Backdated to 7/26/2014

Gemma’s high fades as they near her father’s townhouse. Christopher answers the door. He looks tired, and why shouldn’t he be? It’s nearing three in the morning. “Go sit in the kitchen,” he orders, and she goes, lingering in the hallway to listen to the officers speaking to her father. They say they found her wandering Coolidge Corner, and they think she might be high… When she hears the door closing, she hurries the rest of the way into the kitchen.

“Are you high?” is Christopher’s first question, and he very nearly roars it. Gabrielle and Ethan are sound asleep, two floors above them. Gemma shakes her head meekly, and he comes over and sniffs her clothes and hair, looking for evidence. Of course he finds nothing, no offending smell, and Gemma’s good mood from her starseed snack is fast turning to fear.

“How the ******** did you get out?” he demands, and Gemma shrinks a little. “I bring you here, under my roof, and this is how you repay me? I have a reputation to maintain, Gemma!”

He doesn’t need to scream, she thinks, and she imagines turning into Astrophyllite again and reaching her hand into his chest and pulling out his starseed and then he won’t be able to scream at her anymore. Gemma’s not bad. She’s very, very good.

But she also knows that there are generally rules against harvesting your father’s starseed even if you really really want to and Avalon would probably not be very happy with her if she did.

“You’re going to your room,” he says, “And you are going to stay there until we decide what to do with you. I don’t know what they’re teaching you in that school of yours but it’s clearly not taking hold. I don’t know why we ******** bother trying to make you anything but a delinquent. Your mother’s too soft with you.”

Gemma gets slowly up from the table. Christopher follows her up the stairs and into her bedroom, where he sees that the window is open. He slams it shut and locks it, does something on his phone and tells her, “It’s alarmed now. No more of this ******** bullshit. I’m going back to bed and so should you.”

He closes her door a little bit too hard. Gemma listens, and hears him telling Gabrielle in hushed tones that nothing is wrong and she should go back to bed. She wracks her memory, trying to find an instance of him speaking to her like that, but her childhood is so fuzzy to begin with…

She gets back into bed, and the comforter is warm and plush and luxurious but it doesn’t smell right. It doesn’t smell like home. She can still feel the tingle in her fingers and toes from when she ate the man’s starseed and she thinks she could really easily get addicted to this which is a reason why she shouldn’t do it all the time.

Her father didn’t even ask if she was okay, she thinks as she drifts off. He didn’t even care. Maybe he never wanted her at all.