Broken Compass

by Jo Raven

  Nah, just weird.

  “Okay.” I shrug again. And then, because he’s not moving or saying anything, “Is that so bad? Having a roommate, I mean.”

  He shakes his head as if breaking through cobwebs. “He’ll be fine.”

  I stare at him, trying to figure out what it is about his answer that strikes me as odd. Not that it’s bad or good having the roommate, not what Nate thinks about it or how it might affect his life. The roommate will be fine.

  As if there was any doubt of that.

  Nate’s apartment is well kept, clean and tidy, and his parents seem like nice people.

  Before I can ask what he meant, if he meant anything at all, he starts walking again, much faster this time, and I have no choice but to follow.

  By the time we reach home and enter our building, his gaze seems to have cleared, and we part ways before I remember he didn’t say another word about the mysterious roommate, and that he’s taken my backpack with him.

  Well, good. I grin at myself as I climb the stairs to my apartment, shower quickly and change into something more comfortable.

  Maybe I can talk to Nate some more.

  Maybe I can figure out what put that darkness in his usually sparkling eyes.

  And maybe I can meet the mysterious roommate myself, all before I have to get ready to go to work.

  Not that I’m curious or anything…

  Chapter Two

  Nate

  Taking the stairs two at a time, I hurry to my room, drop the bags to the floor and lock the door, even though I’m pretty sure dad’s still away on his business trip, and that nobody’s home.

  Apart from our new roommate.

  Then I back away from the door, sink down on the bed and push my shaky hands through my hair.

  Fuck.

  Can’t fucking believe we have a roommate. Can’t fucking believe I now have to look out for him, too. Or that I almost spilled the truth to Sydney.

  I let myself fall back on the bed and gaze up at the ceiling, willing my racing heart to slow. Deep breaths, in and out. This was supposed to be a peaceful couple of days.

  It will be okay.

  He’ll be okay.

  Only how the hell can I know that? How can I guarantee it? It’s out of my hands, now more than ever.

  My stomach growls. It’s way past lunch time, and hunger is throwing my thoughts into weird loops, making things look worse than they are. Though how that’s possible, I dunno.

  I sit up and attempt to gather my scattered wits. Though Jane is in town, I doubt she cooked anything, so I’d better throw something together and eat before my stomach eats itself out and my head starts acting up.

  Halfway out of my room, I hear a noise from the living room and freeze.

  Shit. I hate how my muscles tense, and my heart starts hammering again. There was a time when I felt safe in my home.

  “Jane?” I call out, keeping my voice steady. “Jane, that you?”

  No reply.

  I square my shoulders and walk to the living room, when all I want is to back away and go lock myself up in my bedroom. “Who’s there?”

  Someone is standing at the kitchen door, and I frown at his blurred outline. He has a bright halo around his head.

  I keep going, a hand on the wall for balance, keeping my eyes on him. It’s a man, I know, from his shape, his height and the width of his shoulders, and I’m pretty sure I know who he is.

  “Kash?” I ask, stopping again.

  Our roommate. Has to be.

  Please, God.

  “Hey,” he says, so low I barely hear him. He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, man, I just…” He turns to glance inside the kitchen, then back at me. “Haven’t had a chance to buy groceries. Thought maybe I could grab a sandwich.”

  “Sure, go ahead, dude.” I stop, paste on a cocky smirk. “I was about to do the same.”

  He tilts his head to the side, studying me. I look right back at him, hoping my vision will clear and my stomach will settle. “I can make you one, too,” he says, still in that low, careful voice.

  The offer catches me off guard. His whole presence keeps catching me off guard. I don’t have any siblings, and I never thought I’d have another guy roughly my age in the apartment.

  He is my age, right?

  “I’m twenty,” he says as if he can hear my thoughts. At my blank expression, he says, “You asked.”

  My shoulders loosen, and I snort, oddly relaxed. “I sure did. And I’ll never say no to food, man. I’m a growing guy.”

  He turns into the kitchen, and I follow, realizing that he took my answer to mean that yes, I want him to make me a sandwich, so I take a seat at the table and press my fingers into my temple while his back is turned.

  The halo around his head persists, billowing out of his short, blond-streaked hair like a cloud of light. Man, I should have eaten something earlier. Low blood sugar and stress is a fucking bad combo.

  His blurry form moves gracefully, as if through a dream, opening drawers, opening the fridge, smearing mayo on the bread, stacking up ham and cheese. Something glints on his face, catching the light, and I remember from last night the piercings in his brows and nose.

  “So what brought you to our neighborhood?” I ask when he turns back around and slides a plate with a messy sandwich in front of me. “It’s pretty quiet here.”

  My stomach growls again, and I dig into the food, to hell with consequences. If I chuck it up, well at least it won’t be just bile.

  “The price was right,” he says, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s answering my question about moving here.

  Well, into this apartment, at least.

  “You’re not from around here, though, are you?” I lick mayo from my hand and squint at him. I remember his face from last night—lean and youthful. He didn’t look twenty, and I can’t place his accent.

  He doesn’t sit down, instead starts to eat standing at the counter, swallowing his sandwich in huge bites. “Nah.”

  “I knew it. Where from?”

  He chews, and gulps, then puts his sandwich down. “Elsewhere.”

  “That’s it? Elsewhere? Come on, dude, are you kidding me?”

  He says nothing.

  Shit. I rub again at my temple, lean back in my chair. “You’re not wanted by the police or anything, are you, man?”

  He laughs, a short and rueful sound. He shakes his head.

  The shadows in the kitchen are slowly clearing up, and his halo is fading. His face starts to clear, set in tight lines.

  “I’m not wanted by anyone,” he says quietly, nods at me, grabs his plate and leaves the room.

  Not moving from my seat, I hear his door whine as it opens, then click closed, and I’m left alone in the silence, lost in distorted space and time.

  “Coming!” I yell as I hurry out of my bedroom, the doorbell ringing again. “Just a fucking minute.”

  My vision has cleared enough to read, but trying to study brought back the nausea and headache, so I’d been dozing when the insistent ringing started.

  I’d been caught in a dream where I walked in a forest of glowing trees, and West had been there, and Sydney, and then an angel fell from the sky and crashed so hard that his ribs had broken open and I could see his heart, a heart of gold, beating in time to mine.

  “Nate!” a familiar girlish voice shouts from outside. “It’s me! I need my backpack.”

  “Sydney?” I can still see her as she was in the dream, wearing a long dress made of flames, her red hair lifting on a warm breeze.

  Fuck, I totally forgot I have her backpack.

  Throwing the door open, I step out and she smiles up at me. “Hey, Squirt.”

  Her smile falls. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Shortcake, then.”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Peanut.”

  “Nate…” She rolls her pretty eyes, and I give in. I capitulate.

  She does that to me every
time. Also, I’m too damn tired for any real banter today. “Wanna come in?”

  She glances inside, clearly curious. “You alone?”

  “Yeah. Except for our roommate. But he’s locked up in his room.”

  “Oh.” Her mouth purses, as if in disappointment.

  I’m not gonna think about that. That she could be here to check Kash out, and not to see me.

  Unlike in my dream, she’s dressed in cut-off denim shorts and an off-shoulder white blouse. She’s all smooth legs and freckled arms and curves.

  So many sexy curves. I try to look away and can’t. It’s as if my vision cleared just to see her better. One of life’s ironies.

  My pants suddenly too tight, I step back into the apartment, cursing inwardly and hoping she doesn’t notice. We’re goddamn friends. She never seemed to check me out or want anything more from me than that.

  Friendzoned to death.

  Tell that to my dick, though. Tell that to my body, when every muscle clenches in anticipation and desire every time she’s around.

  It wasn’t so bad a year ago, when she first moved in. She’s a pretty girl, but her curves, those that drive me crazy with need right now, weren’t so full yet. In the stretch of a year, she went from girl to woman, with full tits and a heart-shaped ass. I swear, even her mouth got fuller. Softer. More inviting.

  Or maybe I’m noticing her more and more, every part of her looking better with every look.

  Oblivious, she wanders inside after me, her Converse squeaking on the polished wooden floor. She brings in with her a scent of summer rain and flowers, and her red curls catch the low rays of the sun slanting through the door, burning bright.

  I close the door, plunging us in dimness.

  “It’s so… nice in here,” she whispers, and walks by the sofa, brushing her hand over the carved back. “Feels so calm.”

  Does it, now? That distracts me, lands me with a crash back to the here and now.

  Because no matter how hard I try to see what she sees, I can’t. The old furniture Dad got from Grandma when she passed away is antique wood and velvet, and it looks dead and suffocating to me. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, all pulse with darkness.

  “Your bag is in my room,” I say as she comes around the sofa to stand in front of me again. “Shall I go get it?”

  Her cheeks redden. “I’ve never seen your room.”

  The urge to lift my hand and touch her hair, her cheek, her mouth is back, overwhelming my senses. I can’t think straight, not when she’s standing so close.

  “Wanna come in?” I gesture at the hallway and swallow hard.

  “Sure!” Her gaze brightens, and I’m done for.

  As I lead the way to my room, where I’ve never taken any girl before, I curse myself. What the hell am I doing? She’s so pretty she’s frying all my synapses.

  Most dangerous girl in the whole fucking world.

  “So what is he like?” she asks as she checks out my room, peering outside the window and then at an old poster of Metallica I have taped to the wall.

  I quickly gather up some dirty clothes from the floor and throw them behind the bed, then sit down on the bed and pretend to be busy with my phone. “What is who like?”

  “Your roommate. Duh.”

  “Well, he’s really old. And ugly. And he stinks. You wouldn’t like him, I promise.”

  “He’s not old.”

  Putting my phone down, I frown at her. “And how would you know that?”

  She comes to sit down beside me, and her scent hits me again. It’s a punch to my senses. “I kinda saw him. When he arrived, last night.”

  “You just happened to see him?”

  “I was sitting on the stairs and could see your door. So yeah.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “You.” She tucks her full lower lip between her teeth and her lashes lower. They’re golden and long and fuck. “I saw you.”

  “Me.” The thought of her looking at my apartment, at me, sizzles through my system. I like it. Way too much.

  Look away, Nate.

  “Anyway,” she twirls a copper lock around her forefinger, “I saw him, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t old. Or ugly.”

  “He stinks,” I insist, just to see her reaction.

  He stinks of lies. Or at least of half-truths.

  She blushes. “I don’t believe you.”

  Yeah, I don’t like her reaction at all. Why is she so interested in him?

  “What’s his name?” She gets up and goes back to the window. The light makes her curls glow, and I blink, not sure that I’m not seeing auras again.

  But no, it’s just the light. “Kash. Kash Graham.”

  She nods, as if that explains everything—or anything at all, dammit—and sighs. “I need to go to work. Maybe I’ll meet him some other day.”

  Or never, if I have any say in it, though why I’m so pissed, no fucking clue. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Aren’t you going running today?” she asks, picking up her backpack from the floor where I dropped it when I first came in earlier. “With West? Or is it Assassin’s Creed day?”

  “You know we’d invite you to play with us if it was. No, today is running day.” I grab my phone, expecting to find a text from Weston asking me what the fuck happened, but there’s nothing. “This is weird.”

  “What is?” She lingers at my bedroom door, all sexy and cute, but my mind’s elsewhere now. “Everything okay?”

  “Dunno. Was West acting normal today at school?”

  “He was distracted.” She frowns. “Didn’t do his homework, he said.”

  Shit. Weston likes rules. He’s like clockwork, showing up on time, doing his homework, never deviating from his schedule.

  Unless something’s wrong.

  It has happened before, and the thought has my spine stiffening. I think of the spare key he has given me to his apartment, just like I gave him mine, and wonder if I’ll have to use it. He could be sick and lying there all alone.

  Wouldn’t be the first time. Or it could be his sister again.

  So many bad possibilities.

  “I need to go,” she says, her mouth tight. “Is West okay?”

  “Yeah.” God, I hope so. “Yeah, he is.”

  Because we all have our secrets, and I’m keeping West’s as if it were mine.

  Chapter Three

  West

  “What happened?” Grandpa asks me for the hundredth time, standing at Della’s bedroom door, his black walking stick pointed at me like the devil’s own finger. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “Nothing, Grandpa. Go watch some TV.”

  “Della. What’s the matter with her?”

  “She’s just resting. Now go.” Go before I lose my temper and explode into a million fucking pieces.

  “Weston—”

  “Just go.”

  He glares at me.

  I glare right back.

  “She never wanted you, you know,” he mutters as he turns to go. “From the beginning. So fussy, and difficult, and messing up her life.”

  The anger in my blood turns to ice. “What are you talking about? That’s not true!”

  But he doesn’t reply and leaves me there with a hole in my chest.

  My sister thought that? No fucking way. He’s just trying to get a rise out of me. He hates me. And I know she doesn’t like me. Okay, maybe she hates me, too, but I thought that hadn’t always been that way. I thought that when she was well, she didn’t mind me so much. That when I was younger, she cared about me.

  Guess I was wrong.

  Or else Grandpa is trying to drive a wedge between us.

  Another one.

  As if it’s needed, but he’s a contrary old man, bored with life and full of bitterness.

  Della moans softly, shifting on the bed, and I pull the bucket closer, in case she gets sick again. The stink of booze and sour vomit hangs so strongly in the air it’s all I can think of for a moment, and it’s strangely
a relief.

  “Drink some water,” I tell her, and pick up the glass from the nightstand, but she shakes her head, her face pale. “If you don’t, I’ll have to take you to the ER.”

  She makes a face. Turns her back to me.

  Awesome.

  I let out a quiet sigh and rub my hands over my face.

  Then I lower them and find them shaking.

  This is crazy. And it’s messing with my brain. Right now I should be running with Nate. I should have finished my homework so that when I got back home I could do some push-ups and curls, and then go prepare dinner. Change the burned-out bulb in the hallway. Clean the bathrooms.

  Run the household.

  Instead, I’m stuck here, in Della’s room, by her side, and it feels… wrong. It’s all wrong. All the things I didn’t do, the things I won’t do, the things I’m doing.

  Taking care of my older sister, reassuring my grandfather everything will be all right. Such déjà vu. It keeps happening.

  I wonder sometimes if this is how other sixteen-year-olds live.

  But it doesn’t last, because I know they don’t. Nate and Sydney don’t live that way. They have fucking parents who fucking take care of them.

  My hands are shaking harder.

  I shove them under my armpits. I can’t be cold. Outside it’s warm and summerlike. How can it still be winter in here?

  When the doorbell rings, I jerk, panic gripping me. Who can that be, what if someone finds out, what if…?

  But then I see a text message blinking on my phone, and I know who it is. There’s a slight release of pressure inside my chest, and without a word I get up and go get the door.

  Nate is here.

  “Drank herself unconscious?” he asks, coming out of my sister’s bedroom.

  “What gave it away?” I mutter.

  Nate waves a hand in front of his face.

  Yeah. She drank so much the booze is literally oozing from her pores, so the whole apartment stinks of it.

  “It’s a miracle she made it home,” he says.

  “She wasn’t out,” I mutter. “She was right here.”