Impostor - By Jill Hathaway Page 0,2
fainting spells. I bet, just like me, she found herself sucked into other people’s heads, other people’s lives. Too bad she died before I was ever able to ask her. Now I’ll never know. Whenever I try to broach the subject with my father, he starts talking about something else.
My father doesn’t believe that I can slide. I tried to tell him when it started happening, but he sent me to a shrink who said I was just trying to get attention after my mother died. I’ve tried hard to forgive him for that, for thinking I was lying, for pushing me away when I needed him the most. But sometimes the anger creeps up inside me and I just have to get away from him.
“The parents want to take care of the problem before she’s old enough to remember it,” my father explains.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I say, pushing my chair back from the table. My father and sister watch me grab my plate and glass, which I rinse off and put into the dishwasher before trudging upstairs. My sleepless night has started to weigh on me, and I wish I could just crawl back into bed.
Rollins, my best friend, will be here in a half hour, and that lifts my spirits a bit. He always knows what to say to cheer me up.
“You look like hell,” Rollins says when I open the door of his old Nissan and slide in. He hands me a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Decaf,” he says. “Just like you asked. I don’t know how you drink that shit.”
After taking a sip of the steaming liquid, I lift my middle finger. “Excuse me if I haven’t been sleeping well. I thought cutting the caffeine might help.”
His face goes serious. “The dreams again.”
Unlike Mattie, Rollins knows what really happens in my dreams. That I’m reliving the moment of Zane’s death. He knows what torture it is for me.
“Yup,” I say, taking another sip. “In full Technicolor.”
“Ugh, Vee. I’m sorry.”
At that moment, the back door swings open and Mattie throws herself inside. The whole car fills up with her too-sweet perfume, and I start to gag. “Jesus, Mattie. Did you empty the bottle?”
“Hey,” she snaps. “Someone hogged the shower, so I didn’t get a chance to wash my hair this morning. Do you have any idea who that might have been?”
I give her a sheepish look. I kind of fell asleep a little between washing my hair and putting in the conditioner. Mattie woke me up by pounding on the door and shrieking that she was going to pee her pants if I didn’t open up right away. The only way I was able to appease her was by letting her borrow my black scoop-neck sweater.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
Rollins shifts the car into reverse and backs out of the driveway.
I let my gaze flit from house to house, lawn to lawn, as he maneuvers through our neighborhood, toward the school. Gone are the leaves that littered the lawns months ago, when I was in love with Zane. Snow has been here and melted away, leaving the grass shyly green, the way it is in April, with flowers starting to push up toward the sun. I wonder if I’m taking too long to get over the hurt of Zane’s betrayal, the fact that he knew his mother wanted revenge on my family and let her move forward with her sick plan, even after he fell in love with me. Sometimes I wonder if he ever did really love me. Or if what I felt for him was true love. Because if it was, it just makes me really sad. I always thought that love was supposed to be this pure, renewing thing, but what Zane and I had turned out to be rotten on the inside.
Rollins’s voice slices through my thoughts, bringing me back to the moment. He’s got the White Stripes playing on the stereo, and the doors and floor of the car seem to vibrate with the sound.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I’m sorry. What was it? Something about the radio?”
“I got the internship,” Rollins says excitedly. “At KRNK, the university station? They want me from ten to two on Tuesday and Thursday nights. It’s perfect because I’ll be able to—” He stops himself midsentence and glances at Mattie in the rearview mirror. I know what he’s worrying about: that he almost spilled his big secret, that he has to take care of his