by C. L. Stone
Kota crept back from across the hallway, opened the door and peeked his head in. Nathan tensed at the noise, but when I didn’t move, he didn’t move, either.
Kota spied the laptop on the floor and looked at us. “Something wrong?”
“The laptop is broken,” I said.
“So is her stereo. And I think that fan is, too.”
Kota frowned, glancing at the torn books stacked on the shelves. He pressed a palm to his forehead, rubbing his fingers across his eyebrow and putting his other hand on his hip. “The stereo will be hard to replace. It’s old.”
“I don’t need a new one,” I said.
A chop landed on my head. “Shut up,” Nathan grinned at me.
“So what was said downstairs?” I asked.
Kota sighed and knelt on the floor next to us. “He’s making her eat. That’s a good thing.”
I slipped out of Nathan’s lap, to sit between them on the floor. “What else?”
Kota pursed his lips.
“Kota,” Nathan said. “If it’s about her, she should know.”
Kota rubbed his palm against his jeans, smoothing out the material. “Her mother’s denying knowledge of what happened yesterday. She claims she doesn’t know what happen to Sang at all. She’s lying and saying Sang was on her knees this morning for stealing money.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Stealing?”
“She said there’s money missing from her purse.”
I blinked, shaking my head. “She has a purse?”
Kota and Nathan focused on me, eyebrows raised.
I shrugged. “She never goes out. I don’t think I’ve seen her with a purse since... I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Regardless,” Kota said, “she’s lying to cover up why. I don’t really understand her motivation.” He turned to me. “Would he believe her?”
I shrugged. “I never talk to him. I never see him. I don’t know what he thinks.”
Nathan frowned. He reached for my hand, squeezing it. “It might be why he turns a blind eye to everything going on. He really doesn’t know because he isn’t here.”
Kota nodded. “You’re probably right. So if she lies about any injuries he happens to notice, or sees you kneeling, he’s going to take her side because... well... she’s his wife.”
We all grew silent. I sighed, letting go of Nathan’s hand to rub both palms across my face. “It’s conjecture. It isn’t helpful. He’ll go back to work tomorrow and I’ll not see him for a while. We’ll go to school. Things will cool down.”
Kota shifted, his lips pursed as if he wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure how to approach it.
Nathan blew out a puff of air. “What now?”
“Let’s get ready for the day,” Kota said. He stood up, lowering a hand out to me. I slid my palm into his. It was easier to touch them when they reached for me first. My heart still fluttered. I was still nervous. In the back of my mind, I worried one day they wouldn’t want me to touch them or I’d go too far.
I stood up. “I guess I’ll go wash up and get dressed,” I said. “Are we staying in or heading out?”
Kota hesitated, shifting on his feet while he held my hand, intertwining our fingers. “I don’t want to cause any more trouble, but if your father’s here, maybe we should take advantage of it. If you’re sure they won’t come looking for you.”
“They haven’t even asked about Marie,” Nathan said.
“Right,” Kota said. “We’ll fall back to Nathan’s house. No offense, Sang, but I don’t want to scare my mom or my sister with those wounds on your wrists. I’m not sure they’ll understand.”
I didn’t want to worry them anymore, either. I wondered how much Kota told them about what happens over here. How far did this inner circle of friends go? I moved away from them to open my closet. I started to pull out a skirt and a blouse.
Nathan grunted behind me. “Wear shorts,” he said. “And a t-shirt. We’ll start some training.”
“Maybe we should give that a rest,” Kota suggested.
“You’re the one that gave the order, remember? Self-defense this weekend.”
“I think she’s had enough. We need to let her heal,” he said, looking pointedly at me.
I knew what he was asking me to say. I swallowed. “I cracked my tailbone yesterday,” I told Nathan. “It kind of hurts.”
Nathan’s blue eyes widened. “What? When?”
“When I was knocking the stool around in the tub to get your attention.”
Nathan looked confused for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Was that what it was? Well shit. How do you fix a broken tailbone?”
“You don’t. It’s like her ankle,” Kota said. “You wait for it to heal. That means no rigorous training for a while, though.” His mouth twisted. “We may need to take her in for another X-Ray.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” he pushed his palm into his eye.
“We’ve been busy,” I said. I still traded the skirt for shorts, thinking I should save the skirts for school.
Kota and Nathan withdrew to the attic, so quietly that if I wasn’t watching, I probably wouldn’t have heard them. Music started and I guessed the other laptop was okay. It would mask their noises and my parents might think it was from my stereo.
I crossed the hallway and locked the bathroom door. I put down the clothes I was going to wear on the counter by the sink. I moved to the tub. My fingers lingered on the faucet. Silas had fixed it. That meant something to me.
I flicked the water on. The shower spray crashed into the basin. At first, I stared at the light sparkling in the water before it touched down to swirl toward the drain.
My knees wobbled as I thought about stepping into the shower. My stomach churned, my hands started to sweat. I had to sit down.
Flashes came over my eyes. Water streaming into my face. Screaming with no one listening. Nathan’s confused, horror struck face. Silas’s contorted rage.
The thought of stepping into it made me lose my breath and my stomach twist.
I swallowed, shifting the water from the shower to the faucet to fill up the tub instead. The shaking and the sweating subsided. I breathed some mild relief.
At least I wasn’t afraid of a bath. My heart was still thundering, but I didn’t feel so lightheaded like before.
How embarrassing. When the bath filled up with warm water, I slid into the tub. I tucked my knees against my chest and I rested my head on my left one. The warm water surrounding me felt better, anyway.
I’d been lucky I hadn’t collapsed. It was one thing they didn’t have to know about. They had enough to do and most of it was involving me now.
Kota had to be mistaken. You couldn’t tell everyone all of your secrets. You couldn’t burden someone else with every little thing. You took care of yourself and tried not to be in the way and help others as best as you could.
I didn’t need to worry them about how I felt about showers.
♥♥♥
By Monday, the marks on my wrists were still obvious, but Gabriel permitted the pink bands Silas had given me. Gabriel did, however, spend the night again Monday evening to determine what I should wear that would go along with wearing them.
My father was home in the evenings and my mother was subdued, in a gentle routine of sleeping most of the day and eating regularly. A doctor called, conveniently, on Tuesday afternoon to ‘verify’ which pills she was taking and to schedule an appointment in a month. She complained about doctors telling her what to do and tried to get them to put the appointment off, but they said the next available date would be in three months.
Part of me wondered if it was Dr. Green on the phone, but I would never know.
Someone spent the night with me every evening. After the first night, the others slept only in the attic under Kota’s command. I would stay out at Kota’s or Nathan’s as late as I could risk it, usually until a half hour before my father got home. There was less of a chance for us to get caught t
ogether in my room if we weren’t there in the first place. One of the guys followed me home, climbed the roof and waited for me to open the window. They’d slip into the attic. I spent a lot of time next to them as they huddled inside the attic door to finish up homework or to play on some electronic device they brought with them or just to talk. If there was Academy business to deal with, they closed the attic door, disappearing to the platform in the back to make phone calls. In the morning, I had to get up early to give whoever it was time to run to Nathan’s to shower and change for school.
We tiptoed around eggshells in my hollow house. The Academy became my shadow.
Escape
I dreamed of being chased on foot through the woods. I was weaving through the trees, but no matter how hard I tried to run faster, my legs felt clumsy and sluggish.
Growling emanated from behind me.
“Aggele mou,” Silas pressed a hand to my back, shaking me.
I was sleeping on my stomach. I twisted to look at him and pressed my palms to my face to rub out the sleep. “Hm?”
Silas was kneeling on the floor near my bed. His dark eyes softened with concern. “You were shaking. Are you okay?”
I sucked in a deep breath, my cheek rubbing against the cotton of the pillow case. “Yeah,” I said. “I was just dreaming.”
He nudged me and I flipped over onto my back, making room so he could sit on the edge of the bed. He leaned over me. “What about?”
“Running,” I whispered and yawned, pushing a finger over my eyebrow. “Too slowly, in my opinion.”
He chuckled, his deep voice reverberating through my bones. “Tell your dream self to exercise more.”
“Did you sleep?” It was Silas’s first night staying in the attic.
“No,” he said. He lifted a finger to my cheek and slid a lock of hair away from my face.
“You’re on the football team,” I reminded him. They’d gotten the official word the day before. Silas and North were first string for the varsity team, no surprise considering their size and sheer power. For sophomores, I supposed it was pretty good. Neither of them seemed too excited. “You should sleep. You can’t stay up all night and then go to school and practice.”
“I can’t sleep in that thing,” he said, nodding his head toward the attic. “It’s like a coffin. And I should be listening for trouble.”
“We can’t do this forever, Silas,” I whispered. “You guys can’t come over every night and stay awake all the time. And we’ll get caught one day. We’ve been lucky so far.” Every night, I was scared my sister would pop in at the wrong moment, or I would go to the bathroom and come back to find my mother peeking inside the attic door, or my father would overhear our early morning shuffle to get out of the house before anyone woke up. I snoozed more than I actually slept because of how terrified I was. I wouldn’t be able to hide how tired I was for much longer.
His lips pursed. He leaned closer to me, his face inches from mine. “I know. We’re working on it.”
I blinked at him. “How? On what?”
The corner of his mouth drifted up. The finger returned, coarse and strong, and it slid across my cheek again. “You’ll see. Soon.”
I pouted. Secrets.
“Don’t give me that face,” he warned. He nudged me, tucking an arm around my body. “Come here.”
I kicked the blanket away, blushing because I was wearing Nathan’s blue shirt and really short shorts. The shirt was long enough to make it look like I wasn’t wearing anything on the bottom.
Silas didn’t hesitate, but picked me up, placing me in his lap. It’d become almost a tradition for all of them. They woke me up and the next thing I knew, I was in someone’s lap. It was like if one of them did it, the others followed. How they knew, if they told each other, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t complain, but it did confuse me why they did it. I could only trust it was because they were my friends and they were doing their best to make me feel better.
I buried my face into his chest, inhaling the faint scent of the ocean mixed with attic dust. He dropped his chin to the top of my head. His strong hands rubbed my back and side. “I can’t stand when you pout.”
I smiled against his chest. “Gabriel said it doesn’t work.”
“He’s full of shit,” Silas said. “It totally works on him. He just tells you that so you don’t try it or to get you to stop. Watch. Next time do it and keep doing it. Just not to me. And don’t tell him I told you.”
I giggled, shaking my head. “He’ll be mad that you gave away his secret.”
“If he gives you a hard time, tell me. I’ll beat him up.”
I stuffed my hand to my mouth, smothering a laugh.
He dropped his face, pressing his nose to my hair. “Ready to get going? I want to stay, but I can’t sit here with you like this.”
I sighed, nodding and wriggling to get up. He was right. The longer we were there, we were more likely going to get caught.
He squeezed me once more before his hands slid away from me. I stumbled to my feet and a wave of shivers swept through me.
“Will you stop shaking?” he begged quietly. His hand smoothed over my back. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, being honest. “It’s just early and I’m still waking up.”
“You shake all the time. That’s going to drive me crazy.”
The tease of a smirk touched my face but I turned away to hide it. I went to my closet to figure out what I was going to wear today.
Silas followed, standing behind me. I fingered over the blouse and skirt Gabriel had picked out for me.
“Wear this one,” he said, pointing to a thin dark blue hoodie. “You look good in it.”
I smiled softly. Having the boys pick out my clothes was peculiar, but I appreciated their opinion and it gave me a small surge of confidence that the clothes I wore weren’t too weird. “Gabriel...”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. He turned to me, bowing his head closer to my face. “It’ll drive him crazy.”
We shared a conspiratorial smile and I took the hoodie along with a matching sporty skirt. “It won’t match the pink wristbands.”
“I don’t care,” he said. He turned away, heading back to the attic. “Knock when you’re done.”
♥♥♥
Twenty minutes later, I was out of the bath, with my hair still wet but smoothed out and twisted into a clip. I dressed in the skirt and hoodie and went back to my room. I knocked at the door to the attic. Silas emerged, crawling out on his hands and knees. I collected my book bag and he took it from my hands, along with my violin case and his own overnight bag. I crept to the window to open it for him.
He hefted the bags and crawled out onto the roof. My heart thundered in my throat as he did. I did it now every time they started to leave. I don’t know where it came from, but the five minutes between being upstairs with them and then downstairs in the yard was by far the scariest for me. I wondered if they’d fall or if someone would hear their footsteps on the roof or someone in the neighborhood would notice.
I grabbed my shoes and slipped down the stairs, stopping short when I spotted my father in the foyer. His head tilted up and he was looking puzzled.
“Up early?” he asked. He was dressed in an oversized shirt and pajama pants, looking sleepy.
I felt the blood draining from my face but nodded quickly. “Yes.”
“It’s too early for the bus, isn’t it?”
“I... like going for a walk before it’s time. Clears my head a little before I have to study inside all day.”
He raked a hand through the curls on top of his head as if considering this. “Oh.” He moved on to the laundry room.
Were we late getting up? That was close. If he’d been listening earlier, he might have heard Silas’s deep voice through the walls. Maybe that’s what woke him.
I chewed on my lower lip, pondering my next move. It seemed obvious, I should do just what I said, pretending to go for a walk.
; I slipped my sandals on and cut through the house to the back door. By the time I got there, my father was leaving the laundry room with folded clothes.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go,” he said. “You know how your mother feels when you go out. It’s still dark.”
He had an opinion? I stuffed my fingers into the front pocket of the hoodie to hide how they trembled. Nathan was right, I needed to learn how to lie better. “I just go to the woods behind the house. No one is ever out there.”
He frowned but shrugged me off and headed back to his bedroom. I hesitated, waiting for him to relay what was going on to my mother and my mother to punish me. I couldn’t spare another minute. If I wasn’t outside now, Silas would come back for me. If I ended up kneeling in rice again, I wasn’t sure what I could do. He’d pull me out for sure.
I opened the side door and slipped out into the early morning. It was the risk I had to take right now. Maybe by that afternoon when I got home from school, she’d have forgotten or I’d get lucky and he wouldn’t think to mention it to her at all.
Silas stood, ready to go in the drive. He turned to me when I rushed out, his eyebrows going up. ”What took you?”
“My dad’s awake,” I said, frowning. I grabbed his arm, tugging him toward the back yard. “Let’s hurry. I don’t want him looking out and spotting you.”
He frowned, shaking his head. “Forget the long way.” He jerked his head toward the neighbor’s yard. “Come on.”
I followed on his heels behind him as he cut through the neighbor’s front lawn, taking the shortest distance possible and one where we wouldn’t be seen through any windows by my parents. If anyone else was awake, I wondered what they would have thought of two teenagers sneaking off together before dawn. Would they think we were running away together? Would they assume we were off to have sex or get high? Would they believe that he was helping me to escape my mother’s crazy punishments and I was helping him avoid being discovered?
