The Pratt house was messier than ours, but I didn’t mind. It was clean but lived-in and you never felt weird about flopping on a couch or putting your feet up on the coffee table. I stepped over a pair of mud-caked cleats in the foyer as I searched for their owner. He wasn’t in the kitchen where I’d assumed he’d be scarfing down a bowl of cornflakes next to the breakfast dishes soaking in the sink. And he wasn’t sitting at the bottom of the staircase, tying his shoes before he ran out the door.
He was up in his room but when he heard me on the stairs he immediately stepped out into the hallway. And he wasn’t in his pajamas like I thought, but dressed for the day in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a short-sleeved one layered over it.
I had to describe that outfit to what seemed like everyone in town, because they wanted to know the last thing he’d been seen in. White sleeves with a short black T-shirt over it. Or was it the other way around? Were the jeans dark or light? Was I positive they were jeans and not shorts? Was he wearing a belt? What brand were his sneakers?
But I never got to see his shoes because he pushed me out shortly after he greeted me.
“Hey, I’ll just catch up to you at school,” he said. Quickly, like he had things to do.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my hand firm on the banister as I waited for an answer.
He ran a hand over his head. He was in need of a haircut, which wasn’t like him. Usually his dad buzzed his head every couple of weeks, and Donovan stayed on top of this because he didn’t like longer hair, said it made his head itchy and hot.
“I need to take care of something before school.” His deep brown eyes moved from my face to the stair rail and slid across the carpet. “You should go on without me.”
Take care of something? We were thirteen. It’s not like we had errands to run.
I looked at him for a long time. Until he looked at me, too, and then looked away and back again.
“What, Theo?” he said, turning his hands up like I’d seen my parents do. The universal symbol for What do you want me to do?
“You’re being weird.” I tugged on the straps of my backpack.
“We don’t have to do everything together.” His eyes were elsewhere again. On the picture that hung next to the stairs—a portrait of him with Julia when she was just a baby, taken in the hospital before his mother was discharged. “I’ll meet you at school later and we can ride home together, okay?”
“Do you have a note?” I pressed on, not wanting to let him get out of this so easily.
Was this my punishment for not telling him about everything I’d done with Chris? Making up secrets of his own and throwing them in my face? It wasn’t fair. Hadn’t I been punished enough when Chris disappeared without saying goodbye?
“Theo.” He sighed and leaned against the doorframe, dug his toe into the carpet. “You’re gonna be late.”
“Fine.” I turned but I didn’t walk down the stairs. Not before I looked over my shoulder to say, “But I’m not covering for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to, did I?”
Those were his last words to me.
Hosea clears his throat from across the car. “That must’ve been tough, him being gone all this time.”
“Yeah,” I say, with a small nod for emphasis. “It was.”
I look at Hosea and wonder what it would feel like to kiss him. To touch him. To really be with someone like him. He pays attention when I talk. That was one of the things I hated about Chris. He never seemed to take anything I said all that seriously, but Hosea listens. If Ellie weren’t in the way, we could be together—really together. No abandoned parks, no quickies against the sink of a gas-station bathroom when I wasn’t even sure how to do it in the back of a car. We could hold hands between classes and go on dates and he would be my actual boyfriend.
I steal a look at his hands, strong but almost elegant, and I can’t imagine he would ever be anything but gentle.
“Did the drive help?” Hosea dips his head a bit as he looks at me. “Even a little?”
“Yeah.” I thread and unthread my fingers in my lap. Smile at him for being so nice to me. “It did. Thanks.”
“Good.” His hand rests on top of the gearshift, inches from my knee. “You know, Marisa would be pretty pissed if I’d just left you in that diner.”
I hold my leg still as can be. Waiting. Wanting. “Why would she care?”
“You’re her star dancer. I couldn’t leave you all bummed out like that.” He smiles a little, then says, “You’re special.”
“I’m not that special,” I say, and it doesn’t come out as carefree as I wanted, but that’s okay because it’s true. Special girls are worthy of a proper breakup, don’t have to wonder if their boyfriend was using them to get to their best friend.
“Right,” Hosea says softly. “I know shit about ballet but when you’re out there, you look pretty damn special to me.”
I’m afraid to look at him, for fear of what I’ll see. His voice was serious but maybe he’s kidding. Maybe this is the kind of thing he says to girls all the time; maybe it’s no big deal that he said it to me. But I force myself to turn my head, to meet his gaze, and whatever this is, it’s not just in my head. He feels it, too. It’s real, reflected in his gentle eyes. They search my face again, just like earlier at the diner. But there’s an understanding this time. A look that will quicken my pulse every time I replay it in my head.
I don’t know who leans in first, but moments later we are close enough for our foreheads to touch, close enough for me to breathe him in. I slide my hand up the nape of his neck at the same time he slips his arm around my waist and pulls me closer. We’re so in sync, it’s like our own private pas de deux, like we learned the choreography years ago, are only now putting it to practice.
Hosea’s kisses are whispers, just the slightest touch that keeps me wanting more. He pulls back, looks at me, smiles. My palm is still cupped around the back of his neck as he leans in to kiss me again. Deeply this time so there is no doubt as his lips meet mine; this is real.
I run my hands through his soft, soft hair and he keeps his around my waist, tickles a trail up the small of my back with his fingers. For a while, we are the only two people in the world. A burst of light in this small, dark car, on this deserted road. A tangle of heat and breath and touch and taste and I want to stay like this forever. Being with him is safe and wonderful and—
“Theo.”
It’s not fair the way he says it as he pulls away from me, like he’s the only person who is allowed to say my name. It makes me want to keep kissing him for hours, ignore the fact that we have school tomorrow and my parents expect me home any minute now. It makes me forget about Donovan and whether anyone will find out that Chris Fenner and I used to kiss like this.
Only . . . this feels real in a way that things never did with Chris.
“Sorry.” Hosea brings his hand up to my face, where he runs his thumb along the curve of my bottom lip. “We should probably—”
“I know.” Of course I should have expected him to pull away. Of course we can’t keep going. I kissed him and he doesn’t belong to me and I liked it. I’m not special, but I am That Girl.
He looks at my mouth, brushes his fingers against my lips one last time before he pulls away completely. He reaches into the console for his pack of cloves. I sit back in my seat, buckle my seat belt, and pull my phone from my bag so I’ll have something to do.
Hosea pinches a clove between his lips and pulls out onto the street again, en route to Casablanca’s. Neither of us says another word and we don’t look at each other for the rest of the ride, but longing melts through me in a thousand waves.
Hot and slow and bittersweet to the core.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ONCE, SARA-KATE AND I PLAYED FUCK/MARRY/KILL: TEACHERS Edition and I ended up marrying Mr. Jacobsen.
&n
bsp; Kill was easy enough—Mr. Gellar is the biggest waste of space in the school and not just because he teaches chemistry. The Fuck part was a no-brainer because we had a really hot student teacher in English that year. His name was—no joke—Grant Fineman. But Jacobsen was the only real option for Marry, so it flew out of my mouth too easily and Sara-Kate teased me for weeks.
So maybe his hair is thinning. And his belly isn’t getting any smaller, but I can tell Jacobsen used to be cute back in the day. Or “kind of a fox, in a retro way,” according to Sara-Kate. Whatever. He has a nice smile. And he’s a good teacher. He doesn’t have to think up gimmicks or games to interest us in the justice system. He simply talks like he’s telling us a really good story.
He finds me in the atrium the Thursday before Halloween. I’m standing with Sara-Kate and Phil before homeroom and nobody blinks an eye when Jacobsen pops his head into our circle and asks if he can talk to me for a minute. It’s never anything bad with him. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him raise his voice, not even last week when he kicked Leo Watson out of class for texting.
We walk over to an empty part of the hallway, a little sliver of space between the custodian’s closet and a water fountain I’ve never seen anyone use. They paint the walls every summer, but someone has already scuffed the latest coat of beige with the heel of their shoe.
“I’ve been meaning to ask how you’re doing, Theo. Everything all right?” Jacobsen looks relaxed in a polo and khakis with a brown belt that matches his shoes. His tone is easy, like he makes a special point to check in with me every couple of weeks or so.
“Everything’s great, Mr. Jacobsen.” I push my shoulders back and stand tall, make direct eye contact to assure him this is true.
Because what would he say if I told him how everything is really going? What would he do if I said my ex-boyfriend is sitting in a jail cell, awaiting arraignment? Or about the fact that I’m the type of person who kisses other people’s boyfriends and likes it?
“Theo, Principal Detz is asking the faculty to help out as much as we can in . . . the wake of Donovan Pratt’s return,” he says, nudging the base of the water fountain with his toe.
And?
“And,” he says, reading my mind, “I wanted to give you a heads-up that I’ve planned my lesson today around Stockholm syndrome.”
“Stockholm syndrome.”
“Yes, it’s—”
“I know what it is.”
When the victim sympathizes with their captor. Like people who have been abducted and don’t hate their kidnapper. Maybe they even like them a little bit, start to feel like their abductor cares for them. Everyone talks about Patty Hearst, but that was a million years ago and she can’t be the only one.
“I think it could be helpful.” Jacobsen is talking again. “An open discussion. But it’s your call whether or not you want to be there. I can write you a pass to the library. Or maybe you could talk to Mrs. Crumbaugh. I’m sure she’d be happy to make time for—”
“I’ll be there.”
Why not? It’s all hypothetical at this point. Chris is just a suspect, and maybe everyone else thinks they know what he did, but I won’t know for sure until I talk to Donovan.
What would Jacobsen do if I raised my hand today and asked, How do you know if your best friend and boyfriend ran away together? Or, Could you find a way to be happy, even if you’d been kidnapped? Because I know he saw the video. Everyone saw the video.
Jacobsen pauses long enough to look surprised by my answer, then says, “I’m sorry we’re able to tie the lesson to something that hits so close to home, but I’m glad your friend is back, Theo.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Me too.”
And then he pats me on the shoulder and I smile as I walk back to Sara-Kate and Phil because otherwise he’ll know something is off and I can’t risk that. Besides, world gov only lasts an hour. I can put up with anything for an hour.
Until that hour arrives and suddenly it’s like everyone in class has everything in the world to say about Stockholm syndrome.
“Okay, but here’s the thing.” Klein Anderson is talking. He sits two rows ahead of me. I watch him chew on the eraser of his pencil, which is about the most action that thing has gotten all semester. “We’re not talking about a few months with some militant kook. He was gone four years.”
“Yeah, and imagine what he went through for that long,” says Phil. He’s sitting in the row between Klein and me, sliding his pen lazily across a blank sheet of notebook paper.
This is the only class I have with both him and Sara-Kate, and I’ve always loved that until today. Today—right now—I want everyone to shut the fuck up. Including him. They don’t know everything about this case. They don’t know anything.
“What about the video?” Klein counters. I think he would have stopped if he wasn’t arguing with Phil, but their friendship is so tenuous. The line between hatred and respect is thin enough for them to enjoy testing it. They push and pull and poke at each other until one of them is seconds away from snapping.
“What about it?” Phil’s voice is calm but when I look over, his mouth is holding so much tension, I think his lips might crack from the pressure.
“It’s not like he was some little kid who couldn’t figure out how to get away,” Klein says, his head darting around the room for support like a pastor looking for an Amen. “He was thirteen. You know what I was doing at thirteen? Not running off with strangers.”
Thirteen. I learned how to put a condom on a guy when I was that age. Not every time. Only when Chris felt like it. Which wasn’t often.
“Don’t you think that’s a little disingenuous?” Phil shoots back at Klein. “The guy didn’t see him on the street and randomly pick him up. People are saying he worked at the convenience store. He was probably talking to him for weeks before the whole thing went down. The guy was setting him up—grooming him.”
Grooming. It sounds so textbook, like Chris opened up a manual on how to abduct a child and followed the steps one by one. It’s hard for me to think of him as a predator, when all I can see is Donovan laughing in the video.
“Good point, Mr. Muñoz.” Jacobsen brings the attention to the front of the room again. He stands in front of the whiteboard, to the side of his desk. “The fact that the victim knew the defendant puts a different spin on the case. Is the extent of the victim’s danger diminished when we learn that he had a seemingly normal relationship with the defendant prior to the abduction?”
Bingo. Is it? I will give one million dollars to whoever can answer that question right now. I’d also come up with one million dollars if it meant Donovan would answer his phone.
“Absolutely not. He was brainwashed,” says a voice from behind me.
Sara-Kate.
“We don’t know what it’s like to be kidnapped,” she says, her soft voice growing stronger as she continues. “Or how hard it would be to get away. None of us do. Lots of times . . .” She pauses and I feel her eyes on me before she goes on. “Lots of times they’re threatened. Maybe he thought he would be killed if he ran away. Or that someone in his family would be killed. He has a little sister . . .”
Killed? That’s extreme. Chris may not be the person I thought he was, but he’d never kill someone.
But who was the real Chris? Was it the one who offered sweet words and sweet sex, the guy who traced figure eights on my back, told me he loved me? Did he say and do those things with Donovan, tell him they belonged together? Or is the real Chris just a sociopath?
I wish I could tell Sara-Kate the good things about Chris. Like the way he told a story. He had hundreds of them. About growing up in Michigan playing Little League, and learning how to fish with his older brother, and cutting class to sneak into Detroit for the day, looking for trouble. It didn’t matter who or what he was talking about. The way he gestured and looked at you when he talked, the way h
is amber-colored eyes danced, made you feel as if you’d been right there with him. I could have listened to those stories forever. Now I don’t know if any part of them was true.
“Yeah, and the fact that he may have known him doesn’t mean he wanted to run away with him,” says Phil. He’s really doodling now, the pen crosshatching furiously across the page as he talks. He looks at Klein as he says this next part. “How do you know he wasn’t just trying to stay alive?”
“Okay, fine.” Klein again. “Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to be kidnapped, but I think if some dude was trying to fuck me every night, I’d find a way to get out of that situation a little faster than he did.”
The room falls completely silent.
It’s not because of Klein’s language. Jacobsen doesn’t care how we talk, so long as we pay attention to the lesson. I’ve only seen him flinch once, and it involved the c-word. It’s not for everyone.
But what the fuck, Klein? His revelation is hardly new and yet the way he said it—so loudly, so matter-of-factly—makes me feel like someone drove their knuckles square into my stomach.
“Let’s reel it in a little, Mr. Anderson,” Jacobsen says evenly.
He’s looked about five seconds away from shitting his pants the entire time we’ve been talking about this, and now he’s afraid Klein has said the thing that will break me. I don’t move. I keep my eyes on the whiteboard behind Jacobsen, on the part where he’s scrawled STOCKHOLM SYNDROME in red and underlined it twice.
Klein shrugs and leans back in his seat, slings his arm over the back of his chair. “I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking.”
The room rustles uncomfortably. In the front corner of the room, Lark Pearson does one of those awkwardly obvious cough-laughs. Directly in front of me, the back of Leo Watson’s neck turns red from the collar up, and next to me, Joey Thompson drops his pencil, which is quickly followed by his notebook. My eyes travel up to Jacobsen, who’s gripping the edge of his desk so tightly, his knuckles have turned white.
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