November 30

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The sudden flash of light causes me to wince, squinting my eyes shut before opening them a fraction to squint into the blinding beam. Shane says something I don't hear, slowly recognizing the face outside the window as my dad's.

"Dad," I breathe.

"Shit," Shane blurts out.

I don't know who drops whose hand but Shane is the one who rolls down his window when Dad's fist rams against it. His set face appears when the tinted glass vanishes and I'm already reaching for the door handle. Jumping out of the car and slamming the door shut behind him, I walk around the front of the car and toward dad whose car stands start in the driveway.

"What are you doing out here?" Dad demands, his red-tinged eyes boring into mine.

Mine roll to the back of my head of their own accord and I try not to be so insolent. His question makes me want to burst out laughing, though. Is this the only thing that concerns him? Why I'm outside at this time of the night.

"What are you doing out of the house past midnight, Taylor?" Dad asks slowly.

Taking my time to answer, I take in Dad's open collar and the tie hanging loosely around his neck, the reddish tinge to his eyes, the slight delay in his speech. It's evident he's been drinking.

"I could ask you the same thing," I say calmly.

In the dim light, I watch Dad's face pale further. The sound of the door opening behind me makes me glance over my shoulder to see Shane jumping out of his Navigator and taking a hesitant step toward me.

"I'm so sorry, sir, it's my fault," he says, clearly flustered but plucking up his courage to stand up in my favor. "I'm Shane Gray. I'm Taylor's --"

"Shane," I interrupt. "You should go. I've got this."

Shane stares at me, his mouth hanging open. Still, I stand my ground, knowing now why Shane did what he did yesterday. Not only do I want to handle my messy family myself but I also don't want my dad saying anything to Shane that will make me feel bad later.

He doesn't argue, though, his uncertain gaze fixed on me. As for Dad, he looks from Shane to me and back.

"Go, Shane," I repeat softly. "I'll see you at school on Monday."

Before he can say anything, I turn back to look at Dad before taking firm steps toward the house. I don't want to create a scene with Shane watching and the last thing I want is to show him how crazy everything in my family has become.

There was a time when I could talk to my dad without feeling a rush to rage toward him. There was a time when Carter and I would wait for the weekend because we could spend time with him and Mom. He'd take us camping and shopping and we loved sitting in McDonald's and talking about my badminton team and Carter's obsession with NFL.

Now, though, every time I either see Dad or even think about him, I wish I could grab him by his shoulders and shake him hard. I want him to open his eyes and see what he's doing to us. What he did to Carter without knowing and is now doing to me and Mom.

I wish I could make him see how he's losing everything we used to have.

Passing him by, I turn around with raised eyebrows to give Shane a questioning look. Shane sighs and nods, getting in his car and causing it to start. As he drives off and disappears, Dad turns to look at me with pursed lips and furrowed brows, and I ignore him and enter the house.

I cross the living room slowly, making my way to the stairs while pretending I'm not waiting for dad to catch up to me.

"Taylor, I'm asking you a question," Dad snaps, his voice ringing loudly in the deadly-silent house.

"I asked you one too," I counter, not turning around.

"I'm your father and I have every right to know what you're doing outside with a boy at this time of the night," Dad snaps in one breath.

I turn around and fold my arms across my chest. The door to Mom's room flies open and she appears in over the threshold, wide-eyed and messy-haired.

"What's going on?" she grumbles, her eyes skipping between Dad and I.

"Ask her." Dad waves a hand around at me. "I just found her sitting in a boy's car outside --"

"Shane's," I tell Mom.

Although Mom doesn't know much about Shane and we really haven't had a mother-daughter chat about my involvement with him, she's aware that he's someone important to me. If she remembers meeting him all those days ago in the kitchen, she doesn't speak, her forehead creasing.

"It's one a.m.," Dad points out.

"So you can be out and one a.m. and I can't?" I ask, my voice growing louder. "What about that, huh? You clearly weren't at work at this time of the night."

"You're in no position to be asking me this," Dad says.

"Then you're in no position to question me about what I do."

"I'm your father," Dad exclaims.

"And all that means is that you can question me about whatever boy I talk to, yeah, sure," I say mockingly, scoffing aloud. "Because the only two occassions you've talked to me in this past year is because of a boy."

Dad's face shifts from white to red and his eyes narrow into slits. As for Mom, I'm aware of her wide eyes on me as she attempts to slide away from the scene without being noticed. Her cowardice only makes me angrier.

"You know what?" I ask, my voice still rising in pitch and volume. "You're a coward. You're an avoidant person who thinks things will get better if you just keep ignoring them. You're afraid to address the elephant in the room. You'd rather run back to China and leave everything painful behind."

"Don't act like you're the victim here," Dad responds loudly. "You're not the one who has to deal with all the shit, Taylor. All you have to do is study and hang out with friends and --"

"While you stay out nights and spend all your money drinking at bars, yeah, I know," I interrupt, feeling a bubble of anger swelling in my belly. I'm so upset I'm about to blow.

A volcano about to erupt.

"You're the victim here," I shoot venomously. "I mean, it's not like Carter was the victim, right? The sixteen-year-old who killed himself because he was so depressed but nobody cared."

All the air in the room suddenly drifts out, leaving a suffocating void behind. It pulls at my heart, causing me to gasp for breath. My parents, too, are frozen.

Avoiding.

"When was the last time you visited his grave, Dad?" I demand, my eyes stinging. "When was the last time you went into his room or looked at his pictures? When was the last time you remembered you have a family? Do you know that your teenage son killed himself?" I nearly yell, my voice choked. "Do you know that your teenage daughter is injecting fucking insulin into her body every day because she's sick? Do you know that your wife is seeing a therapist because she's so depressed all she does is drink and sleep? Do you know that this house is falling apart and we're all equally responsible because we're all shitty people who don't care about the people living under the same roof?"

My breathing comes heavy and ragged, my words echoing and reverberating between the walls, reflected from every solid surface and tossed back at me with full force. My knees wobble under the weight of every word I utter, my heart threatening to burst under the force of them.

Sucking in a shuddering breath and blinking back my tears, I force a weak smile at the mannequin I'm facing.

"Do you know it's my birthday today?" I ask softly, my voice so distant I don't even recognize it. "Carter's birthday? He would have been seventeen today. He would have been seventeen if he'd been with a family that actually cared about him. But he's never going to be seventeen. He's not going to grow up and go to college. He's not going to get a job, buy his own house, get married, have kids. He's not going to live the life he deserved because he decided we didn't deserve him. His self-absorbed sister, negligent parents ... we didn't deserve him."

Tears leak out of my eyes and down my face and hiccups interrupt me after every few words. I'm no longer angry, just regretful. I'm sad and upset, wishing he was standing next to me right now with his signature smile and stupid jokes. I wish Carter was bounding down the stairs right now and telling me he was older than me and thus deserved more presents. I wish he was alive even if I had to replace him in the six-foot piece of land that is his eternal home now.

"This is what we deserve," I conclude, the sound of mom's dry sobbing reaching me from one corner of the room. "We deserve to live with this guilt."

Dad's eyes are dry too, but he's not the man he once was. He's not the man who had once owned this house and had the perfect family. He's a broken man, a dead soul trapped in a living body.

We all are.

We have to live with it. We should live with it. No running from it. No avoiding it. We should all know that we did that to him. He didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve to feel unwanted and neglected. But we deserve it. We deserve to live with the self-hate and constant regret of knowing what we should have done but didn't do.

"I'm sorry," Dad says, his voice so small as he stares at me with so much pain in his eyes that it tears at my heart. "I'm sorry and that's all I can say."

I rub my face harshly with the back of my hand and shake my head.

"I'm sorry too," I answer. "I'm sorry that I just don't care what you say anymore. You want to go to China, go. If I can live without Carter ..." I look from Dad to Mom who is staring at me as she continues to sob. "... I can live without the two of you too."

Neither of my parents says a thing, and I spin toward the stairs and race up to my room. Instead of going into my own room, though, I enter Carter's, closing the door behind me and sliding down the cool wooden surface until I'm sitting on the floor of the dark and eerie room.

Pulling my knees up to my chest, I wrap my arms around them and hug myself, squeezing my eyes shut and allowing myself to cry.

As I sit there, my sobs the only sound in the empty room, I feel a presence close by. I feel the warmth of a familiar body, someone I know and love. I sense Carter sit down next to me on the floor and wrap his arms around me.

"I miss you, Carter," I whisper to no one.

He doesn't answer, not even here.

He'll never answer and never be here again.

And nothing will ever be the same without him.

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A/N: I'm sorry for this dark chapter but it was bound to happen. Do you think Taylor snapping will get her dad to see what he's doing like her mom did or will this not lead to any positive outcome? Next chapter <3