Scarlet Awakening (Sweet Secrets #2)

by Taylor Henderson

  Ella nodded her head slowly before focusing on Eleanor again.

  I did the same, and glanced back over my shoulder just as Eleanor turned her head and met my gaze. The realization hit her face faster than it had mine. She looked different, more grown up, with a new style about her, while Ella and I looked basically the same as we had when we knew her. Our red hair was unmistakable, and probably her biggest reminder.

  As soon as she noticed us, she slid her chair back out of our view and attempted to hide herself behind one of her friends. Considering the fact that the other girl was toothpick thin, her hiding didn’t go as well as she had planned.

  With a sigh, and an air of confidence surrounding me, I pushed myself up and out of my chair. “Come on,” I demanded as I grabbed our plates. I led Ella toward Eleanor, dropping our plates in the trash on the way there.

  When we approached her table, all of her friends looked up at us with confusion on their faces. I didn’t recognize any of them either. She must have gotten herself a whole new friend group. Hopefully they were people who weren’t in the habit of ruining other people’s high school lives like she and her old friends had been.

  “Eleanor,” I said with a forced smile. She cowered slightly as she looked up at me. She was attempting, rather poorly if I may add, to appear cool and collected. I saw through her act instantly.

  “Lena, Gabby,” she said, her voice shaking a little when she said Ella’s old nickname. When we had lived here she went by Gabby as a shortened version of her full name Gabriella, but when we moved to Virginia she had wanted to be called Ella instead. “I thought you two moved.”

  Eleanor held her head high with her nose in the air. I noticed a small, pink scar that rested on her jawline that was slightly raised from where her stitches had healed. Last year after the incident had happened between her and Ella, I had started a fight with Eleanor at school. It ended with me being expelled, and Eleanor with a few nasty gashes, bruises, a black eye, and even a fractured jaw. After the fight, I had felt a sense of satisfaction at my damage, but now I felt bad. I shouldn’t have stooped to her level in that situation. I understood why I had a reputation amongst my peers in the area as being hot-headed.

  I nodded in response to her statement. “We did. We’re only here for the summer.”

  Eleanor swiped some of her hair behind her ear and pursed her lips. “Oh,” she said, her eyes focused on me. It looked like she was expecting me to leap over the table and attack her at any moment.

  I stood up straighter, and ignored the eyes of her friends. I wasn’t here for any of them. I was here for me. I had changed, and although I slipped up at times, I wanted to be mature and own up to the things I had done. “I’m sorry for what I did to you last year.” When I glanced down at the puffy scar on her chin, she turned her head slightly so that I couldn’t see it. “I’ve grown a lot over this past year and I’ve realized that what I did was wrong. I really hurt you, and I just wanted to apologize for that.”

  When my apology was finished, I grabbed Ella’s arm and went to turn around, but Eleanor’s voice stopped me in my tracks.

  “Wait,” she called abruptly, causing us to turn back around to face her. “I’m sorry too.” She focused her eyes on Ella as she continued. “I’ve thought a lot about what I did to you last year. I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did, and I was wrong for what I did to you. You deserved better—I know that you just wanted to fit in with us. I shouldn’t have abused our friendship like that.” She glanced at her friends, who looked confused and were looking between each other. She would probably be doing some explaining when we left. “I have no excuse for what I did, but I truly am sorry. Anything could have happened to you that night, and at the time I didn’t realize how bad it was. I thought it was just a joke. I have a lot of stuff that I’ve done that I’m not proud of, and that tops the list.”

  Ella sighed, and after a beat of awkward silence, she shrugged. “Everyone has stuff they’ve done that they aren’t proud of. Trust me, I get it.” Then a smile formed on her thin lips as she added, “It could’ve been worse though. You could have blackmailed me.” I rolled my eyes, picking up on her reference to what Brianna had done to her this past school year. The girl really had bad luck when it came to mean girls.

  Eleanor furrowed her eyebrows, a bewildered expression on her face.

  With that, we waved goodbye and turned to head off. Once we were at a far enough distance from Eleanor and her friends, I leaned into Ella and muttered, “Yeah, she didn’t blackmail you, but she did drug you. I think that’s worse.”

  Chapter 10

  “Are you girls having fun?” trilled my dad’s voice from my laptop. His face was closer than necessary to the screen, and he kept leaning into the microphone to talk, which made his voice extremely loud on our end.

  Ella nodded and grinned. “We went shopping yesterday.”

  Dad shook his head at that. “How much did you spend? I hope you girls don’t use up all of the money I gave you before your break ends.”

  “You can always just send us more,” I coaxed, batting my eyelashes.

  He frowned at my suggestion. “Money doesn’t grow on trees, girls.”

  I waved my hand at the camera. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard this spiel before. We won’t spend it all before summer break ends. I’m planning on having enough left over to last me a few weekends when we get back home anyway.”

  Dad scoffed. “Yeah right. If you have any money left over when you get home it’s going back in my wallet.”

  I jutted my bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout.

  “Yeah, well, how would you know if we have anything left over or not if we don’t tell you? We could say that we spent it all, and then just keep it for ourselves.” Ella looked smug.

  Raising a thick eyebrow, Dad responded, “That would be lying, and even if I don’t know the truth, you guys will. Your lying will take a toll on you and you’ll get stressed out, and then all of your hair will fall out. That’s the long-term effect that lying has on people.”

  Ella and I rolled our eyes simultaneously. “We aren’t kids anymore, Dad. That story won’t work on us anymore.” I glanced at Ella next to me. “Well, it won’t work on me. Ella is still kind of naïve. She might actually believe it still.”

  “Ha, ha.” Ella feigned a laugh. “You are just so funny,” she deadpanned.

  “She gets her sense of humor from me,” Dad bragged. He smiled so hard that the laugh lines in the corners of his eyes became prominent.

  Considering how depressed Mom was for the past year, I couldn’t really remember if she was funny or not. She didn’t do a lot of laughing or joking around lately, that was for sure. Of course there had to be a time when she’d had a good sense of humor; I just couldn’t remember it.

  “How’s Virginia without us?” I questioned.

  Dad sighed, and his smile disappeared. “Boring. I miss my girls. I never thought I would say this, but I even miss hearing you two argue.”

  “Well then, you’d be sad to hear that we haven’t argued once since we’ve been here,” Ella pointed out.

  Dad raised an eyebrow at her statement. “You have to be kidding me. You girls go at it at least once a day.” He wasn’t exaggerating. Even when Ella and I were getting along and having fun together, we were still sisters and we still got on each other’s nerves at times. We had argued significantly less since our parents had separated, and since Ella had started to think for herself rather than blindly follow others, but arguing was still usually a daily activity for us.

  “Maybe it’s the change of being in a new environment,” I offered up. “We both just needed a break from school and our friends—”

  “And your old man,” he interjected.

  “Yeah right,” I shot back. “We miss you so much.”

  “Maybe you can take a week off and come to visit too?” Ella chimed in. “We do really miss you, Dad.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, which was now significant
ly grayer than it had been at the start of the year. All of the stress of going through a divorce must have sped up the graying process. “I can see if I can move your flight back to a week earlier if you want?”

  Ella laughed and shook her head. “That would be so unfair to Mom. She won’t see us a lot next school year. We’ll all be fine. It’s only a few weeks, and it’s really nice getting to see Mom, and Grandma and Grandpa.”

  He sighed deeply. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just so lonely around here with you girls gone. I’ve been picking up extra hours at work, and it’s taking a toll on me. If it weren’t for Rose, I’d be having Chinese take-out and frozen dinners every night.”

  I smiled. Violet’s mom, Rose Forrester, had promised me that she wouldn’t let my dad be lonely while Ella and I were away. She felt awful about the fact that my parents were separated, and that we were leaving for the summer. When I first told her about him being alone while Ella and I were on break visiting our mom, she had instantly had Mr. Forrester befriend my dad. Apparently now she was making sure he got a proper meal at night. “Does she drop food off for you?” I questioned.

  He shook his head. “No, she and Tim invite me to dinner nearly every night though. After dinner she makes me wait for her to pack up some leftovers to take home with me.”

  I smirked as I thought of him taking home leftovers from the Forrester household. Mrs. Forrester was a health nut, while my dad liked his food like Ella did—extra greasy and dripping oil. Mrs. Forrester took wheatgrass shots daily, while my dad had probably never even seen wheatgrass in person before.

  As if he had read my mind, he patted his gut and said, “I think I’m losing weight from all of the healthy dinners she makes. I didn’t know eggplant could be prepared in so many ways. She made eggplant lasagna a few nights ago and it was actually good! I was pleasantly surprised.”

  Ella made a sour face. “That sounds disgusting.”

  “Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” he countered.

  “I think I could go my whole life without trying it, thank you very much.”

  I rolled my eyes. She was picky when it came to certain vegetables.

  “Anything else interesting happening with you?” I asked. “Dating anyone while the kids are away?”

  “When the kids are away, the parents will play,” Ella chorused. “Isn’t that a saying?” She frowned, thinking about the phrase.

  “It sure is,” Dad answered.

  Ella pursed her lips in thought for a moment before she said, “In this case, it would be ‘when the kids are away, the newly divorced parental figure will play.’” She winked at Dad, who shook his head and chuckled.

  “That may be a saying, but it doesn’t mean that said parent actually has time, or even is ready for the dating world. It’s been so long that I wouldn’t even know what to do on a date.” Dad ran a hand through his hair and looked slightly scared. He didn’t know how to be single yet.

  Ella shook her head and laughed. “I can give you some pointers if you need them, Dad.”

  He widened his eyes in horror. “I think I’ll pass.”

  Ella shrugged.

  Dad tugged on the collar of his night shirt uncomfortably as he said, “The closest that I’ve come to dating recently is when Tim and Rose tried to set me up with Rose’s sister, Heather, earlier this week. I wasn’t interested.”

  “Awkward,” I muttered. I’ve seen Mrs. F’s sister. She’s very pretty, but she isn’t even in my dad’s age group. She recently turned thirty, and my dad is in his late forties. She’s not even old enough to be my mom.

  “They really have a thing for natural names in their family, don’t they?” Dad added with a laugh.

  Ella counted the names off on her hand. “Rose, Heather, Violet, Lilly. Sure seems like it.”

  A giggle erupted from my throat. “Yeah, Violet said that natural names for the girls run in her family. Her mom’s parents were over the moon when she married a guy with the last name Forrester. Her grandma’s name on her mom’s side is Ivy, and her grandma’s twin sister’s name was Clover.”

  “Clover, huh? That’s clever,” Dad joked.

  He was the only one to laugh.

  Just then a knock sounded on the door to my room.

  “Come in,” I called out.

  The knob twisted and the door pushed open to reveal my mom. Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun, and she had a pair of reading glasses tucked in her hair just above her forehead.

  “I just came to see what you girls were up to.” Her gaze flicked to my computer screen, seeing my dad easily from the way that Ella and I were sitting sideways on the bed with our backs to the door. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she added hurriedly before turning to leave.

  “Wait, Christine,” Dad called. She heard him loud and clear thanks to his leaning toward the microphone.

  Mom turned around and hesitantly approached the side of the bed. She leaned down and forced a smile for my dad.

  “Hey Jamie,” she said softly. “How are you?”

  “I’m lonely without my girls,” he answered honestly, smiling nonetheless.

  Her smile was no longer forced. “Now you know how I felt. It’s hard without them, isn’t it?” She glanced sideways at Ella and me, patting my leg affectionately.

  “I feel your pain,” he said with a chuckle. There was a moment of silence where they stared at one another in the camera, and Ella and I were looking back and forth from Mom to the pixelated version of Dad, waiting to see who would break the silence first.

  “You look great, Chris,” Dad said with a smile.

  Mom tilted her head down and said thank you. I think she might have even blushed. “I’ll talk to you later. See you, Jamie,” she said, and excused herself from the room.

  After she left, Dad asked us how she was doing. We filled him in about how she was definitely a lot happier these days, and that she doesn’t sleep the day away anymore.

  Dad grinned and his only response was, “That’s good. That makes me really happy.”

  After we talked for a few more minutes, Dad looked at the clock and said that he needed to get ready for bed.

  “It’s nearly eleven o’clock here, and I have work at seven in the morning.”

  We all said goodnight, and when Dad hung up, Ella left the room, leaving me lying on my bed and staring at my ceiling in thought.

  Dad was right that it was good Mom was feeling better and getting back into a routine. It was obvious she was much happier to be back in California, and also at the prospect of no longer being married. It was obvious they were both finding happiness without each other. Maybe eventually they’d find happiness in other people like they used to have with each other.

  I went to retrieve the only sketchbook I had brought with me from home, and began drawing the picture I had found of my mom and the twins from memory, mentally removing John from the picture, and adding in my dad, Ella, and me.

  Chapter 11

  I tried to avoid John at work, but every day the simple task of walking past his desk without speaking had gotten harder and harder. Even when I walked by and didn’t say good morning, I couldn’t miss the smile he gave me. He was such a friendly guy. Jamie really didn’t deserve my strayed attention.

  I sighed after I finished reading the entry in my mom’s journal. My mom had gone out for the day with a friend, and while she was gone, Ella and I had seized our opportunity and snatched her journal from her room. It had been about two weeks since we had last read her journal, since she rarely ever left the house for more than an hour at a time. Now that we knew she was going to be out for over an hour, we were trying to get as much information from the little book as possible. We knew it was wrong, but we needed answers.

  We were currently sitting in my room on the floor on the side of my bed that was away from the door. We had shut and locked the door as a safety precaution. This time instead of starting from the beginning and flipping through, we had gone halfway into the book and scanned for J
ohn’s name before starting. What we had found so far was strange. Mom’s entries seemed to be talking about the past, and explaining her prospering relationship with John, who had been her coworker, and her dwindling relationship with Dad.

  Raising my eyes, I met Ella’s gaze. Ella scowled. She looked betrayed with each new entry that I read. Honestly, I felt a little betrayed too. So far, we hadn’t read anything confirming that Mom had cheated on Dad, but it surely seemed like she wanted to from her journal.

  “Do you want me to keep reading, or are you taking this new information to heart?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Ella. Despite our small age difference, I was still her older sister, and part of my job description since she was born was to protect her. That not only meant physically, but also mentally and emotionally. If she couldn’t handle this new information about our parents’ relationship, then I would skim through and only tell her the information that pertained to the twins, and what we needed to find them.

  Ella shrugged in response, but then took a deep breath, and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Keep reading.”

  I searched her face for a sign that she wasn’t telling the truth, but when I didn’t find one, I went back to looking at the journal. Flipping the page, I took in a breath of air in preparation for reading again. As I read the words I could practically hear my mom’s voice in my mind.

  Jamie and I spent a majority of our time together arguing. That wasn’t an excuse, but it was so hard to stay interested in a relationship where I didn’t want to even spend time with my husband. We argued so much about the smallest of things. Sometimes I couldn’t even remember what the argument was about, I just stayed angry. During that time, Jamie was sleeping on the couch every night. I remember how annoyed I used to be when he woke me up in the morning to climb into bed, but it was a must. We didn’t want the girls to know that things were getting so bad that we didn’t even want to sleep in the same bed together.