by Laura Tims
“Correct.”
“I’m not coming.”
He’s not my responsibility. And after what happened at school, surely Anthony is in jail, or under house arrest, or whatever happens to people who get arrested—just not around to harass Eliot.
But his friends are. And they’re worse than Anthony, some of them. They’ll do more than punch him once if they think he got Anthony arrested.
“Never mind, I’m coming,” I growl at the exact moment he says, “Yes you are.”
He smirks maddeningly and adds, “ISFJ.” I’m tempted to change my mind, but he parks before I can.
Anthony’s neighborhood is full of huge white houses spaced apart with hedges so the neighbors’ marital disputes don’t interrupt each other. His friends are rich kids who realized they could make more cash selling pills to high schoolers than going to college. One of them owns the house on the corner—his parents moved to Cancun and gave it to him. I used to pick up Rex here when he was too blitzed, when Anthony was a freshman and Rex started trailing after him instead of the other way around.
Eliot knocks. It’s fascinating, watching an insane person do insane things. Like a TV show. Except I go blank during shows, and right now my brain is 100 percent accounted for.
A guy with red-rimmed eyes and a Beer with Me T-shirt answers. “What do you want?”
“I’m Eliot,” says Eliot.
“So?”
“Anthony asked me to meet him.” He steps sideways. “This is Rex’s sister.”
I wave weakly.
Inside, it’s clear that a bunch of insane twentysomethings have unleashed their hormone-and-drug-influenced life choices on this house. An empty birdcage perches on top of a million pizza boxes, a scraggly dude puffs on a hookah and stacks beer cans, and a black cat shreds the curtains. Spray-painted on the wall are the words DON’T LET THE COPS IN OR THE CAT OUT. But I don’t see any of Anthony’s crazier friends.
Beer with Me Guy points at Eliot, the stairs, and then me. “Rex’s sister, you are welcome to refreshments.”
He indicates a spilled box of Cheez-Its and a bottle of Mountain Dew on the scarred coffee table. Eliot strides upstairs before I can remind him I’m his bodyguard. When I follow, the guy stops me. “Business only.”
I sit on the couch. A patch of unidentified wetness soaks my jeans and I jerk back up. The bearded guy on the other end, who I thought was sleeping, clears his throat with hazy recognition. “’M sorry for your loss,” he says.
I crush a Cheez-It under my toe and text Rex:
Are you upstairs in this dump?
He responds: I’m at Tito’s vet appt, what dump
Anthony’s friend’s house, I text.
wtf are you doing there
Protecting Eliot, apparently by being downstairs while he gets murdered upstairs. I guess Rex hasn’t heard about Anthony’s arrest. They’ve been phasing him out ever since he became nonfunctional. The moron’s not even a good drug dealer.
I’m counting beer cans (thirty-three) when Anthony himself comes down the stairs, smiling a lot for someone who was recently hauled out of school by the cops.
“I thought you were in Guantanamo Bay,” I say. Everyone else either cowers or sucks up to Anthony, so I avoid both.
“Thank you for your concern, Samantha.” He halts at the base of the stairs. “This is an eighteen-and-up establishment.”
“I’m making sure you don’t punch anyone in the face.”
He laughs softly. “You’re Eliot’s security now?”
“Not on purpose.”
“Go home, Samantha Herring.” These days he talks to me like I’m way younger, even though we’re both seniors.
“He said you asked him to meet you, and he said yes for no reason that I can figure out.”
He goes practically incandescent with pity. “He’s here to buy.”
I squash a few more Cheez-Its. The mystery of Eliot is solved, and there’s no diagnosis. He warned Anthony because he was afraid of losing his source. He dragged me here because even though he’s a rich pill-abusing kid, the rich pill-abusing crowd hates him.
When someone is rejected by the whole world, including their own group, there’s usually a reason for it.
I’m weirdly disappointed.
“He said he hated lying,” I mutter like an idiot.
“Never trust anyone who says they don’t lie. That’s just insurance.” He rubs my shoulder, even though I’m supposed to be on his shit list. “Rex always bragged about how you were too good for this. Don’t waste that on a guy like Eliot, acting like he’s proving something by being such a freak.”
I haven’t felt this stupid since Lena told me what a blow job was.
His grip tightens. “When we were little, I always thought of you as my baby sister. What kind of good brother would let his sister hang out here? I’ll give you that ride home.”
I sink into the moldy couch. I never get to yell at people, and Eliot’s not even a family member or a friend—just an ex-possibility. “I still don’t trust your driving skills after you rammed Rex’s plastic truck into our doghouse.”
I mean it friendly, but his face sharpens. He snatches keys off the top of a broken grandfather clock and bangs out the door without a word, the echo ripping around the house.
What the hell was that?
In the kitchen, it sounds like someone is putting a chain in a blender. After a minute I realize it’s heavy metal music. I take advantage of Beer with Me’s absence to go upstairs, a clunky affair that I’m glad the dude on the couch is too stoned to register. I open the only closed door. It’s the luckiest time I’ve ever opened a door, because two of Anthony’s crazier friends are holding Eliot. Or rather, one of them is holding him and one seems to have recently stopped hitting him.
And I understand why they turned on the music.
And that Anthony is full of shit.
“Put him down.” My voice shakes. I wish it wouldn’t.
“This is how we handle these situations,” says the first guy, who was a senior when I was a freshman and got expelled for choking someone.
I yank out my keys. Before Lena left, she loaded my key ring with three things she said every woman should have: pepper spray, a whistle, and a penknife. The second guy laughs, presumably at the five-foot-four girl on crutches wielding a one-inch knife. Which is fair. I’m not the type you rely on for protection.
But maybe Eliot hadn’t had anyone else to ask.
“It’s fine,” says Eliot with mild irritation, like I offered him a drink too many times. Blood trickles from his lip.
“I’m calling the police,” I say hoarsely.
“I don’t think you should do that,” says the first guy.
“Then put him down.”
He does, shrugging. Eliot crumples soundlessly to the ground.
“If he’s dead, you killed him. I’m telling Rex,” I gasp, which comes out exactly as ineffectual as you’d expect.
The first guy sighs. “What do you care about this asshole?”
“He’s my friend,” I lie.
The second guy shrugs again, and they both step around me. I wait until they’ve left. Then I stagger on my crutches, breathing deep like Dr. Brown said, before lowering myself to the floor beside Eliot.
He opens his eyes. They stand out like alien beacons against the blood. “Sam.”
“Okay. Good. Good. I can’t carry you. Can you get up?”
“Yes,” he says, but doesn’t move.
I do the deep breathing. “Okay.” By balancing on one crutch, I drag him upright. He pulls away stubbornly, but then he either slips or collapses and we both crash down.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“You hate apologizing, remember?”
Somehow I get us downstairs. Eliot doesn’t wince once. Anthony’s two friends are gone, probably worried that I actually will call the cops.
“I’m bringing you to the hospital,” I say as soon as we’re outside.
“Give me your address then.”
“Not there either.”
“Then where the hell do I take you?”
“Your place.”
Dad’s not home yet. Rex is at Tito’s checkup with the vet. It’s doable. But— “Why do you want to go there?”
“You’ll look after me,” he says.
I stare at him, but he doesn’t say anything else. Swearing, I unlock his car and dump him in the backseat. Then I climb in front, shoving my crutches over my lap. I have my permit, but haven’t gone for my license SMD. My bad leg isn’t the one I use to drive, but the accident messed with my driving abilities in other ways.
Only the sight of Eliot in the backseat is enough to make me turn the key.
Chapter Three
AT HOME, MY DRIVEWAY IS EMPTY. FOR A second I don’t know how I ended up driving this car with this boy in the backseat, like I swapped lives with someone without noticing. “Eliot, we’re here.”
There’s a bloodstain on the seat. He gets out, unsteady but upright. I lead him inside. Back when I had friends and they’d come over, I’d launch into explanations for our mismatched furniture, but this isn’t the moment for craigslist war stories.
It’s the first time a boy has been in my room, but Eliot probably doesn’t qualify as a boy in the boy sense. I shove aside dirty clothes on my bed to make space. I’ve taken care of enough injured teammates to know what to do. “How’s your head?”
“More functional than most.”
“Are you dizzy?”
“What about you? Are you all right?”
“Answer, don’t ask.”
“Typical ISFJ, playing doctor.”
“Oh, Jesus. Tell me what just happened. Do you remember?”
“You were there.”
“Eliot.”
“I may not have thought it through. But that’s a rarity, I promise.”
“That is so obviously a true thing you just said.” I shine my phone flashlight in Eliot’s face. He squints. Regular dilation. “I don’t think you have a concussion. Does anything feel broken?”
“Just my dignity.”
“It’ll recover.” I dip a clean sock in the glass of water on my bedside table and wipe blood off his jaw.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
“I think you’d better just shower. It’s on the left. Clean towels are on the rack by the sink.”
“Does your dad know you’re inviting strange boys over to shower?”
Only the strangest. “I’d like to think you move to acquaintanceship after saving someone twice.”
He stands. I expect him to finally flinch—he hasn’t even said ow—but nope. Is he hiding his pain for my sake? “I feel the need to point out that I was right again. About bringing you.” He addresses the wall. “You’re a decent bodyguard.”
“Maybe you could pay me back by avoiding stupid situations.”
“What else is there to do around here?” he says, the smirk returning, and leaves. A minute later, there comes the sound of water running. I lie across my bed and listen to my heartbeat slow down.
Anthony was lying. Eliot doesn’t take pills. He doesn’t have to be an ex-possibility.
Except he didn’t tell me where we were going. I was supposed to find a new friend to keep me safe—socially anyway. Someone with a spot at their cafeteria table who doesn’t abuse the word sorry. Eliot fulfills this requirement, but he’s also a lunatic.
Eventually I realize it’s been ages since the shower turned on. If he passed out and I have to administer CPR to his naked body— But then he steps into the room, bare chested.
“Could you relocate my shoulder?” he asks casually. “And lend me a clean shirt?”
I can’t speak. He’s covered in scars. Old ones, new ones, jagged ones, thin white ones patterning his sides and stomach and everywhere else. And his shoulder looks wrong. It’s swollen and pointy.
He should be in the hospital. He should be in agony.
“I thought you might know how since you know sports injuries. If not, I can show you.”
“What—you—? You definitely need to go to the hospital!”
“It’s easy. Easier for someone else, though, which is why I was hoping—”
“How are you not screaming in pain?” I can’t believe I didn’t take him to the hospital.
“I don’t feel pain.”
“What?”
“I have congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis.”
“What?” I repeat.
“It’s a problem with my nerve fibers,” he says impatiently. “Now I’m going to lie on the floor, and all you have to do is—”
“Insensitivity to pain with what? Are you serious?”
“It’s a rare condition.” He looks tired. So tired that I stop the questions from flying out of my mouth. He has to be lying, right? Invulnerability to pain isn’t a rare condition—it’s a superpower.
Still stunned, I say, “So you lie down and—?”
I end up sitting with my good foot in his armpit. It’s the least sexually compromising setup in the world, but if Rex comes home, he’ll find a way to make it inappropriate.
“Now pull on my arm,” Eliot instructs.
“It’ll hurt.”
“It won’t.”
His skin’s warm and soft from the shower. I privately catalog the tiny scars on his fingers, his palms. Where did they come from? Most don’t look neat enough to be self-harm, which means he’s either been cage fighting lions or he’s incredibly careless.
After a minute of steady pulling, with Eliot gazing at the ceiling like he’s at the dentist’s, there’s a pop. He straightens.
I pinch his ankle. “That doesn’t hurt at all?”
He frowns. “No.”
My most wanted superpower is real. I choke on a laugh. I can’t help it. “That’s amazing. You’re so lucky.”
“Yes, very lucky. Thanks for the joint relocation. I should be going.”
“Wait, I want to talk to you.” I feel an obsession hatching, like the time Rex took me to Anthony’s middle school lacrosse game and I tracked the ball from start to finish. But then Eliot’s frown deepens, so I reroute. “About your death wish. They could have killed you. They dislocated your shoulder.”
He rotates it experimentally. “They were holding me like idiots, that’s all. They wouldn’t have done any permanent damage.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I did. I brought you.”
My annoyance is vaporizing in the face of his inability to take care of himself. “You’re saying it’s fine if they beat you up, but as long as they don’t kill you—”
“I don’t feel it. It doesn’t matter. And it’s hilarious how pissed off they get when they realize they can’t do anything to me.”
He has a point. How do you hurt someone who doesn’t care what you think of him, doesn’t care what you say to him, and doesn’t care if you attack him?
He sighs at my expression. “People hit something and they feel better. It’s convenient to be something that doesn’t mind getting hit. I wanted Anthony to get over his issues.”
“I figured you had an ulterior motive for going, but considering that you’re smart I assumed it was a good one.”
“Isn’t it?”
“He thinks you narced and got him arrested, not Trez. There was this freshman last year—all he did was steal a couple pills. He ended up in the hospital.” It’s usually not hard to laugh at Anthony playing mafia, but I’m realizing how dangerous he might actually be.
He picks up a plastic toy from my dresser. “My Little Pony. Interesting.”
“It’s from when I was— Forget it. You can’t let people treat you like a human punching bag just because it doesn’t hurt. It’d be easier to avoid pissing them off.”
“Easier for some.”
“Just be nicer.”
“People waste t
heir lives trying to find the right thing to say.”
I groan. “Why didn’t you tell him it was Trez?”
“I imagine I can handle the retribution better.” He holds the toy horse up to his face and imitates its vacant wink. I can’t stand looking at his scars anymore, so I go down the hall and pillage Rex’s room for one of his least-favorite shirts. When I get back, I throw it at Eliot, along with a point. “Health problems. You’ll have them when you’re older if you let people beat you up.”
It was Mom’s end-of-debate card: eat the spinach or you’ll have health problems when you’re older. Stretch before practice or you’ll have health problems when you’re older. Take the fish oil or YHHPWYO. Except having health problems when you’re older doesn’t matter if you get creamed by a car at forty-five.
The shirt is too big on Eliot. He’s not muscled-thin, but angles-thin, breakable like something beautiful made of glass. “My life is a health problem.”
“Come on.” I chuckle. “Not feeling pain, that’s not a health problem—that’s a miracle.”
He stiffens. “I don’t want to get so old I can’t think. My goal is to live efficiently. And that means cutting out stupidity like saying things I don’t believe to people I don’t respect, and—this conversation.”
I fold my arms. “Has it ever occurred to you that people would be upset if you died?”
“No,” he says, surprised. “It’s not a factor.”
“Why not?”
“Because nobody would be upset.”
I say the automatic thing: “I would be upset.”
He squints. “You would?”
“Yeah,” I say defiantly.
“You’d put flowers on my casket and wear a black dress and listen to a minister call me an upstanding citizen?”
“I’d order a hundred baskets of flowers and carry the casket and get ordained as the freaking minister if it would convince you not to be so dumb.”
He stares. Then he tips back his head and laughs, wet hair trailing moisture into his eyes.
This funeral could be way less hypothetical if Anthony continues his campaign of revenge. But there’s one person who might be able to convince him not to put Eliot in an early grave, and luckily that person is me.
