust her?"

"Oh my God," Kass whispers from beside us, stealing a glance over my shoulder, "what if this is a set up? You can't go. It's not safe."

In true Faye fashion, she scoffs, except it sounded more like a poorly suppressed cough more than anything else. "We need answers. She's proven that she can give us ammunition, Kassie, and that's what we need right now."

"Only recently, and under an anonymous guise. Prior to this, she's constantly defended my dad against all the accusations. I know that woman better than you do, and she cannot be trusted. People don't change overnight," Kassie retorts, throwing her clear plastic gloves into the garbage bin and running her hands under the cold sink water. The water splashes against the seashell-shaped dip of porcelain. In a hostile manner, she shakes away the excess water from her hands and trudges her way toward the exit.

"Still, then I want to know why she would feed us this information. What does she gain from this? Absolutely nothing. This is our chance and it could very well be the only one we get. Lee doesn't have to go meet her alone. We'll be there too, to make sure she's safe," Faye points out, filling the doorway so she can block Kassie's path.

"We are not going to see that witch, and that's final. I really don't want to argue with you."

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm definitely more on Faye's side, though I do see where Kass is coming from. Bias aside, while this option is a high risk, we really cannot let an opportunity like this slip by us. We don't have that many options, to begin with.

"Hey," I interject, putting a hand on her shoulder, "don't you think we should at least hear her out? There must be a damn good reason why—"

"Yeah there is. And it's so she can fucking find a way to fucking ruin our lives again, and I'm not going to let that happen. Not when I just got my family back. Hell no," she fires back, using her french manicured hand to push mine off of her.

"We are not children," Faye retorts, jaw slack, "we can handle this like adults."

"Like adults?" she repeats in disbelief, almost as if she had to stall time to make sure what Faye was saying was real, "when has any conflict handled by them seemed adult-like to you? You think pulling strings behind the scenes is shit mature adults do? Because I can tell you right now it's fucking not."

Sheepishly, with her elbow propped onto the toilet seat, Halle presses a frail hand to her forehead. Her entire face is a feverish cherry red. "I think you guys should talk to her."

Stunned, Kassie's lips part, likely because out of all of us, Halle would be the one to sympathize with her the most. "You can't seriously agree with them, right? C'mon, don't tell me you don't realize how horrible of a person she actually is? I thought you learned, guess I've been mistaken."

Halle presses her ghostly lips into a thin line. "Kass, that woman raised you, fed you, and loved you for years—"

"I don't fucking care! That was her obligation to maintain a certain image. She lied to me. Treated our actual mom like shit. No kin of mine would ever do that. Not now, not ever. And the fact that you're siding with—"