by AC Washer
“Well, it is my—”
“And I know it isn’t just your dream because that would make me a figment of your imagination, which I’m not, because this is me thinking so therefore I am and all that.”
I thought about Kate again. Could this really be Caleb after all?
I swallowed, wanting to believe it, but freaked out at the same time. What if this wasn’t just some dream? What did that mean? And what would that make me?
I squished that thought as soon as I had it. This was just a really cool, messed up dream I was having because I almost lost my brother, and I’d just found out my dad was dead. Subconsciouses did weird stuff all the time. This was no different.
“So, what is this then?” dream-Caleb continued, “And how are you causing it?” he asked, staring around at the fog.
“How am I…” I wanted to pull my hair out of my head. “Caleb, I am dreaming. This is what people do when they dream. Make. Weird. Stuff. Happen.”
Caleb studied me for a moment. “Maybe you’re somehow pulling my subconscious into your subconscious.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “And maybe we should actually talk because even if I’m pulling you into my subconscious, it’s probably for a reason.”
He tilted his head, considering. “That’s a good point. This is only the second time you’ve done this, but both times you’ve been upset. Maybe when your emotions are very strong—”
I cleared my throat as loud as I possibly could without damaging anything.
“What were you thinking about before—”
I cleared my throat again.
“I just—”
“You promised,” I said.
“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Caleb held his hands up in surrender. “The ‘how’ can wait.”
“There is no how, it’s a…” I shook my head. “Never mind. So, can we talk now?”
“Yeah, I’ll be good.”
I eyed him.
“I promise,” he said.
“Kay.” I plopped down beside him and cleared my throat. “Deena called me today, and—”
“Wait, the caseworker, right? Southern accent, likes to knit?”
I gave him a look. “Yeah to the southern accent, but how’d you come up with knitting?” I asked, settling into our pretend conversation.
Caleb shrugged. “Nobody knows what to say to someone in a coma. Sometimes they read books, sometimes they talk about the handbag they’re knitting.”
I nodded. That made sense.
“So, Deena called you,” Caleb prompted.
“Yeah,” I said. I fidgeted with my fingers instead of looking at Caleb. “You were right. Deena said she died from a drug overdose—just like Dad said.”
I shook my head because it didn’t make sense. When Dad had told us five years ago, I had known he was lying—just like I always knew when someone wasn’t telling the truth. But maybe it was a lie that had become true.
Caleb sighed and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer, “I’m sorry, Kella. I know you thought he was lying—that you hoped she’d come back. Probably especially now, huh?”
I shrugged, pretending it didn’t matter. But we both knew he was right. If Mom had been alive, we could have found her, told her she was safe from Dad, and she could have taken us in knowing he couldn’t weaponize the law and make all of our lives a living hell.
“And…there’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
I didn’t know why I felt so reluctant to tell him about Dad all of the sudden—I’d almost blurted it out earlier.
I took a deep breath. “Dad’s dead.”
The only indication I had that Caleb had heard me was his arm tightening around my shoulders.
After a few moments, he said, “Dead, huh?” He’d tried to keep his voice neutral, but it broke on the “huh.”Caleb swallowed. “How’d it happen?”
“He—they say he fell on his cellmate’s shiv. That it was suicide.”
Caleb’s brows drew together. “Suicide? You sure that’s what she said?”
“Yeah. Dad had a visitor, and when he came back into his cell, he fought his cellmate over the guy’s shiv and then…” I shook my head, not really understanding it either. “…fell on it. On purpose.”
Caleb’s Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “And who was the visitor?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
Caleb nodded.
Silence engulfed us, pressing in on us. Finally, Caleb said, “Whoever he was, he must have said something that scared Dad enough to drive him to it.”
“Like what?”
“Hell if I know. But suicide…” Caleb shook his head. “It’s not something he’d do.”
I nodded. Caleb was right. Dad might have hated himself, but I couldn’t imagine what would have led him to kill himself. Suicide would have meant admitting that life had defeated him. And Dad wasn’t one to accept defeat.
He sighed. “But why he did it doesn’t change where we’re at, does it?”
“Nope,” I said, popping the “p.” “Wait,” I said, an idea forming in my mind. “Maybe it does.”
But before I could say anything more, Mickey burst through my bedroom door, waking me up. He looked around my room frantically, slumping in relief when he saw me on the bed. “Um… I thought…” He shook his head.
“Was I talking in my sleep again?”
“No, I—sorry.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, too groggy—and too relieved to have a plan to get back to Caleb—to wonder why he’d burst into my room in the middle of the night.
Chapter 10
That morning, I bounced down the stairs, skipping steps along the way. It was about breakfast time, and the smell of blueberry pancakes had managed to reach all the way up into my room, beckoning me. Maeve, Mickey, and Bridgette were all gathered around the circular table, gawking as I plopped myself in the chair across from Maeve.
“Hey, Bridgette. Guess you and Mickey made up?” I smiled at her.
Bridgette’s eyes widened.
I looked over to Mickey, his forkful of pancake paused halfway to his mouth.
“You invited her over for breakfast, right?” I asked.
Neither one of them seemed to know what to say, so I shrugged my shoulders and got busy piling three pancakes on top of each other.
“You’re…” Maeve said, looking from Bridgette to Mickey. “You seem to be in better spirits.”
“Yep,” I said as I squeezed a diabetic’s death sentence over my pancake stack.
“By the way,” I said between shoveled mouthfuls, “I need to call Deena, but her number’s not on the fridge anymore.”
Maeve glanced once more at the other two. “What do you need to call her about?”
“I want to get emancipated,” I said as I reached for the bowl of cut melon and spooned a generous helping onto my plate.
Mickey’s forked pancake paused halfway to his mouth, and Bridgette choked on the orange juice she was sipping.
Maeve gave both of them a stern look before shifting her gaze back to me. “I see,” she said, drawing the word out.
“It’s nothing personal,” I added quickly, cutting the stack of pancakes with my fork. “You guys have been great and all, but I need to get back to Caleb.”
“How are you going to do that?” Mickey asked, setting his fork down on his plate.
I shrugged. “That’s why I need to talk to Deena. I don’t know how all that works with me being in foster care. I think I have to show that I’m not living with a parent, which,” I said, gesturing to them with a forkful of syrupy pancake, a few drops landing on the vinyl place mat, “shouldn’t be a problem.”
Mickey’s mouth worked as if he was about to protest, but Maeve shot him another look.
“And the second?” Bridgette asked, her eyes lit with interest—the way they were when she’d met a potential challenger on the soccer field.
“I a
lso have to show that I can support myself.” Which really sucked, because I’d had enough savings to prove it just one month ago. Now, I had nothing—except for job experience.
Maeve sipped her orange juice. “Getting a job when you’re already behind in your schoolwork doesn’t seem like an ideal plan.”
On the surface, Maeve sounded completely reasonable. But I didn’t miss the way her shoulders stiffened—how the corners of her mouth tilted downward, giving her a stubborn look.
“I’ve been working since I was fifteen. I’ll be fine,” I said. “And besides, I have less than a year until I’m on my own. I need to start saving for stuff. You know, an apartment, school, a car…”
Maeve shook her head. “Don’t worry about all of that. We’ll be here to help when the time comes.”
I snapped my head back, unable to hide my surprise. Who promises to help out with all that stuff after knowing a kid for only a few weeks?
Maybe she was one of those Florence Nightingale types that helped people pathetic enough to elicit their sympathy. That was great and all, except for the fact that Maeve would get to know the real me pretty well between now and when it was time for me to leave. She’d change her mind about helping me once she realized that snarky, impulsive Kella was a heck of a lot more common than depressed, hurting Kella.
“Well, that’s really nice of you, but,” I said, drawing the last word out while I pieced together a thought, “…but I need to build my resume, too. You know, for future jobs. I need to have a track record of being dependable and all that.”
There were a couple seconds of stilted silence—long enough for me to go over what I might have said wrong—before Mickey said, “Well, it’d keep her too busy to get into trouble. That’s a plus.”
“Right, because a job wouldn’t add a complicating layer to things,” Bridgette said, her brows twisting in and down.
“What would it complicate? It’d just be a part-time job. Nothing that would be bad for my grades or…” I trailed off, not sure what else Bridgette could be talking about, but I felt sure it wasn’t about grades.
Maeve smiled her skinny-jeans smile. “Sure, dear. You can look for a job. But make sure you are able to attend Homecoming. I don’t want you to miss something so important to you.”
“That’s okay, it’s not. I’ve never been into dances. They’re not really my thing.”
Maeve’s mouth dropped in surprise. “But…I mean…” After a few moments, she regained her composure. “Well, I insist you go. It is an important event in your life. You are not skipping Homecoming.”
An important event in my life? Were we talking about the same thing? Homecoming was just a bunch of overdressed girls who spent too much money on mani-pedis going to a school gym in a limo so they could grind on dates that hoped to get lucky. My desire to go: zero.
“It’s really not a big deal. Besides, it costs a lot of money, and—”
“Don’t worry about the money.” Maeve cut me off. “It is my responsibility as your foster parent to provide for your extracurricular activities, after all.”
“But I don’t want—”
“And if you agree to attend, there is a job opening where I work that I believe you would fill quite well. It becomes available in two weeks.”
I perked up. I thought I’d have to do the whole job search thing, but Maeve was offering me a job on a platter. Sure, going to Homecoming was a condition, but even that was better than slogging through applications, trying to find work on my own. “What kind of job?”
“It’s in administration,” Maeve said vaguely. It was probably some sort of assistant job. Paperwork, maybe. Well, I could do that.
“Um, sure. Yeah. Deal,” I said, before she could take it back.
Maeve smiled, shaking her head. “You need to hurry or you’ll miss the bus.”
I nodded, cramming the rest of my pancake into my mouth and dumping my plate in the sink before I ran upstairs to finish my makeup. Normally, my bruises would be almost gone by now, but they were only half as angry as they had been when I’d first come here. But I’d been pretty stressed. Was stress enough to keep bruises from healing?
I came down to Maeve saying, “Was it the council?”
Mickey’s head was down and he was spearing his pancakes with undue ferocity. “Don’t know. Didn’t get to it in time.”
Maeve’s brows furrowed. “I don’t like it. This is the second time it’s happened. We need to know which of the council is interfering—” She glanced up as I walked into the kitchen to grab a snack for later on. “Ah, Kella.”
“What’s going on with the council?” I said as I opened the cupboard next to the fridge.
Maeve hesitated just a second before saying, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“Be nice if they left a calling card,” Mickey mumbled, spearing another pancake. “Whoever it was is acting too close to the—to Homecoming for it to be a coincidence.”
“What does Homecoming have to do with anything? And what did they do?” I asked.
I looked over at Maeve just in time to see her giving the stink eye to Mickey. But a glance at me and her features quickly transformed into careful neutrality.
“They haven’t done anything yet, but we have reason to believe a council member is meddling in Homecoming affairs. Some members will find any excuse they can to exert influence in the community,” Maeve replied.
“Wow. Sounds like major power trippers with some serious issues if they’re making a homecoming into a big deal.”
Mickey chuckled darkly. “’Power trippers’ is a fairly accurate description.”
I shook my head. I didn’t get it. Why would anyone on the council care about a high school homecoming? This town had to be a lot smaller than I thought to have this kind of thing be a big deal. Deena’d said small towns had their own way of doing things. Maybe this was the sort of thing she meant.
“So how would they interfere anyway? Try to choose the Homecoming King or something?”
Maeve coughed. “Um, yes, you could say that.”
I rolled my eyes. “And they really don’t have anything better to do? I mean, it’s a high school homecoming court—pretty much one big popularity contest. What are they going to do, lobby students for one of their kids to be voted in?”
Mickey grinned at me. “I would hazard to say yes to both of those questions.”
“Mickey,” Maeve warned.
He shrugged. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Wow,” I said, grabbing a halo for my backup snack. “If this is what small town councils are like, it’s pretty pathetic.” I coughed as I glanced at Maeve. “No offense.”
Maeve pursed her lips, but Mickey gave me a lopsided grin. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
For the first time in a while, I walked through the doors of the high school feeling something other than nothing. I had a plan, and I was determined that nothing was going to get in my way—including getting in trouble because my grades were slipping. I needed Deena and my assigned judge to see me as a responsible teen who had her life—and grades—under control. That was my best bet if I wanted to get emancipated from foster care.
But that meant I had some serious work to do. Namely, rescue my grade free fall and get a job. The grades shouldn’t be a problem though; I had a sob-worthy excuse that even the most heartless teacher wouldn’t ignore. I mean, how often do students learn that both of their parents are dead on the same day? It was a pretty legit excuse—they’d definitely let me make up any work.
I had dressed to elicit optimal sympathy, settling on my oversized skinny jeans with a flowing navy-blue top that Maeve had gotten me a couple of weeks back. I’d decided the outfit, combined with the half-up hairstyle that I wore when I was in middle school, made me look softer—or at least younger—than I was.
So I was a bit surprised when heads started swiveling my way like I was some sort of eye candy.
“What’s going on?” I leaned forwar
d to whisper into Mickey’s ear. He flicked his eyes over the hallway as we walked to our lockers.
“What are you talking about?” he whispered back.
“Everybody’s staring at me.” Staring was probably the wrong word. It was more like stealing glances—enough to where it was obvious that they were stealing a lot of glances. My eyes widened as I watched groups of two and three chatting together, furtively looking at me the whole time.
Mickey cocked a brow. “Really? That’s not new.”
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve noticed it,” I snapped.
“Yeah.” He stopped at his locker and fiddled with the combination. “Because it’s the first time in days that you haven’t been in zombie-mode, so you’re actually somewhat aware of what’s going on.”
Oh. Point.
“By the way, I still don’t understand. I thought you’d be happy that guy was dead.”
I ignored his last comment—mostly because I didn’t get it, either. “So,” I said, resting my shoulder against the slick blue locker next to him, “why are they staring at me?”
Mickey opened his locker, ignoring me.
“I know they’re saying something about me.” More silence as he switched out the books from his bag with the books in his locker. “Look, I can handle it.”
He slammed the locker shut and looked at me. “It’s just speculation,” he finally said.
“Speculation? Continue, ‘little brother.’” I gave him my most winsome I’m-not-gonna-kill-you-if-you-tell-me-but-if-you-don’t-there-are-no-promises smile.
He sighed. “Homecoming is in a week, and people are trying to figure out who you’re going to pair with.”
“What?” Whatever juicy gossip was going on around me, that wasn’t what I was expecting.
“Well, if that’s what’s got everyone freaking out then I’ll make it simple: No one. I’m going stag.”
He chuckled. “No, you aren’t.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one, nobody’s asked me.”
“Then ask someone.”
“Like who? It’s kind of late to find a date—another reason I should just go stag.”
