Her eyes fell on a couple sitting in the bleachers to her right, their backs to her. A big guy dressed all in black stretched his arm around the waist of a girl with a bleached-blond pixie cut, his thumb hanging from her waistband. Then he slipped it under the bottom of her shirt, against her bare skin. She smiled tightly, twisted away from him and gave him a look. Greta tried to read the look from the girl’s profile. Not here, it said. Maybe Not at all? He didn’t move his hand though. The purple-punch feeling trickled through Greta. She couldn’t look away.
The principal strode to the middle of the gym with a cordless mic and called for quiet, breaking Greta’s trance. After talking for a minute about the team’s successes through the season, he announced they would start the rally with a students-versus-teachers shoot-off. The basketball team jumped from their bench, hooting, arms bare in their jerseys. A few teachers trickled onto the court—the sacrificial lambs.
Dylan stepped forward for his team, first up. Cat calls and whistles erupted from every side. He motioned for them to go louder, and the bleachers rumbled with stomping feet.
“Why him?” Ash asked softly, somehow audible through the thunder. They watched Dylan strut around the gym, pumping his arm in the air. “Why him, Greta?” he asked again, turning to look at her.
His face close to hers. She fixed on the black ring circling his green irises, a burst of brown around the pupil. She knew. He knew. She knew he knew. Why’d you sleep with this clown? Why him?
His eyes locked her in place, grounded her. A moment of stillness in the waves of chaos rolling around them. The worst had happened—Ash knew—and they still stood there together.
“I didn’t,” she said. At hearing the lie, his sharp green eyes dulled and shifted to her ear. He looked down at the floor and back up, his face tired now. “I didn’t”—the words left her mouth, bypassing her brain—“say yes.”
I didn’t say yes. Those four words ripped through her, blowing open doors and windows. Locking others. Everything a different color now. The whole story shifted. I didn’t say yes.
For a moment, Greta was back in her bedroom, rolled in a blanket cocoon, while Ash dealt with Patty. She had sent him out to fight that battle, to deliver that ultimatum.
She stayed wrapped tightly, a step away from it all, as Ash launched onto the basketball court and tackled Dylan. She didn’t call for him to stop, didn’t ask for mercy, as Ash pinned Dylan on his back and beat his face, again and again. She didn’t move as bodies rushed to pull him off. Flecks of blood spattered the court. She said nothing at all.
When the howling of five hundred people reached her ears, and a wave of bodies lurched and heaved forward, Greta fled through the unguarded door. She ran, her feet slapping the floor of the empty hallway. At her locker, she yanked her coat and purse from the hook. Too risky to return the way she came—the crowd might spill from the gym any second and swallow her up. She felt their vibration chase her from the school.
At the door to the parking lot, Greta ducked out, checking over her shoulder. A buzz whispered in the distance, growing. She ran, scrambling on ice, to the sidewalk ringing the school. Arms pumping, her boots gripping the shoveled walks, she ran.
Ten minutes from the school, at a bus stop nearly hidden by a tree, Greta doubled over. Air seared her lungs—ice and fire. It couldn’t come fast enough, and then it was gone before she could get enough. What had she done, leaving him to the mob? What had he done? She hadn’t asked him to, didn’t want that. Did she? Maybe. She smothered that admission. Why had she told him in the first place? The weight of it. Something that held those words distant—from Ash and herself—had broken loose. So heavy to carry. She should go back, stand beside him. Face any consequences with him. Forgive me, Ash.
Five minutes later Greta caught the first bus that pulled up, waving an old bus transfer. The driver looked at her face and pretended not to notice. They drove a city block before she even asked him where they were headed. The driver knew of a stop within walking distance of her house. Then she collapsed in a seat, her head knocking against the window.
Elgin. Today she couldn’t even handle his quiet plant pruning. She ducked low, passing his picture window, and headed straight to the door of the basement suite.
She pulled a chair over to the oven, held a match near the stream of gas and huddled close. As her body shook, Greta imagined a finite number of tremors, each one bringing her a step closer to warm. It comforted her, the counting. Minutes passed. Greta’s skin thawed, but her limbs stiffened to the shape of the chair. Rigor mortis. A battle clashed inside of her—stand up or run and hide. What was happening to Ash at this moment? Her insides shook while her body stiffened.
As she considered busing back—the wait unbearable—a shadow flickered past the living-room window. The door slid open, dragging against the entryway carpet. Greta turned her head. Her neck worked. Ash stood in the doorway for a moment, the afternoon sun glaring bright around his body. She didn’t turn away. Something loosened in her muscles. His body whole, in one piece. “Ashwin.”
He closed the door, kicked off his shoes and walked to the kitchen. A purple bruise swelled on one cheek. He turned off the dial on the stove, the hiss of gas falling silent and the flame disappearing. How long had it been on?
“You’re okay,” she breathed. “I left you.”
He slumped against a nearby counter. “I’m glad you left.”
“Dylan hit you?”
“Some other knuckle-dragging cretin on the basketball team.”
“I left you. I’m sorry. I couldn’t—”
“Greta, it’s okay.”
“What were you thinking, attacking him in front of the whole school?” Blood moved through her body again, shifting her forward in her chair.
“You feel bad for that guy?” Ash’s voice rose.
“No, not him.” Dylan hadn’t asked her if she wanted to. She didn’t get a choice. And when she did have a choice, he decided it was the wrong choice. Discarded her. What would’ve happened if she hadn’t been able to get cell reception at the cabin? Hitchhiking home in the middle of the night, a flimsy jacket against the cold? A blaze lit in her center, waking her body. After humiliating her, they had put her in a position for more abuse.
“I don’t feel bad for him,” Greta said. She didn’t fault Ash for beating him. Dissecting that moment, peeling away the terror for Ash as the entire student body roiled around him, something else remained. Justice. Satisfaction at seeing Dylan flinch in pain, knocked flat, weak in front of every person at West Edmonton High. She wouldn’t apologize for the feeling, even if it meant she was a sociopath. Sorrynotsorry.
“I was really scared for you though,” she said. “And you’ll never walk safely in that school again.”
“I was expelled. I can’t go back.”
That knocked the breath from her. Of course they expelled him. An unprovoked attack in front of five hundred witnesses. In vindicating her, he had also left her. She dropped her head. Alone again in those hallways.
For a minute they let the silence settle between them.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Ash asked. He only knew she hadn’t said yes. Maybe he pictured roofies in her drink or some savage attack in the locker room.
She sighed, trying to choose her words. What to include? What to leave out? “There was a party at Matt’s cabin back in November. I drank too much and…” She nodded, like that’s all there was to say. Was she blowing this way out of proportion?
“And?”
“I blacked out.” She shook her head, trying to rouse more memories from that moment. “When I woke up in the morning, Dylan told me we’d had sex.” She stumbled over the last words. Weird to be talking to Ash about sex, consensual or not. It violated some too-much-information-from-your-sibling rule. “I don’t remember anything about it.” She left out feeling emotionally smashed from that moment forward, every nerve in her body misaligned.
Ash’s jaw stiffened, clenched tight. A ch
oppy breath left his body.
“Maybe I seemed into it,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“Did you say yes?”
“I had shaved my legs, like maybe I thought something was going to happen.”
“Did you say yes?”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything at all. I had a hard time talking.” She remembered struggling to form words, Priya bent beside her. Then nothing after.
“Then I don’t care about your bloody legs,” he snapped. Greta flinched at the phrase. “An absence of no isn’t a yes, Greta.”
She paused for a moment. “There’s something…else… you should know.” It wouldn’t help him to hear it, but she needed to shake off the weight of the lies. Why had she felt responsible for carrying them? “That night you came to pick me up from the cabin, something else happened.”
Ash waited, grim. “Okay?”
“Dylan wanted to…you know…again.” Just say the words. “I—I couldn’t. I said no.”
Ash nodded, his expression controlled.
“He got really mad, thought I was accusing him of being a predator. He told Rachel and Matt to leave without me.” She swallowed. It sounded even worse out loud. “And they did. They drove away and left me there.”
Ash looked away, muscles twitching up his neck to his ears. “‘Brave knight’ and ‘protector,’ my ass.” He ground a fist against the tears on his cheeks.
“It’s not your fault, Ash.”
“Look, you should probably talk to a counselor or someone about this. It might have to be someone other than me”—he choked out the words—“because right now I could kill that guy with my bare hands.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to move on with my life.”
“It will change you. It probably already has.”
She didn’t know how to answer. Had it changed her already? From A student to dropout. Creeping through the school halls as though hunted by a tiger. Alternating between self-loathing and confusion. A year ago—a lifetime ago—she was dealing with Patty and missing her mom. It was enough, even that. But this.
“Maybe you should go to the police,” Ash said.
“No!” Reports, statements, probing exams, digging around the school. Cornering people for interviews. It would be her word against West Edmonton High royalty. Every nasty detail dragged out, examined, questioned. Or discounted and thrown away before it even started. A whole new world of humiliation. “And don’t you dare. I’ll never forgive you.”
“It’s your choice. I’ll leave it up to you.”
“Thank you.”
He watched her, then filled his chest a few times before speaking. Trying to muster something, Greta thought.
“I’m sorry for freaking out,” he finally said. “That won’t help you, I know. You can talk to me, Greta.”
She looked him in the face, saw a forced softness there. But his hands were rolled in tight fists, knuckles white. Veins popped at his wrists. An energy—a suppressed tremor—ran from his planted feet to his stiff neck. No, he couldn’t be her counselor, her impartial listener, as she worked through this story again and again.
Greta had sent Ash up first. She’d meant to follow behind him, after a few minutes to compose herself, but couldn’t move from the sofa until hours after the sun had set. When did it start taking this much energy just to exist? She let herself in the door to Elgin’s suite, the heat a relief as she stepped through. Not a single light on the upper floor. Just the streetlights through the uncovered windows.
Before starting down the hall to her bedroom, Greta glanced into the living room. She almost missed him this time, slumped lower than normal in his chair. The moonlight outlining his hair like a handful of feathers.
“Elgin?” she whispered. Had he fallen asleep?
“I’m here.”
She settled into the chair beside him. Their spots now. “Ash and I had some things to sort out. We thought it was better not to do it in your space.”
“About his expulsion?”
“He told you?” What else did he say?
“Yes. The school called. Your brother gave them my number. I guess I’m the closest thing to a guardian.”
Greta sank lower in her chair. Elgin, who put a roof over their heads and served them home-cooked meals, now had to field angry phone calls from their principal. What more would they ask of him? “Did Ash tell you what happened?”
“A little. The principal told me he got in a fight. I guess Ash didn’t care much for that boy.”
Greta tried not to laugh. That was one way of putting it. “Sorry you had to deal with that.”
“Oh, it’s okay. It made me a nostalgic for Alice’s school days.” He chuckled. So Alice had been a little monster too.
Passing headlights on the street drew their eyes out the front window. Greta didn’t want to think about when the sun would rise again. When Ash would stay and she would go. How would she finish school now? How would he?
“I’m sorry I didn’t get any dinner made tonight,” Elgin said. “Wasn’t feeling up to it, to be honest.”
“That’s okay. You really don’t have to.”
“But I like to. It’s just that”—he paused—“after Eleanor died, after the cancer, I haven’t quite been myself. Alice says I suffer from depression.” He said the word like a grade schooler reading from a medical textbook.
“And what do you say?”
She felt him move beside her. “I don’t know if I feel the need to sum it up in a word. That feeling though…” He braced his hands against his knees to push himself upright. Leaving the sentence unfinished, he picked an empty mug off the table and started toward the kitchen. Then stopped. “It feels like a wall between me and everything else.”
A wall. Maybe. “I think of it more as a maze,” Greta said. She sensed his proximity but felt okay.
“Yes, a maze.” He nodded, then slouched beside her. “It feels like standing in the middle of a maze. You wake up, no idea how you got there.”
“There are paths all around you,” Greta continued. “At least one of them right. You know you should pick, start down one, dive in. But they all look exactly the same, so you just turn in a circle, looking at them.”
As she spoke, Elgin turned his body to face the television, then the picture window, the bookcase covered in plants, and finally Greta. He said, “You keep waiting to feel a pull, for something to become clear. But it doesn’t. So you turn round and round in a circle.” Then he shuffled off into the darkness, his footsteps sounding in the kitchen, then down the hall.
Greta stood, her eyes tracing the invisible circle Elgin had tread in the living room, and followed behind him. She knew those ivy-covered walls well.
THIRTEEN
Greta slept, exhaustion shutting down every cell in her body. In the early morning, when she rolled over and heard Ash’s slow breathing, she woke like a flash of light. A door inside of her cracked open, and her brain jammed its foot in the space. She lay in the dark and followed one spidery thought to the next. They all led back to the same place: How could she do it without Ash?
Impossible to continue as before, now that Ash had beaten up Dylan in front of the whole school. If they didn’t know it before, they’d know now that she was Ash’s sister. She needed a truce, and it had to come from the top. Rachel? Dylan and Matt would never forgive Greta, but Rachel had a way of reining them in. Maybe she could advocate for Greta, quell the uprising. And Rachel had always seemed uncomfortable with the way things sat between them. Maybe a small opening still existed. They’d been friends once.
Greta pulled her phone toward the bed, tugging on the charger cord. She hid the bright screen under her blanket, shielding Ash, and texted, Can we meet before school? Somewhere we can talk in private. 4:46 AM. She waited.
Close to six thirty, as her body started to drift, the phone vibrated. Rachel. OK. See you in the library at 8.
When she told Ash, he wan
ted to go with her.
“You’re not allowed back on school property,” Greta said. “Don’t make things worse.”
“I don’t care. I don’t trust her. What if she brings those assholes with her?”
“What are they going to do to me in a library?” But she knew Rachel wouldn’t bring Dylan or Matt. Sneaking off to see her was an act of treason—fraternizing with the enemy. She was surprised Rachel had agreed so easily.
“I’ve stopped imagining what they could do,” Ash snorted. “They surpass my expectations every time.”
“I have to try to make some kind of peace, Ash, or at least explain my side of the story. There’s no way I can finish the school year like this.”
He sighed. “Now I get why you never wanted to go before. Just promise me you won’t put up with any crap.”
“I won’t.”
“You could definitely take her, if it comes to that.”
Greta smiled. “I could.” She texted Nate, asking if they could leave twenty minutes early.
In the library, a few people milled around or sat at tables, books spread out in front of them. Greta wandered, running her fingers along the spines of paperbacks, scanning the blurbs on the back without comprehending the words. She couldn’t stand still, the door always in her view. Eight o’clock came and went. Greta checked her phone compulsively, Ash’s paranoia whispering in her ear.
At 8:08, a shadow crossed Greta’s hand as she reached for her phone again. Rachel. Greta glanced around the room, just in case. Only the two of them, standing by the romance paperbacks.
Rachel ducked her head and smiled, like old times. “Greta. I was surprised to hear from you. How are you?”
Greta didn’t know how to answer. “I thought it was time we talked.” She paused. “And I think I need your help.”
Rachel pulled her over to a round table in the corner, far from anybody else. “What do you need my help with?”
Trail of Crumbs Page 12