Pretty Fierce

by Kieran Scott

  your 5 mins late 4 curfew

  shouldnt u b home by now?

  where r u? DO I HAVE 2 CALL THE COPS???!!!

  Her tone gradually descended into guilt-slinging hysterical.

  U BEST NOT HAVE RUN OUT ON US

  WHAT ABOUT TREVOR? U ONLY EVER THINK ABOUT URSELF.

  I gripped the phone so tight my fingers hurt. I was so mad I wanted to throw the thing out the window, until I remembered how much it had cost me.

  ITS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!! IM CALLING THE COPS. I AM. U HAVE 3 MINS TO WALK THRU THAT DOOR OLIVER I SWEAR TO GOD

  But she hadn’t called the cops. She wouldn’t. Because that would have brought attention to her. To her family. Her household. Her estranged husband, his drug habit, and his violent tendencies. So I was pretty sure she hadn’t called them. The next few texts were calmer.

  WHERE R U? CALL HOME.

  come home oliver. itll b different i swear.

  trevor misses u. he was confused when he woke up and u werent here. broke my heart.

  At least none of Robin’s messages mentioned a visit from Jack. If he’d been there, she wouldn’t have been able to resist telling me, laying that responsibility on me. So I knew that Trevor was all right. For the moment. I took a breath and typed a response. It took a minute, because my fingertips were so sweaty.

  be back soon.

  No. That was a straight-up lie. I looked at the trees zooming by outside the windows as Kaia drove us through Indiana. I didn’t even know exactly where I was, but I knew I wasn’t going back to South Carolina anytime soon. I deleted the text.

  God, poor Trevor. That kid already had so much to deal with, between his special school and being teased by kids in the neighborhood. I’d left him to deal with his father too. I’d left him without a buffer between him and a mom who had no clue how to protect him.

  i’m sorry…

  No. I wasn’t going to apologize. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Not really. They weren’t my family. Trevor was not my responsibility. He was Robin’s. Maybe leaving them would force her to finally realize that. And besides, she’d abandoned me a hundred times over in a hundred different ways. She didn’t love me. So why shouldn’t I take off? Why shouldn’t I disappear with the one person in the entire world who actually cared that I existed?

  I looked at Kaia. I couldn’t believe she was still functioning. It was pretty clear that someone was after her in a big way, but why? I wished I knew more about her history, her parents. Then maybe I could help her figure out that mystery. If only she’d told me from the beginning—who she really was, where she was really from—I hated that there was so little I knew about my girlfriend when I’d thought I knew everything.

  Until Kaia shared every last detail of her life, she was on her own when it came to constructing the conspiracy theories portion of this drama, and the strain was clear on her face. Besides, it wasn’t like she knew everything about my life. Not by a long shot. I deleted the text.

  i’m fine. Will be in touch when I can.

  There. Make it about me. That would shock the crap out of her. If she even picked up on it.

  “Who’re you texting?” Kaia asked.

  “No one.” I deleted the text and shut off my phone. My face sizzled with anger, sadness, and guilt. I shoved the phone deep into the pocket of the black jacket I’d been wearing on and off since we left the safe house, though right then I was so hot it was making me itch. I reached over and flicked on the air conditioning.

  “You’re not telling them where we are, are you?” Kaia asked, tense.

  “What? No. Who would I tell?”

  “I don’t know. Robin…Hunter…Brian…someone.”

  Someone? Who the hell was someone? And why was she saying it in that weird, leading voice?

  “Well, I’m not texting anyone. No one would believe where I was anyway,” I told her.

  “Good, because if people start asking around, they’ll figure out you’re with me, and if they know you’re with me, they’ll start asking the people you know where we are, and it’s better for them if they don’t know anything.”

  My nerves crackled. “Wait, you don’t think someone’s going to come after Trevor and Robin, do you? Like they did Bess and Henry?”

  Kaia had tried calling Bess and Henry again after lunch. Still no answer.

  Kaia’s face said it all, but her answer contradicted her expression. “No. No. Of course not.”

  “Shit.” I said, my palms starting to sweat.

  “Oliver, I’m sure they’ll be fine. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But, if you want to go home…”

  For a half a second, I considered it. Yes, I wanted to get the hell out of Robin’s, but I’d always thought that the most reasonable and realistic way to do that was to keep my head down, get good grades, maybe land a partial athletic scholarship, take out some loans, and go to college. I’d already missed one important game. If I missed another… And we had a history paper due next Friday. And all those chem labs… Shit. I’d survived as long as I had under Robin and Jack’s roof. All I had to do was survive another ten months and I would be free.

  “What’re you thinking?” Kaia asked.

  I looked at her. At the cuts on her face, the bruise on her forehead, the question in her blue eyes. And my doubts melted away. I couldn’t abandon her now.

  Maybe I could at least warn Robin. Maybe she would take Trevor to her mom’s or something. Then he’d be safe from Kaia’s crazy stalkers and Jack. And I could tell Robin to call the school and say I was sick—like really sick—and might be out for the week. Just to keep the door open…

  “You can go home. If you want to,” Kaia finished.

  Great. Now she was trying to get rid of me. Had I not proven I was worth having around?

  “Well, I want to be with you,” I told her gruffly. “I kind of thought you knew that, but whatever.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kaia said. “I didn’t—”

  “Forget it. It’s fine.”

  I crooked my arm on the door and leaned my head into my hand. I couldn’t stop thinking about Trevor. Yesterday, when I’d left to pick up Kaia, I’d told him I’d play Battleship with him when I got home and he’d given me a rare smile. I imagined him sitting at that little table in his room all night, the Battleship set ready to go, waiting for me. Waiting for me and I’d never shown up.

  I pulled the jacket’s hood up over my face.

  “Are you okay?” Kaia asked.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t trust my voice not to crack.

  “Oliver?”

  I cleared my throat. “M’fine.”

  I could feel her watching at me, but I stared out the window. I didn’t want her to see my watery eyes, the red blotches that were definitely growing across my cheeks.

  “All that barbecue made me tired, I think.”

  “Or you’re coming down from the adrenaline,” Kaia said. “After a close call like that, it’s normal to crash, you know?”

  She leaned forward over the wheel so she could see me, and gave me this funny look, like my answer really mattered.

  “Not really. I’ve never been on the run before.”

  But I did know. I’d had my fair share of last-second escapes.

  “I’m gonna try to take a nap,” I told her.

  “’Kay,” Kaia said quietly.

  I leaned my head against the passenger door, closed my eyes, and tried like hell to make myself stop thinking.

  • • •

  A truck horn blared and I woke up gasping for breath, instinctively bracing for the impact. But the car wasn’t moving. My mouth was gummy, and my head felt heavy. The sun bore down on me, turning the black jacket into a private sauna. I unzipped it and looked around.

  Rest stop. Tons of cars. And no Kaia. I bl
inked and stared at the silver key chain stamped with some kind of intricate Gaelic-looking symbol that dangled from the ignition. There was money on the passenger seat. I couldn’t make what I was seeing make sense.

  Had someone driven up behind us and forced us off the road? Had the money fallen out of her bag when they’d grabbed her? Where was she? What the hell had I slept through?

  I grabbed the keys, shoved the money in my back pocket—because, hello, invitation to break in—and got out of the car, leaving the jacket on the front seat. The mid-September sun was high in the sky, and waves of heat rose up off the tarmac by the gas pumps where several tractor-trailers waited in line. I scanned the cars, the faces of the weary travelers as they passed, searching for Kaia or anyone suspicious.

  Where was she? What if something had happened to her?

  Terror swelled in my chest. My fingers curled around the key chain. I stopped when I reached the paved sidewalk around the white building, where a sign in the window advertised EGG SPECIAL! $2 (plus tax), and a family of five had to step down onto the asphalt to walk around me. I turned in a slow circle, the heat and the mounting panic making my vision blur.

  My mother had already been taken from me. Not Kaia too.

  I headed inside the building and slammed into a linebacker type with a long beard and dark sunglasses. His monster-sized soda spilled over the rim of the cup and onto his arm and splattered my still bloody shoes.

  “What the hell!? Watch where you’re going, son!”

  “Sorry,” I muttered, skirting around him.

  From the way he followed me with his eyes, watching me go through the door, I half expected he was going to follow me and crush my skull. But when I glanced back, he was shaking soda off his wrist and heading for a red pickup. I was hit with a sudden wave of nausea. What if he’d taken Kaia? What if she was tied up in the bed of that truck? I almost ran after him, but the man was already peeling out of the parking lot and gunning it for the highway. I backed up toward the wall, dozens of people eating ice cream, buying candy bars, streaming for the bathrooms, and felt light-headed.

  I had no clue how long I’d been asleep. Kaia could be curled up in the trunk of any one of these trucks or cars. She could be halfway to Mexico by now. I’d failed her. Why the hell had I fallen asleep? Had I really lost the love of my life because I was feeling sorry for myself? Because I’d needed to take a nap?

  I forced myself to breathe, and as I did, our last conversation came back to me in bits and pieces. Kaia suggesting that I might want to go home. Her hinting that maybe she even wanted me to go home.

  Keys in the ignition. Money on the seat. I pulled the bills out of my pocket, turned toward the wall for a little privacy, and counted it. A thousand dollars. A thousand freaking dollars. It was more cash than I’d ever held in my hand at one time. I shoved it away, glancing around to make sure no one had noticed. There wasn’t a single soul looking at me. All these people were roaming around, and I was totally invisible. No one had a clue where I was, and in a hot flash of panic, I realized that no one cared.

  Shit. Shit!

  Bracing my hands above my knees, I leaned forward and sucked in air.

  “Oliver?”

  I straightened and waited for the head rush to pass. Kaia was standing not five feet away, her backpack and skateboard strapped to her back, holding an iced coffee in one hand and a Red Bull in the other. My body flooded with relief.

  “You woke up,” she said. But she didn’t smile. She looked sort of…distressed. Obviously she was distressed. This was a distressing trip. I was so glad to see her I almost mowed down a toddler to throw my arms around her.

  “I got you a Red Bull,” she said into my shoulder.

  Red Bull, my third favorite.

  “I thought you were gone,” I breathed.

  She wrapped her arms around my back, holding the drinks away from me, then pulled back.

  “Where would I go?” she asked with a wan smile. “We’re in this together, right?”

  She searched my face like she was looking for the meaning of life. I felt this odd hitch in my chest, as if I’d done something wrong. Maybe she was mad at me for falling asleep, for leaving her to drive all that time with no one to talk to. Maybe that’s why she had bought so much caffeine, as a hint. I resolved to try to be better. I’d prop my eyelids open with toothpicks if I had to.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’re in this together.”

  18 MONTHS AGO

  “Mom!? Tell me what to do! Call 911? Do they have 911 in Mexico?”

  Grunting and gasping, my mother pushed herself up on one elbow, then into a seated position, letting out an awful wail of pain. She slumped back against the side of the bed, heaving for breath. I looked into her eyes to keep myself from staring at the blood. There was so much blood.

  “Kaia, listen to me, you have to run.”

  “Mom, no. You have to tell me what’s going on. What do you mean, dad’s never coming back?”

  “The phone.”

  My mother gestured weakly at the Batphone. I scrambled to it on my knees and grabbed it. The screen displayed one word, all lowercase letters: run

  “It’s code. He’s compromised.”

  “Compromised? I don’t understand.”

  “We never should’ve come here,” my mom said. “I knew it. I told him. But does he ever listen to me? No. One last job. One last job and then…”

  My pulse pounded in my ears. “One last job? Mom, what are you talking about? Please tell me what’s going on. I don’t—”

  My childish rambling was cut short by the sound of car doors slamming. One, then two, then three and four, right outside the exterior door to our room. My mother gasped. “He’s found me.”

  When I looked down at her, her eyes had gone unfocused as if staring at something in the distance.

  “Oh, God. He’s found me.”

  chapter 10

  KAIA

  We caught more than a few curious glances as I pulled the car alongside a crumbling curb in Chicago that evening, possibly because every other car we’d seen for the past three blocks had either been dented, had windows smashed in or was half rusted-out. The sun was starting to set, and shadows loomed across the pavement. Half the homes on the street were boarded up, and the chain link fences were overgrown with weeds and vines. A man shuffled his way down the sidewalk clutching a bottle inside a brown paper bag. A siren shrieked nearby, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

  “For a safe house, it doesn’t seem to be in the safest neighborhood,” Oliver said. He looked worried.

  “Sometimes places like these are the best camouflage there is,” I told him, paraphrasing something I’d once heard my father say when we were holed up in a shady district in Oslo. I shoved open the driver’s side door and pulled my backpack straps over both shoulders. “Let’s go check it out.”

  I took out my skateboard and dropped it on the sidewalk, my feet practically itching for a ride. Before I got on, I reached for Oliver, lightly entwining my fingers with his. When he squeezed my hand, I told myself for the hundredth time that I’d done the right thing by not ditching him. I’d come close—leaving the money on the seat, the keys in the ignition, hoping he’d take the hint and head for safety—but the second I saw that Red Bull display in the convenience store, I realized what a jackass I was being.

  I loved him. And I needed him. I didn’t give a crap if he was some babysitter hired by my parents. And if he’d started out a bad guy, then maybe he’d fallen in love with me and been turned good by my irresistible wiles. I’d read hundreds of books, so I knew this was at least somewhat possible. What really mattered was, aside from Henry and Bess, Oliver was the only person who had been there for me this last year. That had to mean something.

  If it wasn’t for Oliver, I’d probably still be sleeplessly haunted by nightmares. It was Oliver who had
spent an entire month up late on the phone with me, talking in low tones, telling me silly stories until I dozed off. It was Oliver who had done all the research on insomnia and taken me for long walks in the sun at lunch and insisted on afternoon adventures, knowing that exercise and fresh air would help me sleep at night. He’d sacrificed a lot to help me: all-important cafeteria time with his uberpopular friends, after-school hours when he could have been studying, his own rest—and I appreciated it more than he’d ever know.

  The sidewalk was uneven and weedy, so I rolled slowly, keeping pace with Oliver as he walked.

  “One-twenty-one, right?” Oliver said, looking up at the nearest house. Its blue siding was moldy in spots and completely missing in others. “There’s no number on this one.”

  “There,” I said, pointing at a leaning mailbox. “One-seventeen.”

  One-twenty-one was a two-story red brick building with white trim that had seen better days. The gate hung open, and the small, square front yard was nothing but a dirt patch peppered with crushed beer cans, random food wrappers, and one headless baby doll. I tamped down a quivering unease in my gut, hopped off the board, and popped up the lead wheels to grab them. Then I lead the way up the creaking stairs and went to the second window to find the key. There was nothing there.

  Had the German been here? Had he found the keys? Why didn’t I search his bag better?

  Something tickled the back of my neck, and I whirled around.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Oliver positioned himself near the front door, his jacket zipped to his chin against the quickly dropping temperature.

  “Nothing. Just got the weirdest feeling that someone was watching me.”

  Clutching Sophia in one hand, I looked from window to window across the street, but there wasn’t so much as a porch light on, let alone lights inside the houses. I saw no one. Nothing. For some reason, that made me feel even more nervous. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked frantically, and I had a vivid memory of blood on my skin and my mom’s labored breathing.