Chapter 5: I Want to Be Normal
My tires kiss the curb as I swerve into our driveway, the world spinning like I'm trapped in some fucked-up carnival ride. I kill the engine and just sit there, knuckles white on the steering wheel, trying to make the universe stop tilting.
"That wasn't Mom," I whisper to my reflection in the rearview mirror. The guy staring back looks like me but worse, eyes bloodshot, hair plastered to his forehead with cold sweat. "It couldn't have been. The jungle juice was fucking with your head."
I stumble out of the car, nearly eating pavement before catching myself on the hood. The house looks normal, peaceful even. Porch light on like always, Mom's gardening gloves still draped over the railing where she left them yesterday. Everything in its place, like the world hasn't just been turned inside out.
My key misses the lock three times before I manage to get it in. I make it upstairs through sheer muscle memory, my brain a hurricane of fragmented images. White hair, blue eyes, legs I'd recognize anywhere.
"Stop," I hiss at myself, stumbling into my room and collapsing face-first onto my bed without bothering to turn on the lights. The ceiling spins above me even with my eyes closed. My stomach constricts, threatening to empty itself, but I breathe through it. In through the nose, out through the mouth, like Mom taught me whenever I'd get carsick as a kid.
Mom.
Fuck.
"It wasn't her," I repeat into my pillow, the words muffled and desperate. "You were wasted. Brad probably slipped something into that hellbrew. People don't look like themselves when you're that fucked up."
But her voice. The way she said my name. "Gabriel."
No. No. No. I shake my head violently, trying to dislodge the memory. My mother is not an escort. She doesn't fuck college guys at parties. She works late at... at...
I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. BUT THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY SHE'S A PROSTITUTE.