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It’s safe to say that he’s the only person who joins in enthusiastically whenever I talk shit about Eli. So the fact that he’s nodding in agreement with the same person he calls ‘a prison runaway’ and ‘a privileged criminal’ is bizarre, to say the least.
This is a dream, after all.
Mama pulls away, but her touch doesn’t feel surreal. I can feel her warmth and smell her favorite cherry perfume. It’s her. My mother.
“Are you feeling okay, honey?” she asks, stroking my hair away from my face.
Papa sits beside her and I stare at them, then at Eli, who’s standing behind them like a wall, both hands in his pockets and a calculative look in his eyes.
“Yeah,” I answer. “Papa. What’s going on? Where’s Ari?”
“Ari went to get you a change of clothes.” Papa strokes my hand. “Do you need anything else?”
“No…” I get distracted by Eli again, pause, swallow, then groan. “Seriously, why is he here? Wait. You can see him, too, right? Mama? Papa?”
Mama steals a glimpse behind her, and when she looks back at me with a furrow in her brow, my heart races so fast, I nearly throw up.
Is it my imagination again?
No.
Please no.
“Where else would Eli be?” Mama asks with a note of confusion.
“He better have stayed the entire night by your side.” That note of loathing Papa has for Eli rushes to the surface, and I let out a breath.
Okay. It’s a bit more normal now. Except where Papa wants Eli to spend the night by my side.
Or that he’s here in the first place.
“Do you remember what happened, hon?” Mum asks.
All of a sudden, a shroud of tension covers the room. Three pairs of eyes dig into my skull in silent expectation.
Way to pressure a girl.
“Um, yeah. I called 999 before the accident because someone was following me.” I trail off when I hear a subtletskcoming from Eli, then narrow my eyes at him.
“Someone was following you inside the house?” Papa asks with a note of weird carefulness.
“Was someone else there when you fell down the stairs?” Mama says.
“Stairs…there were no stairs. It was a…”
My lips seal together when Eli shakes his head. I narrow my eyes.
“It’s fine if you’re confused,” Papa says. “You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, so let’s leave it for now. We’re just glad you’re okay.”
I nod, but the confusion mounts to an unprecedented level. I am so going to have a field day talking to Cecy about this.
“Where’s my phone?” I ask Mama. “I want to call Cecy.”
“She’s on her way from the States.”
I frown. “But she wasn’t leaving until next week.”
“She hasn’t been here for about a month, Ava,” Mama tells me, her voice soft but her face slightly paler.
