by AC Washer
The math problems on the first sheet took longer to fumble through than I’d ever admit. After slogging through the last problem and getting three different answers, I picked one and slammed the book shut, glaring at it. But a glare wasn’t satisfying enough. I swept the math book off the desk so I could hear the thud of it hitting the carpet.
I clenched and unclenched my hands and flexed my jaw. I needed something easy to do—something that wouldn’t make me want to set the dumb textbook on fire. That didn’t leave many choices; I was behind in every single subject. At least my English teacher said I didn’t have to make up any writing assignments, just catch up on the reading. Easy enough.
Reading Shakespeare this late guaranteed that I’d fall asleep within the next twenty minutes, so I prepped accordingly. As soon as I hopped into my pajamas, I heard a quick knock before Mickey popped his head in.
“Hey.” He grinned. “Nice PJs.”
I looked down. “Yeah, I didn’t even know they made Hello Kitty prints in my size.”
“And bright pink, too.”
“Well, at least they don’t make me look like a corpse. Bright colors, I can do. Kind of.”
“Can I come in?”
“What about the rules?” I crossed my arms.
“Well, they’re more like guidelines.”
“That you were enforcing not too long ago.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, his smile wavering. “Cut a guy a break?”
Mickey’s expression echoed the one he wore when talking about his girl. Feeling guilty, I waved him inside.
He threw me a smile before taking two large steps and plopping himself down on my bed.
“Hmm. You know that’s where I’m supposed to sleep, right?”
“Yep. They gave you the comfy mattress.” Mickey put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.
“And you wanted in my room because…?”
“Homework,” he said. I lifted a brow. He angled toward me, propping his head up with an arm. “Irish. Remember, that class you have tomorrow that you’re gonna sink in without my help?”
I groaned as I sat on the floor, bringing my knees up and burying my head my arms.
“I don’t want to study Irish,” I said, my voice muffled. “Just let me read something easy and go to sleep.”
Mickey glanced over at my desk. “CliffsNotes for Macbeth? You’re not even reading the actual text?”
“Don’t judge me.” I lifted my head. “And anyway, Ms. Pendragon said I could use the CliffsNotes until I caught up to the rest of the class.”
“Fair enough, but you don’t have English tomorrow. Irish, on the other hand…”
“No. I want something easy,” I said, dropping my head back into my arms.
“Never fear, lass, ye got me,” Mickey said, pulling off a flawless Irish accent.
I peeked up at him. “You say that as if it’s a good thing.”
Mickey spent the next hour quizzing me on pronunciation while I slogged through an entire chapter written in Irish, clueless as to what I was reading.
“Again.” He waved his hand toward me, the other still tucked under his head.
I groaned. Mickey had turned out to be a language purist, correcting my accent after each and every word I butchered—which turned out to be most of them. For someone who had only started Irish three weeks ago, him acting the part of the language snob was a little much.
“If they didn’t want you to say the letters, then why’d they write them? The whole ‘when bhg is together, it’s silent’ thing is stupid. If they want people to learn Irish, they should chop their words in half and spell everything the way it sounds.”
“So says the native English speaker. Read.”
After stumbling through a freakishly long word, I glared at Mickey. “This word has over twenty letters.” I paused long enough to count. “Twenty-three!”
He chuckled. “That’s the name of a city. Most words aren’t that long.”
“How do you even know that? School started less than a month ago. Unless this Irish course is insane, shouldn’t we have only covered colors and careers at this point?”
Mickey shrugged. “We already covered this chapter in class for pronunciation practice.”
I shook my head. He didn’t answer my question. “What, did the teacher translate the entire chapter for the class?”
“No.” Mickey turned onto his side and grinned. “So, you already know I’m a bit of a—”
“Goober?” I supplied.
“No, overachiever.”
I narrowed my eyes, not liking where this was going. “Continue.”
“Well, I found out the classes I’d be taking in advance, so…” He shrugged, his grin sheepish.
“Un-be-lievable. You are a nerd. A complete, absolute, unrecoverable nerd.” I let out a huff and fell back into the cozy carpet, my hands splayed out to the sides. Ooooh, it was so comfy—as comfy as a bed. And I was so tired of studying Irish.
“They say it takes one to know one,” he said, his sheepish smile still there.
I closed my eyes, resting them. “Um, no. I am your average I’ll-probably-go-to-college student. You are the nerd. Normal students don’t love learning—not in the same way nerds do, anyway. For us, learning is a means to an end. For example, I’m in a couple of advanced classes to get ready for college, but I’ll never do as well my brother did.”
“Sounds like you’re selling yourself short.” Mickey squinted in disapproval.
I shrugged. “Just a realist. I’m a sprinter, Caleb’s a marathoner. At the beginning of the school year, I get straight As. By midyear, they drop to mostly Bs, and come the end of the year, there’s at least one C in there. Maybe a D if the teacher didn’t like me.”
He chuckled. “Sounds like you don’t have enough incentive.”
I opened my mouth to say I had plenty of incentive, but Mickey quickly added, “So your brother’s a nerd, then?”
I snorted. “Nerd is putting it mildly.” I yawned, forcing myself to look at him through half-lidded eyes. “He skipped two grades. Two. The guy’s learning a third language, builds computer programs, and once built a robot. He’s like…” I paused, waving a hand into the air above me. “Super Nerd.”
I yawned again, stretching my arms overhead before letting them fall back to the floor. “Sometimes, you remind me of him.” My eyelids had gotten so heavy that it took too much effort to try to keep them open.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that a good thing?” he asked.
I tried to crack my lids open but yawned instead. “I think, yeah,” I mumbled, my tongue heavy in my mouth. “Yeah.”
Chapter 8
The next few days passed in a blur of classes and catch-up assignments. Honestly, there wasn’t much else to do—not even binge-eating junk food, since Maeve didn’t seem to believe in the stuff.
The only memorable thing that had happened was when I first stepped into Irish class and found Edon leaning back in his seat at the back of the room, his arms folded as he grinned at me. I’d ignored him and he seemed to have returned the favor. But sometimes I could feel him staring at me, and on the few occasions I’d check to see I wasn’t imagining things, his lips would turn up into a charming, crooked smile, turning my insides into a fluttery mess.
I’d stopped checking.
By the time my first assignment in Irish class was due, I was ready to kill it. Sure, I hadn’t figured out why people here couldn’t stop staring at me or why most everyone at school acted a little off. And I didn’t even want to think about why my meds hadn’t worn off yet, as evidenced by my Irish teacher looking like she had a dragon lurking underneath her very human surface. But after Mickey had grilled me for a couple of nights on Irish vocabulary, something seemed to shift, clicking into place. Irish just made sense now, and I wasn’t about to question it. I was lost in math, drowning in Shakespeare vocabulary, and physics made my brain feel like mush, so Irish had bec
ome a refuge from feeling like a complete idiot.
So yeah, I had the pronunciation down, and I totally knew I nailed the homework assignment—with the help of some advanced vocabulary courtesy of the Internet. When I’d asked to use the computer the night before, Maeve looked like I’d asked for drugs. I could have sworn her eye twitched as she unlocked the study door so I could get on her desktop PC.
“Ms. James, your turn,” Ms. Pendragon said, gesturing toward the half-podium sitting on top of the table at the front of the room.
I quickly stood up from my seat, a broad smile on my face, as I strode up the aisle and faced the class. I glanced down at the notecard in my hand and looked up, making sure to not look in Edon’s direction. Mickey frowned at me as if he knew I was up to no good.
I grinned even wider.
His frown deepened as he crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat.
The other students in the class shifted forward, like this might be awesome.
Well, I wasn’t about to disappoint.
“Mo Chlann,” I began, pausing for dramatic effect before launching into the description of my family.
There was a long pause as Mrs. Pendragon’s jaw worked. Everyone else sat in their seats, frozen. I swallowed. My assignment wasn’t quite going over the way I’d expected.
“Ms. James. I am certain that your mother is not, in fact, a hamster. And your father smelling of elderberry… I am assuming you are referring to the alcoholic beverage. I asked you to describe your fam—” She paused as a snicker started in the back. She shot them a glare, silencing them. “—your family. Not insult them.”
“But I didn’t. At least not my brother.”
“Yes, you mentioned he was cold.”
“No, cool.”
Mrs. Pendragon arched a single brow.
I shook my head. “Fine. But you recognized the movie, right?”
She blinked.
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail?”
“Do you mean to say you plagiarized as well?”
Crap.
“No! I didn’t plagiarize anything. Everyone’s watched that movie, right?” I looked around the class. No one looked at me now except for Mickey. And probably Edon, but my gaze skipped over his seat out a healthy sense of self-preservation. I didn’t need to look at him to know that he was smirking at me—and it’d be enough to make my stomach a knotted mess.
“Oh, come on. It’s not that old. Well, maybe it is, but someone’s got to have seen it.”
More blank stares.
“Ms. James…”
“Never mind.” I trudged back to my desk in a huff.
Mrs. Pendragon took a deep breath. “As a reminder to the class, please confine yourselves to the assigned vocabulary when completing future assignments.”
I ground my teeth.
“Your father smelled like elderberries?” Mickey whispered to me as he stared straight ahead at the next shmuck telling everyone his sister’s hair color.
“It’s a quote from an awesome movie.”
“That no one’s ever heard of.”
“This place keeps getting worse.”
“Well, people here are very—”
The opening door cut Mickey off. A wispy, timid boy handed Ms. Pendragon a note before disappearing.
After reading it, Ms. Pendragon looked up at me. “Ms. James, you’ve been called to the office.”
“For what? I haven’t done anything.”
Mrs. Pendragon held out her hand with the note, waiting. I huffed again as I stood up and walked over to grab the pink slip of paper, not even glancing at it as I left the classroom.
“I do not believe…” Mrs. Pendragon said.
Mickey murmured something I couldn’t really make out.
I was only a few steps down the hall when Mickey caught up to me.
“She actually let you leave?”
He shrugged. “I convinced her you needed moral support.”
The lady at the office told us to go the guidance counselor. It turned out to be the same guy who’d given me my school schedule a week ago.
“Ms. James. It is an honor—” Mr. Hayes began. Mickey cleared his throat. “Oh. Oh, yes. I, uh, we have, that is to say. Um.”
Mickey cleared his throat more forcefully. The counselor jumped.
“Your caseworker is on the phone and wishes to speak with you. She has indicted that my presence during the conversation would be appreciated, although she was hesitant to explain the details.”
I stared. “She wants you to monitor our phone call?”
Mr. Hayes’ eyes widened as he darted a glance to Mickey and back to me. “Not monitor, per se. I believe she requested my presence with the idea that I would play a supporting role.”
He glanced at Mickey and then quickly back to me. “If that pleases you, Ms. James.”
If that pleases me? He talked like some chivalrous knight out of a medieval movie. “Um. Yes?”
The guidance counselor nodded and ushered us behind the receptionist and toward his office. He offered me his phone on outstretched hands. I almost expected him to kneel like a knight would when offering something to his queen. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
I gingerly picked up the receiver, eying him for any sign that he was messing with me—a quirk of a smile, a glint in the eye. But no, nothing.
I cleared my throat, bringing the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hey, Kella.” Deena’s voice was subdued as she continued, “I got some information you should know about and I didn’t think it should wait until my next home visit. I was gonna tell you when you got home, but Ms. Reid didn’t feel—well, she thought your school counselors might be better at this sort of thing,”
“Counselors—why? Wait, is this about Caleb? Is he okay? He’s not getting worse, is he?”
“No, honey. Caleb’s…”
Something was wrong—I could hear it in her voice. It had to be Caleb. Tears beaded at the corners of my eyes.
“What’s going on? What’s happened to Caleb?”
“Honey, this ain’t about Caleb. He’s doing okay right now, I promise. It’s your daddy.”
“My dad? Then Caleb’s okay?”
“Yes, honey, he’s stable.”
I took a deep breath. She was telling the truth.
“But your daddy…” Deena trailed off.
“What? Let me guess, one of his ex-girlfriends posted bail.”
“Kella, he’s dead.”
I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat.
“Dead?”
“Yes, honey.”
It took me a moment to process the word “dead”—like it was some complex math problem that my brain kept stumbling over. “Dead” wasn’t a thing I’d ever connected to Cory James before. To Caleb? Yeah. But my dad—he was the bogeyman, the ever-present bad guy shutting down anything I was trying to do with my life. Yeah, I’d wished he were dead sometimes, but it was more in a wishing-unicorns-existed kind of way. To have him really, permanently gone… I didn’t even know what to think.
“What happened?” I meant the question to come out strong, but my voice squeaked.
“They’re not sure on that. The, uh, cellmate said your dad had some visitor and when he came back to the cell…” The line went silent. “Honey, you sure you wanna hear this? Dead is dead and…”
“I do.” The words came out strangled.
More silence.
“Really, I do. I’m fine.”
“Okay, hon.” Another pause. “Far as they can tell, your daddy grabbed a shiv from his cellmate. They had a fight over it—the camera caught all that. But the cellmate says your dad fell on it. On purpose.”
“On purpose,” I echoed.
“They, uh, they don’t know yet. They said they’re waiting on some reports.”
A few moments passed, punctuated by the ticking of the guidance counselor’s clock.
“Okay,” I said.
Deena drew in a ragged breath.
Static crackled as she exhaled into the receiver.
“One more thing, honey. About your momma.”
My heart thumped in my chest, like it knew what she was about to say before I did. I looked at Mickey, but he stood staring at the blank wall beside us.
“We found out—they told me…” Another burst of phone static. “She died twelve years ago.”
Blood rushed from my face to my toes and I wobbled on my feet, like someone who’d just taken a punch in the gut. And I had. My mom. Yeah, I didn’t know her, but I’d always hoped that, I don’t know… That she’d come back one day, telling us our dad had lied. That she hadn’t just abandoned us when I was three. That she had some really, really good reason for not coming back for years.
I wanted to scream, to cry all at once. Instead, I asked, “How?”
My voice sounded distant to my own ears, like it’d come from someone else’s mouth. The room seemed to evaporate before me as my brain worked overtime, trying to hold back my emotions long enough to figure out what this all meant for me. For Caleb.
After a pause, Deena said, “Drug overdose. I’m sorry, Kella. I’m real sorry.”
My emotions roared to life, growing into a fiery inferno and burning all of my well-hidden fantasies and hopes—things I’d tucked away from even myself—to ash.
There would be no red-headed, smiley mom to swoop in and save the day, to take me out of foster care and into a real family. No mom to sit next to me at Caleb’s bedside, waiting for him to wake up. No dad I could scream or curse at, face him down for what he’d done to my brother. I had no one now. Not even Caleb—not really.
From my bed, I stared through my window at the oak in the front yard. The oak’s limbs dipped up and down in the wind like they were bobbing for apples. It was easy to not think of anything else.
Sometimes I’d hear Maeve banging pots around as if she were trying to smash them. Now and then, Maeve and Mickey’s voices climbed in argument, always ending with slamming doors.
I just watched the oak branches outside my window bob up and down, up and down.
But when they stopped moving—when there wasn’t a breeze in the sky—the nightmares would begin.
But really, day-mares was more like it.