The Shadows We Know by Heart

by Jennifer Park

  “Why? You know I don’t like the stress of all that stuff.”

  “Because Ben is coming over and he wants to hang out.”

  “With who? Me?”

  “I believe you’re the one who agreed to it.”

  “I didn’t. I shrugged. That wasn’t a yes.”

  “Well, he wants to talk to you. I told him it’s fine as long as I’m there.”

  “Why does that make it sound like a date and you’re the chaperone?”

  “It’s not a date. But if my best friend wants to hang with my little sister I’m sure as hell going to sit in on it. Got it?”

  “I didn’t say yes.”

  “Well, then you should have said no. But it’s too late now. He’ll be here in an hour.”

  “Please don’t make me play Halo.”

  “Shhhh . . .” Matt says, shooting a glance at Dad as he opens the back door into the kitchen. “He doesn’t know Mom bought it for me. You know he said no violent games.”

  “Then I’d hate for him to find out you have it.”

  Matt glares. “Let’s not forget I just saved you from a long lecture and likely more jail time.”

  “Let’s not forget you forced me to go to a party and drink. I go down, we’re going down together. You did drive home buzzed.”

  Matt chews his lip, eyes narrowed. “Fine. No Halo.”

  “Agreed.” I hold out my hand.

  Before I can jerk it back, Matt spits in his hand and slaps it to mine. “Agreed.”

  “Ugh! I hate you sometimes. Do you know how disgusting that is?” I wipe my hand on my blue-jean skirt. “Sick person.”

  “Well, would you have rather used blood?”

  “I don’t understand you. Like at all.”

  “You don’t have to understand me. You just have to keep my secrets. You’re good at that.”

  I meet his gaze with wide eyes, but he just smiles and walks through the doorway. The day Matt realizes how good I really am at keeping secrets will be the day I can no longer keep them.

  chapter nine

  I’m wedged between Matt and Ben on the couch that sits beneath Matt’s bunk bed. It’s been ten years since there was a bottom bunk. Laughter rings up from the kitchen from the meeting of deacons’ wives that I also didn’t know about. Ben’s mom is one of them, which explains a lot about my current circumstances. Had I said no, he would have just come anyway.

  “Why aren’t we playing Halo?” Ben says flatly, focused on the black McLaren speeding across the screen. Every time he jerks the control to move his car, his knee and elbow touch mine. I’m not even sure he notices it, but since there are only two controls, neither of which I have, it’s all I can focus on.

  “She didn’t want to,” Matt answers as his yellow Lamborghini Diablo speeds past.

  “It’s not that bad, Leah.”

  “I don’t like getting killed.”

  “It’s not real.”

  “It feels like it. It makes me want to go outside and run or something. I don’t like all the tension and anxiety.”

  “So we’re going to race cars all afternoon?”

  “You can leave.”

  Ben grabs his chest. “Ouch, little Leah. I think you’re trying to hurt me.” He nudges me with a grin, leaving his arm against mine. My heart picks up speed, but I can’t tell if it’s because of butterflies or the fact that Matt is sitting next to me while his best friend is flirting. He leans across me, obviously in my personal space, and whispers loudly to Matt, “I brought Fallout.”

  “Aaaand we’re done here.” Matt hops up and turns off the car game. “Where?”

  “Here.” Ben pulls it out of the pocket of his jacket and tosses it across the room to Matt.

  “Let me guess, lots of shooting?”

  “Is there any other kind?” Ben says, leaning back against the couch. It feels strange to sit this close to him with Matt’s space empty. I don’t know whether to move over or stay, because I’ll just have to move back when Matt returns. Ben stretches his arm across the back of the couch, and the movement causes me to slide closer, until I’m pressed against his side. He pretends not to notice, or he actually doesn’t notice. I’m not sure which one I’m hoping for.

  This is Ben. Matt’s best friend, the son of Dad’s best friend, although I’d call Sheriff Hanson more of a professional best friend, because they don’t exactly do friend things. More like run the church business meetings, deacon meetings, and other meetings that I don’t know about and that happen behind closed doors. Regardless, I’m not sure how to make the leap from friend Ben to more than friend Ben, or if he even wants to.

  I remember when he became friend Ben. Before I can stop it, another off-limits memory crowds into my mind. We sit in Ashley and Reed’s tree house, a pile of first and second graders, on a Saturday in October. “I don’t like Ben Hanson,” Ashley says, throwing acorns across the deck, watching as they bounce and fly off the edge.

  “Me neither,” I say, taking one from the pile in my fist. But mine doesn’t bounce, just sails straight over the edge to hit the tree trunk below.

  “Ben’s in my class,” Sam says. “Why don’t you like him?”

  “He pulls my hair in music.”

  “Well, he pulls mine in art,” Ashley says.

  “Just tell him to stop,” Matt replies, sharpening a stick with a deer antler knife Dad gave him.

  “We do, he just doesn’t listen.”

  Matt shrugs, but Reed answers. “I’ll make him stop.” He picks up the acorns that have slipped out of my hand and holds them out to me. I take them, one by one, and throw them. Our backs are pressed against the wall of the tree house, Reed, me, Ashley, Sam, and Matt, and our dirty bare feet lined up in a row could be on a greeting card.

  “You know he lives down the street,” Sam taunts. “Why don’t you just do it now?”

  Four pairs of eyes swivel to stare at Reed.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “No, you won’t.” Sam shrugs, fashioning a slingshot from a stick and a piece of rubber band he found in Dad’s shop.

  “Yes, I will.” Reed leans across me, staring my brother down.

  “I dare you.”

  “Fine.”

  “Well, I double-dog dare you.” Matt grins. “ ’Cause I don’t think you’ll do it.”

  Reed jumps to his feet and slides down the rope ladder, and the twins follow him. Ashley and I scurry after them, acorns scattering, because there’s no way we would miss this.

  Five minutes later, our bikes lie carelessly in the ditch outside Ben’s house. Reed knocks on the door, which is answered by Ben’s mom. We’re all speechless for a moment, and I’m probably not the only one wondering what exactly Reed is going to say. I take a step back, ready to rush for the bikes. “Is Ben home?” Reed asks, like it doesn’t really matter to him.

  “Yes, he is. Ben!” Mrs. Hanson calls over her shoulder. “Your friends are here.”

  Ben comes to the door. “Hey, guys, what’s up?”

  “My sister said—” Reed begins.

  “Our sisters said,” Sam cuts in, “that you’ve been pulling their hair.”

  Ben looks past the wall of brothers at Ashley and me. “Yeah. So?”

  “Well, quit. They don’t like it,” Matt says.

  Ben shrugs. “Okay.”

  “Want to play baseball?” Reed asks.

  “Yeah, I’ll get my glove.”

  And just like that, it’s over. Ashley rolls her eyes as we get our bikes, the boys already arguing over who’s on what team, like nothing even happened.

  The memory slides away, leaving bitterness in its wake. So when Ben’s hand slips down to rest lightly on my shoulder, I do the most obvious thing I can think of and shoot up off the couch like a coward. “I’m thirsty. Anyone want a drink?” I ask, not looking back and not stopping.

  “Um, Cokes?” Matt yells as I hurry down the stairs and into the kitchen full of women. No one notices me for a moment as they all study a sheet of paper
on the kitchen table. Mom has her ever-ready fake smile pasted on her face, almost on the verge of a grimace. She hates this kind of stuff, but it’s expected of her. Today it’s a discussion of the food for the church wide Christmas party. They’re planning it now, so they’ll have a couple of months to squabble over who is cooking what. Some of them have been cooking the same thing for decades. Heaven forbid someone shows up with the same cherry pie as Mrs. Lewis, or a sheet cake that has the same color and texture as Mrs. Brennan’s.

  So they sit over coffee and discuss the sign-up, each claiming her own dish before the sheet is tacked up to the events wall for the rest of the congregation to add their names.

  I slip around the corner and into the hallway, shoulders hunched until I make it to the front door and freedom.

  Why is this so hard? Ben Hanson literally had his arm around me and all I could do was freak out and run. He’ll probably never look at me again. My next thought is that Ashley is going to kill me. The one boy I’ve been hung up on and he makes the first move and I can’t handle it. Yep, she’ll likely have a heart attack right in the hallway at school. I’d call her and ask for a pep talk, but I don’t have a phone, and the two landlines are in the kitchen and Dad’s office, so that’s not happening.

  The distant wood knock is familiar now, even though it sets my heart racing like nothing else. But instead of coming from across the pasture in the distant forest, it’s coming from the woods running along our driveway. I weigh my options. Dad said nothing about going outside, just not back to the woods. The driveway runs through the trees, but it’s technically not in the forest. He can’t yell at me for just walking down the road a bit. No one else lives down here except Mr. Watson, and his mailbox is nearly a quarter of a mile up the road.

  Mind made up, I walk down the steps and hurry toward the trees before anyone thinks I’ve been gone too long. Just as I’m starting to worry that Ben will think I’m hiding from him, another knock sounds closer, and my mind goes blank.

  It’s hard walking through the fear. Instinct tells me to run, and it feels foolish to be out in the open like this and not surrounded by brush. I go as far as I can stand, and then stop, still within view of the house.

  Silence falls. Even the birds have stopped calling, leaving only the wind to whistle softly through the trees. I close my eyes, listening for the slightest sound, but nothing comes. It’s like the forest is holding its breath, waiting. Suddenly the feeling of being watched sweeps over me like water, leaving me shivering. It crawls over my skin and under, into my core, until my stomach twists with nausea. I can’t shake this. I can’t even stand here any longer.

  I feel like prey.

  Turning slowly, I walk back to the house. It takes every ounce of self-control not to run because I can feel eyes watching me, and they don’t feel like the boy’s. I’ve never felt that sick fear before without seeing its source. Not once. Terror rips through me to think I might have been walking toward the Sasquatch instead of the boy.

  Too numb to care about what I’ll say to Matt and Ben, I walk back into the house and up the stairs past the gaggle of women and close my bedroom door. I’m chilled. It’s warm as summer in the house, but I feel like I’ve been left out in the cold for too long. I wrap up in a blanket and huddle down on my bed until the anxieties subside and the feeling of being stripped bare goes away.

  It takes a long time, long enough to make me think I just avoided a trap.

  “So.” Ashley walks up to our side-by-side lockers, dragging me out of my thoughts. “I guess if you’re still alive your dad hasn’t found out about Saturday night?” Today the only bit of color she’s wearing is the pink strip of hair that’s hanging down from her ponytail. Everything else is black. Clearly the result of being in the company of Matt and Kelsey too long on Saturday night.

  “For now, I guess. I really can’t believe we lucked out and made it home without them finding out. I’m surprised I didn’t just disappear in a pillar of flames the second I sat down in the pew yesterday. And speaking of flames, you know you look like a vampire, right?”

  “I know, and you know whose blood I would like to drain right now?”

  “I can imagine.” I grin, spinning the combination on the locker with the precise ease of a junior but without the casual mastery of a senior. Matt can almost find the numbers without looking, but that’s because he’s requested the same locker every year of high school. I don’t care where mine is, so long as it’s not next to Coach Banks’s room. It’s too much trouble to go to the girls’ bathroom every time I need to refresh my lip gloss or use some of Ashley’s cover-up. No makeup is another of Dad’s rules, and Coach Banks is in Dad’s little flock of deacons, and therefore not to be trusted.

  “Here.” Ashley pops open a package of Reese’s cups and hands me one. “I think it’s good that you got out of the house. Even if it was unauthorized.”

  “You make it sound like I did something illegal.”

  “No, just to your dad. I mean, you can’t spend your entire high school life locked inside your room reading books. Look at my mom; she’s fine if I go out on a Saturday night.”

  “Yeah, but your mom’s normal.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but she’s not a complete control freak like your dad. She knows she can either let me go or I’ll just leave.”

  “I can’t do that. Dad would never let me.”

  “Have you tried? Have you ever said, ‘Hey, Dad, I’m nearly seventeen, and I’m going out with some friends’?”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Come on, Leah. There is a finite number of nights that I have left in me to spend sitting in your room on a weekend pretending we’re not painting our nails. Pastor Roberts is going to have to get a grip. I mean, we graduate in two years. What do you think will happen then?”

  I don’t give Ash an answer because I don’t have one. But leaving is the last thing on my mind.

  Ashley changes the subject. “Did Ben ever talk to you after church? Or maybe just stare intensely at you like he did at the party?”

  “He came over yesterday so we could . . . hang out.”

  “Now see.” Ashley slaps her hand on the locker door. “That would have been useful to say five minutes ago. ‘Hey, Ashley, guess what? Ben came over to see me yesterday, which is kind of like a date with the boy I’ve been drooling over for years.’ See? Easy. Now spill. Everything, right this second, and no, I don’t care if we’re going to be late.” Ashley’s stare pins me to the wall, but her eyes flash to the side. “Dammit. Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”

  “Please don’t tell me he’s walking over here.” I slink down against the lockers.

  “Why? What happened?” She grabs my arm.

  “He sort of put his arm over my shoulder on the couch.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I went downstairs.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t go back up.”

  Her eyes close in sympathy. “You should have called me.”

  “No privacy. Deacons’ wives’ meeting in the kitchen.”

  “Well, it’s about time he noticed you. I mean, he’s basically seen you grow up, you know? Maybe it’s one of those romantic things where he suddenly looked up and saw you in a pool of light and rainbows and realized you’ve been here all along.”

  “Please.”

  “Or maybe he can’t forget how good you looked in my bikini.” We laugh as the warning bell rings. “And you’re welcome for that, by the way.”

  “For what, the bikini? Not sure you did me any favors there, at least not with Dad.”

  “Yeah, heaven forbid you look like a normal teenager.” She hands me her water bottle and rolls her eyes when I check for floaties. “You know it was probably Coach Banks that sent your dad that picture. No one else would have cared.”

  “I know, I’ve got that sparkling reputation to uphold.”

  Ashley pulls a book out of her locker. “I know, but if I was
going to ruin my rep, it would almost be worth it to let Ben do it.”

  “Really?” I stare at her. “I thought you wanted my bro—”

  “I will kill you. Right now. Lit-er-al-ly.” Her hand stretches across my face but can’t even begin to cover my grin.

  “Payback for the bikini. Oh, and that mild headache I had yesterday. One would think you were almost trying to get me drunk.”

  “Oh, I was. I don’t deny that at all. I just wish I would have succeeded.” She closes her locker with a grin. “Imagine the fun we would’ve had. Hell, imagine the fun we could’ve had with Ben.”

  “Ashley!”

  “Leaving, see you at lunch,” she calls over her shoulder.

  “See you.” I shake my head, trying to find my math spiral.

  “Leah,” a deep voice says next to my ear.

  Crap. I slam my locker door a little too loudly before turning around. “Ben.”

  He’s wearing an eighties metal band T-shirt that is super faded and super tight. It is taking every freaking ounce of self-control I have not to stare at any part of him except his eyes. I am so glad Ashley left because I know she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from making the most of this moment.

  “Hey,” he says slowly, like a question. And we both know what that question is.

  Might as well get this over with. “So, I’m sorry I disappeared yesterday.” My gaze drops to his neck, a fairly safe place to stare, since his dark eyes are making me nervous.

  “No, don’t worry about it. I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “It was stupid to just hang out and play games all day.”

  “But wasn’t that why you were there?”

  “No.” He grins just a little bit, and I swear the hallway just heated up to ninety degrees. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  I find anywhere else to stare besides Ben.

  “Look, I knew I was pushing it yesterday and it freaked you out, but you’re Matt’s little sister, and that kind of freaks me out too.”

  “It does? Then why even bother—”

  “I like you,” Ben admits, almost reluctantly, as he shuffles his feet and runs a hand through his hair. “And I know it’s going to be weird for a while, but I want to get to know you as more than my best friend’s sister.” He rolls his eyes. “If your brother doesn’t kill me first.”