by Rachel Caine
Dad sounded pissed. Claire swallowed hard, resisted the urge to back up and close the door and run away—mainly because Shane was right behind her, and he was finding this way too funny to let her escape—and walked down the hall toward the voices. Just Eve and Dad, so far. Where was—
“Claire!” She’d know that shriek of relief anywhere. Before she could say Hi, Mom, she was buried in a hug and a wave of L’Oréal perfume. The perfume stayed longer than the hug, which morphed into Claire’s being held at arm’s length and shaken like a rag doll. “Claire, what have you been doing? What are you doing here?”
“Mom—”
“We were so worried about you after that terrible accident, but Les couldn’t get off work until today—”
“It wasn’t that big a deal, Mom—”
“And we just had to come up and see you, but your room is empty in the dorm. You weren’t in classes—Claire, what’s happened to you? I can’t believe you’d do something like this!”
“Like what?” she asked, sighing. “Mom, would you quit shaking me? I’m getting dizzy.”
Mom let go and folded her arms. She wasn’t very tall—just a couple of inches over Claire’s height, even in midheeled shoes—and Dad, who was glowering at Shane in the background, was as tall and twice as broad. “Is it him?” Dad asked. “Did he get you into trouble?”
“Not me,” Shane said. “I’ve just got that kind of face.”
“Shut up!” Claire hissed. She could hear that he thought all this was funny. She didn’t. “Shane’s just a friend, Dad. Like Eve.”
“Eve?” Her parents looked at each other blankly. “You mean—” As one, they cast horrified glances at Eve, who was standing with her hands folded, trying to look as demure as it was possible to look while wearing an outfit that looked like something a Goth ballerina might wear—all black netting in the skirt and red satin up top. She smiled sweetly, but it was kind of spoiled by the red lipstick (had she borrowed Miranda’s?) and skull earrings.
Mom said faintly, “Claire, you used to have such nice friends. What happened to Elizabeth?”
“She went to Texas A&M, Mom.”
“That’s no reason not to still be friends.”
Mom logic. Claire decided that Shane had been right—there was no getting out of this one. She might as well jump into the pool; the sharks were circling no matter what she did. “Mom, Eve and Shane are two of my roommates. Here. In this house.”
Silence. Mom and Dad looked frozen. “Les?” Mom asked. “Did she say she was living here?”
“Young lady, you are not living here,” Dad said. “You live in the dorm.”
“I’m not. I’m living here, and that’s my decision.”
“That’s illegal! The rules said that you have to live on campus, Claire. You can’t just—”
Outside the windows, night was slipping up on them, stealthy and quick as an assassin. “I can,” Claire said. “I did. I’m not going back there.”
“Well, I’m not paying good money just to have you squat in some old wreck with a bunch of—” Dad was at a loss for words to describe how little he thought of Eve and Shane. “Friends! And are they even in school?”
“I’m currently between majors,” Shane offered.
“Shut up!” Claire was nearly in tears now.
“All right, that’s it. Get your things, Claire. You’re coming with us.”
All the amusement faded out of Shane’s face. “No, she isn’t,” he said. “Not at night. Sorry.”
Dad got red-faced and even more furious, and leveled a finger at her. “Is this why you’re here? Older boys? Living under the same roof?”
“Oh, Claire,” Mom sighed. “You’re too young for this. You—”
“Shane,” Shane supplied.
“Shane, I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice boy”—she didn’t sound especially convinced—“but you have to understand that Claire is a very special girl, and she’s very young.”
“She’s a kid!” Dad interrupted. “She’s sixteen! And if you took advantage of her—”
“Dad!” Claire thought her face might be just as red as his, for very different reasons. “Enough already! Shane’s my friend! Stop embarrassing me!”
“Embarrassing you? Claire, how do you think we feel?” Dad roared.
In the silence, Claire heard Michael say mildly, from the stairs, “I think maybe we’d all better sit down.”
They didn’t all sit down. Shane and Eve escaped to the kitchen, where Claire heard a clattering of pots and furious whispering; she was sitting uncomfortably on the couch between her parental bookends, looking mournfully at Michael, who was sitting in the armchair. He looked calm and collected, but then, he would. Mom, Dad, this is Michael, he’s a dead guy…. Yeah, that would really help.
“My name is Michael Glass,” he said, and extended his hand to Claire’s dad like an equal. Dad, surprised, took it and shook. “You’ve already met our other two roommates, Eve Rosser and Shane Collins. Sir, I know you’re concerned about Claire. You should be. She’s on her own for the first time, and she’s younger than most kids coming to college. I don’t blame you for being worried.”
Dad, defused, settled for looking stubborn. “And who the heck are you, Michael Glass?”
“I own this house,” he said. “I rent a room to your daughter.”
“How old are you?”
“A little over eighteen. So are Shane and Eve. We’ve known each other a long time, and to be honest, we didn’t really want to let another person into the house, but…” Michael shrugged. “We had an empty bedroom, and splitting costs four ways is better. I thought a long time about letting Claire stay here. We had house meetings about it.”
Claire blinked at him. He had? They did?
“My daughter’s a minor,” Dad said. “I’m not happy about this. Not at all.”
“Sir, I understand. I wasn’t too happy about it, either. Even having her here is a risk for us, you understand.” Michael didn’t have to go into it, Claire saw; her dad totally got it. “But she needed us, and we couldn’t turn her away.”
“You mean you couldn’t turn her money away,” Dad said, frowning. For answer, Michael got up, went to a wooden box sitting on the shelf, and took out an envelope. He handed it to Dad.
“That’s what she paid me,” he said. “The whole amount. I kept it in case she wanted to leave. This wasn’t about money, Mr. Danvers. It was about Claire’s safety.”
Michael glanced across at her, and she bit her lip. She’d been hoping to avoid this—desperately hoping—but she couldn’t see any way out now. She nodded slightly and slumped back on the couch cushions, trying to make herself small. Smaller.
“Claire’s dorm was girls-only,” Claire’s mom put in. She reached over to stroke Claire’s hair absently, the way she did when Claire was little. Claire endured it. Actually, she secretly liked it, a little, and had to fight not to relax against Mom’s side and let herself be hugged. Protected. “She was safe, wasn’t she? That Monica girl said—”
“You talked to Monica?” Claire said sharply, and looked wide-eyed at her mother. Mom frowned a little, dark eyes concerned.
“Yes, of course I did. I was trying to find out where you’d gone, and Monica was very helpful.”
“I’ll bet,” Claire muttered. The idea of Monica standing there smiling at her mom—looking innocent and nice, probably—was sickening.
“She said you were staying here,” Mom finished, still frowning. “Claire, honey, why would you leave the dorm? I know you’re not a silly girl. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t have a reason.”
Michael said, “She did. She was being hazed.”
“Hazed?” Mom repeated the word like she had no idea what it meant.
“From what Claire told me, it started small—all the freshmen girls get it from the older ones. Nasty stuff, but not dangerous. But she got on the wrong side of the wrong girl, and she was getting hurt.”
“Hurt?” That was Dad, wh
o now had something to hold on to.
“When she came here, she had bruises like a road map,” Michael said. “To be honest, I wanted to call the cops. She wouldn’t let me. But I couldn’t let her go back there. She wasn’t just getting knocked around…. I think her life was in danger.”
Mom’s hand had frozen in Claire’s hair, and she let out a little moan.
“It’s not that bad,” Claire offered. “I mean, look, nothing broken or anything. I had a sore ankle for a while, and a black eye, but—”
“A black eye?”
“It’s gone. See?” She batted her eyelashes. Mom’s gaze searched her face with agonizing care. “Honest, it’s over. Done. Everything’s fine now.”
“No,” Michael said. “It’s not. But Claire’s handling it, and we’re watching out for her. Shane especially. He—he had a little sister, and he’s taken an interest in making sure Claire stays safe. But more than that, I think Claire’s taking care of herself. And that’s what she has to learn, don’t you agree?” Michael leaned forward, hands loosely clasped, elbows on his knees. In the glow of the lamps, his hair was rich gold, his eyes angel blue. If anybody ever looked trustworthy, it was Michael Glass.
Of course, he was dead and all, which Claire had to bite her tongue not to blurt out in sheer altered-state panic.
Mom and Dad were thinking. She knew she had to say something…something important. Something that would make them not drag her home by the ear.
“I can’t leave,” she said. It came from her heart, and she meant every word. Her voice stayed absolutely steady, too—for once. “Mom, Dad, I know that you’re afraid for me, and I–I love you. But I need to stay here. Michael isn’t telling you this, but they put themselves on the line for me, and I owe it to them to stay until it’s settled and I’m sure they won’t get in trouble for me. It’s what I have to do, you understand? And I can do it. I have to.”
“Claire,” Mom said in a small, choked voice. “You’re sixteen! You’re a child!”
“I’m not,” she said simply. “I’m sixteen and a half, and I’m not giving up. I never have. You know that.”
They did. Claire had fought all her life against the odds, and both her parents knew it. They knew how stubborn she was. More, they knew how important it was to her.
“I don’t like this,” her dad said, but he sounded unhappy now, not angry. “I don’t like you living with older boys. Off campus. And I want these people who hurt you stopped.”
“Then I have to stop them,” Claire said. “It’s my problem. And there are other girls in that dorm getting hurt, too, so it isn’t just about me. I need to do it for them, too.”
Michael raised his eyebrows slightly, but didn’t answer. Mom wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief. Eve appeared in the doorway wearing a huge apron with a red-lips emblem that read KISS THE COOK, peered uncertainly at them, and gave Claire’s parents a nervous smile.
“Dinner’s ready!” she said.
“Oh, we couldn’t,” Mom said.
“The heck we can’t,” Dad said. “I’m starved. Is that chili?”
Dinner was uncomfortable. Dad made noncommittal grunts about the quality of the chili. Shane looked like he was barely holding on to his laughter most of the time. Eve was so nervous that Claire thought she would jitter right out of the chair, and Michael…Michael was the calm one. The adult. Claire had never felt more like the kid at the big table in her life.
“So, Michael,” Claire’s mother said, nibbling at a spoonful of chili, “what is it you do?”
Haunts the house where he died, Claire thought, and bit her lip. She took a fast sip of her cola.
“I’m a musician,” he said.
“Oh really?” She brightened up. “What do you play? I love classical music!”
Now even Michael looked uncomfortable. Shane coughed into his napkin and drained Coke in huge gulps to drown out his hiccuping laughter.
“Piano and guitar,” he said. “But mostly guitar. Acoustic and electric.”
“Humph,” Claire’s dad said. “Any good?”
Shane’s shoulders were shaking.
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “I work hard at it.”
“He’s very good!” Eve jumped in, eyes bright and flashing. “Honestly, Michael, you should quit being so humble. You’re really great. It’s just a matter of time before you really do something big, and you know it!”
Michael looked…blank. Expressionless. That didn’t quite hide the pain, Claire thought. “Someday,” he said, and shrugged. “Hey, Shane, thanks for dinner. Good stuff.”
“Yeah,” Eve said. “Not bad.”
“Spicy,” Dad said, as if that was a flaw. Claire knew for a fact he ordinarily added Tabasco to half of what he ate. “Mind if I get a refill?”
Eve jumped up like a jack-in-the-box. “I’ll get it!” But Dad was at the end of the table, closest to the kitchen, and he was already on his feet and heading that direction.
Michael and Shane exchanged looks. Claire frowned, trying to figure out what they were looking so alarmed about.
They sat in silence as the refrigerator opened, bottles rattled, and then it closed. Dad came back, one cold-frosted Coke in his hand.
In his other hand he held a beer. He sat it in the center of the table and glared at Michael.
“You want to explain why there’s beer in a refrigerator with a sixteen-year-old in the house?” he asked. “Not to mention that none of you is old enough to be drinking it!”
Well, that was that. Some days, Claire thought, you just couldn’t win.
She had two days, and only because Dad agreed to allow her to go to the admissions office and file transfer paperwork. Michael tried his best, but even angelic good looks and complete sincerity weren’t good enough this time. Shane had stopped finding it amusing at some point, and started yelling. Eve had gone to her room.
Claire had cried. A lot. Furiously.
She was so angry, in fact, that she barely cared that Mom and Dad were going to be driving out of Morganville in the dark, unprotected and unwarned. Michael took care of that, though, with a story about carjackers stealing SUVs in the area. That was the best anyone could do, and more than Claire wanted, anyway.
Dad had looked at her like she was a disappointment.
She’d never, ever been a disappointment before, and it totally pissed her off, because she didn’t deserve it, not one bit.
Michael and Shane stood in the doorway, watching her parents hurry to their SUV in the dark. Shane, she saw, had a big hand-carved cross, and he was ready to charge to the rescue, even though he was mad as hell. He didn’t need to, though. Mom and Dad got in their truck and drove away, into the hushed Morganville night, and Michael closed and locked the door and turned to look at Claire.
“Sorry,” he said. “That could have been better.”
“You think?” she shot back. Her eyes were swollen and hot, and she felt like she might vibrate apart; she was so mad. “I’m not leaving! No way!”
“Claire.” Michael reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. “Until you’re eighteen, you really don’t have the right to say that, okay? I know, you’re almost seventeen, you’re smarter than ninety percent of the people in the world—”
“One hundred percent smarter than anybody else in this house,” Shane said.
“—but that doesn’t matter. It will, but it doesn’t right now. You need to do what they say. If you decide to fight them, it’s going to get ugly, and Claire, we can’t afford it. I can’t afford it. You understand?” He searched her eyes, and she had to nod. “Sorry. Believe me, it isn’t the way I wanted it to happen, but at least you’ll be out of Morganville. You’ll be safe.”
He hugged her. She felt her breath leave for a second, and then he was gone, walking away.
She looked at Shane.
“Well, I’m not hugging you,” he said. He was standing close to her, so close she had to crane her neck way up to meet his eyes. And for a long few second
s, they didn’t say anything; he just…watched her. In the living room, she heard Eve talking to Michael, but here in the hallway it was very quiet. She could hear the fast pounding of her heart, and wondered if he could hear it, too.
“Claire—,” he finally said.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sixteen. Heard it already.”
He put his arms around her. Not the way Michael had, exactly—she didn’t know why it was different, but it was. This wasn’t a hug; it was—it felt—close.
He wasn’t holding himself back, that was it. And she relaxed against him with a breathless sigh, cheek against his chest, almost purring with relief. He rested his chin on the top of her head. She felt so small next to him, but that was all right. It didn’t make her feel weak.
“I’m going to miss you,” he whispered, and she leaned back to look up at him again.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She thought—really thought—that he was going to kiss her, but just then, she heard Eve call, “Shane!” and he flinched and pulled back, and the old Shane, the cocky Shane, was back. “You made things exciting around here.”
He loped off down the hall, and she felt a pure burst of fury.
Boys. Why were they always such dumbasses?
The night did its usual tricks—creepy creaking sounds upstairs, wind hissing at the windows, branches tapping. Claire couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t get used to the idea that this room, this lovely room, was hers for only two more nights, and then she’d be carted off, humiliated and defeated, back home. No way would her parents let her go anywhere now. She’d have to wait out the next year and a half, which meant that her admission paperwork would have to be redone, and she’d have to start all over….
At least it didn’t matter now if she blew off classes, she thought, and punched her pillow into a more comfortable shape. Several times.
If she’d been asleep—even a little asleep—she’d have missed the knock on the door, as light as it was, but she was wired and full of restless energy, and she slipped out of bed and went to unlock it and swing it open.
