Page 63 of So This Is War
She shakes her head. “It’s an email from your father.”
“What?” I shout as I take the paper from her and start reading.
To: Levi Posey
From: Will Wood
Subject: Your List
Don’t fuck this up, Posey.
Aside from regular tasks like social media, retrieving your food, arranging your calendar, and being at your beck and call, here are a few tasks you need to give her this week:
Hand her a copy of a book. I don’t care what book, but give her a copy of it. Tell her you don’t like the font it’s written in, and have her type it out in a different font. Yes, have her type up the entire book, word for word. Tell her you want it in a week for your away trip to the Northeast.
Spill something on your floor. Don’t care what it is. But make it disgusting. Tell her she needs to clean it up and make it seem like it was never there.
Ask her to get you ten pounds of Skittles. The Skittles must be divided into colors and placed in separate jars. But you want more reds than any other color. At least half a jar more.
Have her purchase you fifty number two pencils. Have her sharpen them just enough so they’re pointed but not too much where they’re splintering. Use them as a decoration for a day and then have her donate them to a local school, but she must receive a receipt of the donation.
Text her in the middle of the night that you need something, anything. Make her get it for you.
After each task, I expect you to take a picture and inform me that it’s been completed. Do not let her off the hook. Don’t let her skate by. I want you to make her life a living hell, got it?
And don’t forget the rules. Don’t forget why you’re doing this. And mainly, don’t forget that she’s completely off limits.
My eyes slowly lift as anger sears through me.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” I hop out of bed, all of my exhaustion fleeing as red-hot rage and adrenaline pulse through me. “Is this real?” I shake the paper at Sandie.
“It looks real to me.” She grabs it and scans the paper. “It’s printed out like a real email. Is that your dad’s real email?”
I snatch the paper again, looking over the email a few times. My eyes feel wild at the moment. When I realize that it is, my entire body breaks out into an angry sweat. “It is.” I toss the paper to the floor and start pacing the length of my tiny hole of a bedroom. “I can’t believe this.”
“What part can’t you believe?”
“All of it.” I toss my hands up in the air. “This is all a joke to him. To my dad. He’s not giving me a chance to prove to him that I can handle this. He’s trying to make me fail. That’s so . . . that’s so fucked up.”
“It is,” Sandie says softly. “I’m sorry, Wylie. You deserve better.”
“I do deserve better,” I reply. Hands on my hips, I stare down at the printed email as realization falls over me. “And he’s helping my dad.”
“Levi?” she asks.
I nod. “Yes. He’s helping him.” I look up at her. “All this insane shit that he’s made me do. The bagels. The writing of the goddamn book. The stain. The pencils. That’s all because of my dad’s direction. Direction that Levi is taking. Why would he listen to my dad? Why would he be a part of this?”
“Well, according to the email, it seems as though there’s a reason he’s doing this.” She picks up the paper and reads, “Remember why you’re doing this.Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . maybe he knew who you were that night and is pissed that you took off and is now trying to get back at you.”
I whip around to look at Sandie. “There’s no way he knew who I was, unless . . . do you think my dad saw us and confrontedLevi after? Maybe Dad has been holding this over his head, and they’ve come together to get me back.”
“That seems very calculated,” Sandie says. “But also, slightly plausible.”
“Wow.” I shake my head as I cross my arms and sit back down on the bed. “I can’t fucking believe this. Here I thought I was actually getting a chance to do something different with my life, and it turns out it’s all a freaking setup. A setup to try to get me to do something I don’t want to do.”
“And I think we all know that you don’t do things you don’t want to do.”
“That’s correct.”Not to mention that my dad doesn’t care whether I fail or succeed. Why? Why would he do that?What parent deliberately sets up their only child to feel bad about herself? I lean against the headboard, feeling so incredibly hurt. So angry. So horrified at the fact that my dad thinks this is all a game. This isn’t a game. This is my life. And it’s about time he realizes he can’t control me anymore.
