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Lifting my hands up to shield my eyes from the light, I flashed an insincere smile. A nervous chuckle bubbled out of me as three sets of eyes peered down at me, frowning. I suddenly wished I was back in Maine with my mother. Being with her was a challenge on its own, but wanting to willingly be with her was a feeling I hadn't felt since I was kid, running from the thunder noise outside my bedroom window.

"Who the hell are you?" Dion asked.

"Um, uh, I am -" I began to say.

"Silvia!" someone yelled. "You're back!"

I didn't need to move my hands away from my face to know who that was. If anything, I raised both of my arms up even more when I saw Dakota rushing right for me, hands stretched out with his fingers spread apart. It was useless though, Dakota pulled me into a tight embrace whether I liked it or not.

"Sorry about that. He's rarely ever like this when he's sober." Dion sighed, prying him off of me.

"Oh, trust me I know." I assured him.

"He's a happy drunk."

"Sometimes a violent drunk," Heath added, motioning to the space behind him. There was a tall CD rack on the floor with content spilled around it. The bed was unmade, but other than that the room looked spotless. Dakota had similar bedsheets as the black satin ones he had at his brother's apartment in Boulder Valley.

"Don't say that with her standing right there!" Dakota stage whispered and straightened the front of his shirt, roughly. "He's lying. I'm not that bad, Silvia."

Dion stopped rolling his eyes and looked at me again, differently than when they discovered me in the hallway. "Wait, are you Silvia Ellington by any chance? I heard about the new Ellington family member in town recently, but I didn't think it was true though. I thought it was only a rumor."

"Yes, she is Silvia Ellington." Dakota took the words out of my mouth. "She related to the same Ellington that mom keeps talking about and the lawyer that got dad in the slammer."

Dion slapped the back of Dakota's head. "If you keep talking, I'm going to have to sow your mouth together." He narrowed his eyes on me, pulling his lip ring between his teeth while he thought to himself in silence. "How long have you been standing in the hallway?"

"Yeah, what did you hear?" Heath asked.

"Not much," I lied. "I barely got up here. I only came here so I could see how Dakota was doing. He sent me a lot of texts and calls and I got worried. What happened?"

I attempted to shift the conversation away from me and to Dakota, who was the real problem at the moment. Dakota hiccupped and rubbed the back of his head where his brother had hit him. He pouted, "Ouch."

"Don't worry about this guy. He'll be fine." Heath beamed, sending a heavy hand down on to Dakota's back.

"Maybe if he didn't go to that stupid gig of yours he wouldn't have been like this." Dion scolded.

"Nah, I would've found booze one way or another," Dakota chirped and winked. "I've got my ways."

Dion sighed. "See what you did!"

Heath matched his scold. "I did nothing. He's the one who decided to drink after our gig last night."

"Then I kept drinking after we left," Dakota filled in. "And then when I got home, and then when I woke up..."

"How are you still walking?" I inquired, cocking a brow. "You should be on the floor right now. Blacked out and in need of a stomach pump."

Dakota patted his chest. "I've got an iron liver."

Heath lowered Dakota's hand from his chest. "That's not where your liver is. But okay."

The anger toward Dakota turned into pure laughter. It was only after Dion realized there was a sleeping baby in the room adjacent to Dakota's when he told us to hush. A door at the end of the hall slowly opened, causing a creaking noise to echo down the hallway.

"What's with all of the commotion?"

The laughter died, along with our smiles and the light energy in the air. A shadow moved through the unlit hallway. I could make-out a white sleeping gown and long slender legs coming our way, but other than that I was clueless.

It had to be Dakota's mother, Dona Ridgewood.

The infamous woman who hadn't left her house in eleven years...and now I knew why.

At first, my eyes focus on her unreal sapphire colored eyes, shimmering under the dim-lit hallway. It was like the entire ocean was captured in her irises. From the roaring deep blues to the tranquil light blues. Long auburn hair fell over her thin, boney shoulders. It was when she turned to the left, looking at me even harder, when I saw the burns starting at her wrist, stretching down to her toes. It was just on one side. Her right side didn't have any old burn scars, but the left side was entirely engulfed by bright, discolored flesh.

She shuffled back into the shadows. "Who is that? Dion, you said only Heath and Paul were coming for Dakota."

"She's here for me, too, mom." Dakota looped his arm with mine. "She's my g...good friend."

Perfect. I was even friend-zoned by drunk Dakota.

"I don't care if she's your...wait," she cut herself off and I could feel her eyes on me again. "You look familiar. Do I know you?"

"Of course you don't, Mom." Dakota snapped, rolling his eyes a little too much. "You haven't left your house since '04."

I wanted to say something to Dona, but I didn't know what I could possible say. She had said the same exact words Beth had said to me when we first met. Why did people keep thinking they knew me? I didn't have that much of a familiar face.

"You look a lot like someone I knew..." she trailed off and let out a deep sigh.

"She's an Ellington," Dakota said with a smile. "You know her dad."

Both Dion and I sighed. I had to stop him from slapping Dakota again in the back of the head.

Instead of rushing to kick me out, the unthinkable occurred before me.

"Is that so? Hmm, I'll be downstairs in a moment. Where I hope you are all by the time I come back out." She opened her bedroom door. "Dion, start up the kettle."

I wasn't sure why she would want to sit down with us.

. . .

While waiting for Dakota's mom, I texted Ronnie that I wouldn't need her to stay around after all. Dion offered the spare room they had upstairs. I, at first, denied the offer-not because I was afraid of my grandma's wrath when she found out I'd snuck out, but more because I was still creeped out by the house. Drunk Dakota assured me that he'd even go as far as checking under my bed for any monsters if I was still scared.

Dona gracefully walked down the steps, wearing clothing that hid all of her burns from sight. Her face and the backs of her hands were the only things that didn't have burns either. "So you're Jonah's daughter? I didn't know he had children."

"Yeah, I lived in Maine for the most part. This is my first year out of my hometown Portland. It's just my brother and I."

"There's two of you?" She nodded. "Hmm. I'm sure your father told you about his glory days at Crescent Heights."

"Mom, please." Dion huffed, setting down the kettle just like she had asked for him to do. "I doubt she knows any of that shit you keep talking about."

Dona's body practically floated on to the coach across from me. "We can always ask. Did you father ever happen to tell you? Yes or no?"

"Stop living in the past, mom." Dion sighed. "Let it go."

"It's a harmless question." She insisted. "I just want to know if your father ever told you about how he started the legendary tradition for all senior boys at Crescent High."

Dakota gulped. "I don't like where this is going."

"No, it's okay. I don't mind answering." I patted his hand that was on my knee. "I'm not all that close with my father to where he'd tell me about that."

She sat there, observing me and periodically glancing down at the hand on my knee. Dakota had no intentions of moving it anytime soon. "I swear, you remind me so much of someone I knew."

"You keep saying that, but you haven't said who."

She picked the kettle and poured herself a cup. "I doubt you'd know who Jasmine Jama is."

I sat up straight. "Jasmine Jama is my mother. How would you know her? She's lived in Maine for most of her life."

She laughed. "No she hasn't. She lived in Crescent Heights since she was old enough to drive. That's when she drove right out of this town and to New York to pursue some childish modeling career. Of course when I knew her, she was the step-daughter to Doctor Giller."

- - - - - - - -- - -

Song for the chapter: Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye

Lyrics:

❝Now you're just somebody that I used to know❞

Here's the cast for Dona and Dion Ridgewood.

Jesse Rutherford as Dion Ridgewood

[this photo is of him slightly younger than he is now]

Julianne Moore as Dona Ridgewood

[ she doesn't have blue eyes but she's the first actress that comes to mind when I think of Dona Ridgewood ]

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