Not today. Please, not today…
She stays only for a moment, though, because she can’t… she can’t break. She takes a deep breath, then opens the front door. Roger is sitting on the couch, eyes fixed on the wall, the Times resting unopened in his lap. Not a good sign. Jed is beside him, watching a repeat of the Falcon’s game from two weeks back – the only one they’ve won this season – with the volume down low. He must have put it on to try and coax Roger out. He looks up when Mallory enters, the skin around his right eye all swollen and purple now, but Roger doesn’t even move and something about that seems to cut at her.
Of all the days he could have picked…
‘Mal?’ Jed stands, brow furrowing with concern, and she realizes…
Shit.
Her eyes must be red, though she stopped crying on the way home. She never cries. Jed knows she never cries.
‘I’m fine,’ she tells him.
‘But you – ’
‘It’s okay,’ she says firmly, closing the front door and stepping further into the room. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all.’ She swallows. ‘How about you? The pizza okay?’
‘Yeah, Mal.’
‘And how you feeling?’
‘I’m okay, too,’ he says. ‘Eye’s sore, but I don’t feel sick or have a headache; none of the things you said to watch for. And I did, Mal. I did watch out, just like you said, so you don’t have to worry.’ He’s still looking at her with that concern.
‘Good kid,’ she says, words a little wobbly. ‘You’re good.’ Roger is still unmoved. ‘What started it?’ she asks. He’s worse than he’s been for a while. She can see that already. His shoulders are hunched, not straight. The Falcons are playing right in front of him, but his eyes just aren’t there.
‘Me,’ says Jed, and he falters, expression seeming to crumple. ‘He got upset, saying he should have protected me.’ Mallory’s insides feel like someone wrenched them sideways, sadness followed by this rush of anger. ‘I told him I was sorry, that I was all right, but he went dark again, Mal. I’m sorry, he went dark.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she says, jaw clenching up as she glares at Roger. ‘None of this is your fa – ’ She stops herself, stopping before she says things she shouldn’t. ‘Sorry,’ she tells him, trying to stall the rage growing inside of her.
Why today? Why the hell today?!
‘Just go to bed, hey?’ she says. He doesn’t go though. She looks back at him. His little blue eyes are still watching her, searching.
‘You sure you’re okay?’ he asks. For a moment, she feels it again, feels Bobby’s hands on her stomach, feels him touching her and she almost…
‘I’m okay, kiddo,’ she says. ‘Now, bed.’ He doesn’t look quite like he bought it.
‘I can help with Dad,’ he says.
‘Go upstairs.’
‘But Mal – ’
‘Upstairs!’ It comes out a horrible, nasty sound, but he finally obeys. ‘Close your door,’ she adds, turning, as he starts up the stairs. ‘And if… if you feel sick in the night or anything, you come wake me.’ She holds herself steady, like a rigid, coiled spring, doesn’t move until she hears that bedroom door click shut.
Then she looks down at Roger.
Damn it, damn it, damn it…
All scraggy and pathetic and old-looking, though he’s only thirty-six.
Her dad, just sitting there, staring.
Staring, when he should be at work, because if he loses this job, she doesn’t know what they…
Staring, when she…
‘Roger,’ she says, her voice cold and hard. He stirs a little. ‘Look at me!’ she shouts. He finally does, that same ridiculous expression he always has on his face when she pulls him out of going dark, halfway between startled and scared, though he’s only in his living room and she’s only his daughter.
‘Mallory?’ he stammers.
‘Shut up,’ she says. Whatever he’d been going to say, the words seem to fall back down into his throat. ‘So you saw that your son got beat up today?’ she continues. Roger’s face twists. He glances at the stairs. ‘Yeah, that kid,’ she says. ‘You’re upset you couldn’t protect him? Well, he’s been sitting by you all evening and you looked like you didn’t even know he was there.’
‘I can’t – ’ he begins.
‘There are things you can do!’ She’s heard it before, so many damn times. ‘You just won’t. And it’s not that you don’t see, because you do.’ The words start pouring out of her like a stream, all her fury, all her built up tension spilling out on him. ‘You aren’t dumb. Whatever else you lost, that didn’t change. You’ve never been dumb! You see what’s going on. You see everything, but you don’t help him, you don’t… Your own child.’ Her voice breaks. And then, suddenly, it’s not Jed she’s talking about, ‘Right there in front of you…’ She sees Bobby’s face bearing down on her, feels his hands sliding across her stomach. ‘And you don’t help, and…’ The words choke up.
Don’t you cry again! she tells herself. But she can feel it, she can still feel it…
Roger is staring at her now, not at the stairs, at her. She blinks her eyes, and blinks her eyes, and blinks…
‘There’s this boy from school,’ she says, her voice suddenly paper soft and trembling. ‘And it’s been going on a long time, calling names and generally being a jerk… but, today, he actually did something. He did something bad, Roger, and it was horrible. He hurt…’ Her voice cuts out again.
‘Mallory, what – ’
And she almost… but she can’t, she can’t, she can’t…
Shut it off. Stop it! Stop it!
‘He hurt… Jed,’ she says finally. She wipes her face, wipes her stupid, watering eyes. Roger’s gaze is fixed on her, glistening too. She holds onto it because, for a moment, he’s there, he’s really there, and her longing for that suddenly overwhelms all else – a longing she never usually lets herself feel any more because it doesn’t help, and it hurts. She tries to squash it out now, tries to block it, and grabs hold of his arm, holding on to him though the touch makes the tips of her fingers itch. ‘It doesn’t matter what you’re feeling inside,’ she says. ‘You hear me? I don’t care. But your shift started over two hours ago and if you don’t show up at all, you’re gonna be fired. You get fired, we lose the house and get the socials on our backs again, just like after Mom left.’ He winces, even at the mention of the word and a fresh bolt of fury shoots through Mallory. ‘Jeanie,’ she snaps at him. ‘Jeanie, who left us because you couldn’t deal with your shit, because you were too scared to fight to get her to stay!’ The words sting him visibly, and guilt tugs at her. They sting at her too, prickling in her chest and she sees it, sees it in her head, remembers the last time…
Shut it off! Shut it off!
‘We’re still here,’ she says. ‘Your son is still here. Jed. Still here. And you need to go to work,’ she says. ‘Jed needs you to go to work.’
Roger starts rising, starts doing what she’s asking, but he’s doing it so slow she reaches out and pulls him up too, dragging him to his feet faster than he’d like. He’s heavier than he looks and it almost yanks her shoulder out until his legs start to take the weight. ‘You’re going to work,’ she says, muscles seizing though she doesn’t let go. ‘You’re going to grovel to your manager for being late.’
‘Okay, Mal,’ he says. They stumble to the door together, her dragging, him following. She grabs the keys from the bowl on the side. ‘Okay,’ he repeats, finally standing up straighter. ‘Okay.’ She lets go, flexing her fingers, over and over. She walks him out to the car, handing him the keys as he sits in the front seat. He looks at her, properly looks at her again. And there’s that shadow of him again, there in his eyes, and it breaks her heart so hard she almost can’t breathe.
‘I’m sorry, Mal,’ he says. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘You grovel,’ she tells him, and shuts the car door, blinking far too much. She watches from the porch until he�
��s driven away – guilt bubbling again, though she needed to, she needed to – then she goes back into the house. She catches a movement from the corner of her eye and sees Jed perched near the top of the stairs. Any strength left seems to fall away.
‘You need anything?’ Mallory asks quietly. He shakes his head. ‘Please, go to bed, Jed,’ she says. ‘Please.’
He stays a moment longer, before disappearing again. There’s a kind of emptiness then, in the silence after so much the noise, as if Mallory’s been sucked into some kind of vacuum where everything feels ringing and distorted from what it should be. She follows Jed up the stairs, all her movements suddenly feeling sluggish. When she reaches the landing, her brother’s door is already shut. She goes into her room, carefully locking her own door behind her, checking it twice. She double checks her window is held fast, too, then she closes the curtains, right to the top – no gaps, not from any angle. The room is plunged into darkness, but she doesn’t turn the light on. Her hair is wet, her back is wet, but she doesn’t do anything about that either. She crosses back over to the door and sits down against it, knees scrunched right up to her chest. She takes Bobby’s phone out of her pocket and puts it on the floor. Her hand is trembling, though she tries to still it. She should put the cell in a box, in a drawer, hide it, make a copy – it’s her insurance for Jed – but, just right then, she can’t move. She tries to shut it all out, like Roger seems to be able to do so easily, but all she feels is Bobby, the touch of his skin against hers, the weight of his body on top of her. She starts shaking again, and she can’t make it stop. She clenches tighter… tighter… tighter… but it doesn’t do any good.
She feels helpless, impotent.
She feels alone. And not a good kind of alone, not a safe alone, but one that is exposed and hollow. Almost without thinking it, she reaches up to her desk and pulls down her laptop. She turns it on and types in everything asked of her, fingers moving automatically against the keys. She opens up the browser, goes to the back door address, goes through the security…
Greetings, Echo Six. Welcome to the Forum.
There is truth to be shared.
Let us begin.
The words should release her. This is when everything else fades away and she becomes Echo; Echo who is strong and free and undefeatable… But it doesn’t work. She’s still there in her room, still just fucking Mallory Park, who’s sitting like a scared little child against her locked door, in her wet coat.
Mallory Park, who can’t even stop herself from shaking.
Where the fuck have you been?! The words flash up in a chat box from Warden almost immediately.
Mallory starts.
Warden…
That’s how we greet each other now when we’re late on, isn’t it? he adds. He’s joking. He’s…
Warden, she thinks, who is always there.
She roots around in her mind for some sarcastic remark, something that she, as Echo, would usually snap back at him. But there is nothing.
Echo? Warden writes. Are you there? Hey, Echo! (Echo, Echo, Echo…)
Nothing.
No clever words come.
Instead, she shatters.
She can feel it happening, feel the walls falling apart as her fingers start to move, and every piece of logic and warning disappears. She pushes enter before she even realizes what she’s typed. She reads it back to herself, even as Warden must be reading it, wherever he is.
A boy from school attacked me today. He pushed me down in the parking lot outside where I work and tried to take pictures under my shirt.
Mallory stares at the words. In two sentences, she has told Warden five things about her life. Her real life. She’s of school age. She goes to a mixed gender school. She’s old enough to work, so likely fifteen to eighteen. She has an after-school job. Where she works has a parking lot. Five things, in two sentences.
I don’t like to be touched, Warden, she tells him, more words appearing. I don’t like to be touched at all, not by anyone, but he did.
Six things.
He touched my face and my arms and he put his hands under my shirt and now I can’t stop shaking. I can’t stop shaking. I fought him off and took his phone, but I feel sick, even just thinking about it.
Seven things. Seven too many, but she keeps typing.
I have a little brother, and he’s small for what he should be.
Eight, nine.
And he’s been getting bullied and I didn’t even notice. I didn’t notice, Warden, when I should have.
Ten. Her fingers keep moving.
And my dad, he’s just… He used to be a Marine and something happened when he was on his last tour, six years ago, and he won’t ever talk about it, but he’s just not right any more and I can’t fix it. I tried. I read everything about it I could find, but I couldn’t make any difference. And I miss him, she writes, and she feels it again, then. And sometimes, he just makes me so mad I want to hit him. Like properly hit him. And he’s my dad and I shouldn’t think that, but I do.
Eleven, twelve.
Twelve things.
Her fingers finally stop. She stares at the screen. Warden hasn’t responded. It doesn’t even say he’s typing. Twelve things that Echo wouldn’t ever say look back at her, typed beside the name Echo Six. Twelve things about who she really is. Some are obvious, some he’ll only figure out if he looks closer, but they’re there and she couldn’t take them back, even if she wanted to.
And she’s not sure she wants to.
And that in itself is wrong, because she should want to. She should be panicking. But she’s not. Because it’s Warden, and, right now, he feels like safety, like something she needs. He finally starts typing. Then he stops. He must have deleted it. He starts typing again. Mallory just waits. She realizes she isn’t shaking any more. Her heart is pounding in her chest, but her body is still. She taps her finger slowly against the desk.
Four, three, four, two.
Four, three, four, two.
Four, three, four –
I’m so sorry, Echo. The words flash up on the screen. Then, Are you okay?
Even in her cold, wet coat, for a moment, she feels a warmth. And it’s not just the relief that he didn’t comment on the fact that she’d suddenly spoken honestly to him after years of hiding.
No, she answers. She’s not okay.
I mean, bollocks, of course you’re not okay, Warden types. That was a stupid thing to ask. I’m sorry. I just mean… I don’t know, is there anything I can do?
They talk for most of the night. They talk about things that matter, and about things that don’t. Warden rattles away in that way he does that’s sometimes exasperating but, tonight, makes the tension coiled inside of her slowly release, makes her feel strangely secure. She’s careful to never be specific, still – no names, no details – but she is more open with him than she ever has been before. More open than she’s been with anyone for a very long time. The light of sunrise is just starting to glow faintly along one edge of her blackout curtains when he finally signs off. And she feels better. Despite everything, she feels…
She’s just about to leave too, when a chat box from The Asker appears. She blinks, rubbing her tired eyes – and her stomach drops a little as she sees what’s written.
Another hacker has disappeared.
Who? she asks simply.
The reply is just one word, but it stops her cold.
Scarlet.
Pulling Punches
Mallory’s hand smacks into the punch bag, her skin already stinging, the knuckles still tender from where she hit Connor two days ago. The bag swings back further than it had the last time, but still not as much as she’d have liked. Jed steps forward and steadies it.
‘That one was better,’ he says, smiling.
Mallory nods. One more go, then it’s his turn again. She pulls her arm back, trying to remember everything the YouTube video had said, setting it up perfectly. She swings, fist colliding with rubbery plastic.
She and Jed have watched that damn clip – supposedly teaching you how to punch properly – three times, but it still isn’t working. Mallory shakes out her hand, wincing as the knuckles click.
‘You’re up, kiddo,’ she says, moving back and switching places with Jed. The bruise around his eye is already yellowed and fading, but she still doesn’t like seeing it. It shouldn’t be there at all. He levels his feet in front of the bag – brow knitted in concentration, mouth a thin, tight line – and bends his knees for balance, just like the video had said. Mallory watches carefully. It’s important he gets better. She has Bobby’s phone locked away in a drawer in her room, the pictures now backed up on her computer just in case, and maybe it will work for a time – get Bobby to keep Connor off Jed’s back – but she can’t rely on it forever. Jed needs to learn how to defend himself. He wants to.
And so does she.
She thinks briefly of Scarlet, of what The Asker had told her…
Then she thinks of Bobby. Her skin goose pimples, the memory of hands across her stomach…
No! she tells herself. No, no, no. She shuts it off, just like she has been doing for the past two days. She can’t let it get to her. She’d almost lost it the first time she saw him at school yesterday, walking down the corridor with his friends, eyes all red raw still… but he hadn’t gone near her, hasn’t even looked at her since. Warden thinks what she’s doing is dangerous, stupid even. He’s been on at her to tell the police what happened, saying that she shouldn’t hide it, that Bobby shouldn’t get away with it. Mallory swallows. Warden doesn’t understand. She’d have to go down to the station to do it and they’ll know who she is, they’ll recognize her, and she can’t, she…
She hates that place.
No, she thinks. It doesn’t matter anyway; the threat of the phone is better because it keeps Jed safe too. That’s more important. She tells herself that, at least. Warden had said she should tell the teachers about that fight too, but Connor has steered clear of her brother so far, so it’s working – her way is working. It’s better, she tells herself again. This way, things are kept under control. She can’t risk losing that, can’t risk someone else changing it.
Echoes (US Edition) Page 6
