The Taking

by Kimberly Derting

  Four days ago Austin and I had been destined to spend the rest of our lives together. I’d been willing to turn my back on scholarships and softball and everything in order to make that happen.

  Then I woke up behind a Dumpster and found out that he and my best friend, the girl I’d grown up with and told all my secrets to, were living the life I’d always dreamed of living.

  Was it really so strange I might be having second thoughts about facing him now?

  When the doorbell rang, it reverberated through my entire body. My mom leaned over and whispered to me ninja-quiet, “Do you want me to tell him you’re not here?”

  I let out a nervous laugh, but even that sounded too shrill, and I had to remind myself to breathe. “No. I can do this,” I assured her, totally sounding calmer than I felt inside.

  Bracing myself, I went to the door. My lungs ached, and I was definitely light-headed, but there was no going back now. No matter what happened, I needed this. I tried to think of one of my dad’s inspirational quotes, but all I could come up with was something about “opportunity knocking,” which was totally inappropriate because it wasn’t opportunity at all—it was Austin, and he was standing on my porch ringing the doorbell.

  When I opened it, my mouth went completely dry. Tyler had been right about Austin; he did look older.

  His eyes were the same green as always, just shades lighter than his brother’s; but beyond that he was completely different from what he had been that night after my championship game, when I’d kissed him by the softball diamond, promising to meet up later at the Pizza Palace.

  His hair, which had always been sun bleached and chlorine damaged from spending so much time in the water, was darker now, and his face was leaner than I remembered. Not sharp, but more defined, as if age had chiseled in the angles.

  A part of me had hoped his new life with Cat would have turned him fat and soft and, yes, maybe too hideous even to look upon, like some fairy-tale troll. But he was none of those things. He was older and more matured, but he was also still Austin.

  “Oh my god. It’s really you,” he breathed, drinking me in. “I thought . . . we all thought you were gone for good.”

  He touched my face, and I flinched. “Can we . . . ?” He shifted nervously, and I was relieved he was at least sort of uncomfortable facing me in person. He looked past me to where my mom was standing at my back like some sort of Mafia enforcer, and his voice rose. “Can we talk someplace private?”

  Silently I was grateful to my mom for giving me that—the whole solidarity thing—but I still needed to do this on my own, so I closed the door on her, giving Austin and me some space.

  I stepped away from the door and led him down the steps so she couldn’t eavesdrop either, because I wouldn’t put it past her, not if she was anything like my old mom. That mom would have no qualms about putting her ear to the door so she could listen to what we were saying.

  We had to cross the street to reach his car, which meant walking over the top of the chalk birdcage, and I tried not to stare, but my eyes kept straying downward, taking in the bird and its feathers, and marveling over every tiny detail Tyler had put into it. Self-consciously, I wondered if Austin knew that his brother had drawn the birdcage or that it was meant for me. I seriously hoped not.

  We stood there, each studying the other for what was probably only a few seconds but for what felt like hours. Austin rubbed the thick shadow of whiskers along his jaw that used to be the finest of stubble, and I crossed my arms, mostly to hide the fact that my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I kept looking away to avoid his eyes and his face, pretty much all of him, because looking at him gave me that itchy déjà vu sensation all over again.

  “Cat misses you,” Austin said at last, clearing his throat loudly.

  And with that, any nerves or worry that I might not say or do the right thing evaporated. Maybe it was hearing his voice again, because at least that hadn’t changed all that much, or maybe it was the fact that he’d said something so incredibly insensitive to start off our very first conversation, but suddenly I couldn’t see him as anything but plain old Austin anymore. Older, yes, but still just a stupid boy who said stupid things when he opened his mouth. “Cat? Really? You drove all this way to talk about Cat?”

  Had I forgotten that about him, the way he sometimes bulldozed right over my feelings, not because he didn’t care, but because he was so totally oblivious?

  “I mean, no. Of course I didn’t.” He shifted some more, almost like he was doing some sort of dance, and I winced because it was so . . . strangely pathetic. God, he couldn’t even talk to me; he could barely look me in the eye at all. “It’s just that she wanted to come, too . . . to see you, but we . . . I mean, I . . . I thought it was a bad idea. I thought I should see you first.”

  Inside, in a place where Austin couldn’t see, where he’d never know what this meeting was doing to me, my heart felt like it was shattering into a million little fragments. It wasn’t like I didn’t know this already, that we were really-truly-completely over, Austin and me, but to see him here and hear him stammering for something to say to me . . . I guess it finally hit home.

  But that didn’t change the fact that I was pissed at him for giving up on me in the first place, or for choosing to go on with his life with Cat, of all people! I didn’t realize I was crying until I heard myself yelling at him. “Why couldn’t you wait, goddammit? Why did you”—I choked on a sob—“have to give up on me?” And then, before I knew what I was doing, I hit him, but it wasn’t a real hit, and we both knew it. My fist struck him square in the chest while I yelled again, tears streaking down both sides of my face. “Why’d you have to do all the things we were supposed to do with her?”

  I felt his arms go around me, and even that wasn’t the same anymore. I should’ve loved that he was finally touching me, hugging me. Except he wasn’t hugging me, not really. He was comforting me, and that isn’t the same thing at all. I felt like a little kid who’d skinned her knee, and Austin was just trying to make it all better.

  Thing was, I didn’t want to be comforted. Not by him. I writhed inside the circle of his arms, but instead of realizing I meant it, that I wanted him to let me go for real, his grip tightened. Understandable, I guess, since in the old days I would’ve wanted him to keep hold of me. To wait out my stubbornness.

  But not now.

  I shoved harder. “Get. Off.” I demanded, making sure he understood I meant it this time.

  When he released me, my faced felt flushed, but not in an attractive, you-just-made-me-blush kind of way. I knew it was blotchy and gross, but I didn’t care. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand.

  Just then Tyler’s car pulled to a stop behind Austin’s. Austin barely seemed to notice his younger brother, but Tyler was all I noticed now. I hadn’t realized how close I’d been standing to Austin until Tyler got out of his car and his dark eyes moved from me to Austin and back to me again.

  I swallowed hard as I took a step back, wishing more than anything I’d never come out here in the first place.

  But Tyler didn’t skip a beat. He nodded at me like we were old buddies rather than the kind of people you stay up half the night drawing chalk masterpieces for as he jerked his backpack from his backseat.

  When he approached Austin on the sidewalk, he didn’t step around him like a normal person would have. Instead, he bumped into him with his shoulder, shoving his older brother out of his way.

  “What’s your problem?” was all Austin said as Tyler passed him, which wasn’t much of a greeting from one brother to another, but I guess neither was the shoulder-bump thing.

  After Tyler had slammed the front door behind him, leaving us all alone again, Austin turned his attention back to me and beneath his breath muttered, “Jesus, Kyra, this is really hard for me.”

  “Hard for you?” I managed when I finally stopped glancing up to their house to see if Tyler was in there, watching us.

  Austin exhaled, running his ha
nd through his hair. I knew the gesture. He thought I was overreacting. “Yeah. I thought my girlfriend was dead, and now here you are. I’m confused, but I want us to be . . . friends.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Nothing, I guess. We weren’t friends, not anymore. We hadn’t been for a really, really long time.

  Shrugging and shaking my head, because what else could I do, I turned on my heel and left him standing there.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Day Four

  I SAT IN DR. DUNN’S EMPTY WAITING ROOM, MY tongue running over the chipped tooth I was here to have fixed while I continued to rehash my confrontation with Austin yesterday. I’d been replaying it in my head over and over all night, but worse was the fact that I also couldn’t stop thinking about Tyler, and the look on his face when he’d come home from school to find the two of us standing there together.

  None of it should matter to me, mostly because it really didn’t matter. I was nothing to Austin, and now that I’d seen him again, it was clear Austin wasn’t anything to me either. We were so over.

  Besides, on top of everything else, Tyler was still just Austin’s little brother. Too young to be anything more than a friend.

  So why had my already-fractured heart shattered a little more when I’d stepped outside this morning to leave for the dentist only to discover there was no new chalk drawing for me, only the birdcage from the day before—a little more smudged and worn?

  Because if I stopped lying to myself for even a second, then maybe there was a part of me where Tyler mattered more than he should.

  I watched as my mom’s son ate a corner from a page of the Highlights magazine he’d been maniacally flipping through, pretending he knew how to read. I thought about asking my mom if there was something lacking in his diet that made him crave paper pulp as he chewed off a second piece, but I’d already offended her and The Husband that morning when I’d implied that, perhaps, he needed more practice with a spoon as more of the oatmeal had fallen off it than made it to his mouth.

  To be fair, my exact words were something along the lines of a suggestion that they put him into physical therapy.

  Considering that The Husband had given my mom a terse look, I decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort to bring up her son’s nutritional deficiencies too.

  As if reading my mind, the kid looked up and grinned at me, his teeth all pulped out with mushy bits of newsprint. Disgusting.

  “Kyra.” A woman in faded pink scrubs read my name from the file in her hands, as if the waiting room was teeming with patients all clamoring to get in to see the dentist on this busy Wednesday morning. I made a point of glancing at all the empty seats. Nope, still just me.

  I got up and followed her. Behind me, I heard the door from the parking lot open and a voice I recognized said, “Sorry I’m late. I—uh—I overslept.”

  I turned to see my dad standing in the doorway. He had the same unshowered look he’d had the first day I saw him, like he’d just rolled out of bed.

  “I told you, you didn’t have to come. It’s just a dentist appointment. I can handle this.” My mom’s voice was pinched and high-pitched, the same way it had been when she’d reminded me that “my brother” had a name. I just kept walking and ignored all of them.

  I couldn’t remember Dr. Dunn not being my dentist, but now, like everyone else—well, everyone but me, it seemed—he looked older. Fatter, too, like my dad, but cleaner, something I only just now realized that I appreciated in a dentist.

  I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He was whistling off-key to the music that played overhead. I remembered that about him, the way he whistled and sang beneath his breath like no one could hear him.

  “So your mom says you chipped your tooth.” He straddled the small swivel stool next to the examination chair I was reclined on, and he ducked in close. He nodded once, my signal to open wide. I did, and he asked, “What happened?”

  His fingers were already in my mouth, probing over my molars, so I tried to talk around them. “A hee o’ hang-ee” were the sounds that came out of me, nothing like “A piece of candy” should have sounded. I might as well have been a two-year-old with a mouthful of mashed-up magazine.

  “Candy, huh? That’ll do it,” he answered cheerfully, his latex glove finding the broken spot on my tooth. His glasses had special magnified lenses on them that made him look like he was wearing miniature binoculars. He sat back and told the lady in the pink scrubs, “Let’s get a quick set of X-rays to make sure everything’s A-OK.” He turned to me and winked with one of his giant eyes. “Then we’ll get you all fixed up. Sound good?”

  I shrugged. Okay.

  She took her X-rays, and he came back in to check them, holding them up to the wall-mounted white box. I watched him disinterestedly as he scrutinized them and then asked his assistant to get my old X-rays, the ones I’d had done just last week. Or, rather, the last week I remembered.

  He looked at those, too, and now I was more interested in what he was doing because he was more interested. I could tell because it wasn’t a casual glance; it was a long, drawn-out perusal, the kind that you give to something curious or strange, something requiring a second or third look. He kept his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined him squinting behind those giant-eyed lenses. Squinting and biting his lip and concentrating.

  Then he left the room, both sets of X-rays in hand.

  I waited a long time in the reclining chair before he finally came back.

  “What was it?” I asked.

  He dismissed my concern away with a wave. A flourish, really. “Nothing,” he answered, glazing over my question and moving on with the adept skill of someone used to dodging the prying questions of children. “Good news. Tooth is chipped but not cracked, so we don’t need to do a filling or a crown. I can smooth the edge down so it doesn’t bother your tongue.”

  He was lying, of course. All that concentrating over a chip that needed polishing? But I could tell he wasn’t planning to give me any more than that, so I opened my mouth wide when he told me to and let him buff the chip into submission.

  And on my way out, like I was still seven, he let me choose a prize from the treasure box the receptionist kept hidden behind the counter. It was overflowing with plastic rings and beads and spinning tops and toy soldiers with flimsy parachutes stuck to their backs.

  I reached for a paddle with a rubble ball attached to a string, and when I did, I saw the way “my brother’s” eyes lit up with desperate longing. He wanted my third-rate paddleball; I knew he wanted it.

  I pretended not to notice, but inside I was grinning a pretty self-satisfied grin at my not-too-dignified jab at the toddler as I tucked it into my pocket, thinking I’d rather throw the stupid piece of junk in the trash than give it to him. And then I turned to my mom, who was looking at me like she knew exactly what had just transpired, and I told her, “I’m riding with Dad.”

  “So what was all that about? With Dr. Dunn? I know he saw something on my X-rays.” I had to say it fast so I could get the words out in one breath, doing my best not to breathe inside my dad’s pigpen of a van. The smell of stale fast food alone was enough to make me gag, but, like yesterday, it was the other smell, the faint odor of something . . . mildewy . . . or musty—I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was disgusting.

  “Nothing, really.” But he didn’t gloss over things as well as Dr. Dunn had, and his “nothing” sounded more like an admission of guilt.

  I kicked a crumpled paper bag at my feet and wondered just how often he got his meals at greasy drive-throughs. From the state of his van, I’d guess every one. “You can tell me. Actually,” I said, sitting up taller, “I think you have to tell me. I’m an adult now. I have a right to know.” It was so strange to say that out loud, especially sin
ce I didn’t feel any older.

  My dad reached up and rubbed his jaw, his fingers distorting the skin of his face. “Really, I can’t tell you. Your mom—”

  “She doesn’t have to know you told me. What’s the point in keeping secrets? It’s just the friggin’ dentist. How bad could it be? I have gum disease? I need a root canal? Come on.”

  My dad veered suddenly to the right, the van lurching along as he maneuvered us toward the side of the road. My stomach dropped. It reminded me too much of the night he pulled his car over, when I’d insisted I was getting out to walk.

  “What are you doing?” My voice sounded hollow, weak.

  He pulled out his phone. A flip phone that had been outdated even five years ago, and he dialed while I waited. “I’m taking her to my place,” he said into the low-tech receiver. He flashed a knowing grin at me. “Yeah, she wants to meet Nancy.”

  The first thing Nancy did was lick me. It was the grossest greeting I’d ever gotten, but I forgave her right away because, after licking me, her tail was wagging so hard she could hardly stand still. It was as if someone had wound up her butt, and she no longer had control over her own actions.

  Nancy was a mutt. And not just any mutt, but the muttiest-looking mutt I’d ever laid eyes on. She had to be at least part sheepdog, and maybe part wolf, but there was definitely part something else in there too. Something mangy. She was bushy to the point that she was in danger of being considered some kind of mongrel prehistoric ram or a mutant woolly mammoth rather than just a regular old dog.

  But when she stared at me with her enormous, liquid-brown eyes, I could see why my dad had fallen in love with her in the first place. And also why he put up with her unholy stink. It was exactly that smell that I’d noticed in his van: the Nancy smell.

  “So, what’d’ya think of my fancy Nancy?”