“We were chasing who we thought had planted the box and placed the fake bomb call,” Kota said. “He stole Mr. Blackbourne’s car and took us on a tour of the city before he took out the GPS in his car and we lost him.”
My heart stopped. “So he’s the one? And he’s the one who sent me text messages.”
The others nodded. They already knew. “Yes,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “We realized that when you called.”
My finger drifted up, hovering just over my lip. “He intercepted the phone. We just got new ones today.”
North moved toward the passenger side door. He opened it, picking up the phone from the floor and brought it back. “This one?”
I nodded. “Victor bought those sometime around noon. He must have followed us all day to know we got those. But he didn’t need to get our phones to use them against us. Unless he did something to Victor.”
“We were chasing him for a couple of hours today prior to him finding you. He has another way he’s listening in on us,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “We’ve got to do a sweep.”
“We need to take her somewhere safe,” Kota said. “I should take her back to Victor’s for the night.”
Mr. Blackbourne shook his head. “We’ve got to let her go back to school.”
The guys squared off their shoulders at him. “You can’t,” North said. “He’s warned her. He’s kidnapped her.”
“And he left her here with us. She’s right. He could have taken her further and he didn’t. He wanted to rattle us and he did. He expects us to hide. Unfortunately, we’ve got other problems, too. Mr. Hendricks is asking for her. He’s left several voice messages on my school number already, asking where she is and threatening to call her parents if she doesn’t get back to school. If she doesn’t make an appearance tomorrow, this could get ugly.”
“Why is he calling you?” I asked.
“He has witnesses at school seeing you leaving with the others. You haven’t been back since. He’s assuming you’re with us.”
North pinched at the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes. “Why do we care? Let’s get that over with. Hanging her parents’ being missing over us all the time is putting her at risk and making things too complicated.”
“Let’s not talk about it here anymore,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “We need to go. Kota and North, come with me in my car. Nathan, take her home. Don’t leave her. Everyone’s going to school tomorrow. That’s an order. I think we’ve identified the phone code threats enough. We’ll be monitoring.”
I shoved my forefinger at my lip, wanting to say something but afraid to ask too much. Kota and North glanced back at me once, both frowning. They got into the car with Mr. Blackbourne, and Mr. Blackbourne took off, heading up the road to find a place to turn around.
Nathan found my hand and grasped it. He drew it away from my mouth, his eyes were serious and dark. “Let’s go home, Peanut.”
I wanted to agree with him, but couldn’t say anything. Home suddenly seemed like a concept I couldn’t understand. I followed him anyway, because without the boys, I had no idea where to turn. Maybe the masked man had been wrong.
I was too deep within the Academy to turn back. I had nowhere else to go.
Maybe it was too late for me.
FINDING SOLACE IN EVERYDAY THINGS
Nathan held on to my hand as often as he could while he drove, but we rode in silence. I was overwhelmed. He was caught up in his own thoughts. But he never released me, and in a strange way, I couldn’t let go, either. I sought out a comfort I was unwilling to give myself by being near them again.
Finally, he pulled North’s Jeep into his drive.
“Should I go to my house?” I asked him. “What about Marie?”
“Marie’s told me if you’re not there, she’d rather I didn’t stay,” he said. “I think she likes playing queen of the house. I've asked Derrick to keep an eye on her since she’s by herself. He didn’t seem to mind.”
I let a small smile slip. I felt better knowing Derrick was watching over Marie. Maybe it wasn’t the same as the boys watching over me, but I thought it was sweet of him, since he seemed to have a crush on her. If anyone would understand this, Derrick would.
Nathan ran around the car, opening my door before I could snap open my seatbelt. “You don’t really have to do that every time?”
“Do what?” he asked, tilting his head.
“I can open a car door. It’s okay.”
He smirked, putting a hand out, palm up. “Are you kidding? Do you want me to get my ass kicked?”
I didn’t really get what he meant. Who would kick him if he didn’t? The other boys?
I followed him to the front door. It was unlocked and he walked in.
I was going to ask why he left the door unlocked, but from inside the house came a couple of familiar voices.
“I can’t really picture her liking it.”
“Oy, shut the fuck up. What do you know?”
“Hey!” Nathan called into the house. “We’re home.”
Shuffling feet met us as we reached the dining room. Gabriel poked his head out first from the hallway, then Luke was behind him.
Gabriel’s crystal blue eyes widened as he caught me behind Nathan. “What did you bring her here for?”
My cheeks heated and I flinched at his reaction, like he didn’t want me. He probably didn’t mean it like he made it sound, but it was bad timing.
“Huh?” Nathan asked. “What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to set up for her birthday, and you brought her here.” Gabriel raised his hands in the air. “How am I supposed to work around her and make things a surprise if she’s here? This has been the only time I’ve had to do this.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Shut up and give me a hug, will you?” Gabriel stepped forward. He picked up my hands and brought them around his shoulders. When I was hugging him around the neck, he wrapped his arms around my waist and held me close. “And what the fuck happened to your hair? It looks like shit. Where’s your clothes? I didn’t buy you those. Is that Kota’s shirt? Why are you wearing boy clothes? Did you go out in public like that? Why is there blood on your shirt?”
“Long story.” I squeezed him a little, pushing back the little bites of worrying that threatened to ruin Gabriel’s hug. Now that I was away from the chaos the masked man had created, it all seemed too surreal. The boys cared. How could this hug with Gabriel mean nothing?
Luke stood behind Gabriel’s back. His brown eyes warmed with his relaxed smile. His long blond hair was pulled back into one of my spare clips. The way some locks had escaped and framed his face made the angles of his jaw soften. “I want a hug, too,” he said.
“Get in line,” Gabriel said. He squeezed me tighter until he was lifting me as he hugged. My feet dangled in the air. “I’ve got her. You can have her when I’m done. Sometime next week.” He started walking off, carrying me, my toes sweeping the tile.
“No way,” Luke said, lunging after Gabriel. Luke caught me around the shoulders, preventing Gabriel from walking too far. “I haven’t seen her in a while, either.”
“You saw her yesterday,” Gabriel said. He kept tugging, but with Luke hanging on around my shoulders, we started tilting over, threatening to fall.
“You saw her, too. And that’s not the same.”
“Chill out guys,” Nathan said. He dropped his keys on the kitchen table and started kicking off his Nike sneakers. “She’s staying the night. Put her down. I want to hear what happened to her today, too.”
When Luke released me, Gabriel half carried me to the kitchen and eased me up onto the counter. Nathan fumbled through the freezer, digging out a frozen pizza. Nathan cooked and the others listened while I talked about Silas and Victor and the car crash, getting new cell phones, the surgery with Dr. Green. Nathan filled them in on the masked man picking me up and the ride they’d taken following me. I let him, unsure if I wanted to give them the details of what the masked man had said.
It was tempting, but I wanted to figure it out first.
Once the pizza was cooked, we took our paper plates and sat around Nathan’s living room, facing the television. There was a cartoon playing, but the sound was turned down, and the boys asked me questions, trying to piece together the rest of what had happened since I left out big blocks of time, trying to figure out what to tell them first.
Gabriel wiped his fingers on a paper towel before he waved his hand in front of me. “Wait a second,” he said. “So Dr. Green lied to some dude and said you were a doctor in training?”
“Pretty much,” I said. I’d only eaten one piece of pizza, since I’d talked the whole time. I felt odd. I never talked so much. The others did that. I realized in that moment how much I relied on the boys to pass along information and how little I actually did speak to them, at least in this way.
Nathan pulled a pepperoni piece off of his pizza and held it close to my mouth. “Peanut.”
My mouth popped open out of instinct. He slipped the pepperoni between my lips. He started to pull away, but out of my own urge to feel like I was really back, I took the opportunity to nip at his finger. It was just for a moment, but I felt an odd comfort in it.
Nathan beamed. He picked up my hand and started shoving it toward his mouth. This was what I wanted. Drive out the masked man’s words and ideas, to force them out, by feeling the boys close. As if this might silence the uncertainty in my brain and make me feel as strong as I had before. I needed them to make me believe.
Nathan stopped short. His eyes narrowed on my fingers. “What’s that?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. I glanced at the pink color. “Polish,” I said.
“Since when did you polish your fingers?” Nathan asked.
“Victor took me to the spa and ...”
“Hold up,” Gabriel said. “Wait.” He squinted his crystal blue eyes and pointed a lean finger at me. “Turn your head?”
I tilted my head toward Nathan.
“Did someone fuck with your hair? I should have known you wouldn’t have done that to yourself.”
“It was ...”
“Don’t tell me,” Gabriel said. He shook his head, frowning with pursed lips. He stood up, snapped his fingers at me. “Get up.”
“What?” I asked, but stood at his command.
Gabriel snagged my hand, and guided me around the coffee table before nudging me toward Nathan’s bathroom. “I’ve got to wash Adam out of your hair before you become infected. Let’s go.”
“Infected?”
“The fucker. He did it on purpose. Did he know I cut your hair?”
“Victor told him. He said you claimed my hair.”
“Damn right, I claim it. No one touches that hair.” He swatted me on my back, close to my butt and pointed at the bathroom. “Go.”
His words made me worry what he would have said about Victor washing my hair, but somehow I felt it wasn’t the same thing. I stumbled toward the bathroom. He left the door open, and went straight for the sink. Luke and Nathan followed. Luke sat on the counter while Gabriel tested the water temperature with his fingers.
Nathan leaned against the door frame, his arms folded over his broad chest. “How do you know it was Adam?” he asked.
“Are you kidding? He gives the same shit style to every girl that walks in the door. He tries to go for something different, but it always ends up in that mess. He doesn’t know shit about girls’ hair.” Gabriel shook droplets off of his fingers and looked at me. “Get in there, Trouble.”
I blushed, not expecting to have an audience while he washed. I moved in quietly. “Sorry,” I said, bending down to let the water rush over the top of my head.
Gabriel guided me carefully until I was in a good place where he could cup the water and wet my hair. “Did you get the massage first?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes.”
“Then it isn’t your fault,” he said. “I’d let him shave my head after one of those massages. That’s how he gets you.”
“Oh god, I love those massages,” Luke said. “We have to go next time.”
“Yeah. That bastard Vic didn’t call us. He took her ...” Gabriel’s fingers released my head for a second, but I sensed him hovering. “Wait, was Silas with you?”
“No. He left the night before.”
I sensed something going on over my head, but when I turned, all I could see was Luke’s thigh.
“That jerkface, little ...” Gabriel said. “You mean Victor and you went alone?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He said he felt bad after the car crash. He also said since it was my birthday soon—”
“Oh my fucking god,” Gabriel said. His fingers returned with a vengeance, now mixing in shampoo. “Nathan, did you hear that?”
“Yeah, so what? He took her out on a date.”
“To the fucking spa. Alone.”
“What’s wrong?” Luke said, the start of a laugh in his voice. “Jealous she got to go or jealous Victor was with her?”
“Don’t give me that,” Gabriel said. “What about the ... the ... god damn, I can’t even say it.”
“Say what?” My voice echoed slightly off the basin.
“Nothing,” they all said at the same time.
I twisted my lips at the sink. “Are we not allowed to go by ourselves to places? Is that an Academy rule?”
Gabriel tugged at a lock of my hair as he started rinsing. “Stop asking questions.”
“Victor wandered off alone. He dropped me off with Dr. Green. Does that count? Is he not supposed to go off by himself?”
“I said stop, Trouble.”
I released a sound that was something like a frustrated groan. “How am I supposed to know these rules if you don’t tell me?”
I got a cold dab of conditioner on my neck. “I don’t even care,” Gabriel said, though it sounded like he wasn’t responding to me. “If Victor gets to take you out on a date by himself, we get to, too.”
“You can’t,” Nathan said.
“Why not?” Gabriel asked.
“He obviously ... I mean he didn’t break a rule. So there had to be another reason.”
Gabriel grumbled. “Sang, did you ask Victor out on a date?”
What shocked me the most wasn’t just that he’d asked the question, but that he seemed so casual about it. Was he angry with Victor about taking me on a date or just how he’d asked me? Did it matter? And from what it was sounding like, this new Academy rule had something to do with dating. Did the Academy command their personal lives that much? I stared at the reflection of the overhead light in the sink basin. “I asked him to go to the football game with me the other week. He couldn’t go.”
“Anything else?”
“I was telling him for my birthday I wanted to do stuff with you all that you like to do. I think that was part of why we went to the spa. He was showing me what he liked to do.”
“Oy,” Gabriel rinsed out the last of the conditioner and shut off the water. “Get up here. What’s this about what you want for your birthday?”
I rubbed at my cheeks as Gabriel wrapped a towel around my hair. I started telling them what I’d asked Victor for my birthday. “So I don’t want anything, I just want to be with you all.”
Luke’s face brightened. Nathan smiled. Gabriel smirked at me, his crystal eyes catching the light and almost sparking. “Fucking shit,” he said. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know what I wanted. Whenever anyone asked me, my mind blanked out.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Sit down, will you?” I sat on the toilet seat and he started combing out my hair with his fingers and then dug through the drawers for a brush. “So what does this mean. I get to take you out?”
“I—”
“Gabe,” Nathan said. “You can’t lead her.”
“She’s already asked Victor and she’s asking us to take her where we want.”
“That’s
not the same.”
“Either he broke the rules, or he didn’t and we can take her out. What do you want from me? Do you want to go out with her or not?”
Nathan’s lips twitched like he wanted to answer but he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.
“Because personally,” Gabriel said, “I’m kind of tired of only seeing her at school. Her parents aren’t here. She’s been on lockdown since birth. It’s about time she got out and saw things. Ain’t that right, Trouble?”
I didn’t know what to think. They didn’t seem upset that Victor and I went out on a date, only that they wanted to go and weren’t sure because of some rule I wasn’t allowed to know about. There was apparently a dating protocol. Was this normal? I remembered Karen at school telling me you could date without committing. Maybe this was what she meant. It wasn’t like they were asking me to be an exclusive girlfriend. They were agreeing together with what they wanted to do. I swallowed back my questions and worried thoughts.
“It’s not exactly the best time,” Nathan said.
“If it’s about this new masked bomber, just show me to him. I’ll kick his ass myself if it means I can take her out.”
“We’re on lockdown tonight,” Nathan said. He moved over to sit on the edge of the bathtub. He put his elbows on his knees as he watched Gabriel brushing my hair. “We’re on orders to go back to school tomorrow.”
“It’s her birthday tomorrow!”
“She has to go. Hendricks is looking for her.”
“Oh my god.” Gabriel pressed his fingers to my cheeks, forcing me into making a fish face. He raised my head so I was looking up. The light caught in the green crystal studs in his ears, and glinted on the three black rings. “Pretend to be sick, okay? Do you know how to do that?”
I slurred through my squished lips. “I say we go with the old plan where we move my birthday to November.”
The boys started laughing. Gabriel beamed. “Stop being so fucking cute or I’m going to take you out tonight. In fact, we should do your birthday tonight, I guess.”