Chapter 3
Callie was thankful when she finally arrived at her school, because it was a place where she didn't have to think about everything that had been going wrong lately. Sure Lena would be there too, but rarely did the girl see her during her classes, and she was thankful for the escape from their home.
When she was at their house, all she thought about was anything and everything that could mess things up for her at any second.
At least at school, she was able to concentrate on other things.
Even her statistics test that she was sure she failed, because she had completely forgotten about having one.
Her psychology essay about dream interpretations, which she probably failed as well. Callie knew that Lena would probably be upset about it, but it wasn't like she actually had the time or the will to follow the stupid experiment. How would that experiment even work anyway? There's no way in hell you can force yourself to remember your dreams. They couldn't blame her for not remembering the things she did in her subconscious.
And why would she want to recall her dreams, when she was already living in a nightmare?
When the bell rang, she glanced over at her essay and she knew it was too late to go back and bs it now. Should she even hand it in? she wondered. But before she could process her question, Mrs. Wilson collected her paper from the desk and kept moving down the aisle.
Shit! Callie thought to herself.
Oh well, at least she was honest.
And a ten was a better grade than a zero, she reasoned, as she practically ran out of the room and toward her next class.
It wasn't until she appeared in his doorway that she realized that she was wrong.
She was wrong about this place being her escape.
One look at the biological-father of Lena's child was enough to have a thousand more worries run through her mind all at once.
There was a baby coming.
That was something she was able to forget just by not looking down from Lena's face when she spoke with her.
So what if not finding Robert wasn't the reason that she didn't get adopted?
What if they end up changing their minds about the adoption completely after the baby is born?
It's no secret that babies bring about all kinds of stresses for adults.
Callie learned that the hard way when the last foster-parents, who promised to adopt her and Jude, had a baby of their own. They kept them around for a little while after the kid was born because they needed a baby sitter. They even promised to finalize their adoptions until that day the father offered to take the two siblings to the park.
At ten and seven years old, how would they have known that he would be dropping them off at their social worker's house instead?
How stupid was she to believe them before and even more stupid to believe the same lie again?
"Good afternoon, Callie," Timothy offered as he watched her stare into space in the middle of his doorway. "Will you be joining us today?" he asked with a smile. And that was when she realized that everyone in the entire class had been staring at her for God knows how long.
"No," she answered abruptly. "Is it okay if I go to the nurse?"
"Um…Sure. Let me write you a pass," he offered as he reached for his passbook in his drawer. But when he looked back up, she was no longer in sight.
Callie walked away as fast as she could and made her way into the girls' bathroom.
The moment she threw the door open, two blonde hair and blue-eyed twins eyed her with disgust and rolled their eyes before making their way out of the bathroom.
Normally, this would've bothered her a little bit. But she was thankful for the time alone that their departure had brought her.
She quickly checked the bottom of the stalls, to make sure that she was, in fact alone before she ran toward the last bathroom stall, not wanting to waste any time before someone could walk in and ruin this for her.
The urge to do it had never been so strong as it was in this moment, and Callie couldn't understand why all of a sudden everything just intensified with one look at Timothy.
It was like she didn't even have a place to escape from her worries and everyday she just kept imagining more and more reasons that could destroy it all again.
Even now, she was waiting for her named to be called over the loudspeaker because Elaine was here to pick her up.
Again.
But in her imagination, it was Lena's voice, which just made everything all the more worse.
She quickly slammed the stall shut and shoved her hand into her pocket for the blue lighter she had become obsessed with and studied every inch of. She hadn't ever fallen in love with an object, and she wondered if this obsessiveness with her lighter would qualify under objectophilia. Or maybe it wasn't the lighter, but the fire itself. And if it was the fire she felt a connection to, then the entire objectophilia argument just falls apart because fire is an indirect object, which can only exist when using a direct object to make it.
Hence fire isn't an object.
Or maybe it was the pain she received from the fire that made her yearn for the lighter?
Something to keep her mind off of the awful thoughts she was dealing with or some way to punish herself for believing she was responsible for them.
She wasn't entirely sure why she would burn herself, but all she knew was that it made her feel better and allowed her to breathe.
When she grabbed the object into her hand, she examined it closely like she always had in her palms, studying just how much gas was left.
By now, it wasn't much, considering just how often she had used it. But that didn't stop her from flicking it on and studying the blue and yellow colors that were ignited. The flames had gotten lower, which only meant that she had to stick the lighter closer against her skin to feel something. But she didn't mind.
It was the stress of what she would do when the lighter was empty that worried her the most.
When Stef arrived home from work, all of her children were sitting at the dinner table, waiting for her. "Hey, my babies," she said as she walked in and saw them all talking away and examined the table to find pizza rather than a homemade dinner. "Pizza?" she asked in confusion and smiled at her children, "Uhuh. Which one of you is in trouble?" she asked teasingly.
All five of them looked at each other as they tried to figure it out themselves, before they glanced back over at the blonde.
"Oh, one of you is in trouble," she assured them. "If your mama can't even concentrate enough to make dinner, at least one of you did something…" she said as she waited for one of them to confess something, but none of her kids gave in.
"Then, we should start getting in a lot more trouble," Jesus joked, which caused all of the other kids to laugh.
"Oh, laugh now," Stef said cryptically. "Whichever one of you it was just missed your last chance to come clean and won't be laughing for quite a while," she concluded as she walked out of the kitchen, leaving all of her children with fearful looks on their faces as she went up the stairs to find Lena.
When she reached the top, she opened her bedroom door, "Lena?" she said as she went inside and walked around the room and checked the inside of their bathroom for her wife and was surprised when she didn't find her there.
"Lena?" Stef called louder as she walked out of their room.
"In here!" Lena answered. And from Stef's hearing, it sounded like her voice was coming from Jesus' room, which worried her.
When the blonde entered, she saw Lena lifting Jesus' mattress as if she were in search for something.
"Hey! Hey! Hey! What are you doing?" Stef began as she grabbed the mattress from Lena, so that her pregnant wife wouldn't keep holding something so heavy.
Lena let go of the mattress instinctively, knelt down onto the floor, and began searching under his bed, while Stef dropped the mattress back onto it.
"Lena?" Stef asked in a concerning voice, as she reached down to pick up her wife from the floor. "What on earth are you doing?" Stef eyed the woman carefully, trying to read the woman's thoughts, when it appeared as if she wasn't going to say anything.
"I found this… in the bathroom," Lena said as she raised her hand to open her fist and show Stef the blue lighter.
