by Sara Alva
“Alex, Sebastian has never…” She stopped herself, though I could tell she still didn’t believe me. “Well, do you think you could get him to write some for me? Anything he could share…anything he remembers might be helpful.”
“I…I don’t know. He’s really upset about everything that happened. About me letting him down like this—”
“You didn’t let him down.”
“But I—”
“You didn’t let him down, Alex.” Suzie’s tone wasn’t so gentle now. It was firm, and full of authority. “You didn’t let anyone down. You brought him back to a place where he can be safe, and you did that because you love him.”
And one day he might thank me for it? It was hard to see that future, right now.
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll give it a go, but it’s not gonna work.” Nudging his shoulder gently, I tried to wake him. “Seb? Seb, can you get up?”
“Oh, no.” Suzie reached out to stop me. “I didn’t mean right this second. He must be so exhausted.”
I lifted my hand, but while it hovered mid-air, a thought struck me. Or maybe it was a prayer.
I waved Suzie off. “He’s awake.”
If there was anything I knew about Seb, it was this. And if I was right, then as slim as it was, there was another chance to hope.
“I don’t think—” Her protest died on her lips, because he sat straight up and looked at me.
It was still an old Seb look…but it wasn’t the lost one. It was the one he’d used to stare right into me, like he could see me better than anyone ever had. The one he’d used before I even knew I loved him. The one that had somehow captured my heart and made me love him.
Dark almond eyes with unwavering focus, gazing straight into my soul.
“Seb?” I breathed, laying a single, trembling finger on his upturned wrist. Please, tell me you heard what we were saying. How I did this because I love you. Tell me you understand.
I didn’t say anything else. There were no more words. I just stared back, willing him to feel all that he meant to me. All that he’d done to change me…for the better. How I’d never forgive myself for what had happened, but how I’d do anything I could just to make his life a better one. Even if it meant turning us in like this…even if it meant losing him.
He brought a hand to my face and brushed away a tear I didn’t even know had fallen. I held my breath, too afraid to move or even blink.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Suzie’s lips parting and forming a small, surprised o. Was she beginning to believe?
He let his slender fingers rest on my cheek for a moment before lowering his head.
And when he lifted it up again, his mask shattered.
Suzie gasped.
His eyes sparked to life first, brows scrunching and lids half-lowering as his face twisted in pain. I’m sorry, Alex. I’m sorry.
The explosion of joy in my chest couldn’t be contained. I let out a yell so loud that Suzie jerked back and bumped her head on her chair. “Seb! God, Seb. I…I thought I lost you!” A new wave of tears flooded my already-sore eyes.
He was shaking all over, like he was just now letting the fear and the pain travel through his body.
“I was so scared, Seb—”
He gripped my shoulders and nodded, a fat tear rolling down his cheek. Me too, Alex. I was scared, too.
Scared and lost in his old-Seb world…but somehow he’d found the courage to come back to me. Did I deserve a miracle like that?
With a strength that still surprised me for his slender frame, he pulled me into his arms.
“I’m so sorry, God I’m so sor—”
He put a finger to my lips. Shh. With his other hand, he rubbed my chest, then his.
I let out a whoop of laughter, my eyes crinkling and forcing out a few more streaks of tears. He backed up to grin at me, and with the space between us, I suddenly remembered Suzie was in the room.
Her mouth was unhinged. “Oh, Sebastian,” she murmured. “All this time…”
He peeked over at her. For a moment he seemed to be debating whether to play dumb again, but then he just gave an apologetic shrug. Yeah. Well, here I am.
I wanted to scream “I told you so!” and jump up and down and point with those game-show-host arms used to unveil a grand prize…but then I remembered this moment wasn’t supposed to be about me.
“Listen, Seb.” I cleaned my face with my shirtsleeve. God, I hoped I’d cried enough today that I never had to do it again. “You heard Suzie needs to know some stuff about your mom.”
His eyes darkened and he frowned. What could I possibly say that would be important?
“I dunno. Anything you remember, I guess. Anything that could help them find some relatives. There might be people out there who want you, like an aunt or an uncle or something.”
He shook his head, flustered. How?
“Just…write a few words or something.”
Now he glared.
“Why don’t you start with a picture, like you did the other night…and then see what comes to you.”
He sighed, but eventually stretched out his hand to Suzie.
“What?” She looked at me. “What does he want?”
“He needs something to write with. Hold on, we’ve got stuff in the backpack.”
I grabbed the notebook and pen and placed them in Seb’s hands, letting him flip to a fresh page so Suzie could get a quick glimpse of all the other things he’d drawn.
On a clean canvas, he began to sketch, the lines shaky and unsure. It wasn’t as good as he’d done before, but the angular cheekbones were still there, along with the almond eyes and the long, dark hair.
“That’s her,” I told Suzie. “That’s his mom.”
Suzie’s eyes never left Seb’s hand. “And what happened to her, Sebastian? Can you write that for me?”
He looked back at me hesitantly.
“You can do it.”
Jaw clenching so tightly I could see the bones shifting under his skin, he brought his pen to the paper. Even his ears wiggled slightly as he worked.
Very slowly, he wrote:
She did
“She died,” I blurted out, with way too much excitement, considering the subject matter. “That means she died.”
Suzie nodded, still gaping. I didn’t think she’d closed her mouth for more than a second since Seb had revealed himself. “R-right. What about…her name? Can you tell me her name?”
He gave us a rueful smile, and with less insecurity in his grip, he scrawled: MOM.
I chuckled and rubbed his back. “Yeah, that’s okay. You were little.”
Suzie jumped in, too. “Of course. You’re doing wonderfully, really. Now, um…what about…do you recall…how she passed away?”
She looked really nervous asking that. Her hands were so sweaty they’d left imprints on her pink pants.
Seb swallowed hard. The pen didn’t move. He just glanced back at me once, and I knew.
“Drugs.” Shit, I was such an idiot. “She died from drugs.”
He wet his lower lip, wincing when he struck the place where it’d been split.
“Is that right? An overdose?” Suzie asked.
He nodded.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” she responded automatically, and in the same breath launched into her next thought. “Do you remember when she passed away?”
Inhaling slowly, Seb shook his head and started to add some shading around his mother’s eyes and cheekbones.
“Do you remember anything else? How old you were maybe? Or even what time of year it was?” Suzie pressed.
Seb stopped drawing and considered for a moment. Then he wrote: hot.
“Your mom was hot?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes at me. No, retard.
“Oh…yeah. You mean it was hot out. It was summer.”
He made a little checkmark on the paper, soft puffs of air coming from his nose. The idea that I could still make him laugh, even at a time like th
is, was so exhilarating I felt faint.
“Okay. Then let’s say she passed away in the summer.” Suzie didn’t want to get off track. I could just imagine how many questions she had for him, now that she knew. I’d felt that way not too long ago. “Can you tell me about how long it was before…before DCFS took custody of you?”
She’d chosen her words carefully, but we knew exactly what she meant: how long before he’d been rescued from whatever nightmare had swallowed him up after his mother’s death.
From the t in the word hot, Seb began to draw a circle. It went all the way around until it touched the same letter again.
A full circle. A year.
“You found Seb in the summertime?” I asked. “Maybe it was about a year, then.”
Suzie rested her round face in her hands. “Uh”—she cleared her throat with a watery cough—“yes.”
Seb didn’t respond. He was retracing his mother’s face, fixing some of the wobbly lines.
“She was beautiful,” I murmured, leaning in to press my cheek against him. Seb’s nod moved my head with his, and I felt his jaw stretch wide in a yawn.
“Sebastian…this is…wonderful.” Suzie’s voice was still thick. “Thank you so much for trusting me and telling me this. You’ve given us a lot of information to work with. If you think of anything else, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
Seb put down the pen, blinking sleepily.
With a shaky breath, Suzie stood. “The police will be here soon—not because you’re in trouble, Alex,” she added hastily, “but we do need to make a report, and we’ll have to find you two a place to spend the night.”
I tightened my arm around Seb. “Can’t we just stay here?”
Suzie shook her head. “I’m sorry, Alex. Besides, I only have the one bedroom.
“That’s okay. Seb and I can share the couch.”
She chuckled. “I don’t think so.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because you’re teenage boys, and from what I can tell, you’re in a relationship.”
“So?” I squared my jaw. “What the hell does that mean? We already sleep together. And we’ve already—”
“Alex”—Suzie held out a hand to stop me—“if I had kids of my own, they’d have the same rules. You’re only sixteen. You have plenty of time to be together. It doesn’t all have to happen so fast.”
I kept scowling. “Fine. Whatever. But Seb and I are together, and no one’s gonna make us slow down if we don’t want to.” I turned back to make sure Seb was on board with my declaration and found him admiring me with a smirk.
That was a yes, right?
“Just give me a moment to change,” Suzie said, heading down the hallway. “I can trust you to wait right there?”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have the energy to get off the couch, let alone make a run for it.
She vanished into her room, and a split second later, Seb closed in for a surprise kiss. Open-mouthed, and a little sloppy, but that might’ve been on purpose. At first his lips were cold from the ice but it wasn’t long before they burned, pulling me deeper and deeper into a nothing-exists-outside-of-this kind of kiss. I snaked my arms up and down his back, a soft moan escaping my throat. We gasped for breath and dove back in again. Some blood mixed with our saliva—his blood—but the bitter taste of guilt washed away as we continued to plunge into each other, dissolving it into something warm and salty and right.
When my mouth felt bruised and raw from the friction, Seb finally pulled back, drawing out my bottom lip with one final suck. Then I turned and caught Suzie in a pantsuit out of the corner of my eye.
Her cheeks were as pink as her previous outfit. Mine probably turned a similar shade.
Well, at least she knew I meant what I’d said. No one was going to come between us, if I could help it.
Her phone rang. It had to be the cops, and whoever else she’d called, asking to be buzzed in.
I gripped Seb’s hand.
Please, God. Let me be able to help it.
Chapter 27: Outgrown
“We’re really happy to have a space for you,” counselor Jessica said. She looked like a younger version of Suzie—Suzie in the sweats, because she was in a lavender tracksuit. Same mousy brown hair and rounder body, too, though Jessica was a lot peppier.
A couple of bedroom doors opened as she led me through the sprawling house. Floorboards creaked under my leaden feet and curious eyes peeked out to find the source of the noise, but I was too exhausted to pay much attention. This new place seemed a lot like Ms. Loretta’s, except with cheerful camp-counselor style staff to keep me in line instead of those big old ladies.
I sort of missed them.
“Your room will be right down here,” Jessica went on, gesturing to a small space with two desks, bunk beds and mirrored closet doors. “You’ll be sharing with Carlos. He’s a character, but very friendly, I promise.”
The very friendly Carlos barely looked over from his top bunk, where he was busy typing away on a laptop. I couldn’t have cared less. The roommate didn’t matter. Neither did the room itself, or the house, or Jessica the peppy resident counselor. All that mattered was that I was only a mile away from Seb, at his facility’s off-campus housing for “highly functioning youth.”
I was surprised to hear that Suzie found me highly functioning, all things considered, but I wasn’t going to argue.
“Maybe you two would like a moment to get acquainted?” Jessica suggested. “I’ll be back in a few to check up on you before bed.”
As soon as she and her cheerful smile headed off, I zeroed in on the bottom bunk. Leaving my new bag of clothing and the trusty backpack by the door, I crawled into the temporary haven.
I wrapped myself up in the blankets and ran my hand over the empty space beside me. That space was meant for Seb. I could still imagine the feel of his hair passing through my fingers, nearly two whole days since I’d last touched a shimmering strand. Two days since I’d last seen his face, troubled but trusting, as he’d been taken away.
And now another long night with that image seared on my brain stretched out before me.
I scrunched my eyes shut and gathered an armful of pillow, trying to ease the loneliness. It has to be like this. He’s just a mile away. The faster you go to sleep, the sooner you’ll see him again.
This arrangement Suzie had worked out was probably the best I could have hoped for, and yet my heart still ached like someone had torn a piece right out of it. Of course, it could’ve also been the bruises, but once my lies had been discovered the paramedic had assured me nothing was broken inside.
So it was just lovesickness, then. Lovesickness mixed with the horrible, very real fear that Seb might disappear again without my presence there to maintain him.
A thump startled me into opening my eyes—Carlos jumping down from his bunk. Then I saw Carlos himself, and my eyes opened a little wider.
He was a small kid, probably all of five-four. He had on tight pink shorts that I hadn’t seen when he was under the covers, and the left side of his hair was streaked with purple. His nails were painted a silvery-gray and he wore a rainbow bracelet on his wrist.
I must’ve had my mouth open while I gaped at him, because suddenly he was flashing brown eyes on me in anger. “I hope you’re not thinking about starting no trouble. ’Cause I can handle myself if it comes to that.”
My brows drew up at the challenging note in his tone. It had to take guts to talk to me that way…not to mention dress like that in the first place. A kid like him would’ve been eaten alive at my old school.
“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” he snapped, placing his hands on his narrow waist. “Then you can beat one off to it later.”
I shook my head to cover a snort of laughter. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to stare.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he muttered under his breath. Then he kicked at my backpack. “You gonna unpack? Or are you not staying long?”
“Not sure,” I
admitted. There were no guarantees on this placement, just like there hadn’t been for any of the others. Just hope. Tired, battered, but amazingly still alive-and-kicking Hope.
I stood up to grab my bag, trying to think positively as I unzipped it. Maybe if I acted like this was permanent, I’d help make that happen. I found an empty drawer and clumsily flipped the backpack over to empty the contents.
A few photographs, creased and water-stained, slipped to the floor during the process.
Carlos bent to pick them up. “This your family?”
I snatched them out of his hands before he could get a good look. “Mhm.”
“There are some empty frames in the den.”
“Frames?”
“Yeah. Frames.” He made a rectangle with his dainty fingers. “For putting pictures in. You know.”
“I know what frames are,” I grumbled, squaring the photographs into a neater pile. My mother stared up at me from the top of the stack, a bit of mud stuck on her face from her brush with dirty alley water.
I’d never thought about putting the photographs on display. Of course, I hadn’t really had a place to display them before…but now that I did, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be faced with them day after day, to be reminded of a past I no longer felt eager to claim.
I licked my finger and wiped off the smudge before gently tucking the pictures back in the drawer.
Counselor Jessica popped her head in the doorway. “Getting ready for bed, Alex? I know you’ve had a long day.”
And it would be an even longer night.
~*~
A gentle tapping awoke me. “Alex? Are you up yet? It’s nearly eleven-thirty.”
I peeled back one lid at a time, re-accustoming myself to the new surroundings. Carlos was at a desk on his computer, still in the pink shorts and comfortably slouched over like he was settled in for a lazy Saturday. The little white buds in his ears explained why he hadn’t noticed Jessica at the door—I could hear a faint strain of music coming from the earphones, so whatever he was listening to had to be on pretty freaking loud.
