by C. L. Stone
Micah jumped in the way a few times until Derrick barked at him to stop. He fell on his butt on the other side. “Hurry up,” he said.
Derrick bounced hard in the middle a few times, getting higher. I wondered if he was just trying to test out how high he could bounce. I gripped the edge of the mat to keep from rolling into the middle.
Derrick dropped down hard onto the trampoline, launched himself in the air and did a full front flip, landing on his knees.
“Yay!” I called out and my voice squeaked a little. I was fully impressed and somewhat jealous.
Tom put fingers in his mouth to whistle, and scrambled to his feet, bounding. “Let me do it.”
Derrick backed off to another side of the trampoline and Tom bounced, though he couldn’t get as high up as Derrick. Tom launched himself, started to twist but stopped halfway, landing on his side.
We all giggled at him.
“You have to keep going,” Derrick said.
“I wasn’t going to make it,” Tom said, getting back up on his feet. “I was going to land on my neck.”
“I want to try,” I said.
“You can’t do it,” Micah said. “You’ll break something.”
“Will you shut up and let her try?” Derrick asked. “It’s her trampoline.”
Micah made a face, and grumbled something I couldn’t hear.
I stepped up, unsure of how to proceed. “How did you do it?” I asked Derrick.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just bounce really hard and do a tumble roll or something.”
I sucked in some bravery from the air, thinking of the time Silas and North and the others took turns flipping me in Nathan’s pool. It was much easier to flip when Silas was pushing on my feet to get me started.
I moved to the middle of the mat, my knees shaking thanks to the instability. I started bouncing, putting my weight into it to try to get higher. I wasn’t sure how high I had to be to try to flip.
“Just try to get around until you can get back on your knees,” Derrick suggested. “If you get scared, try to land on your butt.”
I bounced higher, sucked in a breath, squealed and pushed my front forward on an upward jump, curling into a ball. I broke out when I felt myself going down. I landed on my knees, skidding on the left one a little. It was a messy front flip. I bounced sideways, in a ricochet, ending up on my back.
Derrick and Tom laughed. Micah rolled his eyes.
“That’s hard,” I said, sprawled out on my back.
Micah did, too, looking up at the sky.
Derrick and Tom started bouncing more softly around us.
“What do we do now?” Tom asked.
Tom was making me nervous as he jumped too close to the edge where the springs were. “Tom,” I called to him. “Be careful.”
He grunted, jumping harder as if to show me he could handle it, but a colliding ripple sent him flying backward into Derrick. Derrick crashed hard against the rim of the trampoline, and spilled over the edge, landing on the ground.
“Crap,” Tom called out, turning around and leaning over the edge. “Sorry.”
I scrambled to the edge of the trampoline and looked over. Derrick was sprawled on his back on the ground, with his hand on his forehead, his eyes squinted shut, laughing.
“Derrick?” I asked in a quiet voice. “Are you okay?”
“I think I broke my head.” He moved his hand to reveal a cut close to his hairline. It didn’t look deep but his blood dripped against his forehead.
I leapt off of the trampoline, kneeling next to him. My heart raced in panic. What was I supposed to do? “Did you hit it hard?” I didn’t know what to ask. Should I call for help? I wondered if I could call Dr. Green.
Derrick laughed, sitting up. “No. I just grazed it.”
“Let’s go inside. We can bandage it up.” I stood, backing away. I thought about offering him a hand to stand up but my body wasn’t willing to do this. With the guys, I was only starting to get used to touching. Other people were still off limits to me.
I was shocked that Derrick was hurt and it felt like partially my fault. I owned the trampoline, so I was responsible.
Derrick followed me to the house, with Tom and Micah trailing behind. I led the way through the back door and into the family room. My stomach twisted when I realized I was inviting more guys into the house. I felt myself blushing, gazing at the red-orange sofa, the single small television on top of a coffee table, and a desk and computer in the corner. Spartan was how the Sorenson house functioned.
“Redecorating?” Micah asked.
I raised an eyebrow at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Shut up, Micah,” Derrick said. He turned to me. “Can we sit on the couch?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said. Hardly anyone did. I couldn’t remember the last time I vacuumed the thing and was hoping it wasn’t too stale.
I flicked the switch to start up the ceiling fans and disappeared into the kitchen.
My sister Marie was there, looking groggy from just waking up. Her brown hair was tied back into a messy bun and the shorts and t-shirt she wore were a little wrinkled. She’d been sleeping until well into the afternoon lately, and I was surprised to see her up.
She looked longingly into the pantry. “We need more food,” she said. She closed the door and turned to me. “You should call him.”
“His number’s over there,” I motioned to the house phone. There was an index card with phone numbers jotted down sitting next to it. “Just call.”
“You call,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. Maybe this was why our father wanted me to stay. Marie would rather starve than talk to him right now. I really couldn’t blame her. I’d been reluctant to call, too. I didn’t want to hear his voice. I was still too angry.
And I was afraid to hear any news about my stepmother. I was afraid to learn she’d be coming home soon.
I found the medical kit and tucked it under my arm. I opened the fridge to collect bottles of water and carried them with me back to the family room. Derrick was on his back on the floor. Tom was on the couch next to Micah. Tom found the remote and surfed through channels. I handed off bottles of water to them.
“You don’t have an Xbox?” Tom asked, and opened the water.
“Girls don’t play Xbox,” Micah said.
Derrick shot him a look. “Will you cut it out? You’re in her house.” He touched his forehead, covering the area that was bleeding.
I knelt next to him. The blood trickled across his scalp.
“What’s wrong with him?” Marie asked from the kitchen. She half hid herself behind the archway wall, looking in after us.
“Cut his head,” I said. I took out the peroxide and started the process of cleaning and bandaging.
Derrick’s eyes flitted to Marie curiously. His cheeks tinted. I wondered if he was embarrassed that he’d gotten hurt in front of a couple of girls. He didn’t seem this embarrassed when I first saw his cut.
Marie exposed more of herself, putting her arms over her stomach and watching. It caught me off guard. She hadn’t come out much when the other guys were around.
I touched a cotton ball to Derrick’s head and he winced. “Ouch. I’ll do it.”
I relinquished the materials to him, but I helped apply the bandage since he couldn’t see his own cut. “Why were you laughing when you got hurt?” I asked.
“Would rather laugh than cry,” he said.
I thought it was a good point. I wondered if I could manage to get myself to laugh next time I was hurt. Was it possible? It didn’t seem like a natural reaction.
“It’s just like last week,” Tom said. “He almost broke his arm trying to climb on top of that barn in the middle of the woods. He was lucky I was nearby and heard him signal.”
“Signal?” I asked. “What’s the signal?”
Tom opened his mouth to reply but Micah punched him in the arm. “Don’t tell her. She’ll tell those freaks and then they�
�ll know, too.”
Derrick rolled his eyes. “She’s not really with them. I mean, she’s not ...” he looked at me.
I understood what he meant, but at the same time I blanched and tilted my head back in surprise that he said it. I wasn’t part of the secret Academy, so he was trying to say because of that reason, I could be trusted to know their secret signal. What hurt was that he noticed something about me I worried about. I was friends with the Academy guys, but really wasn’t a part of it. Outsider.
“We’re just friends,” I said “But I mean, we’re friends too, aren’t we? If you don’t want me to tell them the signal, then I won’t. What’s it for?”
“It’s just an emergency call,” Derrick said. “We made it so if one of us got lost in the back woods or ended up hurt somewhere, you could call and we would hear it. You know, without the others knowing and calling in Kota or Nathan. They’d ride us about going off alone or treat us like we’re idiots.”
“They probably don’t mean to do that,” I said.
“They still do it,” Micah said. “So don’t tell them we have one. And we’ll know who it is if you tell because we haven’t told anyone for a couple of years now.”
“Well, tell me,” I said. “If I hear it, I’ll come for you.”
Micah twisted his lips, unsure.
“It sounds like this,” Tom said. He put a hand to his mouth as if using it as a megaphone and made a call that sounded like a mix between a pig’s squeal and a crow. “Suuweeee!”
I tried to duplicate the sound. Derrick repeated it, and I mimicked again.
“Good,” Derrick said. “You’ve got it. Now don’t tell the other guys.”
A secret from the Academy? It made some sense. Not all emergencies required Academy students running to the rescue. I also liked the idea of having my own secret that wasn’t so important. I was kind of glad Derrick and the others thought they could trust me with it. They didn’t even question the idea of me possibly helping. Not that I knew my way around the woods, but I could at least follow a signal and my sense of direction was pretty good.
“So it’s only for emergencies?” I asked.
Derrick shrugged. “Sometimes it’s because I’ve been looking for these two and don’t want to walk all over the place to find them.”
“You need cell phones.” I grinned. A tickling in the back of my brain caught me. “Speaking of which, I should grab mine before the Academy cavalry comes back after me for not answering.”
Derrick laughed.
Micah groaned. “See? She is mixed up with them.”
I ran up the stairs for my cell phone, which was in the bed. I loitered in the doorway of my bedroom. I could almost smell the boys’ scents still lingering in the air. It was tempting to disappear into the attic space, where the secret platform held a bean bag chair and their pictures. For the moment, I was really alone, the first time in a week.
A rush of questions threatened to overwhelm me. They were all the questions I kept in the back of my mind when the boys were around, distracting me. What would happen if my mother returned? Would she demand my dad take me then? Would my dad say no? If my parents didn’t want me, and Kota didn’t want me to join the Academy, where else could I go?
I’d have to find my own way, with or without the Academy.
BACK TO WORK
At four a.m. the next Monday, I was jolted awake by another nightmare. I sat up with my heart thundering, feeling Nathan shifting beside me. He half moaned and turned away, drawing up the covers and falling into a deeper sleep.
I eased myself out of the bed, trying not to wake him. I rubbed my hands over my face, to get rid of the images that still haunted my brain. I stifled a groan, realizing North had asked me to call him whenever I had dreams like this. I found my phone in the dark and tiptoed out of the bedroom.
I slipped downstairs in order to be quiet. I parked myself in the family room, sitting on the orange couch. My heart rattled still at the images flashing across my mind. My fingers hovered over the phone, hesitating. It was so early. I wondered about simply waiting until later in the morning or at school.
Part of me knew if I waited, North would be hurt, since I’d promised to call when it happened. I sucked in some bravery and pushed North’s app, finding the black button to call him.
He answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it’s early.”
“I was up,” he said, his voice gruff and I wondered if what he said was true. “What’s going on?”
“I … there was another dream.”
He sounded like he was yawning. “Tell me about it.”
I told him about twisting tornadoes of fire swirling over an open sea and how the tides came up and washed out nearly everything. I’d been helping to drag dead bodies to the beach, setting them on fire because there were simply too many to bury.
“Did you know where you were?” he asked. “Where was this beach?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know the people, either. I was just trying to help and didn’t feel …”
“You were overwhelmed?”
The truth struck me. How did he sum up my feelings so well? “Yes.”
“Things will be okay, Sang Baby. We’ve got to take it one step at a time.”
“It’s just a dream,” I said.
“Dreams can sometimes be what you’re worried about, just painted into a different picture.”
“So you’re saying they mean something?”
“From what you’ve told me about your dreams, it’s like your way of playing out feelings in the worst ways possible. You know you’ve told me about a dream nearly every night for the past week?”
“Sorry.”
“Baby, do you want me to come over?”
I’d already woken him. I didn’t want him to have to drive, too. “No, it’s okay. Nathan’s already over here.”
“I don’t really give a fuck if Nathan’s there. If you want me to come by, I’ll do it.”
The thought was tempting, but I didn’t want to put him out. “It’s okay. I mean I’ll see you in a couple hours at school, right?”
North huffed into the phone. “Sang…”
“Yeah?”
Pause. “Never mind. Yeah. I’ll see you at school.”
When he hung up, I stayed on the couch, staring at the phone and wondering if maybe he wasn’t just feeling lonely and I’d made a mistake by being so nonchalant about him coming over.
♥♥♥
At seven am, I squatted inside the attic space in my room, staring into a custom made wardrobe and trying to read Gabriel’s mind as to which skirt went with which blouse.
Nathan was hunched in the attic doorway nearby. “Just pick something.”
I grumbled, pulling out a sporty cotton skirt in a dark blue and a light gray cotton blouse. They were the most comfortable looking things, and on a personal level, that was all I really wanted. Gabriel might have a conniption, but it looked okay to me. Since I’d been gone for so long with the startling revelation from my parents and my father being gone, I would probably be noticed. I didn’t want to stand out so much on my first day back by wearing some of the nicer things he’d bought.
I crawled out of the attic. Nathan was already dressed, wearing the uniform still required for Academy students. The formal white dress shirt was unbuttoned all the way to reveal his white undershirt tucked into his dark pants. The blazer was dark blue and had a patch with wings and keys and a hidden heart. I hated that they had to wear the things, but the patch made me smile when I saw it. I secretly enjoyed that Gabriel had kept the hidden heart in the design.
I changed quickly in the bathroom. When I was done, Nathan wasn’t in my room, and neither was my book bag or my violin case. I pulled some sandals on and rushed down the stairs to look for him.
He was in the kitchen, sticking his head into the fridge. Marie waited behind him. My heart stopped. She knew they’d been spending the night
and so far she hadn’t said anything. I’d been so angry with my parents for leaving, that I didn’t consider she might be uncomfortable with having them around. We hadn’t talked much since our father left. I wasn’t really sure how to approach her.
Nathan pulled back with four Starbucks coffee bottles in his hands.
I blinked at him. “Where’d we get those?”
“I brought them from my house yesterday.” He passed one off to Marie. “Kota’s going to be here in a second with the car. Do you want a ride to school?”
A ride? We were riding to school in Kota’s car? When was he going to tell me? And now he was asking Marie?
Marie shook her head, twisting the cap off of the iced coffee. “Danielle’s new boyfriend has a car. I’m going to wait at her house and he’s going to give us a ride.” She turned to me. “She’s going to spend the night here this weekend.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Okay?” Was she asking? Or was she informing? I wasn’t too sure I liked the idea of Danielle knowing our parents were gone, but what could I say when Nathan had spent the night?
Nathan frowned but said nothing. He handed off the rest of the coffees to me, picked up my things, along with his own book bag, and nudged me toward the door. “We’re going,” he said to Marie. “See you later.”
Marie sipped her coffee and ran back upstairs.
We went out in the garage and walked toward the driveway. Nathan nudged my hand with his. “You shouldn’t let Marie have Danielle over.”
“What? Why? You stay the night. How could I ask her not to have her own friend over?”
“I don’t think I like the idea,” he said. “If word gets around that your parents are gone, and if Marie really wanted to, she could start throwing parties, or Danielle would bully Marie into it.”
I hadn’t thought of that. It would be insane to try to throw a party now. “But I’m not in charge. What could I say to her?”
Kota’s old sedan pulled into the driveway. Nathan ran around the car and opened the front passenger side door, eyeballing me expectantly. I sucked in a breath at the unnecessary niceness but said thank you as I got in.
