My shaky legs hardly move backward one step before I hear another noise. Automatically I freeze, as though that will make me invisible. If I don’t move, no one will know I’m here.
But then it’s not someone coming down the hall. The door next to mine opens. There’s a dim light in the room and blue hair pops out. “Hey,” Stray whispers to me.
“Hey.”
“Wanna come in? I can’t sleep.”
No. I want to be alone. I need to be alone. Still, I head for him, slipping inside his room. There’s another soft click, and then we’re alone together.
Why is what I don’t understand—why he called for me or why I went.
“We should be okay. Mills is on tonight. He rarely does room checks. He shouldn’t come around again until about four thirty this morning.”
“Oh,” I say, and then wonder why nothing better came out. “You don’t have a roommate?”
“Nope.” He walks over to a bed and sits down. “You can sit.”
“How’d you know I came out?”
“I didn’t know it was you for sure. I have trouble sleeping. Guess most of us here do. The walls are thin. If I’m in my bathroom, I can hear people moving in yours. I heard the door, and since mine didn’t open first, I knew it couldn’t be Mills. Figured it was you or Casey. Happened to be you.” Stray shrugs, then rubs a thumb over one of the scars on his arm.
He’s wearing shorts. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in them. One leg rides up, and it looks like more scars are there, but that’s not all. He has all sorts of drawings, shapes and designs, on one of his thighs.
Stray pushes the leg of his shorts down to cover his thigh. “I don’t bite. If you want to go, you can. Just thought you might not want to hang out alone.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to go.” Forcing my eyes away from the scars and drawings on Stray, I sit on the bed across from his. My leg wants to be jittery again, but I focus all my energy on it, demanding that it chill out. It’s crazy, the fact that I can’t keep still anymore. Those are the things I don’t want anyone to see in me—the things I don’t want there.
Stray kicks his feet up on the bed and leans against the headboard. This time, he doesn’t try to cover up the pictures he put all over himself. The urge to ask him what they are is there, teasing me, but I fight it back.
“Thanks for taking care of Casey today. Fucking Brock. He’s such a douchebag, always picking on people he thinks are weaker than he is.”
“No problem.” Honestly, I’m still not really sure what’s going on here. Stray wanted nothing to do with me before, and in his defense, I didn’t give him much reason to want anything else. It’s not as if I wanted anything to do with him either. Yet they had dinner with me, and I let them. He called me in tonight, and I came. If I hadn’t helped Casey, it wouldn’t be happening, but I’m still trying to work through how I feel about the fact that it is.
“I wasn’t sure…. He bailed afterward, so I thought I did something wrong.” It’s not until I look down that I realize I’m picking at the wrap on my arm. It’s not until I see my hand in action that I realize I actually worried about doing something wrong with Casey. That it was more than a fleeting thought.
“No. He just gets nervous. And embarrassed. Casey appreciated it more than you’ll ever know. It’ll just take him a while to be able to say it.”
I get that. Most of the time, I feel the same way. My feelings are mine, and no one else has a right to them. It’s hard to hand over a piece of me. I just show it in a different way than Casey does. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to jump to conclusions about why he ran off on me.
My hands still want to move, and my legs still want to jump, even though I long to be relaxed like Stray. I haven’t been that way since before, and I’m sure I don’t deserve to feel so at ease, but I move to sit on the bed the same way Stray’s sitting on his. Maybe it’ll help. “Is he your boyfriend?” I ask him. He protected Casey, and he told Rosie he thinks I’m hot.
“Nah. Just a friend. Rosie and I sort of take care of them—Casey more than Bethany, but Bethany a bit too. What about you? Girlfriend or boyfriend back home?”
I shake my head. “No. I was going out with this one guy for a little while….” Before everything happened. Before our lives got shot to hell.
He cocks his head and gives me a partial smile. “I wasn’t sure about you.”
“Yeah. I came out when I was fourteen.” He doesn’t reply, and the silence makes my head throb. “How long have you guys been here?” I ask. People don’t live at Better Days permanently—at least I don’t think they do—but they seem close, like they’ve known each other as long as my friends and I have.
Stray pauses for a second before he continues. “Six weeks for me. I have another six to go. I never stay in one place too long. That’s where the name comes from. Plus, it sounds cooler than Jeremiah.” He winks, but I sense more to the story than that. “As for Rosie? We came within a day of each other. She got three months too. It’s not her first time, though. It’s not Casey’s either. Bethany is a stray like me, only a different kind. Her parents have all the money in the world, and though she’s only been here about two months, she’s been to half the facilities in Colorado. Time has nothing to do with friendship, Hunter.”
I turn his way, surprised that he knows where I was going with that. Who knows if he’s right? Most of my friends have been in my life for years. We’ve run our school together. But then the thought of any of them knowing where I am now makes me want to puke. Puke, hit something, or run. I’m not sure if that means anything or not.
I’m still looking at Stray when he scoots to the edge of the bed so he’s facing me. “I can’t figure you out.”
Me either… I can’t figure myself out either.
“I grew up in foster homes. No one kept me long. It’s hard to want a kid who doesn’t feel good unless he’s hurting himself. There’s a lot I learned living like that. It’s easy for me to read people. I knew Rosie would be important to me the day I met her. I knew which foster parents really wanted to help, and who really wanted money. But you… I can’t really see you.”
I’m no one whispers through my head. It’s a voice I don’t recognize. One that wasn’t there before. But it’s there now, and since I heard him, he doesn’t want to shut up. “I’m the guy who let his sister down.” The guy who let her get raped.
Without another word I get up and walk out of the room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“YOU DIDN’T think we were going to let you go back to eating alone, did you?” Rosie winks before sitting beside me. “You’re kind of stuck with us now. Unless you go back to being a douchebag to Casey, at least. You buried your pancakes in syrup.”
My gaze immediately shoots toward my plate. My breakfast looks normal to me. “Is there a point to eating pancakes if they’re not covered in syrup?”
“See? That’s what I say. No one else here agrees with me!” Stray smiles as he takes the seat on my other side.
“I still can’t do syrup. I miss it so much!” Bethany eyes my plate. It’s the first time she’s said a word to me. She doesn’t have pancakes on her plate like the rest of us. Her tray is fruit and toast. I’ve also noticed a nurse has to check her plate after every meal.
It’s strange how I feel like there are two people living inside me—one is glad they sat with me; the other is tired and numb and wants to be alone. Making friends, hanging out like nothing happened, is like a slap to Holly’s face. It’s forgetting the past, when we shouldn’t forget.
“One time, Mom made me go to breakfast with Dad. It was after the divorce, which means I rarely saw him. I pretended like I didn’t want to go, but I did. I missed him.” Bethany takes a bite of a strawberry. “So, I ordered pancakes and ate them all. As I chewed my last bite, Dad said, ‘You should be careful what you eat, Bethany. You’re putting on weight.’ It was something I’d realized, but it never bothered me until that moment. It’s bothered me ever s
ince.”
Wow. That’s harsh.
“You’re gorgeous.” Casey reaches over and squeezes her hand. It’s strange to see him in that role, the one where he’s comforting someone, but it’s hard to focus on anything except what Bethany said. That easily, her dad altered her life, the same way my dad altered Holly’s. Parents have the ability to fuck us up more than anyone else.
“I’m trying to be,” she replies.
I struggle to make out Bethany’s words. To hear past Holly’s cries in my head, and Dad’s voice in my ears. From seeing him with her. From remembering I did nothing to save her. I’m there with them, trying to take Holly’s pain and make it mine. It should be mine. If I could, I’d take it all from her. I’d—“Hunter?”
Warm skin touches my arm, and I jerk my eyes open. My hands squeeze the edges of my tray so tightly the tips of my fingers are a lighter shade of white than the rest of me.
“Hunter?” Rosie says again, shame making my leg go nuts again. Stray, Casey, Bethany, Rosie—I take them all in, all their eyes on me. Stray’s eyes match his hair, the same bright shade of sky blue. I never noticed that before.
They know I was about to lose it, which really makes me want to get out of here.
“I have to—”
“Thank you,” Casey interrupts me, halfway between sitting and standing. “For helping. I shouldn’t have run. Th-thank you.”
Without thinking, I go back down to the bench. He spoke softly, but somehow his words were still strong. I can respect the fact that he had the balls to say them when I know how hard things like that are for him.
Casey did it for me. I get that, and maybe that’s why it means a little more than I thought it would.
He wants me to know it’s okay here. If I go to another place, if I travel to the past or if I lose it, it’s okay because they do it too.
Rosie speaks next. “You’re one of us now, Hunter. They say we’re here because there’s something wrong with us, but I don’t believe that. We’re here because they don’t know how to handle us. There’s nothing wrong with feeling things more than everyone else. They’d have to turn the world upside down to understand us, but that’s too much work. It’s easier to lock us away.”
I don’t know if I want that. If I want the world to have to be upside down for people to understand me. “I’m not… that’s not me. I just… something happened.” I focus on my hands so I don’t have to see them. “I didn’t have a problem before. Something happened, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I’m not….” Not crazy. Not different. I don’t vomit my food on purpose, or cut my arms or freak out if I can’t play my instrument. Before Dad did what he did, I was happy. I was normal.
“Maybe you don’t want to be, but you’re a castaway too, Hunter.” I close my eyes when Rosie leans forward and kisses my forehead.
Whether I want to be or not, she made me one of them.
When my eyes find Stray, his are on me, a wrinkle between his brows. Then he smiles, and I think maybe he agrees with her. The world would have to be turned upside down to understand me.
Static followed by a voice comes from overhead, tells us breakfast is over, and it’s time for morning activities or counseling sessions.
As soon as I stand, Rosie weaves one of her arms through mine. “Walk with us.” And then she leads Casey and me away. When I get to the door, one quick glance tells me Stray and Bethany are still sitting there. Bethany’s picking at her food, but Stray isn’t. He’s watching us go.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT’S STRANGE how my body temperature automatically kicks up a notch when I walk into the therapy room. It’s like the door has a sensor in it that tells my body it’s suddenly hot. Or flips a switch, making my defenses go up like walls around a castle. No one can get inside.
“Why are you suddenly all tense, Hunter?” Rosie asks me.
“Why aren’t you? This whole process is lame. What goes on in my life is none of their business.”
She gives me a sad smile like my mom would. One that says, Oh, Hunter. You don’t have a clue. My elbow pops when I pull my arm away from her, but Rosie doesn’t seem to notice that she annoyed me.
“Hunter, Rosie, and Casey, it’s so nice to see the three of you together!” Amelia is in another one of her bright outfits that burns my eyes. My lids feel like sandpaper since I didn’t get much sleep last night. Maybe if I tell them, they’ll let me go to bed. That’s what I want. Rest would help me more than talking.
Amelia points to the chairs. “Sit down. We’re going to start in just a minute. I have something really fun planned for us today. I have a few more supplies to get. I’ll be right back.”
Fun. Yeah, okay. Rosie links her arm through mine again as though I didn’t just separate us. It’s easier just to follow her, so I do, with Casey right behind me.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Brock sneers from the other side of the room. Without looking back, I know Casey stumbles. With a cocky smile on his face, Brock asks, “Got some new friends now, man?”
“Yeah, I do” jumps out of my mouth without my planning the words. Rosie’s grip on me tightens, a thank-you maybe. This isn’t about her, though. It’s about Brock. He thinks he can get me to back down, but he has another thing coming. I won’t freeze up like I did with Dad. Not again. Action. I’m about action now. “Come on, Casey.” The frustration in my voice nearly makes me wince.
The three of us sit on the other side of the circle, and I turn to Casey, speaking from pursed lips. “Don’t do that. Don’t let him know he gets to you.”
His eyes widen behind the black rims of his glasses.
“Don’t push him, Hunter. You can’t expect everyone to be like you.” Is it me, or did Casey’s eyes get dimmer with Rosie’s words?
“She’s right.” He looks down. “I can’t….” But Casey doesn’t finish, and I don’t ask. Amelia comes back in after that, with her super fun activity, which consists of us using the different body parts she cut out to make a person. Each one has a spot on it—the heart, the head, the arm—where we’re supposed to write a different trait or emotion. We’re supposed to create the person we are, and the person we want to be. I sigh and stare down at everything as the others get to work.
Glancing over at Rosie, I see her using words like free spirit and fashion design. Every one of her parts says something different.
Casey thinks he’s smart, kind, and shy. He wants to be confident, but he uses kind and smart for what he wants to be as well.
There’s only one word written for the person I am: weak.
And one for the person I want to be: strong.
My body feels like it’s getting hotter and hotter. Guilt and anger, invisible ropes tying me up. Closing my eyes, I imagine bursting out of them. Setting them on fire. Burning up all this crap inside me until it’s nothing except ash that I can blow away. But then there might not be anything left of me. Just a pile of ash that would scatter with the wind.
I don’t want to be gone completely, I don’t think.
“You… you are,” Casey’s quiet voice comes from beside me.
“I am what?”
He nods toward the Casey he wants to be, and I see that he added another word: strong.
“Maybe you could teach me.” He doesn’t make eye contact, but his voice isn’t shaky either. It’s filled with a quiet power I’ve never heard from him.
His intensity makes me wish I could teach him. Wish I were the person he thinks I am. The one I try to make him see when he looks at me. The guy I show Brock, who I know won’t stop giving me crap now that I stood up to him. Now that I’ve shown him my act too. My whole life I thought I knew who I was. It was an act. I am a magician.
“I can’t,” I say softly to Casey.
“Why not?”
Picking up the pen, I add one more word to the figure of who I am now, so he’ll know who he’s dealing with.
Illusion.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AFTER MORNING t
herapy, Mrs. Spencer taps me on the shoulder on my way back to my room. “Mr. Donovan, I’d love it if you could accompany me to the gardens between therapy sessions.”
I jerk away from her. “Don’t call me that.” Dad is Mr. Donovan. Not me. I’ll never be him.
She nods as though she understands where I’m coming from. She can’t really get it. No one can.
“Fair enough. Still, I’d like it if you could go with me.”
By I’d like it, she really means you have no choice. My first instinct is to argue with her, but I really don’t have the energy. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”
We turn and head for the back door of the building. “So, how are things going? I see you’ve made friends with Jeremiah, Rosie, Casey, and Bethany.”
“Stray” jumps out of my mouth. “He likes to be called Stray.” Which is a strange name, but I get it. People on the outside won’t get my reason for never wanting to hear my last name again, the name I got from my dad, so if Stray wants to be called Stray, that’s what I’ll do.
Her smile looks a little different this time, the corners of her mouth tilted higher. “You’re right; Stray. See? It’s good to make new friends.”
Having her think she’s right is the last thing I want, so I say, “I’m just passing the time,” as we step outside. The words taste bitter, though. That doesn’t make sense. I don’t really know the group yet, so it’s not like we really can be that close, but then again, Casey asked for my help today. Stray let me in his room when I couldn’t sleep. They take care of each other the way people are supposed to do. The way I was supposed to take care of my family. Maybe I want that. Maybe I can have that with them.
Mrs. Spencer stops, so I figure I better too. “It’s okay to let people in, Hunter. I know it’s hard. I know you feel like keeping everything locked inside protects you, but really it makes your armor weaker. The longer it has to hold up, to fight to keep things in, the thinner it becomes.”