“Lunchtime,” Mae says, and with that, the subject is dropped. Thank God.
We’re the last to leave the practice building because we dawdledso much after pas de deux. Everyone else is probably in the dining room already. We’ve almost reached the dorm when I spot a familiar slender figure walking quickly toward the parking lot.
“Grandma?” I call, feeling confused. I slow down involuntarily. My friends walk on without me for a bit before they notice I’ve stopped. Grandma doesn’t even notice me. She doesn’t look in my direction, and that hurts.
“Rayne?” Zoe sounds worried, but I can’t focus on her right now.
“Go on ahead. I’ll be there soon,” I say, and turn quickly to follow my grandmother. I only catch up with her when she’s almost reached her car.
“Grandma!” I call again, and now she finally reacts. She turns slowly to face me. Recognition flashes in her eyes, but the expression on her face is just as distant as it usually is. She doesn’t smile. Not even a little.
“Rayne,” she says. Just my name, nothing else.
“What are you doing here?” All at once I’m not so sure if I even want to know the answer. She was here at my school, and she was about to leave again without seeing me. Without talking to me.
“I had an appointment with Travis,” she replies coolly. No, that’s not what I wanted to hear.
“And now?”
“I have to go.” She glances at her delicate watch, and my stomach drops.
“Does that mean you didn’t even want to say hello?” I sound just as hurt as I feel. I don’t understand why I feel this way. We lived together for six months and hardly spoke to each other. Why should she suddenly come and ask how I’m doing? Why isit suddenly important to me that she’s interested? When we lived in the same house, I didn’t want to talk to her. In the last three weeks... I refused to think about the fact that she didn’t get in touch. And I didn’t reach out to her, either.
But to see her here now, and to know that she just wanted to leave again without even asking me how I’m doing, hurts more than I thought it would. Maybe a part of me hoped that she would reach out to me eventually. Talk to me. After all, she was the one who avoided Mom and Dad and me for years; she’s the one who should make the first move.
“Rayne, I’m very busy at the moment.” Grandma brushes invisible lint off her black coat, not looking at me.
“So that’s it? I moved out, and now we don’t even talk to each other anymore?”
“We didn’t talk before, either,” she retorts, and of course she’s right about that. I know that I didn’t make any effort. Not recently, and not in the last few months. I’m an adult, I could go to her. But there’s a small, childish part of me that resists.
“Why not?” I blurt out. “Why didn’t we talk to each other?”
Annoyed, Grandma shifts from one foot to the other. She doesn’t want to be here with me; it’s all too obvious. “You were holed up in your room for months.”
“You didn’t come up once to get me out of there.” I hate hearing my voice break. Grandma doesn’t seem to notice, though.
Why didn’t you come?
I want to ask this question that means so much to me right now, but I can’t get the words out.
“Rayne, I really don’t have time for this right now. Let’s talkabout it another time.” Grandma reaches for the door handle of the car.
“When? When do you want to talk about it?” I snap at her. I have no idea where this anger is coming from. It doesn’t make sense. But it’s here, and it’s making my heart beat way too fast. God, what am I doing? I don’t even know if I really want to talk to her. But I do know that it pisses me off thatshedoesn’t want to. Shouldn’t she want to? She’s my grandmother. My parents are dead. We’re all that’s left of our family. Why doesn’t she want to talk to me?
“I’ll be in touch,” she says curtly, and I know immediately that she won’t. I can see it in her face.
I don’t say another word. Nothing comes to mind. Instead, I watch her get into the car without even looking at me. The engine starts, and the car drives away. She’s gone.
***
I skip afternoon classes because I wouldn’t be able to concentrate anyway, even if I wanted to. I also ignore Mae’s and Zoe’s messages asking if everything is okay and where I am. I don’t answer because I don’t know what to say to them. Instead, I leave campus and walk through the city without the slightest idea where I’m going.
When it starts to get dark, I find myself on a familiar street. I’ve been to Easton’s place a lot in the last few weeks, especially on weekends when Mae was out with Tristan and Zoe was out with Jase, or all four of them were together. Sometimes Zoe’s brother, Caleb, and his boyfriend, Parker, were there too. They alwaysinvited me to come along, but Skye never wanted to join, and I didn’t want to be the third wheel.
Instead, I’d go to Easton’s house, and we’d listen to music in his room. I’d watch him playing his electric piano, searching for that one song and not finding it. And now I’m at his door again, unannounced and not really knowing how I got here. The lights are on in the living room, and I can hear music, loud and raw. The guys are practicing, so this is probably the worst time to show up. I could text Easton, but I don’t want to disturb him. To be honest, I don’t think he’d read my message right now anyway.
Unfortunately, he’s the only person I want to talk to at the moment. He’s the only one who knows at least a little more than just fragments of my life. He’s the only one who knows that my parents and my grandmother have barely spoken since I was born, because I told him. I told him almost everything. Except for the not entirely unimportant fact of who I am. But he knows that now too, so it doesn’t count anymore.