by AC Washer
“Only you could find a way to sleep in a dream,” I said, grinning like an idiot.
He chuckled, opening his arms in invitation. I dove into them, tightening my arms around his waist like a vice.
“I’ve missed you,” he said into my hair.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
After a moment, Caleb made a gagging sound and tried to push me away.
“Kella, you need to let go, I—”
“Seriously?” I said, tightening my arms even more. “This is the first time I’ve seen you since, well…that, and you want me to let go?” I huffed out a breath. “At least give me a minute.”
“I would, but…” Caleb gagged again. “I’m gonna… Your hair smells like…”
I pulled away from him. “Like barf?”
“Yeah.” The relief in his voice as I backed away and took my smelly hair with me would have been funny under different circumstances.
“Figures my hair smells like throw up even in dream world,” I muttered. No doubt I smelled it even as I slept so of course my subconscious would implement it here.
“Huh,” Caleb said, scratching his neck as he studied me.
“Huh, what?”
“Well, normally people in my dreams aren’t conscious that they’re in, well, my ‘dream world.’”
“In your dream? You mean in mine.”
A smile ghosted over Calebs lips. “Always so contrary.”
“But it is my dream. Not yours. And I can…” I stumbled here because I couldn’t prove it. And why was I even arguing with him right now? True, arguing was pretty typical for us—kind of like our own twisted love language—but dream Caleb still looked kind of, well, weak. His thin frame was even skinnier than I remembered—frail, even. Between that and the bruises, enough guilt rose to the surface that I let the argument die.
It wasn’t fair. I wanted dream Caleb to be healthy. To be happy. I needed that escape from reality. Instead, I was staring at this wispy version of Caleb in front of me and almost regretted waking dream Caleb up.
But then he beamed at me again like the sun through a break in the storm clouds.
“Wow. You never let an argument die. I must look pretty bad, huh?” He spread his arms out and made a show of examining himself.
He was trying to make me laugh, but his outstretched arms only made him look skinnier. Unhealthier..
“You’ve lost weight.”
“Yeah, looks like it.” Caleb sounded unconcerned, but I knew how much he hated being thin. “I guess being comatose will do that to you.”
“You know you’re in a coma?” I asked, forgetting that I was talking to a figment of my subconscious.
“Of course.” He smiled at me, but the corners of his eyes tightened. “I hear the nurses and doctors when they come in to check on me. There’s this really nice one. Kate, I think. She reads to me on her lunch breaks. They’re mostly romance novels, but hey, I’ll take The Marquess’ Conquest over silence any day.”
I winced. “Sorry. I should be there.”
“I know you’d be here if you could. And speaking of which, where are you?”
“Um.” I looked away from Caleb. “I’m in foster care.”
Caleb swore, and I looked up in surprise. Swearing was usually my domain. Not that I did it that often—only when circumstances dictated it—but Caleb was practically a boy scout. Make that Eagle Scout.
“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching out to grab my arms, examining me closely.
I pulled away, embarrassed. “I’m fine, Caleb. I just got here, but so far they don’t seem awful.”
“Well, if that changes…”
“You’ll be the first one to know so that your comatose body can wake itself up and rescue me,” I said with a wink.
He scowled at me. I grinned.
He growled. “I don’t like feeling useless. I’m no good to you like this.”
Well, you wouldn’t be useless if you’d just stayed out of the way and didn’t get yourself hurt.
The stray thought made me grateful that Caleb had no idea what I was thinking. He did what he thought he needed to do to protect me. It was my stupid decision that got our drunk dad mad enough to beat me. If I hadn’t taken the car—well, if Dad hadn’t stolen my savings—none of this would have happened.
I shook my head. There were a half dozen things that could have happened differently so we wouldn’t have ended up like this.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Because in the end, I’d pushed Dad too far, thinking that I’d get away with it like I did in the past. I’d been an idiot.
“You couldn’t know that he’d kept drinking after you left.”
“I know, but…”
“Or that you’d wreck his car. Not that taking it out each time you got mad at him was ever a good idea.” Caleb shot me a pointed look.
I scowled at him. “Nobody likes people who say ‘I told you so.’”
Caleb shrugged. “I’m just surprised you didn’t wreck it months ago. Or that Dad never found out where you took it. If he had, not even a guilty conscious would have kept him from beating you—even if he was sober when he found out.”
“But he never did.” At Caleb’s disapproving look, I added, “And just so you know, that’s not how I wrecked the car.”
Caleb’s eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t wreck it in a race?”
“Caleb, if I’d wrecked it in a race, I’d have totaled it. No, some idiot backed into me in the grocery store parking lot.”
“Ah. Well,” he said, scratching his neck again, “that was bad luck.”
I snorted, thinking of real Caleb stuck in a hospital bed, unconscious. “Got that right. Should have listened to you after all.”
Caleb stepped toward me, nudging my shoulder with his. “Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. We all could have done something different. I should have done a lot of stuff differently.”
“Right. Like what? Tie me to my bed so I wouldn’t piss off Dad?” I doubted even that would have worked. My very existence seemed to be enough to get him in a bad mood. From what he’d say when he was drunk, I reminded him too much of my mom.
“No, like have reported Dad to Child Protection Services for one.”
“I told you not to.”
Caleb frowned. “I should have anyway. Even if” —he held up his hand to stave off my protests— “Dad had connections, but maybe he’d have been on good behavior while he was on CPS’s radar, at least.”
“Doubt it,” I grumbled. “If only your dumb roommates would have let me crash at your place.”
He shook his head. “We’ve been through this. I go to a school where most of the student body is decently intelligent. And most intelligent guys wouldn’t want a seventeen-year-old runaway crashing at our place after her dad threatens to drag them to court.”
“But—”
“Don’t you see how that would look? How Dad could make it look? Before you know it, he’d be stringing me and all of my roommates along on charges of corrupting a minor and sex trafficking.”
“He wouldn’t do that to you,” I scoffed.
“No, he’d do it to you. I’d just be collateral damage.”
I flinched. Wasn’t that exactly what had happened? Dad wanted to beat me to a bloody pulp. Caleb got in the way and got beaten close to death because of it.
“What did I ever do to him?”
“Exist?” Caleb said with a laugh before he caught my eye and sobered up. I hadn’t realized I was crying until Caleb wiped a few tears from my eyes.
“Hey.” Caleb gently shook my shoulder. “Hey, don’t let him get to you. You know you remind him too much of Mom. I think he feels that when he’s punishing you, he’s really punishing her.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Maybe not. But it’s never been about you. It’s always been about her. You know that, right?”
I nodded, staring at my hands. A thought niggled at the back of my mind. “Caleb, was Mom, yo
u know, crazy? Dad always said she was a crazy witch and all, but do you think there was more to it? Honestly, whenever Dad talked about her, he was the one that sounded insane. Maybe…did Dad have mental stuff going on? It would kind of explain why Mom left—”
“There’s no good excuse for Mom to leave us with him.”
I nodded, not realizing I was crying until Caleb wrapped me into a tight hug, pressing my head against his chest. “Shhh,” he said, rocking me side-to-side, settling the thump-thump of my heart back down to its normal, steady rhythm. “Shhh.”
I gulped down a sob, swallowing it before it embarrassed me.
“Our family’s so freaking messed up,” I said, my voice wavering.
“No, the sperm and the egg donor are messed up. You and me” —Caleb turned me around to where he could stare directly into my eyes— “we’re our family. We’re freaking awesome and we aren’t going anywhere.”
But just as I raised my arms to hug him back, a loud banging ripped me from Caleb and pulled me back into the sterile surroundings of my new room with a suddenness that made me jerk up, shooting enough pain through my sides that I was on the verge of barfing. I clamped my hands over my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut until I was sure I wouldn’t vomit again.
More banging on the door, louder this time.
Whoever it was, I hated them right then. I’d been with my brother, the one person I really cared about, and they’d dragged me away from him just like CPS had earlier this morning.
I wanted to yell at whoever it was to go away, but I clamped my mouth shut. It was probably Ms. Reid checking in on me. I’d fallen asleep, and for all I knew, it could be dinner time right now.
But before I could trust myself to calmly say “Come in,” the door flew open, the doorjamb framing Mickey.
His wide-eyed expression shifted from worry to relief to neutral so quickly that I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things.
“Are you okay? I thought someone else…” Mickey trailed off. My face must have shown how excited I was to have company.
“Nope,” I said, popping the “p.” “Just me. In my room. Alone.” I was tempted to add Just the way I like it but figured that would have been overkill.
“Strange. I felt…” Mickey gaze flitted around the room. “I thought I heard someone in your room.”
Oh. Crap.
I rubbed my eyes before looking back at him. “I might have been talking in my sleep,” I admitted. “It’s kind of a thing I do.”
But I usually wasn’t loud enough that anyone outside of my room could hear me. The thought that Mickey might have heard what I’d said in my dream made me wince.
“You were sleeping.” There was genuine amusement in Mickey’s voice even though his lopsided smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
I nodded.
“On the floor.”
“Obviously.”
This time he grinned for real. “Then it’s obviously time for me to make introductions.” Mickey walked into—instead of out of—my room and plunked down on my bed, the frame creaking underneath him. “Kella, meet the best mattress in the house. Since Maeve’s idea of comfort is rock-hard mattresses, I convinced her to let me pick it out.” Mickey laid back on the bed, propping his head up with his hands. “But since you have no problem sleeping on the floor, I guess extra firm would have been fine after all.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. Did he really just lie down in my bed? I didn’t want him in my room. I didn’t want to talk to him. Hell, I was still mad at him for waking me up from my dream with Caleb. Well, with dream Caleb.
And yeah, I didn’t need Caleb around to know that I was being petty and illogical by holding it against my foster brother. But I didn’t care.
Instead of acknowledging Mickey, I grabbed the only thing that was mine in the room: the black backpack Deena had given to me. Once I dragged it over to where I was sitting, I noticed a white tag attached to the zipper. Girls Size M.
Lovely. The clothes for my first day of school were a size too big.
I looked down at the form Ms. Reid had given me—an inventory sheet with categories listed to one side and empty columns for me to write quantity, color, and the condition of everything I’d brought into care. The stuff in the backpack probably counted.
Even as I pulled out a powder blue hoodie, Mickey stayed laying on my bed, ignoring—or simply not getting—the hint. From the corner of my eye, I could see him looking around at the bare walls as if they were far more interesting than, well, bare walls.
A couple more seconds ticked by before he said, “You’ll like it here all right.” I flicked him a glance after writing “new” next to blue hoodie on the sheet Ms. Reid gave me.
“And Maeve’ll grow on you,” he continued. “She keeps to herself, but she’s nice enough.”
I barely nodded as I pulled out a light pink t-shirt. Great. Pastels made me look like the walking dead.
“Not much of a talker, are you?”
“Nope.” I glanced at him again.
Leave. I was thinking it so hard that if telepathy was a thing, he’d have heard it loud and clear. But it wasn’t, so Mickey stayed glued to my bed with a big, dorky smile on his face.
I tried to ignore him as I took out another shirt. He said something, but I wasn’t paying attention. Light blue. Perfect. I had two oversized zombie shirts.
“Earth to Kella, come in, Kella!” Mickey’s peppy voice grated on my nerves as much as the squeal of tires right before a crash.
I closed my eyes and took a breath before turning toward him, my lips pursed. “What?” I bit out.
“Your favorite color. What is it?”
I sucked in another pseudo-deep breath. “Blue.”
“Baby blue, sapphire blue, ocean blue…”
“Just regular blue,” I said to shut him up.
“How about music? Do you like pop, country, hip-hop?”
I held up a hygiene pack I’d pulled out of the bag, pretending to examine it. Maybe if he got an eyeful of tampons, he’d leave the room faster.
But no.
For the next five minutes—a time confirmed by multiple glances at the clock—Mickey was in monologue mode, mostly because I refused to answer any more questions.
He’d established his preference for chocolate over vanilla and cats over dogs early on, but when that didn’t get a reaction, Mickey launched into the risks associated with anorexia. By the time he got to the percentage of anorexics who die, shooting me a few pointed looks, he’d shredded the last of my patience.
“Mickey. I don’t care.”
“About anorexia? You should. It’s an epidemic, you know. Up to one in twenty girls—”
I slammed down a pack of hair ties hard enough that a few popped off the packaging. “I am not anorexic.”
“Starved?”
I glared at him before picking up the ties and shoving them in the top drawer.
“Why are you even here?” I asked.
He kicked his legs off the bed. “Well, I thought it’d be nice to get to know—”
“No, I mean are you even allowed in here? There’s gotta be rules for, like, teen boys and teen girls being in different rooms, right?”
Please let there be rules.
“Oh, so you find me attractive.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, but ended up looking like a doofus.
The idea was ridiculous enough that a laugh bubbled up in my throat, but I quickly swallowed it down.
He grinned at me. “No? Probably for the best. But be warned, I have a reputation with the ladies to keep up, so just don’t invade my space, ask me obnoxious questions, or follow me around in public, and we’ll get along fine. Unless you want to follow me around, because that might add to my appeal.” Again, the goofy eyebrow wiggle.
Maybe the ride had tired me out—or Mickey’d worn down my brain to the point where it’d cracked. Maybe everything had gone so far beyond okay it had finally reached absurd.
Whatever the
case, I found myself laughing. My ribs ached, but that made me laugh more because them hurting was stupid. And me being here was stupid. And having a dorky little foster brother who wouldn’t shut up was stupid.
Tears streamed down my face—equal parts humor and pain. I wiped them off, forcing myself to stop. My ribs were burning, and I had the sneaking suspicion I was one laugh away from bursting into ugly tears—a definite no-go.
I cleared my throat and grasped for something to say—something normal, since Mickey looked a little alarmed. “Are you from around here?”
He shrugged, looking back up at the ceiling as if everything was normal. “Kind of. This isn’t where I grew up, but I’ve been living here for a while.”
“How did you end up with Maeve?” I pulled out a pair of jeans. Yeah, the size was off, but since they were skinny jeans, they might still work out…
He shook his head. “Maeve took me in after…” He paused, choosing his words. “After things didn’t work out with my last place.”
That was where I should have left it, but asking Mickey questions was better than him asking me any. “You’ve been in foster care before?”
“No. It’s a little complicated.” He shrugged. “I lived with a friend, but I didn’t like the way her family treated her.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Things didn’t end well.”
“Oh.” I opened my mouth to ask another question, but when I saw the look on his face—the way he wouldn’t meet my eyes—I shut it again. There was more buried there, and I knew better than to dig.
“So,” he said, burrowing deeper into my bed. “What’s your story?”
I flinched, catching an intense look before he flicked his eyes up to the ceiling.
“Nothing major,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “My dad almost killed me and my brother, and—” A thick lump of nothing got stuck in my throat before I pushed it down. “And here I am—living the life.” There was a long pause—so long I wondered if Mickey was a narcoleptic, because he’d shut his eyes and his breathing deepened.
“What’s his name?” Mickey’s voice almost made me jump.
“Huh?”
“Your…dad.” His face puckered on the word ‘dad’ as if it was a sour ball. “What’s his name?”