11. You've Left Me Speechless.
Jade was one hundred percent sure she looked as much of a mess as she felt, so the expression on her father's face when he opened the door wasn't exactly a surprise.
"And where the hell have you been?" Richard inquired unsympathetically. He was in a navy blue bathrobe and black slippers, leaning on his crutch.
"Out," Jade's voice was hoarse. "Can you yell at me in the morning?"
"No," Richard pointed to a bench next to an empty coatrack. "Sit."
Jade sat, her hands between her knees. She let her hair fall in front of her face as she stared at his crutch against the floor.
"Where have you been?" Richard asked again. "And I want the truth."
"At a party."
"With whom?"
"No one."
"Look at me." Richard's sharp voice made Jade raise her head. "Who were you with?"
"I wasn't with anyone. I crashed the party."
"Why?"
"Because my invitation was lost in the mail," Jade's sarcasm couldn't be tamed even by alcohol. "Why do you think? I wasn't invited!"
"Watch your tone," Richard pointed a stern finger at his daughter. "Why did you go?"
"…just wanted to have some fun," Jade mumbled, shrugging weakly. She glanced back down at her knees.
"And did you?"
"Yes," Jade lied, sneering. "I had a blast."
"You smell like beer."
"Not all of us can afford scotch."
"Go to bed," Richard sighed angrily, rubbing the tension in his forehead awkwardly with his braced wrist. "We'll talk more in the morning."
For a second she contemplated not going to bed just to spite him, but the blood throbbing in her temples made a different choice. Jade stomped up the stairs and flopped onto her bed, her head regretting the door she'd just slammed. She moaned into her pillow, shutting her eyes.
She opened her eyes again a moment later and saw that the clock beside her bed read ten in the morning. She'd already slept for ten hours? Jade rolled onto her stomach, wanting to vomit from the pain inside her head. A quote from a movie she'd watched a few years ago came into her mind: "He's having a migraine. Imagine someone sawed open your head, filled it with razors and shook it as hard as they could." Never before had a movie quote suddenly made so much sense. Wanting to delay standing up for as long as possible, she fumbled for the PearPhone resting on the nightstand and turned it on. There were various texts from Cat (the usual random thoughts), and one voicemail notification. Jade sighed — she was pretty sure she knew who that message would be from, but she tapped the icon anyway.
"Hey, Jade…." Beck paused for a moment in his message with a sigh. "I know you're upset with me, and you kind of have every right to be, but we need to talk about what happened last night. Call me when you get this, please. We really need to talk."
Jade didn't want to talk. Instead, she stumbled into the shower, turned it on full throttle and set the steam jets running. Standing under the steady stream of water, she breathed in the heat for a good thirty minutes. When she thought she'd mustered up the courage to face whatever was waiting for her downstairs, she dried herself off, dressed, and tiptoed to the kitchen. Coffee was already made (maybe the universe didn't hate her quite so much after all). She was on her third mugful when she heard Richard's distinctive gait — foot, crutch, foot, crutch — approaching the kitchen.
"Wait," her father said as Jade tried to slide out of the room. "Stop."
"Sleep well?" Jade half-grinned sheepishly, turning to face him.
"We need to talk about what happened last night," Richard announced, seating himself on a stool. Jade stood across from him, clutching her coffee. She wondered if she picked the wrong person to confront about the party.
"It was just…youthful indiscretion," Jade said casually with a wave of her hand, setting the mug down for a refill. Usually she could smooth over whatever argument was actually her fault this way.
"You've never done anything like this before."
"How would you know?" Jade said, uncharacteristically calm. "You weren't around 'before.'"
"Jade," Richard sighed, leaning forward. "Has something happened? Is that why you're acting out?"
"No," Jade said sarcastically with an impatient roll of her eyes. "Nothing's happened. My entire life's been uprooted and my mother is in jail, but nothing distressing has happened."
"You watch your tone," Richard threatened, his patience sapped."I've been nothing but kind to you ever since you got here. I even offered to come to the play you're in, even though you know I despise the theater."
"Well, you don't have to worry about that play," Jade declared with the false cheer she tended to reserve for Tori, "because I am an understudy. Do you know what that means? I'm not even in the play."
Richard raised his eyebrows quickly up and down. He had expected this, Jade could see it in his eyes. He looked like a man who'd just won a bet — Satisfied.
"And you don't despise theater," Jade challenged. "You saw my play, you saw Well Wishes a couple of years ago and you said it was excellent."
"I meant for something you wrote," Richard scoffed. "Something written by a child. It was weird and disturbing. No wonder you couldn't produce it at your school."
Jade tossed her mug into the sink, hoping it cracked, and stalked out of the kitchen.
"I am not finished speaking!" Richard bellowed after her, trying to pursue her on his crutch.
"I am finished listening!" Jade shouted, pivoting to face him. "I've been finished listening to you since middle school!"
"Well you live under my roof now!"
"That doesn't mean you own me!" Jade was screaming at the top of her lungs by now and her headache was making her dizzy. "So stop trying to control me, because you can't! I will crawl to Canada and back before I let you dictate how I live my life!"
"I can dictate how you live your life. I pay for it. I pay for every aspect of it," Richard's voice was suddenly dangerously low. But even with every limping step he took forward, Jade didn't move. She stood her ground, staring back unrelentingly. "I took you in after your shit-show of a mother went off the deep end. The least you can do is give me the respect I deserve."
"I don't respect people who don't respect me."
"I will respect you when you earn it. So you will follow my rules."
"You can't make me." Jade almost winced. She wished for a moment that she could come up with a more mature response, but there really wasn't one.
"I can and I will. Here's what you will do: you will be home by seven every night unless I give you permission to be elsewhere. You will not write your creepy plays or stories or love songs to mend your broken heart. You will attend college and become a surgeon or a lawyer or a goddamn dentist— somebody that's worth something. Someone useful. Successful."
"You'll think differently when I win an Oscar," Jade retorted. Richard smirked.
"To do that you'd have to be talented. You can't even get cast in a high school play — which is why you will not be returning to your performing arts school."
"I… What?"
"You heard me."
"You can't make me leave Hollywood Arts," Jade's voice shook just a little bit. She took a step backward.
"I won't pay for it any longer."
"I won't leave."
"I've already informed the school that you will be out at the end of the quarter."
"You're bluffing, you asshole." Jade said harshly — in reality, she wasn't quite sure.
"Try me," Richard snarled. Then his face softened. "You'll thank me someday, Jade. Someday you'll realize that I'm helping you. These dreams of being a performer… They're laughable, Jade. You'll see that soon."
He turned on his crutch and hobbled away. Jade didn't move for a few moments, biting her lip and trying to keep in her tears. The razors in her head were suddenly tap dancing.
You popped my heart seams.
All my bubble dreams,
Bubble dreams.
*whispers* sorry. You guys are all a little mad at me for the shit I'm giving Jade, so...sorry. I know Jade leaving HA is kind of a trope within the fandom, but I'm trying to make it not cliche. We'll see. Anyway, thank you for all of your reviews even though you might think I'm heartless! I honestly love being yelled at by you guys - if my writing can make you feel something like that, I've succeeded.