by C. L. Stone
A familiar buzzing noise came from the half-size attic door. I smiled. Despite everything, I still had the secret phone the boys had gotten for me.
I double checked my bedroom door to make sure it was locked, pulled a blanket from my bed, grabbed a book from my bookshelf, and collected the phone from the attic. I curled up on the floor near the window. I didn’t expect to be interrupted. It was rare if my mother ever asked for me in the first place. Since she’d already punished me today, she wasn’t likely to ask for me again and wouldn’t come upstairs. Maybe I was being paranoid but the secret cell phone was the only way the guys could talk to me if I was stuck inside. I would do anything to make sure it was never discovered.
I opened the book to a random middle page, leaving it face down on the floor and within quick reach. I flicked on the phone and swiped at the screen.
There were three messages.
Luke: “You okay?”
North: “Call me.”
Nathan: “How bad? Text someone, damn it. We’re worried.”
I felt lighter and curled up into a tighter ball on the floor, holding the phone to my chest as I took a deep breath. Despite what just happened, despite my mom’s warnings, seven guys out there proved that she was completely wrong. They were safe to be around. They thought about me while I was gone. I started typing a message back to Nathan.
Sang: “I’m fine. I just need to hang out here for the day. I’m sorry if I worried you.”
I was just replying to North to say I couldn’t call right now but would try to do it soon when the phone exploded with messages. I fumbled with it, unable to complete a message because it would vibrate and the screen would change for every incoming message.
Gabriel: “Did she yell? Was it bad?”
North: “When are you coming back?”
Silas: “Do you need anything?”
Kota: “What happened?”
Luke: “Did you die? Are you grounded?”
Silas: “How long do you have to stay there for?”
Victor: “Can you sneak back out tonight?”
Nathan: “Why are you apologizing? Just tell us what happened.”
North: “Goddamn it, call me.”
I dropped the phone onto the carpet, pulling my knees up and resting my face in my hands. My heart was beating too hard on too many levels. It was too much to still be angry at my mother and be so excited by the guys. I needed to calm down and find a place to call them from where I wouldn’t be overheard and I couldn’t leave the house.
I crawled to the other side of the room to turn down the volume of the music, listening for the sounds of my family. A radio advertisement floated from my sister’s room. My mom’s television was turned up again. That was a good thing.
I turned the music up on my radio again, this time raising the volume a couple of notches higher. I waited to hear again to see if my mother or my sister would yell at me that it was too loud.
Silence. I scrambled with the phone to the attic door and peered inside. The space was the area between the wall and the slant of the roof. There was a nook in the back that had a flat piece of plywood board, almost like a platform. Once I was inside there, I would be mostly surrounded by insulation in the most remote spot in the house.
I got down and crouched inside the attic door. The air was thick, dry, and hot and smelled like raw wood and insulation. I closed the door behind me. Technically I wasn’t leaving the house but I didn’t want them to know I was using this space. It was the last place I had left that they wouldn’t think to look for me.
Sinking into darkness, I turned on the phone, using the glow to guide me as I crawled on my hands and feet deeper into the tunnel, ducking my head under beams to get to the platform nook. When I was there, I angled myself around a four-by-four beam that partially blocked the opening and climbed in. The nook was wide enough that I could sit cross-legged comfortably and the space above my head was tall enough I wouldn’t hit my head if I tried to stand.
I was still nervous about being heard but I pushed the buttons on the phone, dialing Kota’s number.
He answered before the first ring could complete itself. “Sang?”
“It’s me,” I said in a quiet voice. “There were too many texts to answer at once.”
Questions from six other male voices floated through from the background. I smiled. It was soothing to hear them all.
“Hang on a second, Sang,” he said. There was a beeping noise and the clack of the phone being put on a wood surface. “Okay,” he said. “I put you on speaker. Tell us what’s going on.”
I wasn’t ready for that. I sucked in a breath, trying not to sound so small and lonely. “I’m fine. It’s over with. She told me I had to stay in the house.”
A mesh of voices started at once but it was Kota’s that stood out. “How much trouble are we talking about? Does she know about us?”
“She doesn’t know specifics,” I said. “It was just in general for being in someone’s house. It’s the usual stuff.”
“Sang,” Nathan said, sounding distant from the phone. “Do you want us to try to come over and talk to her?”
“No,” I said, probably a little too loudly and I calmed myself, putting a hand on my heart. “Just let her cool off. School starts tomorrow. We’ll be busy anyway. I’ll be able to get back but not today. I just have to be more careful with how.”
Kota spoke, “We won’t be able to hide this forever.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, trying to sound hopeful. There wasn’t an option for me other than getting better at sneaking out. “One thing at a time. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my head down.”
I wasn’t sure how long I could risk being gone from my room so I told the guys I would text. I just wanted to let them know all at once what was happening.
I got off the phone and leaned against one of the wood beams. A trickle of sweat started at my brow and slid down my face. Maybe I wasn’t so important to them. It didn’t matter. I needed them and much more than I could ever tell them out loud. None of them knew how much I’ve needed to feel like I belonged.
And they were all just out of reach.
I curled up on my side, my face pressed to the wood of the platform. Tears dripped from my cheeks. I was lonely from years without being close to anyone. I’d tasted their kindness and I was starving for more. I would do whatever it took to keep this a secret.
Friendship was hard work.
P OLARIS
That night, I tucked the phone away into the attic space. I’d gotten more text messages but everyone soon had to go home and deal with their own stuff. Tomorrow was the first day.
When my dad got home, my mom talked to him but they didn’t call me down. I had been forgotten again.
It was after eleven. I slipped into a pair of soft cotton shorts and a black tank top that was almost too small for me. The house was asleep. I was trying to sleep but my mind kept wandering to what would happen tomorrow. Instead, I wrote in a small, brown cloth bound diary my father gave me last Christmas.
Diaries were hard to keep in my family. For one thing, Marie was prone to snooping, as was my mother. I tried to keep a regular notebook diary when I was younger but I often got into trouble when I bothered, because I wrote about how angry I was many times. Marie would use it as evidence if she got into trouble, putting me in the middle of the latest argument with my mother.
To combat this, I found another language to borrow. I used Korean lettering in a slightly different format. I made lines and circles that made up the Korean alphabet, writing my thoughts in a language they couldn’t read. I didn’t know any Korean, the words were in English. The Korean alphabet was simply a code. If Marie tried to use a translation tool from the Internet, it wouldn’t work. If she bothered to decode, it would take some work. I knew Marie tried to read it once, because she wrote in the front of my diary in black Sharpie how I was stupid. I might have been stupid, but it stopped her from using my diary and my mother stopped looki
ng at it, too.
It was exciting to know I would be around the guys all day and my parents couldn’t do anything about it. For once when I was around them, I could almost relax and not worry about getting caught. I wrote the guy’s names into my diary, admiring how they looked in my secret language.
A soft tapping started at the window.
I sat up from the bed. A human figure shadowed the glass. Shivers ran through me and my breath was caught in my throat, but I dismissed it. I dropped the diary on the bed, and crossed the room, expecting Nathan to be there. He’d climbed my roof before.
Instead, North was crouched and looking in. In his black t-shirt, black jeans and boots, if I hadn’t known him, I would have been screaming.
I waved and unlocked the window.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I pushed the window up.
He held his hand out, his palm up and fingers spread out. “Come see.”
My mouth popped open. “North...”
“We won’t go far.”
My heart thudded hard in my chest. My hand disappeared into his as he closed his fingers around my palm. He tugged to encourage me out onto the roof.
I angled my body and stepped out. The air was sticky warm. The half-moon shed a gentle glow against North’s tall frame.
North kept my hand, his grip strong, and started to step up the incline to the apex.
“Where?” I asked.
“Up.” He motioned and continued to climb.
My legs wobbled as they still ached from kneeling for so long. I hoped they wouldn’t cause me to misstep.
Once we made it to the top, he pointed to a flat section of the roof that covered the back porch. He let go of me to slide down and when he got to the flat part, he held out his hand to me again as a support.
“Right here,” he whispered, his deep voice carrying to me.
I slid down and he caught me by the legs. He half picked me up and positioned me until I was standing beside to him. We were protected on one side by the edge of the fireplace. He pointed to the corner, and I sat with the fireplace bricks to my right and he sat next to me.
In front of us was the view of the yard and the woods behind it and the stars above our heads.
“Sit back,” he said.
My heart flipped in my chest. Why was he doing this with me? I pushed my hand to feel where the roof made a gentle incline. When I sat back, it was like resting on a hill.
He nestled himself next to me and so close that I could feel the warmth of his arm near mine. There in the dark, we looked up at the stars above our heads. While my heart was still pumping and my body shivered at how unexpected it was, North remained quiet. His silence kept me nervous but I didn’t know what to say to break this tension. I clamped my lips shut, gazing at the stars.
At some point I relaxed and the skin of my arm touched his. He didn’t move. I left my arm as still as possible. The touch was casual enough. I wasn’t directly reaching for him. It was just nice to feel him there in the dark and without feeling embarrassed or awkward.
My mind was totally not focused on the stars.
We about a half hour passed before North spoke. “What happened today, Sang?”
My eyebrows arched in surprise at his question. “What do you mean?”
He turned until he was on his right side, his head propped up with his hand. His dark eyes were in shadow. I caught the gentle outline of his thick eyebrows and his dark hair brushed back away from his face, all but one strand which hung over his forehead. “I want to know what happened the moment you got back to this house after you left today. You weren’t fully honest with us.”
How could he know? “I was--.”
“You were protecting us.” He used his free hand to grasp my arm, his fingers wrapping around my elbow. “I know what softening the truth sounds like. The others might be willing to buy it but I want to know.”
I twisted my lips. “It’s not really that bad.”
“I don’t want your opinion,” he said. “Tell me what happened. I’ll make the decision. Tell me exactly what your mother said.”
I pressed my fingers to my cheek, unsure of where to start. Eventually I did tell him. He listened quietly as I described what she said, my eventual defiant replies, and, with my lips trembling, I told him about kneeling in rice.
When I finished, I heard him swallowing. “Let me see,” he whispered.
“See what?”
He sat up, stuffing his hand into his pocket. Keys rattled. A light broke through the dark. He swung the flashlight toward me and the glow washed over my knees. His hand moved to my thigh as he pulled one of my legs closer. He bent over me, his eyes lit up from the LED bulb. His thumb traced over the crest of my knee. When he did it, I winced, feeling sensitive to both his touch and the pain.
“Baby,” he whispered. “How long were you there for?”
I pushed my finger to my lower lip, “I don’t remember. I wasn’t watching the clock.”
“Did it start right after you left Kota’s?”
“About, yes.”
He looked up from my knee, flicking the light off again and casting us into shadow. My eyes blacked out as they adjusted. His hand found mine against my mouth and he pulled it away to hold it. “And you called us right after?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That had to be over three hours,” he said. “At least.” He let go of me and rolled to lean back against the roof, putting his arms under his head to prop it up. “Trouble, trouble, trouble...” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“Stop apologizing for shit that isn’t your fault.”
“I’m the one that left the house.”
He turned onto his side again. He cupped my chin in his hand. “Listen to me, Sang,” he said. “Your mother has issues. I get that. She can’t keep you locked up like this. You’re not a bad girl. You’re not drinking or smoking or selling your body.” He let go of my face and brushed a strand of my hair away from my cheek. “I don’t like to think of you being holed up here because your mother can’t handle reality. You shouldn’t be on your knees or swallowing vinegar or any of that shit. It’s not healthy for you.”
“What can I do?” I asked. “She’s my mother.”
His face twisted and he looked pained. “I know she is,” he said quietly. “I’m surprised she lets you go to school. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like she’d try to home school both of you.”
“My dad won’t let her,” I said. “She used to say she would, but he insisted that we go to school like everyone else. He said if she did home school, the state would be way more interested in us. Besides, she was sick so much, he thought she couldn’t keep up. If she failed to report to the state, they’d come around and investigate. She didn’t like that.”
He sighed, let go and sat back again. We gazed back into the sky.
I tried to come up with something else to talk about. I was tired of my problems being the center of attention. “North? Are you and Luke going to start the diner with your uncle sometime soon?”
“We already purchased the property, so we better.”
“Is that what you want to do when you graduate? Work with your uncle?”
“No,” he said.
“What would you rather do?”
“Travel.”
“On your bike?”
“Or a better one. Or in a plane. Depends on where I’m going.”
“Where would you go?”
He turned his head toward me. “Where would you?”
I thought about it. “To the beach. A nice one with bright blue water and white sand.”
“We’re not far from the beach,” he said. “We’ll go one day.”
Butterflies did flips in my stomach. “With the guys?”
He paused and I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. “We’ll see.”
While we sat together in the dark, staring up at the stars, his musk mixed with the salt breeze that drifted from t
he east. I breathed in deeply, letting it fill my lungs. I fingered the grit of the tile below us. Stars twinkled and shifted across the sky.
North knew exactly what I needed. Somehow, amid all the other things going on, he sought me out in the darkness. He knew I needed that escape. I needed to know that somewhere out there someone could come for me. I needed to know I wasn’t alone any more.
How he knew I needed it, or if that was what he was thinking, I don’t know. I felt better simply knowing he came for me. Someone out there cared enough about how I felt to comfort me. I could deal with my parents. I could deal with anything they wanted. If North, Kota and the others could be patient with me, I would find a way.
We were only out there a few more minutes before North insisted I get some sleep. He helped me climb over the roof. Once I was inside again, I leaned out the window. If it were up to me, I would have stayed out there with him all night. I was sorry he needed to go but he was right. We had school and other things to do. “Goodnight, North,” I said.
He leaned down and brought his face close to mine. His coarse fingers swept across my cheek. I steeled myself to not pull away. “Goodnight, Sang,” he whispered.
With that, he moved back the way we had come, climbing the roof and dropping out further than I could see.
A little later, the sound of a motorcycle started up in the distance and faded away. I did my best to listen, trying to memorize the sound. I wanted to always know when he came near. Next time I wouldn’t hesitate to open the window.
T UESDAY
F IRST D AY
I dreamed about a frost that was sweeping over a field. I was running to stay ahead of it. The frost froze animals and plants solid. If it touched me, I would freeze to the spot forever.
