Friends vs. Family

by C. L. Stone

  I was terrified to touch as if touching made it real, or would make it disappear. Either option felt like too much. It was impossible.

  “The last time it fell over, the back support was fractured,” Victor stage whispered to me. I gazed back at him. His head rested against the frame, his eyes on me. “North was pretty sure it would have fallen apart if you put anything more on it. He and Silas made you a new one.”

  They made it! I forced my fingers to it now, tracing the details of the carving. It was mostly a leaf and vine pattern with roses mixed in, but when I peered closer, I caught hearts replacing a few of the leaves. Hidden hearts.

  “And the books?” I asked quietly.

  “Kota.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, reading the titles of the books on the shelves. Thick volumes of Sherlock Holmes, Gone with the Wind and other stories I’d told him I liked but I didn’t personally own filled the space, in alphabetical order according to author name.

  “And the bed?”

  “Wasn’t sure if you’d notice,” Victor said. His footsteps alerted me that he was moving closer. I couldn’t make myself face him. I stared at the books. “Gabriel tried to match your blanket. It was thin and needed replacing. There’s a spare, too. And new sheets.”

  “It’s bigger,” I said, still not turning. I didn’t want him seeing me confused, touched, terrified, warmed, a mix of so many emotions at once.

  He stepped closer behind me until I could smell the rich moss and berries of his cologne. His palm smoothed over the bare skin of my forearm. “Sweetie, no one liked your bed. Maybe you didn’t notice, but there were springs poking out. You really needed a new one.”

  “The stereo?” I whispered, a tremble spilled down my spine at his touch. I gazed down at his hand on me, staring blankly at his lean, strong arm, and the way the start of his white shirt fell across his bicep.

  “Mr. Blackbourne found something similar to what you had. It isn’t exact, but I think it’s close enough. I was going to get you a new one, a nicer one, but we were taking a lot of risks as it was with the bed and the shelf. I’m willing to bet they won’t notice a thing, though.”

  They replaced everything. I had new clothes thanks to him. I had new bedroom furniture thanks to all of them. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what I should do. I knew the answer to my next question, but I asked anyway. “How?”

  He inched closer. His breath fell on my hair. “Last night.”

  The admission forced another shiver through me. It was obvious. Scenes from the night before raced through my mind, suddenly becoming clear, like Nathan pulling me away from checking in on my mother to keep me with them instead of trying to talk myself out of spending the night and going home. There was Silas and North and Victor, my guardians, they had placed me next to them so I wouldn’t notice the others were gone. Nathan the courageous ninja, Luke the silent thief, and Gabriel the ever-demanding stylist weren’t there when I had the nightmare and instead were in my room, putting everything into place. Kota walked in after North had started shouting. Was he observing from his bedroom or was he outside as a lookout?

  It was perfect timing, and the perfect night to do it. Marie had been gone. My father wasn’t going to be home. I was under their observation. With my mother, another sniff of Luke’s brown bottle would ensure they could move everything in without being noticed.

  My heart thumped so hard, I wavered where I stood. I forced out the last question I could think to ask. “Why?”

  Victor’s fingertips traced the soft side of my arm, sliding down to my palm. He collected my hand in his, warming. The thumb traced at the skin at the back of my hand.

  “You belong with us,” he breathed against my neck. “And this is who we are. Whatever you need. From now on.”

  The tear traced my cheek, circling my chin before I realized it’d fallen from my eye. I wrestled with the idea that they shouldn’t have. I didn’t need a new bed. I didn’t need a new shelf. I didn’t need new clothes. Part of me wanted to fling my fears back at him, of not wanting to accept any of this. I wanted to demand my old things back. The thought of them putting so much effort into me felt to be too much. They’d already saved my life. They’d already protected me at school. They stood by me when no one else would. What could I have possibly done to deserve it? What more could I ask of them?

  But they did it without asking. The Academy gave them whatever they needed, like Mr. Blackbourne explained to me in what felt like an eon ago. I had thought about it since that day, trying to understand what it must be like for them. They lacked nothing they needed so they wouldn’t be distracted when they had other things to do. Like saving a school.

  Or saving me.

  I thought of Gabriel cutting Silas’s hair, of Victor driving Gabriel in from downtown to school, and of Kota and the others pitching in at starting the diner. They took care of each other, and sometimes without asking. They got what they needed and worked together so they could do their job and move forward.

  Family first, Kota had said. Family first and when that was in order, we moved on to other things.

  And I was now family.

  I spun around to face Victor, my arms finding his neck and my cheek tracing the crook of his shoulder. I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to find the words.

  I wanted nothing more than to no longer be the one that got help, but to be one of them that fit in, that knew my place where I could give back to them in every way possible that I could. If it meant quietly accepting so they would no longer feel that I was in need, so we could move past it and do something else, I would swallow back all the pride forever. But I would always thank them. I would always remember.

  My voice caught, and my lips trembled too much to say what I was thinking. I could only rub my cheek against Victor’s shoulder, begging silently that he would understand.

  Victor’s arms wrapped around my body. His fingers traced the spaces between my ribs. His breath tickled the top of my head as he chuckled. “Don’t start thanking me yet, princess. There’s still a lot to show you.”

  I pulled back from him, pushing my fingers to my cheeks to wipe at my eye. “What do you mean?” I whispered. How could there be more? There was nothing left in the room.

  “First things first,” he said, his fire eyes ablaze and the curl of his lips stoking the flames. He took my hand again, guiding me to the closet. He twisted the handle, opening the door.

  The old traded clothes from Derrick and Danielle and my sister hung neatly on the rack. My old shoes were at the bottom. Nothing else looked touched.

  “Oh,” I said, unable to hide my tone of surprise. I assumed he was going to show me the new clothes were in place.

  “It’s part of the secret,” he said. “We wanted to make sure Danielle or your sister wouldn’t be able to take your new clothes. So we’re leaving these here. They won’t be able to steal your new things if they can’t access them.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “We’ve been after Nathan to clean that closet of his out for a while. You make the perfect incentive, I guess.”

  “They’re in his closet?”

  Victor nodded, a gentle wave of his brown hair falling across his forehead. “I’m sorry. It means more effort on your part. You can keep a handful of things in the attic. The rest you can keep at his house. You can trade off as you need and do your laundry at his house. If they happen to discover the attic, there won’t be much there to take. It’ll limit the damage if they try.” He hovered his face over mine. “But if they do try it again, we won’t hesitate to make them stop and return everything. They got away with it this time. Next time won’t be the same.”

  I had to agree with this. I didn’t like the idea of a confrontation. It could easily escalate with my parents, or with Danielle’s parents perhaps. It might turn into something bigger that no one would want to deal with. “I guess I could have went over and asked for my old things back. Now that she probably realizes she can
’t wear them to school. Maybe she wouldn’t have made a big deal about it.”

  Victor rolled his eyes. “Gabriel’s been dying to take you shopping for weeks. I haven’t had a conversation with him since school started that didn’t involve him asking about taking you out.”

  I pressed a palm against my heated cheek. “Gabriel would have done it anyway.”

  “Gabriel likes having a new doll to play with,” he said, gently squeezing my hand. “And you’re a lot more appreciative and patient with him than we are.”

  The start of a smile finally cracked on my mouth. “You’re kidding.”

  “When he goes shopping with me, I barely last through two rounds of trying on clothes before I’m yelling at him.”

  I giggled at the thought of Victor and Gabriel shopping together, or from that thought, of Silas or North shopping with him. I couldn’t imagine them accepting Gabriel’s demands.

  “A couple more things,” he said, his fire eyes cooling to a simmer. “I don’t know if you’ll like this part, though.”

  “What?” Was there a catch? Of course. There had to be. Maybe I had to work off the expense. Maybe it meant working hours at the diner or doing favors for them at school.

  He closed the closet door and slanted his head toward a vent in the wall. “Look close.”

  My eyes drifted to the vent. The grate was standard, painted white. It didn’t need replacing. It still looked the same.

  Victor stepped away from me, pointing. “Right here,” he said.

  I followed him, squinting. Light reflected against a peculiar spot behind the grate’s blades. My eyes adjusted enough to catch the hint of a lens. “A camera?”

  “Mr. Blackbourne’s orders,” he said. “I’m sorry. There was no talking him out of it. It was the condition to let you stay.”

  “You’ll be watching?” I asked, but I knew this answer. There was no way the boys could stay here with me every night. The risk was too great to get caught and unless we wanted to wait for that inevitable time, something else had to be done.

  I had assumed when my mother calmed down and didn’t dispense punishments as often, they would realize that it wasn’t that bad. I thought we were waiting for that moment and they would back off.

  Instead, they were ten steps ahead of me, only thinking the opposite direction. They were going to keep their promise to ensure that I would never again end up tied to a chair or something worse.

  “It’s not recording,” Victor said. “It’s not even on right now. The cameras will only turn on if for some reason we can’t reach you on the cell phone. There’s one in every major room and the hallways.”

  “And the bathroom,” I realized, feeling the thread of a shiver starting at the base of my spine.

  Victor breathed a sigh. “Yes, but also not on right now. The procedure is to text you if you’re not with us and we haven’t heard from you within an hour or so. We’ll text three times within ten minutes. It gives you an opportunity to reach us just in case you didn’t hear your phone the first time. No text or call back, we start with your bedroom, and then all other major rooms before checking something like the bathroom.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked this new plan. They could look in on me at any time. But would they? Did I trust them?

  I swallowed back the fears. I had promised I would do what they asked in order to remain here. Otherwise Mr. Blackbourne would remove me from the house. They weren’t ready for that sort of thing, not without involving the Academy. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I wasn’t sure I was willing to find out just now. I wanted to know about the Academy, but I didn’t want to do it at such a high risk. I had to trust them.

  “What about at night?” I asked. “Am I supposed to check in every hour?”

  “No. You can sleep. Keep your phone with you.” He shifted on his feet, putting weight from one foot to the other. “I can’t promise they won’t check on you while you sleep.”

  My fingers fluttered to the base of my throat. It was surreal, but perhaps since they’d already slept in the room with me, some even in the same bed, it didn’t feel intrusive. It felt almost lonely.

  Did I prefer to have them with me?

  “You’re not mad, are you?” Victor asked, stepping closer to my side.

  I glanced over at him. “Mad?”

  “I know it feels... invasive. I felt the same way when it happened to me.”

  His inflection struck me. “Is your house rigged up like this?”

  “Yes. We all have cameras.”

  My eyebrows flew up and my eyes widened. “And you get checked up on?”

  He shrugged. “Only if no one can reach me by my phone. It’s a security precaution. We’re not put at risk due to our families so much now, so we’re not required to check in. Your situation is a little unique to us.”

  He didn’t have to say it. His tone inflected it for him. My parents were a high risk. Theirs weren’t.

  But how could I be mad about something they lived through already? Maybe I had been wrong. If they all went through it, maybe the cameras would have been something they would have eventually done. Maybe I was wrong about not being a part of them because they didn’t include me in the morning workout or a few of the other things they had to do. Maybe they were getting around to it, working it in slowly as they thought to do so.

  “I’m not mad,” I said as honestly as I could. “It’s... surprising. But I understand. You can’t sleep here all the time.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” he said, his eyes sparking again. “But yes, we can’t do that every night.”

  I smiled at him, catching his intention but unsure how to respond. I’d enjoyed it, too, even if it was crazy and extreme. I still wasn’t sure if I fully processed the idea of them sleeping with me in the bed, and a few of them had already done so.

  “You can check the cameras, too,” he said. “Do you have your cell phone?”

  I paused, trying to remember where I’d put it. Blushing, I tucked my hand inside my shirt, lifting the phone from the cup of my bra.

  Victor grinned, taking the phone from me. “Secret pockets,” he said. He flipped the phone in his hands and pushed a button. He drew close to show me the illuminated screen. “This here,” he said, pointing to an app displaying a pink heart. He touched it. The app activated, showing a map of a cartoon house. It was the side view of two upstairs bedrooms, the bathroom, both staircases, a couple hallways, a master bedroom downstairs, and a kitchen and living room and the garage. “You can press any of these,” he said, and he pressed the cartoon bedroom that was colored in pink, “and...”

  While he paused, a loading icon circled itself. The screen changed to reveal Victor and I standing together in the room at that moment, from the angle of the camera in the vent. My eyes instinctively went to the vent and back to the phone, as if trying to catch myself.

  “It’ll make things easier on you, too,” he said. “You can check on your mother and Marie without having to risk getting caught snooping.”

  This made it better. I had access to my own cameras. It was now a tool for me, not just them. “You have this app on your phone?”

  He smiled, pulling his phone from his back pocket and pushing a button, showing me the pink heart, dead center on the front. “You’re always with me.”

  I rolled my eyes, unable to smother the smile. “Don’t I get your app?”

  He shifted, as if debating this. “Maybe later.”

  Did they not trust me? Or was there another reason?

  “But now that’s out of the way,” he beamed, stuffing his phone back into his pocket and crossing the room toward the attic door. “There’s one more thing.”

  “Did Luke cut that beam out?” I asked, knowing Gabriel had asked him. I turned off my phone, drawn to Victor’s new surprise.

  “Not just that,” Victor said. He dropped to his knees, hooking his fingers around the door handle and opening it. “Crawl inside.”

  I peered in to the shadows of the attic,
not able to see far. I twisted the phone around to use it as a light but his hand closed around mine, stopping me.

  “Trust me,” he said. “Just go a few feet in.” The fire flickered in his eyes.

  A smile brushed my lips. They might pick on Gabriel for his presentation style, but Victor had a flair for it, too.

  I crawled through the open doorway. Not a foot inside, as I expected to feel the rough of the raw wood, I was surprised by softness. My fingers spread out, smoothing over the fibers of a cushioned carpet.

  The next part I noticed was the air. It wasn’t the warm and thick air, but as cool as the rest of the house. It was still dark and I crept forward, anticipating other surprises.

  When I was about halfway to the platform, I stopped, sitting on my heels, and looked back toward Victor.

  He hovered in the doorway, a shadow against the light filtering in from the bedroom. He crawled in, closing the door behind himself and casting us into complete blackness.

  “Victor,” I whispered to him.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  I waited.

  A click.

  The area lit up around us. A track of lighting had been installed to the side.

  The sconces were shaped like roses.

  The lighting followed all the way to the back. The plush carpet below me was a deep blue, nearly black. The walls were covered in a dark material. I traced my fingers over the wall, feeling padding.

  “It’s been sound proofed,” Victor said, crawling toward me. He stopped two feet in and pointed to the side wall. “There’s this, too.”

  I knee-walked back on the carpet toward him. Against the wall was a miniature wardrobe about the size of a large travel trunk. It was painted a similar dark blue color as the carpet.

  Victor opened the front, revealing a tiny collection of the clothing he’d purchased for me yesterday. Skirts, shorts and blouses were hung up on the right side. A few pairs of underwear and a couple of bras were folded neatly into place on shelving on the left.

  “I’m sorry about the colors,” he said. “We had to keep it dark. The light switch is hidden, but if they ever looked inside on their own, a pink or light color they would probably see and...”