“I kissed someone.” I train my eyes on the magazine to her left. “Someone I wasn’t supposed to.”
Sara-Kate leans forward, arms splayed on the table, her fingertips inches from mine. Her full lips part in surprise, and she looks so horrified for a second that I wonder if she thinks I mean Phil.
“Hosea,” I continue, before her imagination can run too wild. I twist my fingers around the loops of my scarf. “It’s happened a few times now.”
I exhale a long, full breath. It’s a relief to admit it, to let someone else in on this. Maybe it will be easier to stay away from him if I know someone else is aware of my weakness.
“I knew it,” she says. But not in that breathy, satisfied way people use when they’re getting off on gossip. It’s more relief, like she’s solved a minor mystery. “Not about him, but . . . I knew something was up. No offense, but you’ve been acting a little strange lately, Theo. I wasn’t sure if it was just about Donovan or if it was something else. Someone else.”
“He’s nice.” I put my elbow on the table, cup my chin with my hand as I look at her. “I like talking to him. I like—well, everything.”
Sara-Kate sits back in the booth. Scoops her knees up to her chest as she presses herself into the corner of the cherry-red vinyl. “He’s a good kisser?”
“The best.” I smile in spite of myself. “It feels right. I mean, we didn’t sleep together, but just—when I’m with him. He’s . . . we understand each other.”
“Well,” she says, slowly. “That’s great and all, but he has a girlfriend.”
Girlfriend. I can practically see the word land between us.
“Yeah.” I look out the window at the parking lot, where a harried father is trying to get two bundled-up toddlers from the pavement to their car seats. They shriek and run around him in circles as he bends down to speak to them. “He’s not going to break up with her.”
Her forehead wrinkles as she raises her eyebrows. “He told you that?”
Questions like that are usually followed up by statements like, What an asshole. She refrains and I am glad. I don’t want her thinking Hosea’s an asshole.
“He said it was hard for him to make a decision, so I told him not to bother.” The dad outside is getting frustrated. He stands up to his full height, points to the backseat with a firm index finger. The kids stop their game and switch gears, squeeze their arms around his legs, stepping on his big shoes with their little feet. “It’s over.”
Sara-Kate scratches at the knee of her thrifted denim bell-bottoms. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I say, looking straight into her eyes as I wonder if I’m lying. “Completely over. So please . . . don’t mention it to Phil.”
She gives a solemn nod. We both know he wouldn’t take this kind of news so calmly, especially when it involves two of his friends.
So. Now that I’ve confessed about Hosea, what if I told her about Chris Fenner? Told her everything, from how we met to what we did to how I will have to face him in court soon? Look him in the eye for the first time in four years.
I’ve always been able to trust Sara-Kate—maybe if I told her, I wouldn’t feel sick to my stomach from the moment I wake up until I manage to fall asleep. I’ve taken so many antacids over the last few weeks, they’re no longer effective.
It’s just six words: I have to tell you something.
Once you say that, you have to tell. You can’t leave someone hanging, not once you’ve gotten their attention.
“Do you think I’m a bad person?” I bring my hand up to touch my cheek. The heat seeps into my fingers.
“I think you’re a normal person. With feelings.” Her soft, round face looks like a porcelain doll’s as she pauses in thought. “But I think it’s good that you ended it. Before you fell too hard.”
No. I can’t tell her about Chris. She disapproves of what happened with Hosea—it’s in her tone, in the way she moved away from me. So I change the subject.
“Like you’re falling for Phil?” I say with a tentative smile.
She blinks her doe eyes at me, the lashes so curly, I’m surprised they don’t tangle. “Nothing’s happened.”
I give her a look.
“I swear. You know I’d tell you, right?” She fingers the bright green barrette clipped to her dark orange hair. “I’m not saying something won’t happen, but I couldn’t stand to keep something like that from you, Theo.”
It’s supposed to go both ways but it doesn’t.
“Do you ever . . . ,” she begins, and stops to press her lips together, to think about what she’s going to say before she goes on. “Do you ever feel like time is moving too fast?”
She’s just described my entire life, in fact. I look outside. The dad and kids are finally gone.
Sara-Kate fans the edges of her magazine. “Junior year is almost half over and you might be leaving next year and—”
“We don’t know that,” I say a little too sharply.
Sara-Kate stares at me. “There’s a strong possibility. Your ballet teacher said so herself.”
I take a sudden interest in the saltshaker. “Well, nothing’s guaranteed.”
It’s not. If I find out Chris abducted Donovan, that “strong possibility” could turn into “no shot in hell” in the span of five minutes. It’s like being thrust into a real-life game of What If that I never signed up for.
“Guaranteed or not, I want to hang out as much as possible while we still can. So we have to make sure this year counts. Like, winter formal. We’re going to make it the best winter formal ever.” She clears her throat. “Not to get all sappy but I don’t know what I’ll do without you next year if you leave.”
It would sound insincere from anyone else, but I know Sara-Kate means every single word.
“Yeah,” I say as my stomach jumps, raw and angry. I pinch my side. “Me too, Sara-Kate.”
I look away as quickly as I can, feign interest in the menu I’ve pored over a thousand times, as if I’m going to do anything besides push lentil soup around the cup with a spoon.
I look away from Sara-Kate, but her honest brown eyes haunt me for the rest of the evening.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT’S HARD NOT TO THINK OF DONOVAN’S FAMILY AS
Before and After.
Before, Mrs. Pratt managed the gift shop of a busy museum in the city and she was almost as married to that job as she was to Mr. Pratt. But she still made it to every baseball game, every parent-teacher conference. Each time Donovan’s father was too busy, his mother was around to pick up the slack.
I remember when the local news interviewed her, shortly after the abduction. She was pleading, staring into the camera with so much hurt and hope that it was hard to look at her. “Whatever you can do to help my son—to help Donovan . . . I would be eternally grateful.”
After, Mrs. Pratt was the kind of person who called psychics to her home and only went out to buy more gin.
Mr. Pratt’s Before isn’t very different from his After, except he’s no longer married to Mrs. Pratt. He still works all the time because he’s a successful real estate broker for lakefront properties. But now he lives in the city and has full custody of Julia. As soon as I saw the moving van in the driveway that day, I knew it meant he was leaving her—that Mrs. Pratt’s things weren’t packed into any of the boxes being carried down the driveway.
I know Donovan’s Before, too. It was filled with a mother who would do anything for him and a little sister who adored him and plenty of time for comics and baseball and friends. It was filled with the kind of trust that lets you lose track of time and ride bikes home after dark without worrying someone will snatch you up from the side of the road.
Donovan hasn’t left the house since he’s been back. It’s been almost two months. How do they expect him to start talking if he never sees anyone?
&n
bsp; I watch. Each time I’m heading out or coming home, I watch their curtains for movement, and if it’s dark outside, I look for shapes behind them. Sometimes I take the long way around our street so I can look at the house from a different angle.
A couple of people come to Donovan’s house regularly; one is the man who delivers their groceries, but he’s only allowed to bring them to the front porch. If you look closely and at just the right minute, you can see the terry cloth sleeve of Mrs. Pratt’s bathrobe reaching through the doorway as she picks up the bags of food.
The other person shows up twice a week. A woman. Tall and big-boned with gorgeous red hair that cascades down the back of her sensible suits and trench coats. Mom said it’s probably his therapist. I didn’t know therapists made house calls but I guess most people would make an exception in this case.
But that’s it. No one else in and certainly no one out.
I have to talk to Donovan before the trial. If I can see him, talk to him face-to-face, I’ll know what I have to do up on the stand. I’ll know for sure whether Donovan was a runaway or a victim. I’ll know if he and Chris betrayed me together or if Chris Fenner deceived us both.
But every time I think about the witness stand and telling my story to a courtroom of strangers, my skin goes clammy and my mind goes blank. I don’t know where I would start, how I would tell them that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I first kissed the person I thought was named Trent.
I don’t know how I would tell them that I never suspected anything between him and Donovan back then—and not for the four years they were gone, either.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN I’M AROUND HOSEA, I TRY TO PRETEND I’M A BLOCK OF ICE.
In the school corridors, at the dance studio.
Cool, impenetrable, incapable of interaction.
But as soon as he gets me alone—I melt.
I haven’t been in the smoking spot behind the athletic field for five minutes before he’s heading out the same way I came, taking long, even strides with his black boots leading the way. I’m sitting across from the bleachers, my back against the fence; my breath catches in my throat as I see him.
I’m supposed to be in study hall so it almost doesn’t seem like I got away with anything. Gellar didn’t even look up when I grabbed the bathroom pass off the edge of his desk. He won’t notice if I don’t return.
I haven’t lit my first cigarette. The veggie sandwich from lunch is sitting in my stomach like an anvil. Even after I discarded the bread (too soggy), the tomato (too mealy), and the cheese (too waxy). I ate mayo-covered sprouts and cucumber slices and even that felt like too much.
It’s like my stomach has already decided what to do before my brain can make a choice. I think the worst part is that it’s inconsistent, which means I can’t plan. One day a small, plain garden salad might be fine but the next day that very same salad could wreck me.
But in this moment, I can’t tell if it’s the food or Hosea walking toward me that makes my stomach roil like someone’s tossing rocks around inside.
I don’t know where to look as he approaches. The ice block stays intact only when there are other people near us. My insides are warming, and the closer he gets, the more my fingers tremble around my unlit cigarette. Hardly impenetrable.
He leans against the fence and says, “How’s it going?” from above me, and I wish my heart didn’t beat a little faster.
I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say, and a couple of seconds later, there’s the crinkle of plastic and the click of a lighter and he’s sitting next to me with a clove between his lips. He offers the pack, but I shake my head, hold up the cigarette in my hand. One of the two I bummed from Sara-Kate this morning. I light the end with the cheap plastic lighter I’ve been clutching.
He looks down at a small, smooth rock sitting between us, his dark brown eyebrows creased in thought. His angular face is clean-shaven as usual. “I know you hate me right now, but you have to let me say a few things.”
His voice is quiet and I knew one of us would have to speak eventually, but he startles me all the same. I don’t dare look at him again but I don’t get up and walk away, either, so I guess that’s enough for him to go on.
“First of all, I want to be with you. I do.” He pauses, then continues in the same low, even voice. “But you could be going away soon.”
I force myself to look down at the soft caramel leather of my boots as I say, “Who told you that?”
I see him shrug out of the corner of my eye. “Phil.”
Matter-of-fact, like I should have known. And I should have. But he asked me to keep his secret from Phil; why is it okay that they get to talk about me?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He blinks up at the colorless winter sky, the clouds that cover Ashland Hills like the world’s most depressing blanket. Then he flicks ash from his clove on the other side of him, away from me. “Phil made it sound like a pretty big deal.”
“I guess I didn’t think you were interested.” And I’m not sure summer programs will even be an option for me. I’m not halfway done with my cigarette, but I blow out one last puff, stub it out, and toss it into the Coffee & Jam paper cup a few feet away. It’s a fresh ashtray. Half full of someone’s coffee from this morning and a couple of butts from people who sat here before us.
“You listen to me talk about music.” He pulls on the end of his hair.
“That’s different. Music helps us keep rhythm . . . It gives us structure and helps tell the story. You don’t need ballet to perform.”
“So? I still like seeing you dance to what I’m playing. You make my music better.”
Neither of us utters a word after that, not until he says, “Theo.” He sighs out my name with his sweet-smelling smoke and all I want to do is put my head on his shoulder. Listen to him say my name for the rest of the afternoon. “And second—”
“Second?” I manage to croak out, even though his hand is on my arm now and I don’t even know what we were talking about in the first place.
“Yes.” He leans his head close to mine and his breath is warm on my ear. “The second thing is that I think about you all the time.”
I shiver from the way his words tickle my skin, from the familiar scent of him, but I don’t respond.
He clears his throat, leans back so we’re no longer close enough to kiss, so his back is flat against the fence. “Phil also told me about the trial . . . that you have to testify. And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say, so nonchalant I doubt it would be convincing to anyone, let alone Hosea. I wish I hadn’t been so quick to toss out my cigarette. I need something to do with my hands so they won’t look so nervous, so Hosea won’t know that I’m not fine at all.
He stretches his legs in front of him, lazily crossing them at the ankles. “I had to testify once.”
I’m not sure I heard him correctly, and when I try to read his face it’s completely devoid of expression. He passes his clove to me and I look at it for a long moment before I put my lips where his lips have been, like a secondhand kiss. Our fingers touch as I hand it back to him, linger for several seconds too long.
“My grandma . . . she took my mom to court because they said she wasn’t competent enough to take care of me.”
“Why?” I make a point to sound gentle.
“She has an anxiety disorder.” He pauses to drag one last time, the end of the clove burning red but muted under the ash. “Agoraphobia . . . She can’t leave the house or deal with crowds. Not without having an attack.”
I stare at his boots for a while. “When did you figure it out?”
He puts out the clove and bends his fingers back and forth. Looks down at the ground as he says, “A long time before I told anyone. I thought . . . that I could handle things for us. But I was a kid. I couldn’
t drive or make money. She had boyfriends sometimes but they never stuck around.”
“They made you testify against her.” It’s a statement, not a question, and it sits between us like a boulder. Hosea moved here in the middle of his freshman year, so he was even younger than me when he had to tell a judge that his mother wasn’t capable of taking care of him.
“I did it,” he says in this small voice that makes me want to cry. “My Grams made it seem like there was no other choice. And I guess I knew . . . things were getting pretty bad. My mom would spend all day in bed and I’d go to sleep without dinner because I felt like shit begging her to go to the store. Or asking for money we didn’t have.” He taps his fingers against the cold, hard ground. “But my mom is a good person. Maybe other people couldn’t see it, but she did her best. And I knew she really thought she would get better someday . . . that things would be normal.”
I study his profile. The slope of his nose from the side, the edges of his turned-down mouth. “Can’t you go visit her?”
“She’s living with a friend and she’s getting better, but the visits make me feel like shit, you know?” He shoves his hands into his pockets as he looks at the school building in the distance. “She cries and begs me not to leave her, and I can’t—I don’t want to make her feel any worse than she already does, so it’s better to just stay away. Call every once in a while. I send her recordings of my music sometimes.”
“I’m sorry.” I crumble a dried leaf in my palm, scatter the bits over the ground like ashes.
“Grams did what she thought was the right thing, but I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive her.” He rubs his nose with the back of his hand. The tip of it is pink from the cool air, and it makes me think of him as a little boy.
“It’s not fair, what she made you do,” I say.
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