by S. Massery
Now’s not the time to remember.
Later.
“Okay,” he says, leaning against the ledge. Manhattan in the distance is half-hidden by the fog, but the sun is already forcing its way through. “Speak.”
“I want to kill her.” I slap my cheeks. “She’s in my head like a fucking itch I can’t scratch, and it’s driving me crazy.”
“She’s why you came home.”
I grip the cement blocks. The sharp corner bites into my palms, bringing back a speck of reality. “I couldn’t…”
“Yeah.” He crosses his arms. “Well, you’ve always been…”
I raise my eyebrow.
“Obsessive,” he finishes.
I shake my head. It’s true, but my parents liked to call it drive. Fixation with another, prettier name. Better packaging.
“What’s your plan, then? Since you’ve been stewing on this for a while.”
I open the video of Noah and show him. The audible crack when his fist hits my face—it’s a wonder nothing is broken.
“I guess that explains the bruise,” he comments. “So?”
“He needs that job.” I turn and face the middle of the roof. “And he’ll do a lot to avoid jail.”
“Okay…”
He’s not getting it.
“I need you to keep an eye on my dad.” It’s repetition from earlier, but it needs to be said. I hold up my hand. “Noah. Riley’s dad. Her mom. Then her.”
He exhales. “You blame them all?”
“Fuck yeah, I do,” I growl. “Any of them could’ve stopped her from handing over that stupid—”
The roof door bangs open, and two women walk out. They stop short when they see us, but Caleb just rolls his eyes.
“Come on,” he says to me.
We slip past them, back downstairs. I check my watch and groan. “I’ve got to go apply for a job now.”
He snorts. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere that’ll piss off Dad.”
He snickers, opening his apartment door. “I’m sure you’ll find something devious.”
I grin. “I thought about the tattoo shop Noah works at, but I don’t think I want to get punched every fucking day.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t have a problem with Noah. Why don’t you just focus on Riley? You can go in circles all day, but none of them made the decision she did.”
I go still and contemplate that.
And when it hits me, I laugh. “You know why?”
His eyebrow rises.
“Because it’s fucking easier to be pissed at Noah and her parents than it is to be mad at her.” Because I loved her. Thought I did, anyway. Our journey was bumpy, but we had finally figured it out—until it blew up in my face.
She ended our relationship, then put a knife through my heart.
Caleb watches me, his eyes cold.
He knows. He made it through the other side.
Is that what I want? To make it through the flames with Riley?
No. I’m pretty sure I just want to chuck her into the fire and watch her burn.
So… that’s what we’ll do.
7
Riley
Dad waits for me at the bottom of the stairs. It’s been a few days since the incident in the woods, and I’ve been taking it easy. Rest days, if anyone asked.
No one did.
I tilt my head, eyeing the gift bag dangling from his fingers. He doesn’t smile, though. His expression is carefully neutral.
Maybe it’s a box of tampons—even though I’m quite capable of buying feminine products on my own—or a bomb.
“Thanks?” I take it and go to the kitchen island. I make quick work of the tissue paper and pull out a can of Mace. It even has a fabric loop handle to help me hold it, if I wanted to run with it in my hand. That feels like overkill, so I clip it to the band of my shorts. And strangely, some of the anxiety in my chest eases.
“It gives off ten one-second bursts,” he says. He shows me how I would use it, flipping the top up with my thumb then pretending to press down. “I hope you’re upwind if you have to use it.”
I nod.
He kisses my forehead. “You’ll be okay, but this will make me feel better.”
“Okay.”
I take a water bottle from the fridge and glance at him. He’s not yet ready for work—I suspect he’ll watch me go off down the road—and he seems tired.
Bone-tired.
I can’t make myself ask if he’s okay. The clock is ticking, and school is waiting.
Maybe it’s easier to run today because I know I won’t be going down the same trail. Today’s loop is strictly on residential roads, just over two miles. I time my easy runs to the harder practices, and this afternoon will be brutal.
In reality, I could skip it altogether.
But as I set out, I know I couldn’t. This is time for myself, to think and…
Someone stands at the end of the street.
I slow to a stop ten feet away, and he turns to me.
I knew Eli was back, but I almost refused to believe it. He’s supposed to be far, far away from here. Maine. Hours and hours away.
Yet here he stands, staring at me like…
I don’t know what.
My chest hurts.
He’s dressed for running, too. White and lime-green sneakers, shorts. He’s still wearing a t-shirt, but I suspect that would come off rather quickly. Boys like him always tear off their shirts mid-run. A scrap of fabric on their skin is just too much for them.
We watch each other silently.
Move, Riley, a voice in my head shrieks. Danger, danger.
His expression hardens. He was waiting here for me?
I shake my head and go the other direction, breaking into a faster pace—more on par with what I’d run for a mile, not two. I pass my house—Dad isn’t there, thankfully—and keep going in the new direction.
Coward.
Around the corner, onto a new street. I force my speed faster. My muscles already sting, my lungs straining to pull in enough cold air. At this point, I’m making up the route. I don’t know if this will end up being a mile or six, but I do know that I’ll keep running until this feeling in my stomach fades.
It isn’t butterflies.
It’s bees swarming through my veins.
I pass another street and catch a glimpse of someone barreling toward me.
Eli.
He doesn’t stop, but his angle adjusts. And suddenly he’s running beside me, so close that our arms keep brushing. We run stride for stride.
I ignore him and push myself faster.
He gives me the lead for a moment, and then he’s right back at my side.
What is this? A sick mind game? I don’t want to look at him, let alone share the same space. I slam on my brakes and watch him keep going. He circles back almost lazily, slowing to a jog and circling me in a wide arc.
My fingers touch the Mace.
Was it him in the woods the other day?
The way he runs, the way he’s smiling at me—it’s all familiar. My bones ache with the weight of his presence.
He stops. I’ve unclipped the Mace and have it balanced in my hand.
“You gonna hit me with that?” he asks in a low voice.
I pause. Would I?
He takes a step forward, eyes narrowing, and I lift it.
“You want to test me?” I ask.
That stops him.
“I don’t know why you’re back, but just stay away from me.” I show him my back. His attempts to scare me haven’t fooled me—but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.
I get out of there fast, rushing all the way home.
It isn’t until I’m in the front hall, kicking off my shoes, that I realize I have a death grip on the Mace. Slowly, I set it down beside Noah’s keys and release it, one finger at a time. Eli’s done the one thing I wouldn’t have thought he would: he rattled me.
He took away my sanctuary.
But th
en again, so did my accident a few days ago. The illusion of being safe in Rose Hill has fractured.
Dad comes down the stairs and frowns. “You’re back early. I thought it was two miles today.”
I force myself to act normal and shrug. “I just wasn’t feeling it. I forgot we’re doing sprints this afternoon.”
He nods, taking my words at face value. “Okay. I’ll make breakfast.”
“Okay, I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Shower, get dressed, pretend everything is fine.
Noah and Mom are probably still asleep, and Dad is going to be on his way out soon. Suddenly, I don’t want to be alone. I leave my room, grabbing my bag and water bottle on the way out.
“Anything fun happening at school today?” Dad asks. He slides a plate across the kitchen table to me.
Eggs and bacon, and a slice of toast cut diagonally.
“I have a test in math.” I shrug. “Nothing exciting. Practice is going to be tough, though. They’re doing a fitness test next week, and this is a trial assessment.”
He grunts. “With all your running, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
Between bites, I manage, “I hope so.”
He leaves soon after that, and I go to school. I’m early, but Amy’s parting gift—she went off to get her master’s degree last year, leaving the librarian position that she’d held for almost four years—was a copy of her keys.
If only the school knew how devious she really was, I’m sure she would’ve been banned from Emery-Rose. As it stood, she gave her notice and left soon after. On to bigger and better things.
It’s been taking longer to get lighter as winter creeps closer. The sky is still twilight-blue when I arrive at school. It’s been hovering there since I went for my run and encountered Eli.
I unlock the greenhouse door and slip inside, going to the back row of raised beds. I’m not sure who takes care of these plants, but if anyone besides me even cares… they don’t do a good job.
I spend the next hour plucking little weeds from the soil, running my fingers over leaves and flower petals. I water them, then brush off my hands on a rag. It’s still too early, so I finish my homework. Stretch. Contemplate starting a book, but then I’d get sucked in.
So my thoughts turn, inevitably, to Eli.
He’s back, and apparently he’s going to be in my life. He sent that message crystal clear this morning.
Loathing crawls up my spine.
He can’t just walk in without an invitation—that was the whole point of even giving the stupid file to my father in the first place. I can’t play dumb: I knew what I was doing.
I read it.
Eli was untouchable—except for this. He wanted to be a lawyer, to follow in his dad’s footsteps. Ruin that, I’d ruin the boy.
That was my goal.
I close my eyes.
It was my goal, but it took a while to actually work. I didn’t ask questions after I gave it to Dad. I watched the defense crumble, I heard about it in the news. For that trial to get the sort of coverage it did… It’s exactly the sort of high-profile client Mr. Black had a reputation of procuring not guilty verdicts for—the bad people who make up New York City’s underbelly. And I don’t mean the gangs or lowlifes who deal drugs from the street corners. I mean the rich ones who sit in comfortable penthouses, who create chaos just because they like it.
Isn’t that what I did? Create chaos?
Maybe.
Voices seep in from the courtyard, and I silently curse. I like to get out of here before students show up, if only to keep my reputation as a quiet nobody intact. Otherwise, they’ll start to question how I got in. If they can get in, too.
Too late, the door cracks open and a girl slips in.
“Riley?” she asks.
I tilt my head. She’s immediately familiar, and I want to kick myself for not being able to bring up a related memory.
“Are you okay?” Her voice comes from a long way off, shouting down a train tunnel.
I blink, then hoist myself up. I don’t like sitting when other people are standing. It puts me beneath them, and it never fails to illicit a skin-crawling feeling.
“I…”
Short dark hair, pale skin. A heavy smudge of eyeliner all the way around her eyes, glossed lips. Even with the school uniform—white shirt and black skirt—she manages to seem edgy. Maybe it’s the choker necklace with spikes wrapped around her neck, or the million braided and beaded bracelets on her arm. The shit-stomping boots. Those remind me of Margo, for some reason.
And still, nothing.
Her face falls just a bit.
“Parker,” she offers.
I’ve only met one Parker, and I’m pretty sure she died.
“From the hospital,” she adds.
Or maybe not. I stare at her. “Are you a ghost?”
She laughs, but even then—I might be imagining it. It cuts off abruptly when I don’t laugh along with her, and her frown returns. “Seriously?”
“You…” I rub the space between my eyebrows. A sudden headache has begun to form.
Parker Avery was a patient alongside my mother in the oncology department at Beacon Hill Hospital. That hospital—a place I would prefer to never see again—was the reason we moved to Rose Hill in the first place. Close to the hospital, a good school district.
She caught me in the middle of a panic attack once. Rather, I stumbled into the meditation room where she was reading. I was a mess back then—my whole life was disintegrating.
And it isn’t right now?
I shove that dark thought away.
We were friends while she was receiving treatment, but… I wasn’t family. When she left, the nurses couldn’t tell me where, or how she was. I got breadcrumbs from sympathetic rule-breakers. It certainly wasn’t enough to deduce anything except that she might be alive.
The story I formed in my head is that the chemoradiation didn’t work, and she elected to die at home. She didn’t say goodbye because she didn’t want to be another person to leave me.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I can only shake my head. “What are you doing here?”
She hooks her thumb back toward the door. “The guidance counselor said the door might be open if you were in here.”
I narrow my eyes. How the hell does the guidance counselor know I come in here?
Maybe it’s obvious.
“I just transferred,” she says. “Um, well, more like I was forced to change schools? I didn’t last long at Lion’s Head.”
We grew up in different worlds, and she’d lament the public school system in its entirety.
“I didn’t know you were there,” I manage.
She exhales. “I’m sorry. I totally bailed on you. I liked your mom, you know? I got into a trial and she didn’t, and it just made me feel too fucking guilty to reach out.”
I squint at her. There were so many close calls to even remember most of them—drug trials and programs, new FDA approved treatments, on and on. Through it all, I was struggling in my freshman year of high school, missing more classes than I attended.
“Is she okay?”
I appreciate that she doesn’t ask if she died. If the cancer got her in the end.
She was never one to mince words.
“She’s in remission.” I can’t quite call her okay when she spends more hours in her bed than out of it, but she’s alive. Time for a subject change. “Did you just transfer in?”
“Today.” She grins. “You’re a senior, right? I am, too. Dad said I needed to do some sports and make friends—the full high school experience crammed into a few months. I remembered you went here, and when I asked…”
“They pointed you here.” I look around and sigh. “Okay, then. Schedule?”
“Schedule.” Amelie held out her hand.
I gave her the sheet of paper, holding my breath. The guidance counselor had asked a meek sophomore to show me around, but she was scared off by Amelie. An impo
sing force.
We had met at a party a week prior, before I knew anyone at Emery-Rose. Now, she looped her arm through mine and pulled me along.
“We have study hall together at the end of the day. It’ll be great. Half the time a teacher doesn’t even show, and we can leave early. We’re going to be best friends.”
Best friends turned out to be a load of shit.
She put her claim in, made sure all the ‘dangerous’ boys stayed away—including Eli. By that point, though, it was too late.
“Here,” Parker says.
I take the schedule from her and scan it quickly, noting that we do have a few classes together. More than a few, actually. Most of my day will be with her.
Gram never believed in coincidences, and she instilled that in me. I hand it back, wondering if I should move some things around.
It isn’t like I don’t want a friend—the opposite, really. I need more friends now that Margo’s gone. It’s just… this is a lot.
Hospital life and school life don’t need to merge.
No one at Emery-Rose knows the real story.
No one except Eli.
Even Margo. Like the saint she is, she didn’t pry when I refused to answer basic questions. She came over my house last year, but Noah was already gone. His room was so bare, it was hard to even tell that I had a brother at all.
“The bell is going to ring,” she says, eyes on her watch.
A second later, it reverberates the air around us.
I nod. “We have five minutes to get to homeroom. I’ll show you.”
The courtyard is already pretty much empty by the time we pass through it. Down the hall and up the stairs to the second floor, and I point to a room on the left. “That’s where you’re going for first period.”
She nods, hurrying behind me.
“And this is homeroom.”
I follow her in.
Her mouth parts. “You’re in here, too?”
“And five out of seven of your classes,” I admit.
“Wow. Wonder if—”
“It was done on purpose? If you mentioned you knew me, it probably was.” I drop into a chair in the back of the room.
The guidance counselor has been trying to get me to make new friends for years. She was temporarily satiated last year when I made it clear I had made one: Margo Wolfe. It was only after the explosion between Amelie’s cheer cult and me—and getting kicked off the cheerleading team—that caused concern. She didn’t believe that Eli and I were friends.
