“But I can’t stop thinking of doing things to you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Charz, you’ve seen it. My ‘buddies’ would have cornered and pummeled me if there’d been no witnesses at KFC. That’s just some of what I get from people, including randoms. Then you come along and fucking blow my mind and I don’t know what to do. You won’t let me feel guilty and though I’m getting over it, I still am hesitant about us because of what I’ve done. It’s a huge boulder that’s blocking my path. I’m the only one who can come to terms with my issues and move that boulder out of the way, but I don’t know how. Yet.”
“We ain’t nothing but a wreck?” Charz says.
She did read my paperboard earlier. Shifty little girl. She steps in, instead of her usual step-back-and-fade-away thing.
“You’ve changed…” I say, trailing off.
“In case you didn’t notice…” she says, waving her hand in the air to signify everything that has happened. “Anyway, I haven’t. I’m just sticking up for what I believe in. And that’s you. You are a decent person, Dex.”
I cover her ears with my fingertips, cupping her jaw with the heel of my hand so her face is in my hands. It never fails to surprise me every time just how soft her skin is.
“In that case, Dad is back from a vacation and we seriously need to get our investigator caps on, Ms. Sherlock Holmes.”
I think about smacking my forehead with my hand, because that’s what I deserve. That joke was lower than low. How could she possible find a joke like that about her dad funny?
And the silence is killing me.
“We are a wreck, Dex. If you keep fighting it, fine, but you’ll just bring everything down because I won’t let you go.”
The lyrics, again. I fucked up putting them up somewhere so accessible. Because she’s right. Charz admitting it aloud sounds absolutely true.
Right now, I know how to start solving this, at least. Elliot builds programs. He built the game we play on the console, he built the website for his family’s business. He hacked into some bully’s account at school and shut everything down for a few days to teach him to stop picking on fat kids.
“I know someone who can sort out this mess.”
“A counselor?” Charz suggests playfully.
“No, your dad’s accounts. Your boyfriend, Elliot, will definitely be able to help us. My dad could be doing something any day.”
“Dex,” she says, inspecting my expressions with her face on an angle, “you know very well he isn’t my boyfriend.”
I give her a little nod. Charz and I need help to figure this out before anything can happen so we can hand Dad in to the cops if something is going on.
“Your top has been inside out the whole time. Your tag,” She says, pulling me to her by the tag sticking under my chin.
Back to front and inside out. Meet Dexter Hollingworth, dorkiest guy alive.
“Tell me where and when, and no offense, but I’m going to make your dad pay.”
I grunt impulsively, embarrassed that she’s turning me on at possibly the most inappropriate time ever.
That’s my girl.
23. Wishing for Walter
Charlee
Friday night doesn’t come quick enough, although it was only the day before Dex and I were on top of each other on his bed.
It’s weird—how you can spend only a few hours with someone yet know them without knowing them. It’s something about Dex that contradicts what he physically says to me. I’ve seen him with Raych straddling his hips, and other girls at parties who feign drunkenness so they have an excuse to stumble into him. He talks to their lips and boobs and carries on conversations about the weather while always pinning his shoulder to a doorjamb or holding on to something in a way that is so carefree that the girls lose their minds.
But with me he looks past my eyes. Sure, we share a look, but there’s something vulnerable about the way he probes inside me, as if he isn’t looking at the surface at all, but deep within.
I’m sitting on the balcony looking over the hills at the back of the pool house. With the slide-out doors pushed all the way open, the whoosh of the water slapping the sides of the pool is like a calming ocean wave, and reminds me of the years Dad would wake up at five am to drag me out of my bed for training when I complained about never, ever wanting to get up. These memories are how I live with my dad now. I live by memories—stuck in the past for eternity. I suppose there’s something terrible and joyous in the fact that for the rest of my life, the time I spend with my parents will be through my memories. Because I’d be selfish to hold on to him, keep him in agony and away from my mom.
Silently, I’m selfish.
Asshole. That’s what Dad is. I don’t care about what’s right. He wasn’t allowed to leave us.
Quickly, I pick up my cell, dial and say, “Elliot?”
“You sound surprised,” he says.
I shake my head, and the memories of swimming and Dad and Mom cheering from the stands disappears. My cell in my hand, plastered to my ear, shocks me back to the present.
“Yeah, I was daydreaming, I think. I’m…sorry.”
“I’m sorry too, Charlee. I heard. I wanted to bring you a milkshake to cheer you up so badly but I didn’t know what was appropriate and then I might seem insensitive but all I—”
“Elliot,” I say in between his rambles.
“Charlee.”
“I don’t feel like going out, but there’s a milk bar around the corner from my place we can meet at. They have seats around the back where it’s quiet.”
“Are you asking me on a date?” Elliot says. I can hear in his voice that he’s smiling.
“I hate to disappoint you, but I need to use you.”
“Best. Date. Ever.”
Before I say something I usually wouldn’t say, I think of Dex and how he made me angry because I’d apparently acted out of character with him. Well, I’m fed up trying to please. Losing your daddy does this to you, I’ve found. If he’s not here, then nothing really matters.
“Elliot this is not a date. I’m seriously using you for some skills Dexter Hollingworth told me about.”
“Oh,” he mumbles. “I can meet you there now?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
* * *
Elliot wears this V-neck T-shirt that’s straight from a model in GQ. I bet the jeans he’s wearing still have the tag they’re that stiff. Seriously? This still isn’t a date. Although he is sweet.
His thighs are an inch from mine when he falls back onto the bench.
Thankfully, today is the type of day I was able to throw on a thin long-sleeve shirt, but it’s somehow a size too big for me since the last time I wore it was before Mom and Dad died. I pick up the neck of it, which has fallen off my bare shoulder, and hide as much skin as I can because the wind is soft but cool and Elliot might get the wrong idea.
“So what do you want to use me for?” Elliot says, nudging my arm.
“How much has Dex told you about what’s going on with my father?”
Elliot notices it; he notices the way “Dex” rolls from my tongue the same way boyfriend might.
“That he died?”
I didn’t mean to confuse him. My dad is…God, no…okay. Breathe, Charlee. He’s up here, I think, mentally tapping my forehead.
“That’s, um, correct.” I force down a surge of bile. “But I meant about the hacking and his money.”
Elliot still doesn’t get it. I’m surprised that Dex hasn’t said anything. They are best friends, aren’t they? So in the end, I’m the one who has to tell him the bits and pieces about what Dex has overheard from his father, and the evidence he found about my dad’s accounts and money.
“My bet is they’ll be using Walter’s company accounts to do it.”
The company? “Why?”
“Because it’s the easiest way to steal the money and the best way not to get caught.”
I fight the
urge to shout how and tell me about this and all the naïve questions fighting to get past my lips. It’s now, as Elliot tells me everything I should have figured out myself, that I realize I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This is why I don’t like anger. This is why I hate what anger does to me as a person. Like anyone, I’m not immune. Anger is the hacker inside a person who explodes into another personality and suddenly you aren’t there at all behind the body that’s destroying everything around you in a way you’d never do otherwise.
Elliot’s hand touches my back, drawing me towards him. Sitting like this, I feel like the type of nasty person I’ve never been. I’m snarky and annoyed.
Asshole.
“Sorry, Elliot,” I say, leaning my head on his shoulder.
He murmurs that it’s okay and lays his head on mine.
“I like you,” he whispers.
“I know. I did—I do,” I correct quickly. “I’m not myself lately, so I don’t know what I think.”
We both shudder as the wind picks up. I gather the neckline of my shirt closer, trapping as much warm air against my chest as possible. Elliot feels me shivering and wraps me tightly into his side. I bite my lip to stop myself from crying for the hundredth time in recent days, but this protective feeling is too much—these are my dad’s arms and this is my dad never wanting to see me hurt.
I squeeze out of his arms and touch the side of his lips with mine softly, lingering near his face, remembering how Mom would do this after she tucked my bed sheets under my body to cocoon the heat around me. Mom returns with a soft kiss, pressed fully over my lips. Surprised, I pull back because Mom never did that.
I didn’t mean to…
“Sorry for that.”
Elliot looks into my eyes and says, “You don’t have to be sorry for grieving.” He gets it. At least I didn’t hurt him. I’m that much of a mess he noticed that hallucination thing.
“Right, well, my dad’s Roycroft Engines accounts?”
Elliot’s expression freezes. Whatever he had expected me to say is lost. Everything is lost as he processes this fact.
“Your dad…your dad is?” He blinks a few times, shakes his head. “Um, shit. Your dad owns, owned…” He trips at this point, like a skipping track on a CD, between the shock and his embarrassment over which tense to use when referring to my dad.
“Dad established Roycroft Engines back in the eighties. Yes, the Roycroft Engines.”
“You’re Walter May’s daughter?”
I can’t help but grin like a child given a stick of cotton candy while my eyes heat up with the tears brewing there. I’ll always be Walter May’s daughter and neither life nor death can change that.
“Yup.”
After that, Elliot takes a few minutes of asking the usual “are you being serious” and “omg” questions, since the media held back our identities for privacy reasons.
“So explain again why he’ll go for the Roycroft bank accounts and not my dad’s.”
“Because execs have a high turnover of money in their accounts compared to their personal accounts. Company accounts have high traffic with numerous debits and credits, meaning money can easily ‘slip through the cracks’, if you will.”
“As in?”
“As in picture a house party. You invite fifty friends. The fifty friends bring girlfriends or boyfriends or other friends. You have 100-plus guests now. Tell me, how likely are you to notice one extra person who comes in and takes a six-pack from your fridge?”
“I don’t think I’d notice,” I say, instantly associating his example with what he meant about stealing from the company account.
“What if you invited your closest circle of five friends over? Would you notice a stranger walking in to take a six-pack then?”
I don’t answer. It’s rhetorical, naturally, but the insinuation is clear.
“These hackers work by playing on the large amounts of cash traveling out of company accounts in tons of different streams. It can start from an email for a job with an attached resume. Only, the resume is a bug. Once you open it, it’s installed on the computer. The hacker can see through all processes on that computer from an identical screen on theirs, having gotten access from the installed program. Goodbye any security or protection. They get all the passwords and codes and access they need.”
“It’s…”
“Too easy?” Elliot finishes.
Exactly, is what I think, but a red, angry ball festers inside my gut. I tell myself not to be like this. This won’t help, and so I shake away murderous feelings.
“They’ll take away my dad’s name, his effort, his life.” That’s what money is. Not the shallow thing that people say “isn’t what life’s about”, but a symbol of what Dad did to save the car industry in this country, giving thousands of people a way to feed their families and sleep in a bed at night. Even if I never spend a cent of Dad’s money, no one else should have it. It’s his.
“I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” I say, confused.
Elliot grabs my hand, but looks at my face as if it’s someone else’s doing. “I’ll download or build a program and we’ll find this hacker. It might take a while but I won’t sleep until I figure it out. I’ll outsmart them at their game. Once we know who’s behind this, we could do this in a night or two.”
“Well,” I say, “that’s easy. We already know.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Because Dex’s father, Mick, is the one running the show.”
I’ve just realized why Dex didn’t tell Elliot anything; he was too ashamed. What scares me most is that self-inflicted guilt is the worst kind.
I don’t know how Dex will get over it, or how he’ll see me without that guilt.
24. Hacking and Chatting
Charlee
Elliot follows me to my house in his car. He parks beside my car in the driveway, which is already beside Dex’s dirt bike. How Dex got here in the few minutes between me calling him and us arriving is beyond me, but then again, so is the way that guy’s brain is wired.
As I take Elliot through the front door, the first sign Dex is at my home and not Darcy is the music. One of Maroon 5’s songs fills every inch of air in the house, the sound coming from upstairs. The beat grabs hold of my feet and sends vibrations through my bones as we walk. As I lead Elliot to where Dex is—the music is coming from my bedroom—I think I lose myself, just for a second, in old memories of my senior year at high school and kissing my first boyfriend, and Rosa and I getting ready for house parties.
I nudge the door open. Dex is sprawled in a chair, his hands strumming an invisible guitar, his legs propped up on my desk, crossed at the ankle.
“Bro,” Elliot says, coming up behind me, laughter in his voice.
Dex is oblivious, humming and strumming and looking so relaxed that I know he doesn’t hear us, even though we’re only a few feet away from him.
“Dex,” I say, louder.
He shoots up straight, legs under my desk, feet flat on the floor and hands piled in his lap so fast I’m not entirely certain he wasn’t using my chair and desk as if they were his own.
“Charz?”
If seeing me bringing Elliot in my bedroom alone bothers him, I can’t see past that poker face. Dex grins, thumps my space bar, and the room is suddenly so quiet, the air feels dead. I can hear myself swallow. Even when I make an effort to smile, the breath coming out through my nose is loud.
“Hey, numbnuts. Took long enough,” Dex says. He pats a spare chair beside him for Elliot to sit on.
Elliot turns to me, poking me with his expression, is it okay if I go? Or maybe that look says is it okay he’s the one inviting me in and not you? I nudge him forward and dash off to grab a spare chair from Darcy’s room.
Darcy’s room, without any bodies in it, is also beyond quiet. The carpet fibres rustle, separating beneath my toes. His curtains are open, the moon filling this room with a peaceful beam of light, but I find myself c
hoking when I swallow, and then I grip the back of his chair and run out, pushing the chair as fast as I can.
Two weeks is long enough, I think. I don’t know how I spent days at a time in my room, hours without moving. Did I eat? Could I count the total amount of words I spoke on my fingers? I remember feeling Darce poking my back and darting off, and then nuzzled against my shoulder, his face wet with tears as I held him to me, and all the brother/sister up and downs I can’t forget if I tried. Tomorrow or Monday I’ll tell Nana and Pa I need him back.
Elliot’s taken over my computer. But that’s all Dex has allowed. I can sense Dex’s hold over everything else. Elliot is tucked into the desk chair, clicking boxes and buttons and sifting through codes. He attacks a few keys as I push my chair through the stubborn carpet to form a triangle between the two of them.
Dex doesn’t move his legs for me. His heels sit on the carpet under the chair, and his knees poke out, ninety degrees between them. His forearms rest—more like bulge—on his thighs. He sits behind Elliot, murmuring things to him, and finally notices me, beckoning me to come closer with his fingers.
Yep, I am definitely a guest in my bedroom.
“Elliot’s found out some stuff to do with Walter,” Dex says, wrestling a mound of papers behind him on my bed. “Mick is so fucking dumb. He’s been speaking to some guys in his gang back in Chicago. Sometimes Dad asks if they’ve been up to anything lately and how he misses their life before all the charges, but at other times this guy signing off as Freddie says Dad better get his shit together. There’s another dude, Joe, whose name comes up a lot, too.”
I can’t listen to this. I just can’t. “I’m just going to grab some drinks for us. Elliot?” He shakes his head. “Dex?” He nods. I bolt out of my room as fast as I can without actually running.
I dart into the bathroom, press my weight against the door and slide into a heap on the tiles. My head is so heavy. My brain has burst and dead weight is always double—we know that. I hang my head between my knees and gulp air, my breath a haggard sound.
Drowning in You Page 18
