Friends vs. Family Page 12

  Part of me wondered if it was Dr. Green on the phone, but I would never know.

  After the first night, the others slept only in the attic under Kota’s command. I would stay out at Kota’s or Nathan’s as late as I could risk it, usually until a half hour before my father got home. There was less of a chance for us to get caught together in my room if we weren’t there in the first place. One of the guys followed me home, climbed the roof and waited for me to open the window. They’d slip into the attic. I spent a lot of time next to them as they huddled inside the attic door to finish up homework or to play on some electronic device they brought with them or just to talk. If there was Academy business to deal with, they closed the attic door, disappearing to the platform in the back to make phone calls. In the morning, I had to get up early to give whoever it was time to run to Nathan’s to shower and change for school.

  We tiptoed around eggshells in my hollow house. The Academy became my shadow.

  E scape

  I dreamed of being chased on foot through the woods. I was weaving through the trees, but no matter how hard I tried to run faster, my legs felt lumpy and sluggish.

  Growling emanated from behind me.

  “Aggele mou,” Silas pressed a hand to my back, shaking me.

  I was sleeping on my stomach. I twisted to look at him and pressed my palms to my face to rub out the sleep. “Hm?”

  Silas was kneeling on the floor near my bed. His dark eyes softened with concern. “You were shaking. Are you okay?”

  I sucked in a deep breath, with my cheek rubbing against the cotton of the pillow case. “Yeah,” I said. “I was just dreaming.”

  He nudged me and I flipped over on my back, and shoved my body over to the side so he could sit on the edge of the bed. He dropped a hand on the bed close to my stomach and half hovered over me. “What about?”

  “Running,” I whispered. I yawned, pushing a finger over my eyebrow. “Too slow in my opinion.”

  He chuckled, his deep voice reverberating through my bones. “Tell your dream self to exercise more.”

  “Did you sleep?” It was Silas’s first night of staying in the attic.

  “No,” he said. He lifted a finger, dropping it to my cheek and sliding a lock of hair away from my face.

  “You’re on the football team,” I reminded him. They’d gotten the official word the day before. Silas and North were first string for the varsity team, no surprise considering their size and sheer power. For sophomores, I supposed it was pretty good. Neither of them seemed too excited. “You should sleep. You can’t stay up all night and then go to school and practice.”

  “I can’t sleep in that thing,” he said, nodding his head toward the attic. “It’s like a coffin. And I should be listening for trouble.”

  “We can’t do this forever, Silas,” I whispered. “You guys can’t come over every night and stay awake all the time. And we’ll get caught one day. We’ve been lucky so far.” Every night, I was paralyzed that my sister would pop in at the wrong moment, or I would go to the bathroom and come back to find my mother peeking inside the attic door, or my father overhearing our early morning shuffle to get out of the house before anyone woke up. I snoozed more than I actually slept because of how terrified I was. I wouldn’t be able to hide how tired I was for much longer.

  His lips pursed. He leaned closer to me, his face inches from mine. “I know. We’re working on it.”

  I blinked at him. “How? On what?”

  The corner of his mouth drifted up. The finger returned, coarse and strong, and it slipped across my cheek again. “You’ll see. Soon.”

  I started to pout. Secrets.

  “Don’t give me that face,” he warned. He nudged me, tucking an arm around my body. “Come here.”

  I kicked the blanket away, blushing because I was wearing Nathan’s blue shirt and really short shorts. The shirt was long enough to make it look like I wasn’t wearing shorts.

  Silas never hesitated and picked me up, placing me in his lap. It’d become almost a tradition for all of them. They woke me up and the next thing I knew, I was in someone’s lap. It was like if one of them did it, the others followed. How they knew, if they told each other, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t complain, but it did confuse me why they did it. I could only trust it was because they were my friends and they were doing their best to make me feel better.

  I buried my face into his chest, inhaling the faint scent of the ocean mixed with attic dust. He dropped his chin to the top of my head. His strong hands rubbed at my back and side. “I can’t stand when you pout.”

  I smiled against his chest. “Gabriel said it doesn’t work.”

  “He’s full of shit,” Silas said. “It totally works on him. He just tells you that so you don’t try it or to get you to stop. Watch. Next time you feel like it, do it and keep doing it. Just not to me. And don’t tell him I told you.”

  I giggled, shaking my head. “He’ll be mad that you gave away his secret.”

  “If he gives you a hard time, tell me. I’ll beat him up.”

  I stuffed my hand to my mouth, smothering a laugh.

  He dropped his face, pressing his nose to my hair. “Ready to get going? I want to stay but I can’t sit here with you like this.”

  I sighed, nodding and wriggling to get up. He was right. The longer we were there, we were more likely going to get caught.

  He squeezed me once more before his hands slid away from me. I stumbled to my feet and a wave of shivers swept through me.

  “Will you stop shaking?” he begged quietly. His hand smoothed over my back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said, being honest. “It’s just early and I’m still waking up.”

  “You shake all the time. That’s going to drive me crazy.”

  The tease of a smirk touched my face but I turned away to hide it. I went to my closet to figure out what I was going to wear today.

  Silas followed, standing behind me. I fingered over the blouse and skirt Gabriel had picked out for me.

  “Wear this one,” he said, pointing to a thin dark blue hoodie. “You look good in it.”

  I smiled softly. Having the boys pick out my clothes was peculiar, but I appreciated their opinion and it gave me a small surge of confidence that the clothes I wore weren’t too weird. “Gabriel...”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. He turned to me, bowing his head closer to my face. “It’ll drive him crazy.”

  We shared a conspiratorial smile and I took the hoodie along with a matching sporty skirt. “It won’t match the pink wristbands.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. He turned away, heading back to the attic. “Knock when you’re done.”

  Twenty minutes later, I was out of the bath, with my hair still wet but smoothed out and twisted into a clip. I dressed in the skirt and hoodie and went back to my room. I knocked at the door to the attic. Silas emerged, crawling out on his hands and knees. I collected my book bag and he took it from my hands, along with my violin case and his own overnight bag. I crept to the window to open it for him.

  He hefted the bags and crawled out onto the roof. My heart thundered in my throat as he did. I did it now every time they started to leave. I don’t know where it came from but the five minutes between being upstairs with them and then downstairs in the yard was by far the scariest for me. I wondered if they’d fall or if someone would hear their footsteps on the roof or someone in the neighborhood would notice.

  I grabbed my shoes and slipped down the stairs, stopping short when I spotted my father in the foyer. His head tilted up and looking puzzled.

  “Up early?” he asked. He was dressed in an oversized shirt and pajama pants, looking sleepy.

  I felt the blood draining from my face but nodded quickly. “Yes.”

  “It’s too early for the bus, isn’t it?”

  “I... like going for a walk before it’s time. Clears my head a little before I have to study inside all day.”

  He raked a hand t
hrough the curls on top of his head as if considering this. “Oh.” He moved on to the laundry room.

  Were we late getting up? That was close. If he’d been listening earlier, he might have heard Silas’s deep voice through the walls. Maybe that’s what woke him.

  I chewed on my lower lip, pondering my next move. It seemed obvious, I should do just what I said, pretending to go for a walk.

  I slipped my sandals on and cut through the house to the back door. By the time I got there, my father was leaving the laundry room with folded clothes.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go,” he said. “You know how your mother feels when you go out. It’s still dark.”

  He had an opinion? I stuffed my fingers into the front pocket of the hoodie to hide how they trembled. Nathan was right, I needed to learn how to lie better. “I just go to the woods behind the house. No one is ever out there.”

  He frowned but shrugged me off and headed back to his bedroom. I hesitated, waiting for him to relay what was going on to my mother and my mother to start yelling at me to talk to her and ground me to my room or tell me to kneel on the floor. I couldn’t spare another minute. If I wasn’t outside now, Silas would come back for me. If I ended up kneeling in rice again, I wasn’t sure what I could do. He’d pull me out for sure.

  I opened the side door and slipped out into the early morning. It was the risk I had to take right now. Maybe by that afternoon when I got home from school, she’ll have forgotten or I’d get lucky and he wouldn’t think to mention it to her at all.

  Silas stood, ready to go in the drive. He turned to me when I rushed out, his eyebrows going up. ”What took you?”

  “My dad’s awake,” I said, frowning. I grabbed his arm, tugging him toward the back yard. “Let’s hurry. I don’t want him looking out and spotting you.”

  He frowned, shaking his head. “Forget the long way.” He jerked his head toward the neighbor’s yard. “Come on.”

  I followed on his heels behind him as he cut through the neighbor’s front lawns, taking the shortest distance possible and one where we wouldn’t be seen by any windows by my parents. If anyone else was awake, I wondered what they would have thought of two teenagers sneaking off together before dawn. Would they think we were running away together? Would they assume we were off to have sex or get high? Would they believe that he was helping me to escape my mother’s crazy punishments and I was helping him evade being discovered?

  I yearned for a time we didn’t have to slip out into the shadows of the night in order to find some peace. How long did we have to sneak around like the bad people my mother thought Silas and the others to be? Would they ever get tired of having to deal with this? Would the boys eventually hate that they made this decision to include me? It took a lot of work to survive around my parents. How could it be worth it to them?

  When we got to Nathan’s, I reached the door first and started to knock but Silas nudged me aside and opened the door without warning. He pushed me in, entered and shut the door behind himself.

  He dropped our things onto the floor, pressing his back to the doorframe. My fingers fluttered to the base of my throat as he scanned out the glass panes on either side of Nathan’s front door, waiting. My breath caught. Did my father see us at any point? Would he go out looking for me? Would my mother demand for my return?

  “What are you doing?” Nathan’s voice cut through our silence. Silas and I jumped and spun around. Nathan was wearing only shorts, rubbing the back of his mussed, rusty hair and half yawning. A shiver of guilt slid through my spine as I admired the muscles in his chest and arms. It wasn’t the time to stare, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. He was incredible.

  “Her dad woke up,” Silas said. He stepped away from the door.

  Nathan frowned, looking to me. “What happened?”

  I relayed the events from the moment I spotted him in the foyer until we were running through the yards. “I had to go,” I said. “If he told my mother, she’s yelling for me right now. But if I stayed, I don’t know what she’d do and Silas was outside waiting and...” I swallowed, rubbing a finger across my lip. Maybe it was the wrong move. I’d panicked, worried about Silas and because of my own selfish desire to escape. Maybe I should have told my dad I was going to stay and sent a text to Silas that I was going to be delayed and to go to Nathan’s without me.

  Nathan collected my hand at my mouth, squeezing. His blue eyes darkening on his face. “Wait here with Silas.”

  My eyes popped open at his words. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going back to check.”

  “You can’t!”

  “We have to make sure,” Nathan said. “I’ll go listen and see. If she’s calling for you, I’ll call Silas and let you go back, but we’ll be there if she tries one of her punishments. We just need to make sure she isn’t calling the cops on you or anything. We’ll try not to let this get out of hand.”

  I turned to Silas. “Don’t let him. He’ll get caught.”

  Silas sighed, looking conflicted. “He’s right, aggele.”

  There was nothing I could say. Nathan ran to his room, coming back out to the foyer where we were still standing as he dropped a t-shirt over his head. Silas stepped out of the way and opened the door as Nathan walked back out into the early morning, disappearing across the lawns that we’d come from.

  Silas repositioned himself into the kitchen, watching from where he could see out the front windows toward my parents’ front lawn. He dug his cell phone from his pocket to keep in hand.

  I wanted to curl up in his lap again. I wanted to go back and change my decisions. I wished I had fought them on this harder. If Nathan got caught, it would be my fault. If I had to go back for a punishment, and Silas and Nathan had to pull me out, it’d be my fault.

  I clutched a hand over my heart, and leaned against the wall, counting off my heartbeats for every moment Nathan was gone.

  Silas glanced over at me, frowning. He held his arms out to me. I stumbled across the floor to him. He enclosed an arm around me, a hand moving behind my head to hold me against his chest. I hugged him, my fingers rubbing absentmindedly at his back.

  He separated the blinds with one hand to keep a look out as he held on to me. I didn’t mean to be in the way. I didn’t have the courage to let go.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered against his chest.

  He bowed his head, breathing against my hair. “What for?”

  “I should have been more careful,” I said, pressing my face to his chest to avoid his eyes.

  His hand shifted, petting my hair. “It isn’t your fault.”

  “But I...”

  “No,” he said. He pushed me away from him until my back was against the wall. He held his fingers to my lips to stop me from speaking. “No more blaming yourself. You’re doing your best. If you had normal parents, we wouldn’t have to sneak around and do all this. If you want to blame anyone, blame them.” He bowed his head closer to my face, his deep brown eyes gazing into mine. How they treat you isn’t your fault. Anyone with half a brain would never neglect you like they do.”

  “Silas,” I mumbled against his fingers.

  He grunted, pressing his nose to my forehead. His breath warmed my face.

  My eyes closed.

  “You shouldn’t have to do this at all,” he whispered. “You’re too sweet to be stuck there. Say the word, Sang. Tell me to take you. I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  I couldn’t find my voice to reply. Was he serious? Was he just trying to make me feel better? Part of me wanted to say something, to ask him just to see how far he took this. What did he mean? Where would he take me?

  His fingers clutched my chin, lifting. It forced my eyelids open and I was lost in the concern and yearning in his face.

  “Say it,” he commanded.

  “Silas...” I whispered. My mind was in a frenzy. The words teased my tongue. How easy would it be to tell him, but how was I going to? How could I do that to him? I didn’t
even understand what he meant. Those dark brown eyes were begging me to just tell him anything and I didn’t know how.

  What scared me the most was how badly I was tempted to say what he wanted.

  The sound of the front door opening had me stiffening against the wall. Silas grunted, turning with his hands clenched into fists. I could only pray it was Nathan and not my father or the police having snuck up on us. It frightened me to think of what Silas might be preparing himself for if it were the latter.

  Nathan popped his head in from around the corner. His eyes caught mine and he seemed confused, tilting his head. “He’s packing a suitcase,” he said. “He left a note on your door.” He held out a neon yellow note stuck to his fingertips. “I checked in on your mom after he left the bedroom. She’s asleep and doesn’t know anything.”

  Silas crossed the room before I could, taking the note from his fingers. He glanced over the writing before frowning and slowly passing it back to me.

  Business trip.

  “Another one?” I wondered. I swallowed, taking the note from Silas’s fingers. I folded the paper. Relief flooded through me. I wasn’t in trouble. He’d gotten up early because he had to leave. “Thank goodness. We’re not caught.”

  Silas continued to frown, and Nathan joined him, shaking his head.

  I didn’t understand. Wasn’t this a good thing that we weren’t discovered or that she wasn’t calling for me? “What?” I asked.

  “Not even a fucking goodbye,” Nathan mumbled.

  Silas grunted again in an agreeing tone. He marched off, grabbing his bag and heading to Nathan’s bathroom.

  I still didn’t understand, and it scared me that I didn’t.

  Thick in the Nettles

  It was Thursday. School was quiet. No fights. Any note passed to me in class was intercepted by North or the others, or I handed one to them the moment I got one. I wondered when they would ever learn that I didn’t get them or read them and I wasn’t interested. Part of me wondered if it was some sort of joke now. Pass the strange girl a note. Maybe it was a game.