The Bad Girl, The Bullet & The New Beginning (on-going)

9 ~ Rules Are Rules

Lila held her breath as she slipped into the house. Her plan had been to sneak in as silently as possible and head straight up to her room, hoping she could pretend she'd been there the whole time. What she hadn't counted on was Aunt Penny watching the front door like a hawk.

"And where have you been?" she heard a stern voice ask the moment she stepped into the hallway.

"God, Aunt Penny, you nearly gave me a heart attack," Lila breathed, clutching her chest as if expecting to go into cardiac arrest any second.

"I asked you a question, Lila," her aunt pressed, her lips pursed in a thin line that Lila knew meant trouble.

"I, uh, stayed late to study," she lied, shrugging casually to try to make herself sound more believable. Penny's eyebrows shot up with what Lila hoped was pleasant surprise at her industry.

"Oh, that's strange, because I got a call from the school an hour ago telling me you were in detention," Penny said angrily, before adding "again" with emphasis.

Lila froze, unable to think of a way out of this one. Now that she'd been caught lying she knew anything she said would just make it worse.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Penny," she offered lamely, but it seemed as if her aunt barely heard her now she'd lost her temper and was pacing around the hallway in agitation.

"I thought we had a deal," she continued in the same tone that conveyed a mixture of anger, disappointment and confusion. "You said you were going to give Lake Larson a chance and I naively believed that you were actually going to start applying yourself here, but then this afternoon when I got back from the hospital I come home to a phone call telling me that my niece is in her second detention in two days for 'inappropriate conduct with a boy on school grounds'. And I don't even want to know what that means!"

"That is a total exaggeration," Lila defended herself.

"Not to mention you sneaking out last night," Penny raged on. "Yes, I know all about that. Where were you? Do you even know how dangerous it is for you to be wandering the streets by yourself like that?"

Lila's jaw felt frozen shut. Anger and hurt stabbed at her chest as she realised Melissa must have ratted her out to her mom. She knew she and her cousin didn't exactly see eye to eye but she didn't expect this kind of betrayal from her.

"I wasn't alone," she retorted, "I was at the lake with some friends."

"And you think it's okay for you to just decide that without telling anyone where you're going?" her aunt demanded. "Anything could have happened to you! The whole reason for you coming here was to keep you safe and protect you."

"I don't want your protection!" Lila protested.

"This isn't about what you want, Lila!" Penny yelled. "Rules are rules and you need to learn that you can't just do whatever you want here! I know Tali lets you just roam free when you're at home and cause as much chaos as you like but we have order here, and everyone knows their place. It's time you did too."

Lila felt anger bubbling up inside her and she balled her fists in an attempt to contain it. There was something about the way Penny talked about her mom with that condescending tone that everyone in Lake Larson seemed to love using on her that made her want to explode.

"Mom always said you were the only person who stood by her when she dropped out of college to have me, even when grandma and grandpa turned their back on her. But you're just as smug and judgemental as the rest of them," Lila said bitterly. "Even you still look down on us like everybody else in this stupid town. So if you're gonna treat me like trash then I'm gonna act like it," she snapped, before marching up to her room.