I’m not sure how to answer that.
Kristin holds a dripping measuring cup out to Declan, along with another towel. “If you’re going to eat all the bacon, you can help with the dishes.”
He shoves another piece into his mouth and takes the dish readily. “Who did that to his face? Hell, if I looked like that, I’d be afraid of you, too.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m not kidding.”
I dry a cookie sheet. Tension has settled across my shoulders again. I don’t know what to do with this.
“Can you boys help move the furniture this afternoon?” says Kristin. “Dad won’t admit it, but his back is bothering him again.”
“Sure,” says Declan. He takes what must be his tenth piece of bacon. “Keep feeding me and I’ll move the whole house.”
“Deal. You can start clearing out the furniture now if you want. The only thing we’re leaving in there is the dresser.”
I don’t look at her. I keep drying dishes. I can stand in the kitchen and dry dishes all day if it means I don’t have to deal with any of this.
Declan forcibly pulls the bowl out of my hands. “We’ve got our orders. Move.”
I don’t know why I was worried. Matthew doesn’t help. I don’t even know where he went. He’s probably hiding in my bedroom.
Hiding.
I don’t like that.
Shame curls through my chest like something alive. I’ve wondered how my father turned into the man he was. The man he is. I know about the cycle of abuse, and I’ve spent a lot of hours wondering when I would start to change.
Did I do something I’m not aware of ? Does Matthew sense something in me that makes him nervous? I think of the day I found the letter, how darkness wove through my thoughts and turned my anger on Geoff and Declan.
I’m glad for an excuse to bury my worries in something physical. Cleaning out the baby furniture is a bigger task than I anticipated, because we need to make room in the garage first, which requires moving plastic boxes of clothes and toys into the house and up into the attic. Kristin wants us to sweep and blow all the dust and dirt out of the garage before we move the furniture in.
Then Geoff comes back from Big Lots, and we have to unload the new furniture.
By the time we’re done, it’s midafternoon and we’re filthy. Dark clouds have rolled in, promising rain. Declan collapses in the backyard grass with a bottle of Gatorade. He’s flat on his back, staring at the sky.
Thunder cracks. Raindrops fall.
He doesn’t move. “This figures.”
I don’t move, either. The raindrops feel good. I’m sitting cross-legged with my own bottle of Gatorade. I ditched the hoodie hours ago, when the humidity got to be too much, but I kept the long sleeves. I only own one short-sleeved T-shirt. I don’t own any shorts.
“I’m supposed to meet Emma tonight,” I tell him.
“Another hot date at the church?”
“Shut up.” He was half asleep when I told him about her, but of course he’d remember that detail. “But yeah.”
“Do you like her?”
“Yes.”
My answer must be too easy, too literal, because he turns his head and looks over at me. “Do you like like her?”
Raindrops collect in my hair as I try to figure out the twisting pathway of my thoughts. I like the way her questions push me without pushing too hard. I like how she offered vulnerability when my own emotions were clawing at me from the inside.
I like her freckles and her braided hair and her analytical eyes. The soft curve of her lips.
Declan hits me with his Gatorade bottle. “Yeah. You like her.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Just be yourself.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Vickers. You have a pamphlet for that?”
Declan makes an aggrieved sound. “Man, I don’t know. Half the time I think it’s a miracle that Juliet will give me the time of day.” He swipes rain off his cheeks. “I’m probably not the best resource for relationship advice.”
Maybe not, but he’s the only resource I have.
We sit in the rain for the longest time. Lightning flashes, but it’s a while before the thunder rolls.
“Thanks for helping,” I tell him.
“I did it for the food.” Kristin made us tuna melts for lunch. I think Declan really would move in if he thought he could get away with it.
The back door slides open behind us, and I’m sure it’s Geoff or Kristin coming to tell us to get in the house and out of the thunderstorm.
Instead I hear Matthew’s voice. “Kristin says to come inside.”
Then the door slides closed.
I sigh.
Declan sits up. He hits me in the arm. “I’m going home. Go fix that.”
“I don’t know how to fix that.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Sure you do. You remember how to play with Legos, right?” Then he uncurls from the ground and heads for the gate.
THIRTEEN
Emma
Saturday, March 17 4:16 p.m.
From: N1ghtm@re4
To: Azure M
What’s wrong? I haven’t seen you in a while. All tied up?
And then there’s a picture. It’s a screenshot of my avatar, Photoshopped to look like she’s bound and unconscious. Or maybe dead. I don’t bother to figure it out before slamming my finger on the trackpad to close his message.
I’m breathing so hard I’m worried I’m going to hyperventilate.
I block him again.
My heart needs to slow down.
I’m glad I’m alone in the house—but at the same time, I’m not.
I imagine the conversation.
Mom, a guy sent me a picture of my avatar and she’s all tied up.
Emma, I told you to stay away from technology. When will you ever learn?
I swallow. No, thank you.
I click over to iMessage. My father still hasn’t written back.
I can’t talk to Cait about this. She wouldn’t understand.
Then I remember the message from Ethan this morning. He might be online. I pull on my headphones and log in to my game.
Nope, he’s not there. But I switch over to Battle Realms to see if he’s playing there.
Bingo! I send him a team request.
“Hey,” he says, sounding surprised. “All okay?”
“Hey,” I say. “Yeah, just—family drama.”
He snorts. “I know all about it.” A pause. “You sound upset.”
I am upset. I need to move past this. It’s an altered screenshot. I’ve gotten them before. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“God, no. I just need to play.”
Ethan laughs. “That’s my girl.”
I barely know him, but hearing his voice makes me feel less alone. In-game, with my headphones on, I’m never alone.
I take a deep breath and start playing.
FOURTEEN
Rev
When I was seven, when I was first brought to Geoff and Kristin’s home, I had never been in the care of anyone but my father. People have asked me why I didn’t report him earlier, and to me, that’s such a bizarre question. How do you report someone for doing something you’ve always been taught is right?
My father wasn’t stupid. I know that now. My first experience with school didn’t happen until I was living with Geoff and Kristin—my father had homeschooled me before that. I sometimes wonder if a teacher would have reported something, but I doubt it. My father had this bizarre charisma that made people love him. He was honored and respected as a man of God. I didn’t realize it at the time, but his church was an offshoot of what people consider organized religion. We followed the Bible, we believed in God, but really, we belonged to my father’s church—and at the time, it was all I knew. Everything I lived was by his interpretation. Everyone who didn’t was a sinner—or worse.
I remember sitting in a pew at the
front of the church while he gave a sermon about being a father, how discipline was the truest act of love. An older woman had leaned down and whispered in my ear, “You are so blessed.”
I believed her. No matter what my father did to me, he claimed it would make us closer to God. It was my duty to welcome it.
When my father put my skin to that stove burner and broke my arm, I ran from the house screaming. A neighbor saw me and asked what was going on—and my father almost talked himself out of the situation. I was standing there with my arm twisted and bile on my shirt, and my father was talking about how the flu had made me so disoriented that I’d fallen down the stairs. At some point, the neighbor must not have believed him—or maybe I just looked too pathetic. My memories are hazy, and it’s probably some combination of the pain and the hunger I felt at the time, and my mixed terror over whether someone would take action.
Here’s the thing: At the time, I was ashamed of running. I didn’t want to be taken away.
Then I was. I was taken to a hospital, a place I’d never been. I knew nothing of doctors and nurses and immunizations and X-ray machines. I remember needles and people holding me down. At the time, I would have given anything to be returned to the “safety” of my father. I remember screaming for it. I’m sure they sedated me.
The next morning, a social worker left me with Geoff and Kristin, who could not have been kinder and more welcoming. Kristin almost always smells like pies or cookies, and no one is immune to her warmth.
I was, though. At first. I thought I was in hell. My father had taught me black people worked for the devil. I believed him.
As soon as their backs were turned, I ran.
I ended up in Declan’s house, because the back door was open. His mother had been gardening, her back to me. I slipped through the house, found a bedroom, and hid in the closet behind a massive box of Legos.
I was good at hiding.
Declan found me. I remember the burst of sunlight when he opened his closet door. The panicked fear in my chest. The surprise on his face. We were seven.
Declan said, “Hey! You want to play?”
I had never played with another child. I had never had toys.
“I don’t know how,” I whispered.
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”
And just like that, he started building.
I find Matthew in his new bedroom, sitting on his crisply made bed. Geoff picked up gray sheets and a navy-blue quilt at Target. A new desk with a lamp sits against the wall beside the bed. Everything smells fresh and clean—not that the room smelled bad before. But now it’s all fabric and furniture instead of baby powder and Desitin.
A book sits on the comforter beside him, but Matthew isn’t reading. He stares out the window at the rain.
I stop in his doorway, but I don’t go farther than that. “Hey.”
He doesn’t look at me, but his body takes on a certain stillness.
I am not Declan. I don’t know how to do this.
I tell myself to stop being such a wuss. “Can I come in?”
He says nothing.
I frown and try to keep an edge out of my voice. “If you don’t want me to, just say so.”
He doesn’t say so. I don’t like to push, but I’m going to have to, or we’ll be forever trapped in this silent discomfort.
I go through the doorway, and he moves just a fraction of an inch. It’s small, but it’s a defensive motion.
The only chair in the room is at the desk, which is right beside the bed. I don’t want to push that hard, so instead, I sit on the floor, against the wall. I’m opposite the door. He can walk out of here if he wants.
I say nothing. He says nothing.
There’s no knife between us, but this feels like the other night. A standoff.
The bruises on his face and neck have started to yellow around the edges, and most of the swelling is down. “Did you really start a fight?” I ask.
Nothing. Rain batters the house, punctuating his silence.
“I don’t think you did,” I say.
That gets his attention. It’s barely a flicker, but his eyes shift to me.
“If you were the type of kid to pick a fight, you’d have started one already.” I pause. “Did someone pin you down and do that to you?”
His expression is completely blank, but I can feel him evaluating me.
I shrug. “Those marks on your neck look a lot like fingerprints.”
His hand goes to his throat.
I keep my voice mild. “Why did you let them think you started it? Kristin said you risked being sent to juvie.”
“Juvie would have been better.” His voice is rough and very soft.
My eyebrows go up. “Better than here?”
He shakes his head, the tiniest movement. He speaks like he’s not sure he wants to be talking. “Better than there.”
We lapse into silence again. Thunder cracks hard outside, and he jumps. The storm rolled in so fast, and the afternoon sun is gone. His arms fold against his stomach.
“Do you want me to get out?” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
In a flash, I think of my father’s e-mails, sitting unanswered in my in-box. I wonder if Matthew doesn’t know how to answer me, the way I don’t know how to answer my father.
Sitting here questioning him suddenly seems like the worst kind of cruelty.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”
He doesn’t stop me. I go down the hall to my bedroom and fall onto my bed.
This has been the most exhausting day, and it’s only the middle of the afternoon. My cell phone lights up on my bedside table, and I can tell it’s an e-mail from the color of the little icon.
I don’t even want to look.
I have to look.
It’s just something for school.
When I put the phone back down, I notice Matthew standing just outside my doorway. He’s clinging to the door frame like a shadow.
I act like this isn’t the weirdest thing ever. “What’s up?”
“Are you the type?”
I hesitate. “The type of what?”
“The type to pick a fight.”
“No.”
He thinks about that for a minute. “Okay.”
Then he turns around and slips back down the hallway.
FIFTEEN
Emma
I’ve been counting the minutes until 8:00 p.m., and now it’s pouring rain.
This is so my life.
I press my nose against the window in the dining room, blowing steam against the glass. Mom would bitch at me about dirtying the windows. If she were here. I have no idea where she is. After yoga, she put on a pants suit and said she needed to make rounds. She’s been gone all day.
So has Dad. He still hasn’t responded to my text from this morning.
Rain pelts the siding.
Am I not supposed to meet Rev now? Then what was the point of fate putting me in his path twice?
This is what’s wrong with relying on fate. Or God. Or whatever.
I whistle through my teeth. “Come on, Texy. We’re going to get wet.”
The rain is colder than I expect—which is ridiculous, since it’s March. My cheeks are freezing by the time we go two blocks, my hair has a sodden weight on my shoulder. My glasses are so wet I need to shove them in a pocket. I threw Mom’s pullover windbreaker over my sweatshirt before leaving the house, thinking it would be waterproof, but I am so wrong.
By the time I make the final turn for the church, I wonder if I’m stupid for being out here. It’s pouring so hard that a haze has formed around the streetlight, and I can barely see anything through the darkness.
My sneakers squish in the grass. I get to the spot where we sat for the last two nights.
And of course he’s not there.
I sigh. Only a complete moron would go meet in the rain.
Then Texy woofs and bounces on her front paws.
I turn, and it’s l
ike I’m in a chick flick. His shadowed figure lopes across the grass.
Okay, maybe the dark and rain make it more like a horror movie than a romantic comedy, BUT STILL.
He draws to a stop in front of me. He had the sense to wear a heavy, waterproof coat over his hoodie, but the hood is soaked and rain drips down his cheeks.
“Hey,” he says, his voice a little loud over the rain.
I’m blushing. I tell my cheeks to knock it off. “Hey.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d show up, but I didn’t have a way to text you …”
“I had the same thought process.”
Texy presses her nose against his hand. Rev rubs behind her ears, but his eyes stay on me. “Do you want to go sit out front? There’s an atrium. We can get out of the rain.”
“Sure.”
The church underwent a partial renovation a few years ago, and now sports a large timber and stone entryway that forms a covered courtyard. Several stone benches flank the doorway, set undercover. A security light shines overhead, throwing a sallow tint over everything, but it’s still very shadowed on the benches.
Rev curls onto a bench sideways, his side to the glass wall of the church, his legs crisscrossed. I’m not as limber, but I manage to sit cross-legged on the bench to face him. Texy flops down on the concrete below us.
Rev pushes his sodden hood back and wipes his hands against his jeans. His hair is a wet, tangled mess, but the light throws sparks along the raindrops that cling to his face, making him look almost ethereal.
I probably look like a drowned rat. My braid hangs like a limp rope over my shoulder. I hug my arms to my body and shiver.
He frowns. “Are you cold?”
I tug at the windbreaker. “I don’t know why I thought this would be waterproof.”
He shrugs out of the coat. “Here. Take this.”
He does this like it’s nothing, but no one has ever offered me a coat before. My own mother would lecture me on not dressing appropriately for the environment, and then tell me to toughen up. I shake my head. “I can’t. You’ll be cold.”
“I have a dry sweatshirt. I’m okay.” He holds it out and gives it a little shake. “Really.”
There’s a part of me that wants this to be some grand romantic gesture—it’s the same part of me that’s sending warmth to my cheeks. But I also know he’s not flirting. He’s just being kind.