Kota found the corded phone on the nightstand. He picked up the receiver, holding it to his ear. He shook his head and then bent over to unplug the phone from the wall.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“We’ll check the outside line,” he said. He nudged me back through the hallway and guided the way back to the family room.
Luke sat up from the carpet. “What’s going on?”
“The land line is down,” Kota said, heading toward the back door.
Nathan and Luke jumped up, following. I smothered a sigh. Academy training.
Outside, Kota circled the house until he found the phone box. There was a pad lock on the outside. “Luke?” he said.
Luke pulled out what looked like a wallet from his back pocket. Inside was a collection of tiny tools. He plucked a couple out and within a minute, he had the pad lock open.
“Are we supposed to be doing this?” I asked.
“It’s fine,” Kota said. “We’re just checking to see if it’s the wiring inside the house or if the lines are down.” There was a phone jack amid the other wiring inside, and he plugged the corded phone. He picked up the receiver and frowned. “Dead.”
“Want me to run to my house and check the line?” Nathan asked.
Kota shook his head, passing the corded phone to me. Luke locked the box back.
Kota pulled his cell phone out and pressed a button. “Mom? Yeah, sorry, no just checking in.” He sighed, rolling his eyes. “I’m at Sang’s house. I might be staying a little late. I know I don’t have to call.” He rolled his eyes again, longer this time. “We’re already going out Friday. Yeah ... Okay, I have to go.” He stabbed his thumb at the phone. “Our lines are fine.”
Nathan turned to me. “You’ll have to get your dad to call.”
The others followed me inside. I found the index card again with the number and dialed into my cell phone.
There were five rings and then the mechanical voice announcing no one was home. “I’m getting the answering machine.”
“Leave a message,” Kota said, picking through the mail again. He pulled out an envelope and shoved his finger into the top, ripping it open. He unfolded the letter and opened it. “Uh oh,” he said, blinking at the page.
“Uh oh what?” Nathan asked, balling up his fists and shoving them at his thighs. “What’s uh oh?”
“This is a final bill,” Kota said. He turned to me. “He’s shut off the phone.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked. “Don’t we need the phone? He’d said he would take care of it as long as we stayed.”
Kota held up the page. “He had it turned off. I don’t see another phone bill so he’s not replacing it.”
A finger drifted to my lower lip. I felt embarrassed even though I didn’t know why. It just felt like a mistake. “Maybe he forgot to replace it.”
Nathan frowned, shaking his head. “He’s forgotten a lot, then,” he said. “Like food. I can’t imagine what he expected you and Marie to live on. He hasn’t been back to help with groceries or anything else.”
Kota sighed, rubbing a palm across his forehead. “Okay, you three run to the store. I’m going to stay here and call some of these companies. I’d like to know ahead of time before they shut off the water.”
Luke fished keys out of his pocket, picking out one of the car keys. “We need a list?”
“Just grab enough until we can make a proper trip this weekend,” Kota said. “I don’t want Sang out late.”
I lingered, unsure with what to do. They were helping, yes, but in the moment I felt helpless. It made me realize how dependent I’d been on others in the house, and now I found out they weren’t reliable. I felt since I was almost left in charge, that I should have known about this and have handled it myself.
Instead I was completely lost as to what I was supposed to do. If the boys hadn’t been here, would I ever have been able to take care of myself and my sister? We would have starved at the rate I was going. I wondered if that’s part of why my sister didn’t respond well to me. I couldn’t even help her get food when she asked. I couldn’t have done something as simple as called our father to figure out how to get more food.
Nathan caught my expression. He found my hand at my mouth and gathered it, squeezing my fingers. “Stop it,” he said.
“I don’t know how to access the accounts,” I said. “I can’t pay...”
Nathan rolled his eyes. “We’ve got this,” he said.
“Yeah, Sang,” Luke said. “I think we can afford a box of Lucky Charms and a tub of ice cream.”
“Try not to buy just junk food,” Kota said, stabbing a number to the phone company into his cell phone.
SANG SHOPS
Thirty minutes later, I was at the store with Nathan and Luke. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been inside a grocery store. I remembered my mother taking me before she was ill. Maybe once when my father took my sister and I along when my mother was in the hospital and we were still too young to leave at home alone.
When the glass doors breezed open and the rush of cold air met my face, I felt my body wanting to tremble. It wasn’t so much that we were there, it was why. It was about as bad as when Gabriel wanted to take me clothes shopping. My mouth glued shut and I waited for the boys to figure out what to do.
It only took a second for them to take over. Nathan grabbed a cart while Luke walked ahead of us. Luke stopped in front of the bakery display case, staring in at the cakes and the desserts. “Let’s get a cheesecake,” Luke said. He turned to me. “You like cheesecake, right?”
“I liked the strawberry cheesecake Nathan had once. I don’t think I’ve had others.”
Luke checked the case, and found a large cheesecake that had multiple flavors mixed into the box. He put that down into the cart.
“Kota said no junk food,” Nathan said.
“He said don’t buy just junk food,” Luke said. “We’re not buying just this.”
Nathan pushed the cart around while I followed Luke down nearly every aisle. Luke tossed in some bananas and strawberries upon Nathan’s request. Most of the other stuff was sugary cereal, potato chips, and boxes of cookies.
“And coffee,” Nathan said. “Sang likes the bottled Starbucks stuff.”
“I don’t need it,” I said. There was already a large pile in the cart. I wondered who was going to eat it all. I looked at the shelves of so many different types of macaroni and cheese, overwhelmed by choices.
“Do you have a grill, Sang?” Luke asked, dropping a box of popcorn into the cart.
“Maybe in the garage,” I said. “I don’t know how good it is or what type.”
“Let’s get her a grill,” Luke said, walking off toward the end of the aisle and heading toward the meat department.
“Wait,” I said, stumbling forward until I could grab at his arm. “We don’t need a grill.”
Luke’s brown eyes blinked back at me. “How are we going to make steaks at your house without a grill?”
I floundered. I knew Mr. Blackbourne had told me the boys were simply very used to buying whatever they felt the others needed. I knew I didn’t need pay them back, but I still felt obligated to tell them to not pay for things that we didn’t absolutely need. I glanced at Nathan, silently pleading for help.
“We’re getting weekend food,” Nathan said. “We can get steaks and stuff later. Besides, we can grill at my house.”
“Oh yeah,” Luke said. “What else do you want, Sang?”
“I think we’re good.” What else was there?
Luke threaded his fingers through the locks of blond hair hanging in his eyes. “Okay, coffee... oh and let’s get a box of those microwaved sandwiches that Kota always has at his house.”
This time I let Luke lead the way while I hung back with Nathan. I leaned into him a little as we walked. “We don’t need all this,” I said. “We could just get bread and something simple.”
“Just let him shop,” Nathan said. “If yo
u thought Gabriel was bad about clothes, throw Luke in a grocery store without North or Kota.”
“Should we make him buy vegetables?”
Nathan laughed, shaking his head. “It’s fine. You’ve got to let him stretch out a little bit. Every once in a while I’ll take him with me and let him pick out whatever he wants for staying the weekend at my house. His uncle and North give him a hard enough time with what he eats. This is his way of letting loose.”
I was going to comment on something about Luke but the way Nathan was talking made me stop. “You do the grocery shopping at your house?”
Nathan grinned. “Well who else is going to do it? My dad’s gone all the time.”
“I ... hadn’t thought about it,” I said, my fingers twitching at my side, but I held off pinching my lip for his sake. “I guess I just realized today how much I didn’t think about certain things. I hadn’t picked up the phone in so long that I never noticed. I may not have ever opened those bills. And the food...”
“Peanut,” Nathan said, stopping the cart. He caught my chin, tilting my head until I was looking at him. “Hey, we rely on other people a lot, too. And when they stop, it is awkward. You figure it out, okay? You find out what they were in charge of and pick up where they left off. This is just a crash course on what it’s like living away from your parents. Only you’re not alone. You’ve got me and Kota and the others who can help.”
I blushed. “I guess I didn’t think through staying here when my dad asked me.”
“He didn’t think it through,” he said. “He’d told you he’d be back and you trusted him. This is his fault. But it’s okay. As long as he doesn’t forget to pay the mortgage. You, I can stand, but if your sister has to move in if the house forecloses, I may need to shoot someone.”
“Hey,” Luke called after us from down the frozen food aisle. “Sang, you’ve got a toaster, right? They’ve got chocolate chip waffles. We have to try these.”
I sighed, glancing at Nathan.
Nathan lifted my hand to his mouth, kissing the back. “Leave it to us, Peanut. We’ve got this.”
At check out, I half expected one of them to pull out a black credit card like Victor always did. Nathan pulled out his wallet, picking out a collection of twenty dollar bills. When the total was counted up, over two hundred dollars, Nathan tabbed out enough and passed it over.
I was having a heart attack. Two hundred dollars! For food! How was I going to pay for food in the future if my dad never returned? How would I pay for anything?
I wondered how long it would take to earn two hundred dollars if I worked with Luke and the others at the diner.
With the car loaded up, I slipped into the middle seat between Luke driving and Nathan riding shot gun.
I lifted my feet into the seat, but Nathan snagged my knees drawing them over his. He sat back into the seat, closing his eyes. “I am so ready for a weekend.”
Luke flipped on a rock station and wedged Kota’s sedan out of the parking space. “I am so ready for us to make Kota get a new car. This old clunky thing feels like it’s about to die.”
I sat up a little. “You all got this car for Kota?”
Nathan plopped a hand down on my knee. “Mr. Blackbourne gave orders to North to find a suitable car for Kota and I. So Kota helped him pick this one.”
I blinked after them. These guys disappeared for Academy work constantly. It seemed out of place that any of them shouldn’t have a car. “You didn’t want one?”
Nathan smiled. “It wouldn’t make sense for me to get one. If my dad came home and saw it, he’d wonder where I stole the money from.”
“Oh,” I said, “but wouldn’t you need one for when you do things for the Academy?”
“It’d be handy,” Nathan said, “but there’s no way I’d be able to explain it. For this thing, we pretended to put our money together to share the car. That way Erica wouldn’t have a problem with me coming to borrow the car when I need to.”
“That’ll change though,” Luke said. “Once the diner is open.”
“You guys won’t work anywhere else? Where do you get the money for stuff?”
Luke and Nathan exchanged glances over my head. Luke laughed. “We pick up odd jobs for other Academy members every once in a while,” he said. “We used to mow lawns and do repair work. We’d get normal jobs, but not a lot of bosses understand when we need to drop everything and run out the door.”
So Academy students can’t hold a job? “What makes the diner any different?”
Luke opened his mouth to answer, but something in the rearview mirror caught his attention. His eyes followed it instead of the road, enough for me to get nervous that he was going to drift into the other lane. “Were we followed from Sang’s house?”
Nathan stiffened next to me. “Followed?”
“Hang on,” Luke said. He stopped short at a traffic signal, and took a right.
I watched from the side mirror. A single dark sedan turned right behind us. Luke made a left on the next road, and the car followed.
“Shit,” Nathan said. “It’s Kota’s tail.”
“Is that bad?” I asked. “We weren’t doing anything.”
“Yeah, but we don’t want him following you home,” Nathan said. “Kota’s been keeping him busy so whoever it is wouldn’t notice your parents haven’t been home.”
My lips parted. So that was why Kota had been running out to Victor’s late at night. Why didn’t anyone tell me that was going on? I started to turn around. “Are we sure it’s the same guy?”
“It looks like the same car,” Nathan said. He patted my thigh. “Don’t look back at him. We don’t want to look like we’re worried about it.”
I fell back into the seat. “What do we do?”
Nathan glanced at the side mirrors. “Keep driving, Luke. Pick like a store on the other side of town to go to. Sang, call North. Tell him what’s going on. I’ll keep watching, maybe I can catch a glimpse as to who it is.”
I fished my phone out, finding North’s black car icon and smashing at it to call him.
He picked up on the first ring. It made me wonder if he hovered over his phone. “If Luke is driving you crazy, I don’t want him back,” North said. “Make him go to Kota’s.”
“We’re in Kota’s car and we’re being followed by the dark blue car.”
“Fuck,” North said. “Why didn’t you stay home?”
“Because I had no food at my house.”
“Baby, make the guys get you food. You stay home.”
Why was he being grouchy with me? This wasn’t my fault. “I can’t go to the grocery store? Kota told me to go with them.”
Luke waved at me for a second to get my attention. “Tell him to stop yelling.”
“What do we do?” I asked North.
“Have Nathan red line Silas so we can get your location.”
Nathan stuffed a hand into his pocket for his phone. “On it.” He stabbed at the screen.
“Is Silas getting it?” I asked North.
“We’ve got it. Have Luke keep driving. Don’t let him stop.”
I repeated it to Luke. “What else?”
“Just hang on, Baby. We’re coming for you.” He hung up.
Luke drove at five miles under the speed limit and took a long road around the block and back in a direction where we were facing town. “They better hurry up,” Luke said. “We’ve got groceries melting in the back.”
“Got a little more to worry about right now,” Nathan said. He angled his head at the rearview mirror and then at the side mirror. “His car windows are tinted too dark to see who it could be.”
“We should check the plate,” Luke said.
“We tried that,” Nathan said. “They’ve been lifting old plates and planting fake registration stickers on them. And we haven’t been able to get close enough to catch a VIN number. The guy’s always in it. And we’re not allowed to shadow him.”
“Should we call the police?” I asked. “Cou
ld we tell them we’re being followed?”
“No,” they both said at the same time.
I blushed. “Why not?”
Nathan glanced back at me. “We don’t really want the cops knowing about you.”
“Because of my parents?”
Nathan’s eyes darkened. “Yeah, that.”
I became distracted watching the car behind us. The sun was setting, and with the front lights on, it was harder to look at it and discover anything identifiable. Whoever it was wasn’t hiding the fact that they were trying to follow us now.
We were about to cross another road into a run-down part of the city when a text message came through my phone.
Silas: Tell Luke to speed up.
“Silas says to speed up,” I said.
Luke nodded, his knee jerking as he pushed harder on the gas.
The car surged forward. The moment there was a space big enough, a black SUV pulled around into the left hand lane into oncoming traffic from behind the blue car. It raced forward, sliding up in-between the cars.
When the SUV was securely in place, it slowed considerably.
Another text came through on my phone.
Silas: Next turn, make a right. Head home.
“Make the next right and then head home.”
“What is he doing?” Nathan asked, checking out the side mirror.
I turned on my knees in my seat, looking back. I could see North driving and Silas holding his phone, and also another device in his hand. I wondered where they got the SUV from. North has a motorcycle, the Jeep, a truck and an SUV?
North’s head twisted, catching me out. I could see his mouth moving. Silas did something with the phone in his hand. My phone started vibrating.
Silas: Get your seatbelt on.
I groaned, turned around and sat, putting on my belt. Luke made the next turn. The SUV came to a complete stop in the road, blocking the blue car. Luke weaved his way through a neighborhood and took a back road.
“Isn’t the guy going to figure out we tricked him?” I asked, still trying to twist around to watch what was going on behind us just in case.
Nathan leaned back against the seat. “He’ll probably think North is some asshole driver who doesn’t know his way around. That car isn’t registered to him.”