“I don’t want to be the one to ruin it. I didn’t want to do this. I swear to God I never meant to hurt you,” I turn her around and she’s crying so hard her body is shaking. I pull her to me.
“Lisa what is it?”
“Why are you crying Lisa?” a small voice says from behind us. I turn around and see a little girl of maybe seven or eight, with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
“Everything’s fine. Go back in my room okay,” Lisa says trying to pull herself together.
“Who are you?” the little girl asks me.
“I’m Chris, Lisa’s friend,” I tell her, looking back over at Lisa.
“What’s your name?” I ask, kneeling down so we’re at eye level. She gives me a shy smile.
“I’m Willa,” she tells me.
“Please go back in my room sweetie,” Lisa says, ushering her half way. When the little girl leaves I look at Lisa for an explanation.
“Is that one of your students? You didn’t kidnap someone's kid did you?” I say half-jokingly. Lisa has a big heart and I wouldn’t be surprised what she’d do to help a kid even if it wasn’t exactly the legal way. She sighs, it seems like it lasts forever and then wipes her face.
“No. She was staying with my aunt. But now my aunt’s really sick and she can’t take care of her anymore,” she says quietly.
“You’re adopting your niece?” I ask her, sitting back down her couch. I’m not surprised, Lisa loves kids, but to actually take care of one, to be a parent, I don’t know if she’s ready for that yet. She shakes her head.
“She isn’t my niece. She’s my daughter,” she says quickly. So quickly I know I haven’t heard her right.
“Wait. What?” I ask her in disbelief.
“I had her when I was nineteen,” she says, tears coming back in her eyes. I feel like I should say something, but I’m at a loss for words. Lisa has a kid, and she never told me.
“I-I don’t know what to say,” I say, letting out a deep breath.
“Wow, Lisa,” is all I can come up with. We both sit in silence and then my heart starts to beat faster and I remember why I’m here.
Oh no. Oh NO!
“She. She isn’t mine is she Lisa? You and Cal didn’t…” I say, feeling like I’m about to throw up. That son of a bitch. That son of a bitch! She stands from the couch and turns away from me.
“Lisa. Tell me. Say something now,” I say, my voice shaking. She turns back around, her lips quivering and her hands shaking.
“She’s not your daughter. She’s your sister.”
*
When my mom told me she had cancer everything changed. Everything seemed sharper, faster, so fast that nothing really mattered. It all blurred together as time sped up. My world shifted off its axis, my life couldn’t be the same.
When Lisa said those words the exact opposite happened. For a moment everything around me froze, time moved in slow motion, at a glacial pace. I can only describe it as when you get really drunk and you move around lazily. Everything’s foggy. Your mind is like a swamp, your thoughts float around, everything is sticky. Muddy, sticky isn’t the word, muddy. When what you hear is so far-fetched, so catastrophically bad that you brain doesn’t compute it. It can’t compute it. It’s so ridiculous your thoughts won’t process it.
Like it glitches.
I don’t know how long Lisa’s been standing in front of me but I know she could not have just said what I think she just said. It’s impossible, I can’t even respond to it, because if I responded I’d be just as ridiculous as her. I don’t even think I’m here right now. I’m in a nightmare, a constructed dream. Cal is fucking with me. This is all an illusion so he can break me down, mentally fuck me so bad that I can’t come back from it, but I know this isn’t real. My best friend isn’t standing in front of me with a kid I just met in the other room telling me she’s my sister.
It’s implausible because in order for that to be true that would mean she would have had to screw my dad. My father, who would never do anything as disgusting as sleep with my best friend.
He wouldn’t betray my mother like that. Because if he slept with my best friend that would make him…a hypocrite, a filthy piece of shit? It would mean that everything he taught me about values and being a good person was bullshit. That everything I believed in was a fucking lie.
“Christopher,” she squeaks out meekly. It snaps me from my trance.
“Say something. Please.” I look up at her standing in front of me, tears streaming down her face and I feel a switch about to go off. Like a bomb about to explode and it’s taking everything in me not to. So much that I’m afraid to move because the slightest thing could set me the fuck off.