Wildfire (Maple Hills, #2)(17)

The only reason Mom’s house feels huge and lonely is because she sold my childhood home and used the divorce settlement to buy a huge “fuck you” house on the beach.

Her eyes land on me and it’s a look that I recognize: expectancy.

She expects me to want to be home as much as she wants me to be home and she can’t understand why I’d rather work all summer than spend it with her. It was never a problem when I was the one sent to camp, the problem started when she realized I was much happier there than with her.

We travelled around a lot when I was a kid, moving from country to country depending on where Fenrir, the Formula One team my dad owns, was racing that month. Following the team around the world was always Dad’s top priority, never stability for his daughters and wife.

Elsa and I have always joked that Fenrir is the only thing he’s ever helped create that he actually loves.

I love my sister, but even with the same complex web of mommy and daddy issues, our six-year age difference was too big to overcome as two kids looking for connection. I was acting out worse than ever and that’s why my parents started sending me to camp every year when I was seven.

It was everything I didn’t know I needed. I had routine, I was able to spend time with kids my age and I could begin to build the foundations of who I was without constantly being surrounded by adults and a moody older sister.

Honey Acres was the first place that ever felt like home. Even when my parents eventually split up and Mom moved us back to America full-time and enrolled me in school, I still insisted on going to Honey Acres every summer. I loved how happy the staff were to see me every year and it’s my first real memory of feeling wanted.

I want those feelings back, which I’m hoping to do by rebuilding the foundations I’ve broken. I love college and the experiences I’ve had in the past two years, but I feel lost. I make choices I don’t understand in the moments where my feelings get too big and, because there’s nobody there to tell me to stop, the little voice in my head tells me “fuck it.” I’m becoming someone I don’t recognize and I need a factory reset. I want to feel at home again. I want to feel at peace.

Emilia’s foot making contact with my shin drags me from my train of thought and, even after I apparently zoned out, Mom still has that look on her face.

If I wish hard enough, do you think I can summon my dad for a distraction?

Unsurprisingly my father doesn’t materialize, but thankfully the server arrives with our breakfast and interrupts the growing tension slowly building beneath the surface of Mom’s sadness. It feels like a cruel twist of fate to have one parent who doesn’t give one shit and one parent who cares far too much.

I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t like this, which means I can’t decide if this is who she is as a person, or if this is the ramifications of her spending her life feeling like she has to love me twice as much.

I say love and not parent because she’s never parented me. For every inch my dad has pushed me away and favored his job, she’s tried to pull me closer twice as much. For every time he’s let me down, she’s made allowances because it’s easier to blame him for my behavior than it is to risk driving me away. She’s never cared about anything I’ve done unless it directly affected her.

When I was younger, I always strived to be the best, to know the most, like somehow the validation of being the perfect daughter would give me the type of attention from my parents I craved so desperately, but it never came.

So I stopped striving for the best. I achieved validation and attention through other means and became my own person, but somewhere along the way I’ve found myself in this limbo of happily doing whatever I want because people don’t care and then being hurt that I can do whatever I want because people don’t care.

I worked my ass off to get into Maple Hills because I wanted to prove to my teachers I was more than the girl who cut class and didn’t pay attention. Instead of my achievement, all Mom saw was my impending departure. When I got my acceptance letter she acted like I was going to war, not a college in our state, and she didn’t talk to me for three days. It didn’t matter that I’d stayed close by, unlike my sister who moved to our dad’s place in London when she graduated high school.

The balance between being the perfect daughter and my own person is like walking a tightrope.

Except there’s a hurricane.

And the rope is on fire.

I’ve fallen down more times than I can count and I’m really fucking exhausted.

“You can visit us at camp if you want to, Mom.” I push a strawberry around my plate, waiting for her response because with a mother like mine, whose self-worth is so heavily intertwined with the title of mother that it becomes exhausting, every word is a chess move. “Visiting day is in July. I can text you the date.”

“You clearly don’t want to me to visit, Aurora.”

I’ve never been very good at chess. “Mom—”

“Ms. Roberts, did I tell you about the camera Poppy bought me to take pictures at camp?” Emilia interrupts, reaching for her purse. “As you know, I didn’t get to go to sleepaway camp when I was younger and I was so happy when Aurora finally gave in to me begging her to be a camp counselor with me. She says you picked the best camp so I’m really excited.”

I begged Emilia to be a counselor with me, not the other way around, but my mom doesn’t need to know that. She’ll be too distracted by the praise.