“You didn’t need to come with me,” I said as Jo strolled through the West Towne Mall beside me. The two-story mall was filled with teeny-boppers walking through the stores just to be seen by their friends, and soccer moms attempting to get some much-needed alone time in.

I’d stopped in to see how Angela was doing. Except Jo didn’t know where she was. Angela had been gone before she woke up. Kevin was with a client at the gym, and Jo had some time before her evening shift at the Old Fashioned; a refurbished speakeasy turned upmarket pub.

With limited time that really meant one thing: shopping therapy. Even if it was an hour, it would allow us to hang together and meet our issues head-on. I wasn’t sure things were 100% fixed between us, but they weren’t awkward either. I had hoped we could build a stronger foundation now that all my secrets and lies were exposed.

“I needed to get out. As soon as we got home yesterday morning Angela barricaded herself in the bathroom and shaved her head.”

I still couldn’t believe that. Jo had told me right away, but my brain was having a difficult time accepting that Angela had gone full Britney Spears circa her meltdown year, and lopped off all her hair.

I’d known Angela for a while now. Over two years. She was in the last part of her communications degree, and I was in marketing, so sometimes our classes overlapped. And during that time, she’d always had that perfect, silky hair. She’d been a modern-day Rapunzel with this gorgeous mane that went to her waist. The color was amazing too, a soft champagne shade the kind no amount of money would duplicate.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” I couldn’t shake my guilt. Even though I had nothing to do with what happened to Angela, it didn’t sound as if she were handling her assault alright.

“If she gets counseling, yes. I think so.” Jo chewed on her bottom lip. It was a casual reaction, but I knew it was a sign that she wasn’t quite sure she believed what she’d said.

We rounded the area near the food court and passed the huge three-store face of our favorite lingerie shop.

“We need to go into Victoria’s Secret,” Jo said.

Shopping with my newly confident best friend was a change from the normal. While we both loved Ms. Victoria, I’d always had to twist her arm to go in.

I loved what Kevin had done for her.

“Who are you and what have you done with my best friend,” I teased.

Jo laughed and dragged me towards the mall bathrooms. “Hold that thought I have to pee.”

She piled her bags into my arms, luckily taking her big ass pink coat with her, and bounced into the lady’s room.

Everyone in the world seemed to be congregating in the food court.

I struggled beneath her jacket and mine and leaned against the wall. I couldn’t even check my phone. So, I did my second favorite thing other than Facebook and Instagram.

I people watched.

Even to this day, I can’t say what caught my eye. There were so many people to look at; young and old; punk and pretty; harried and ultra-casual. I didn’t normally check out older guys. Especially now that I was with Regi, I just wasn’t interested in anything then a quick glance over a true beefcake. Being that we were all wrapped up in bulky sweaters, and huge coats, it was hard to tell who had the body, and who was just fluff.

The man standing in front of China Wok looked familiar. But it was the girl who gripped my attention.

She looked like Licia. Except she was paler and younger.

I blinked. My attention trailed upwards and back to the man.

It hit me like a hydrogen bomb who they were. Surely, I was hallucinating. What were the odds that he would be here of all places?

I took a step closer, drawn to them as if they were magnets and I was a hapless bit of metal. I stopped within touching distance, but it was my words which were my undoing.

“Dad?” I hadn’t meant to speak aloud. But the title, one he didn’t deserve, burst free.

The man’s — my father — head whipped around and he stared at me. There was no mistaking who he was.

While I had my mother’s body type and dusky skin, my father and I had the same exact eye color and shape. It was like looking into a mirror and meeting my own eyes.

The girl turned her head at my startled comment. Her eyes widened, the sherry brown iris so alike Licia’s and mine, as she looked at me, and then up at our sperm donor.

Holy shit, I had a sister. Another sister.

The bags I held hit the ground with a thump as my arms dropped.

“Dad, who is this?”

The girl — my mother fucking sister — couldn’t have been much younger than Licia. Maybe sixteen, which meant she’d already been born, or her mother had at least already been pregnant when dad had abandoned us.

Was she why he left? Did he have a whole new family he’d hidden away before leaving mom and me and Licia?

Pain coiled around my chest like an anaconda, threatening to crush me to death. I thought I was over this. I thought I’d buried any notion I’d had of wanting him in my life. God, I was a damn fool. I was a little girl again with her face pressed against the window just begging for him to turn around and return to us.

Dad’s jaw tightened, pulling firm the flesh along his jaw. He gripped the girl — my sister. Oh, God — by the arm. She flinched, and my memory stirred as my gaze sharpened on his rough fingers. I remembered those bruising grips. My bicep stung in sympathy for her.

His gaze cut through me, and sliced into the residual little girl hope I nurtured. While he didn’t sneer, the apathy in his voice hurt more than any anger could. “She’s no one. Absolutely no one.”

I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were paralyzed as he jerked the girl away. My throat clotted with unshed tears, The brutality in his grip hadn’t changed. She whined, trying to pry his hand off her arm, as he physically dragged her away, leaving me stunned in the wake of his cruelty.

He’d known who I was. I’d seen the recognition in his eyes. I was too hurt to cry, too numb to feel anything but the flutter of my elevated pulse; deaf and blind to everything but the yawning chasm of parental betrayal sucking me under. I simply stared at the retreating form of my dad and half-sister. I watched them until the crowd swallowed them up and they disappeared as if they’d never existed.

I don’t know how long I stood speechless, wrapped in the growing nimbus of pain when Jo found me. She was touching my arm, her words soft and insistent, shaking me from my coma. What was she saying? I couldn’t grasp the words. They were gibberish until the world around me snapped into clarity like a rubber band pulled too far suddenly breaking.

“Mia, talk to me. What’s wrong? God, you’re white as a ghost.” Worry laced Jo’s words as she guided me away from the restaurant. She gathered the bags I’d dropped after tucking me against the jamb between a storefront window and a wall.

She handled me delicately as if she thought was I was going to shatter into a million porcelain pieces; Mia on the wall and no amount of king’s men would be able to put me together again. Jo piled our shopping bags on the ground. The rustle of the paper was somehow louder than the hum of a hundred-people talking and walking by us.

I couldn’t form the words. It was too cruel. Too real. Too fresh. How had I thought that the wounds my father left behind were healed? They weren’t. They were bloody and infected with truth. He’d said it clearly.

I am no one.

I jerked away from Jo. “I need to go.”

Jo blinked at me, her brown eyes large and confused. “Mia…”

I shook my head. My flight instinct was in high gear. I couldn’t stick around. I couldn’t even utter the depths of the pain lingering in my soul. Jo might have known a bit about my father’s abandonment, but I’d never delved into the shit.

“I can’t.” My voice cracked. I was holding it together by a thread. I didn’t want to make a scene or have some epic meltdown in the middle of the mall. I pulled my jacket on, trying to find warmth despite the ice that grew inside me, and grabbed my shopping bags.

Jo sighed. Her brow puckered with confusion, and I was sure she was going to argue. Finally, she nodded. “Text me, okay?”

She slung her arms around me, pulling me into a hug that almost set the waterworks off. “Okay,” I croaked.

Then I bolted, trying to outrun the thought pounding into my head like a sledge hammer.

Nobody.

Nothing.

Not good enough.