by Orchid Leigh
“Peter, you’re not. I promise. Okay?” But for some reason, my words seemed weak and unsure. I hoped he didn’t notice.
“Okay,” he said, eyeing me with suspicion. “That better be true.” He studied my face again. “I know I sound selfish, Ellie, but it’s not just me. What would your dad do if you left?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. I did know. Dad would be heartbroken, especially after losing Mom. I couldn’t do that to him.
We continued stepping slowly with the music.
“Peter,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m lucky, too.”
“How’s that?” he asked.
I reached up and gently touched his forehead, rubbing my thumb over the memory. I smiled at him. “I’m lucky to have collided with you on that fateful day.”
Peter laughed. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we did, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “And I knew you were special. I knew that very first day.” He narrowed his eyes doubtfully. I ignored it. “Do you know how I knew?”
“No, I don’t know,” he said with a quiet chuckle.
I smiled, thinking back. “I was sitting at the gazebo. You came out of the diner . . . and you held the door for an elderly couple . . . and you had a big smile on your face . . . just completely happy to be helping. It was really sweet.”
“I don’t remember that,” he said.
“Oh, and the Advil . . .” I added. “That was really nice.” I smiled, remembering. “Oh, and the Twix.”
“The Twix?” asked Peter.
“Yeah, you took my suggestion on the Twix. I thought that was cool.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Can I tell you a secret?”
I nodded.
He leaned into my ear and whispered, “I just really like Twix.”
25
The bell chimed when I entered Carle’s. It had been sprinkling a little when I left the house, but a downpour ensued just as I reached town, and I was soaked through and through as I entered the store.
“Hey,” said Peter with a chuckle when he saw me. We had planned to meet here, and he was waiting for me by the door.
Water ran down in beads off the ends of my clothes and hair, creating a drippy mess on the floor beneath me. “You’re soaking wet,” he said, stating the obvious.
He was completely dry and was holding an umbrella.
“You couldn’t have brought that to me?”
“Sorry, I didn’t see you out there.” He laughed again.
I glowered at him, still laughing. “Are you done?”
Peter smiled and took my hand. “Let’s do this, Cordelia,” he said, pulling me by the hand to the candy aisle.
The plan was to get a bunch of snacks and spend the rainy Sunday playing video games. I was looking forward to vegging out and doing nothing. I was hoping I could get my mind to calm down. My anxiety was growing with each passing day, and although I was trying, I couldn’t seem to get Glacia out of my head.
“So, Ellie,” said Peter as he put some chips into our basket.
“Yeah?”
“My mom wants to meet you.”
I looked at him, happy. “Finally. And you’re actually going to let me?”
“Eh . . . I guess. She said if I’m going to be hanging out with you so much, she should at least know what you look like.”
I jumped up and clapped my hands. “I’d love to meet her,” I said. “Why don’t we go now?”
“Now?”
I was nodding happily.
“I guess,” he said with a shrug.
“Oh, yay!” I cheered. Then a nervous wave hit. “Do you think she’s going to like me, though?”
He smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I think she’s going to like you.”
~
We paid for our stuff and headed over. It was still raining, and Peter and I had to duck under the umbrella together. It didn’t serve much purpose for me since I was already soaked, but he insisted on sharing anyway.
The walk to Peter’s house was easy. He lived on the other side of town, just outside the main strip, and we were able to cut through a couple of puddle-ridden parking lots to reach his street.
He lived in a busy neighborhood with lots of houses clustered together. His house was small, with weathered wood instead of paint. It sat a few feet from the street in a small yard with a trove of bushes padding the perimeter.
The rainy day had made a horrific mix with the last of the snow, and we walked up a muddy, slushy driveway. I followed Peter as he led the way up the wooden porch situated on the side of the house.
“Mom!” he called. We entered a small kitchen. It was tiny, the whole thing smaller than Millie’s big closet, but it was clean with little clutter on the countertops and an empty sink wiped dry.
A black Labrador came running through an open door, followed by a small boy clad in a diaper. The boy babbled nonsense as he ran and waved a toy car in the air. He and the dog charged at Peter’s legs in unison.
“Peta, Peta!” he shouted.
“Hey, buddy.” Peter picked up the wiggly child and held him in his arms. “Ellie, this is Liam and that’s Shadow.” He gestured to the dog that was jumping around at his feet. Liam looked like a tiny version of Peter. He stretched out his arm and handed me his toy.
“Hi, Liam! Aren’t you a cutie!” I said, smiling at the boy. Liam smiled back happily, then began to squirm, and Peter put him back down to cruise around the kitchen with the dog.
A dryer door slammed shut, and a moment later, a pretty, petite woman who looked a few years younger than Millie walked in. She had mousy brown hair tied back in a messy bun and wore tattered clothes smelling of bleach.
“Hey, Mom. This is Ellie,” said Peter.
“Ellie!” his mom exclaimed. A delighted smile spread across her face. “Oh, it’s really good to finally meet you.” She stretched out her hand to me. “You’ll have to excuse my appearance. I was trying to get a few chores done before work. Had I known you were coming”—she eyed Peter with a sideways sneer—“I would have cleaned up a bit.”
“That’s okay.” I shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how much I wanted her to like me, and my words oozed out sweet like honey in hopes that I could charm her.
She eyed us both with a smile. “So, what are you two up to today?”
“We just wanted to come say hi,” answered Peter.
“Would you like to stay for dinner, Ellie?”
“No, Mom, we had plans today. I don’t think we were going to stay long.”
“Oh, that’s okay, Peter. We can play here. I just need to let my dad know.”
“Do you need to borrow the phone?” asked Mrs. Evans.
“That’s okay. I can text him.” I dug my phone out of my back pocket.
“Oh, you have a cell phone,” said Mrs. Evans. “Peter has been bugging me for one of those ever since you moved in.” She playfully pinched Peter’s cheek.
“Mom!” said Peter swiftly, lowering his head to hide his embarrassment. I laughed at him. “Mom, you can’t do dinner. Don’t you work tonight?” he asked, attempting to change the subject.
“Yeah, I have to go in, but I can stay for a few bites if we eat early.” She paused, and an anxious breath fluttered through her lips. “I should probably get started on that now, though.” Her cheery face swiftly turned glum, and she shrank, slumped and frazzled, suddenly looking completely overwhelmed. She turned to Peter. “Can you take Liam with you guys so I can work on dinner?”
“Sure.” Peter shrugged and grabbed Liam as he passed under our feet.
We turned the corner in the kitchen, and Peter paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Your dad would be okay if we hang out in my room, as long as Liam’s with us, right?” he asked, looking unsure. “Or maybe not?” His expression was so serious it had me inwardly laughing a little. He was still stopped and waiting for my answer.
“I think t
hat’d be okay,” I said, smiling at him and making a mental note to mention this thoughtfulness to Dad at some point.
We entered the room and Peter closed the door behind him, preventing Liam from scampering off. His room was clean and tidy with a made bed and vacuumed carpet. There were multiple Star Wars posters on his walls with matching figurines orderly arranged on top of a pine dresser. There was a basket of neatly folded laundry in one corner of the room, and a small, wooden bookshelf sat against the wall near the door. Liam moved to the piles of CDs and books stacked inside and was taking it upon himself to remove them one by one from the shelf.
“It’s not usually this clean in here,” said Peter. “My mom did this.”
“At least you’re honest,” I said with a laugh. “It’s a good thing I don’t have to worry about you seeing my messy room.”
Peter laughed.
I scanned the room and turned my attention to a stack of booklets on his dresser. “Hey, are these your comics?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Can I look?”
“Sure,” said Peter, sounding a little hesitant.
I flipped through the pages. The one I was reading had a dopey kid that looked like a cross between Peter Parker and Harry Potter with similar round spectacles. He wore a backpack and was using a cell phone that shot lasers to fight an alien for his spaceship.
The kid stood small next to the big alien creature, but with a thrust of his laser phone, he shouted, “One small step for me, one giant kick in the butt for you!” He did a karate chop move with the laser in hand, and the alien fell flat and dead.
On the next page, the kid was piloting the craft and battling a dark cloud monster near the sun. The monster threatened to block the light from the world below, and the kid, now donning a pair of radiation-repelling sunglasses, defeated the monster with his laser light phone, saving the world.
“Oh my god, Peter, these are really good,” I said, admiring the bright colors and well-done lines of his artwork. He was much better than he led me to believe.
“Thanks,” he said. “How ’bout you?” He was standing beside me with a bundle of clothes in his hand.
“How ’bout me what?” I asked, still flipping through the pages.
“Do you have any new drawings you’ve been working on?”
“Oh, yeah, but . . .” I trailed off.
“But what?”
I smiled at him with flushed cheeks. “Um . . . I’m probably not going to be sharing my journal with you anymore,” I said. No, I was not. Not with how many times his name now appeared among the doodles.
He laughed. “And why is that?”
I glanced over to see him smirking. I stared back down at the comic, shaking my head. “Nuh-uh,” I said.
“What?” he asked, pretending like he didn’t already know.
“Nope,” I said. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of hearing me say it.
Peter laughed. “Well, you’re going to have to make a book with just your sketches so I can see them.”
I nodded at him. “Good idea,” I said with a laugh, still looking down and still feeling my hot scarlet cheeks.
“Here,” said Peter. He was handing over the wad of clothes in his hands.
“What?”
“You gotta get out of those wet clothes,” he said, pushing the dry ones into my arms.
“Oh, thanks.”
I found the bathroom just a room over and changed.
We sat back on the bed and watched as Liam continued his work of reorganizing the bookshelf. I looked at the floor and noticed, among the mess, that he had pulled out a yearbook from school.
“Hey,” I said. “How come you never told me you used to go to my school?”
“Ah,” said Peter, looking a little guilty and embarrassed as he noticed the yearbook. “I don’t know. Not too many fond memories from that place. I don’t know why I keep that thing.”
“I’m sorry, Peter,” I said, turning cross-legged on the bed to face him. He was slumped and fiddling with the corner of his pillowcase. I gently nudged him with my stockinged foot.
He looked up with somber eyes. “Don’t say sorry to me, Ellie,” he said. “I mean, you’re the last person that should be saying sorry to me.”
I shrugged and stared back at him. “I’m sorry because it’s shitty and unfair. And I know how they are there . . . and I don’t do anything about it.”
“You’re here with me now, Ellie.” He squeezed my foot beside him. “Still real,” he said with a sweet smile.
“I’m only here because you’re adorable,” I said. “There was no other motive.”
Peter smiled, his eyes lifting happily. “I’ll take that.”
I sat back beside Peter, bumping his shoulder. I breathed a shaky breath, desperately wishing this moment—easy and happy with Peter—could just be enough. But my unsettled heart was still split.
An anxious tension pulsed through my body. I stretched out my legs in frustration and wrapped my fingers tightly around the back of my neck, trying to stifle a scream.
“What’s the matter?” asked Peter.
“Oh, nothing. I think it’s just this rainy weather getting to me, that’s all.”
He sighed. “No, it’s Glacia, huh?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it to you.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” he said. “I get it.”
I smiled at him, but it faltered. I took a shaky breath, releasing it in a slow stream to try and calm my nerves.
“Come on. Don’t let it get to you so much.” He sat up and faced me on the bed. “I’m going to figure it out for you. I just need another day or two. The answer is in Granny Leira’s letter. I just know it.”
“Peter, I don’t think so.” I didn’t understand what he expected to find in that short letter. “We need to come up with another idea. Maybe Levvi’s found something new. Or maybe we can read the law like you said. There might be something there.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He looked at me with tired eyes. “What do you suppose we do?”
“I want to go back.”
“So you do plan on going back?” He took a bitter breath.
“Yeah. I think I have to,” I said. “How else am I going to help?”
“Come on, Ellie. I really don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
“I know you don’t. I don’t know why, but I just feel like I have to. It’s my responsibility to help them.” The words came out before I knew what I was even saying.
“Agh!” cried Peter. He buried his head in his hands, pulling at his hair in frustration. “It’s not your responsibility!”
“I feel like it is,” I said. I couldn’t explain it more than that. Not even to myself. It was a sick gut feeling deep inside that pestered me and made me want to retch, and I knew helping Glacia was the only thing that would get it to go away.
Peter sighed wearily. “When did you want to go?”
“So you’ll come?”
“Yeah. I’m not going to let you go there all by yourself.”
“Why don’t we go tonight?” I suggested.
“Tonight? I don’t know, Ellie. Don’t you think we should wait until we’ve thought it through a little more?”
“Like how?” I asked, now getting annoyed.
“I don’t really know. We need some sort of plan, though. Don’t you think?”
“I figured we could just make it up as we go.”
“That’s not a very smart plan.”
“I didn’t say it was. But I need to do something. I’m tired of just sitting around. It’s driving me crazy.” I let out a heavy sigh and moved off the bed to pace the room.
“I can’t go tonight. It’s a school night. My mom isn’t going to let me stay at your house.”
“Then when?” I snapped impatiently. “Friday?”
“This weekend’s no good. I start visitations with my dad. What about next weekend?”
> “I can’t wait that long.” How long would another week be for Glacia? “Maybe I could just go without you.”
“Don’t be stupid. That’s crazy.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Ellie, look at me.” Peter got up to stand beside me. He put his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to stop pacing. I stopped and stared into his worried eyes. “You can’t go alone,” he pleaded. “We know nothing about those people. I really don’t think it’s safe there.”
“I’ll be all right, Peter. They aren’t going to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that. You know nothing about them.”
“I can trust Levvi.”
“How can you know that?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I just know.” My trust in Levvi was another pesky gut feeling. Easy to listen to, but hard to explain.
Peter sighed and removed his hands from my shoulders. He slumped onto the bed. “Why do you have to be so stubborn?” he said, shaking his head.
I sat quietly beside him.
“I didn’t think you would do something so stupid. You owe them nothing and you have a lot of people here that love you . . . your dad and Millie . . .” He paused. “And me.” He kicked at a book on the carpet. “How can you be so careless?”
His voice came out bruised and broken. Whether it was his intention or not, it had worked to stir the guilt. A bitter taste rose in my throat, and it was strong.
“I didn’t ask you to love me,” I said, tears filling my eyes.
“Yeah, you kind of did,” he said. He looked at me, pleading. “Just wait till Friday. I’ll get out of it with my dad, and we can go together.”
“I’m going tonight, Peter.” I didn’t realize I had made up my mind until I’d said it.
“What?” His eyes turned hard with disbelief.
“I’m sorry, but I have to.”
“So there’s no talking you out of it? You’re just going to disregard everything I just said?”
“No. I’m listening to you . . . I am . . . I just—”
“You just don’t care.” He finished the sentence, throwing a disdainful look toward me. He moved from the bed, grabbing Liam, and left the room with a loud slam of the door.
