I wait for her to invite me in, but she grips the knob like she’s seconds from swinging the door in my face.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

I’m not sure what reaction I expected. My dad—he told me that she didn’t want me. I thought, maybe, he was lying. I still grasp to that futile hope that she cared for me like a mother would a son.

Inhale. “I just wanted to talk.” My voice sounds coarse compared to hers. Like an animal to an angel. It f**king sucks. And I can’t stop staring at her, like she’s moments from being ripped from my memory.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Her eyes carry apologies even if her words don’t.

“Right,” I say and nod to myself. I could walk away. I could leave it at that. I’ve seen her. What else do I need? What the f**k am I searching for? “You’re my mom.” I want to take back the words as soon as I say them.

She cringes, the door shrinking closed, but she stays beside it, wedged between the frame. And she stares at me like I’m a mistake, a black mark on her resume that she’s been trying to scrub clean. She doesn’t say it, but I can see the phrase all over her face. You’re not my son, not really.

She didn’t raise me. I was a bad part of her life that she’s been trying to forget.

She clears her throat, uncomfortable. “Did Jonathan tell you anything?”

“Not much.”

“Well…what do you want to know?”

The open-ended question takes me aback for a second. What do I want to know? Everything. I want all the answers that have been kept from me. “What happened?”

“I was a teenager…” She glances over her shoulder for a minute and then says, “I was young and was easily drawn to a guy like Jonathan. We slept together once. That’s it. And I was careless, and that’s why you’re here.”

Something nasty sits on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow down the more spiteful retort. I sweat through my shirt, so f**king hot. I wipe my brow and say, “So that’s what I am to you then?”

Her eyes flit past my body. A neighbor across the street stares hard from his mailbox, and I wonder if he’s trying to place me—figuring out where he recognizes me from.

“You can invite me in,” I offer.

She shakes her head and clears her throat again. “No. It’s best if you stay outside.”

“Right.” That’s all I can say without yelling, without screaming everything that weighs on my chest. Why didn’t you come back for me? Why didn’t you f**king care? I’m your goddamn son! I spent years without a mother, without that maternal figure. The most I had were the people who paraded in and out of my house in the mornings. Makeup-smeared, half-dressed women who had no words of wisdom for me, no answers to my problems, no sweet, nurturing voice to ease me to sleep.

“You have to understand…” Her eyes fall to the ground. “I didn’t want you.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I say sharply. My father was right. I shouldn’t have sought her out.

“I was in high school,” she says. “I was just a girl, and I planned to go to college, to have boyfriends and a life. You were going to take all of that from me.”

You were going to take all of that from me. The words ring in the pit of my ears.

I stare at the bright sky, just staring, just looking for something that will never reveal itself to me.

What the hell am I doing here? Not just here, at this house. I feel like I was born to destroy people’s lives. I did it before I even came into the world. And I did it after. You were going to take all of that from me.

“Out of respect for Jonathan, I told him that I was going to an abortion clinic.”

I shut my eyes, and a hot tear slides down my cheek. I wipe it. Exhale. “I wish you went through with it,” I suddenly say. Because then I wouldn’t have to bear this pain. My face wouldn’t twist this way. Lily wouldn’t have spent her childhood in my broken house. Her mother would have loved her as much as she did her sisters. Ryke would have grown up with two parents instead of one. My existence ruined so many people, so many things. Life would have been easier without me.

“What?” Her velvety voice spikes.

“You heard me,” I say, no longer nice. “I wish you would have killed me.”

She pales. “You don’t mean that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She touches her lips for a moment, just staring at me. “Because…your father, he gave you everything.”

You have everything, Loren. Don’t be such an ungrateful little shit, Loren.

“Yeah,” I nod. “He gave me everything.” Before she can speak, I ask, “So what stopped you? Your parents? Some religious belief? Cold feet?”

“Jonathan stopped me,” she says. “He was furious with the idea of losing his child. We came to an agreement. I would have you, and then you would be his entirely. I would get the life I planned, and you’d grow up in luxury, something I wouldn’t have been able to give you on my own. I thought you would be happy.”

“Yeah, I’m still working on the happiness part.”

I wait for the flash of regret to fill her eyes, but it never comes. I’m the spoiled rotten heir, the one who drinks until he’s wasted. The one who went to rehab like it was some publicity stunt. And I have a sex addict girlfriend.

Emily quiets as a school bus rolls to the curb. The doors open and middle school kids dart out. A girl with my light brown hair and my nose adjusts her backpack, walking towards the house.

Emily forces a smile for her daughter. “Hi honey, can you go inside please?”

Her daughter squints at me, fixing her large round glasses on her nose. “Aren’t you Loren Hale?”

I hate that a middle school girl knows me. My face is all over the tabloids. Yesterday, they dissected a photograph of me leaving a restaurant hand-in-hand with Lily.

And then it hits me fully.

She’s my half-sister.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“And you’re at my house…? Do you know my mom?”

Emily waits impatiently for her daughter, about to interject, but I do her a favor and shut down her inquiry.

“Not really,” I say. “She’s a friend of my father’s.”

“Mom,” she whispers. “You know famous people?”

Emily shrugs, her shoulders stiff.

And then my eyes catch a pin on the strap of the girl’s jean backpack. Mutant & Proud. What are the odds? “You like X-Men?”

“The cartoons,” she says. “X-Men: Evolution.”

“My girlfriend likes those too.”

“You mean your fiancée? I just read in Celebrity Crush that you’re getting married.” She rocks on her feet and pushes her glasses further up her nose as they slide down. “Is it true?”

“Yep, it’s true.”

Her eyes brighten like she’ll have something good to tell her friends tomorrow at lunch.

Emily widens the door so her daughter can pass. “Willow, inside please.”

Willow examines me with an inquisitive gaze before she resigns to her mother’s pleas. And then she slips indoors and out of sight.

“You named your daughter after a Buffy character?” Maybe we like the same things, I stupidly think. Probably because Willow strangely does.

She frowns. “What?”

“The televisions show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” She’s still confused. “Never mind.”

“What do you want, Loren?” she finally asks. “What did you think would happen by coming here?” Her voice lowers and the door begins to close so I can’t see past her body and into her house. I can’t see the life that I never would’ve had. “You’re twenty-one. You’re an adult.”

“You’re not my mother. I think I got it,” I say roughly. I hate that I don’t hate her. Not even a little bit. I take a step back, my eyes flitting over the house, over something that I don’t want to destroy. I ruin everything I touch.

And I’m not going to mess up her life. Even if mine is all f**ked up. Right as I’m about to leave this all behind, something else catches my eye in the window.

A girl. A child. No older than two or three. She peers through the glass, clutching a stuffed dinosaur. I see me. Growing up and being lied to. Never knowing about my brother and finding the answers in the most jarring, horrific way. The secrets. The betrayal.

I face Emily again. She seems at peace with her decision and her life, but she’s repeating the same mistake as my father. As Sara Hale. She doesn’t see it now, but the lies she weaves will eat at her family from the inside out.

“You should know,” I say, “that even though I’m not your son, I’m still their brother.”

Her lips press in a line.

But I keep speaking. “And maybe you don’t see it like that, but take it from someone who’s been in their situation before—they will.” I think of Ryke. “I’m not saying that you have to tell them about me now or anytime soon, but they’ll find out eventually. If not from the press, then from some stranger, and they should hear it from you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says shortly. “Anything else?”

Fuck you. I can’t say it though. I don’t really feel it. More like, Fuck me. For being so stupid. For thinking you’d care.

I shake my head, everything draining from me like I’ve been slit open on the sidewalk. I take another couple steps off the stoop, glance up at the three-story brick house. Middleclass family. Happy. Normal.

I turn around and never look back.

{ 48 }

LILY CALLOWAY

With Lo in Maine, he wanted me to skip my therapy session with Dr. Evans today, but the therapist called me and said that if I skip, he’d contact my parents and tell them how poor my progress has been. So I sit alone in Dr. Evans’ office, constantly checking my phone. Lo said he would call after he sees Emily. If their meeting doesn’t go well, I’m worried that he may choose to escape with alcohol. I really wanted to go, but at his request, I’ve stayed here.

Dr. Evans applies the electrodes to my wrist and hands me the small black box with all the wires poking out. He nestles behind his desk in his seat, wearing a smug look. He loves the fact that Lo isn’t here to interrupt the session.

“So are we doing magazines again?” I fidget in my seat, a little nervous to be doing this with only Dr. Evans in the room. When Lo’s here, it feels less weird.

“I think we should move on to another compulsion today.”

I try to wrack my brain. What else could I conquer with aversion therapy besides fantasies and porn?

His eyes drop to my thighs. “It would have been easier if you wore a dress or skirt, but I think you can manage.”

My heart bangs against my ribcage. Maybe I heard him wrong.

“I want you to masturbate. You’ll be shocked until your brain responds to the negative stimuli.”

Oh my God.

My head moves on its own accord, shaking fiercely from side to side. “No,” I blurt out. “No way.” I am not masturbating in front of him!