Cruel Abandon

by S. Massery

  “And I’ll probably come, too,” Liam adds. “Since I’m now getting paid to watch you.”

  His expression after Mom’s back is turned…

  I grip the door tighter to hide the way my knees weaken, and he winks. And then they’re gone, and I’m alone once more.

  I don’t want to be attracted to him. I don’t want to kiss him again.

  I definitely don’t want to see him naked.

  Quit lying, Skylar.

  Fine. If any of those things happen, it wouldn’t be the worst…

  Ugh.

  A kiss or two and a mind-blowing orgasm, and I’m a goner? No way. I may be stuck with him, but that doesn’t mean anything.

  A prick of pain on my neck snaps me out of my thoughts. There’s a bit of blood under my fingernail.

  Huh.

  On a whim, I pull out my phone and text Dr. Penn.

  Me: I scratched my neck until I bled… and didn’t realize it.

  Dr. Penn: Do you remember how we take mental inventory of ourselves?

  Me: Yes…

  My phone lights up with her request to video chat, and I accept.

  “Skylar,” she greets me. “It’s been a while.”

  I grimace. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  She waves her hand. She’s the type of cool mom-aged lady, curly gray hair and a kind face. Her dark-red reading glasses are perched on her nose, and she looks down the phone at me. “Not your fault. School is tough enough as it is without trying to make therapy appointments. Although you could’ve met with one of my colleagues in the city.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Okay.” she snaps back to business. “Let’s sit.”

  I take a seat at the kitchen table, propping my phone on the napkin holder.

  “We’ll begin by centering ourselves. Start with your toes and work your way up, relaxing each muscle.”

  I close my eyes automatically and follow her lead, slipping into meditation mode.

  “Note which parts of you are more resistant,” she says softly. “What muscles feel too tense or stiff. You can say it out loud as you come to them.”

  “My thighs,” I answer. It’s habit to compartmentalize everything, so I just rattle off each thing as I come to it. “Abs. Stomach. Rib cage. Shoulders.” I pause, then add, “Neck and head.”

  I open my eyes and find her eyebrows crinkled.

  “Um, I fell down a hill and found a dead girl. The one who’s been missing.”

  To her credit, she doesn’t react negatively. We’ve learned over the years that her worry just shuts me down. And right now, I’m grateful we know this.

  Her stoicism helps me tell her the whole story, and she listens without blinking an eye. I finish by telling her about my conversation with the detective about Jasmine.

  “Who?” she asks. “Someone from Rose Hill?”

  I nod. “Detective Masters.”

  Her screen jerks in her grip. “I didn’t know he was tracking the cases in Boston,” she murmurs to herself. “Let me know if he calls again, won’t you?”

  I squint at her. “Why? He said he knew me…”

  “Skylar, your brain is trying to protect itself by blocking out memories of your trauma. And believe me when I say, Detective Masters would like nothing more than for you to remember.”

  Oh god.

  “He was there?” I ask.

  Her chin lifts. “Skylar. Look at what you’re doing.”

  I freeze. I’m picking at my neck again, digging at my skin with my fingernail.

  Slowly, I lower my hand.

  “That sort of thing seems to be self-soothing,” she says. “But we don’t want you to bleed every time you’re uncomfortable, right? You could go back to using a rubber band.”

  On my wrist, snapping it to bring me back to the present.

  Not my favorite pastime, but I suppose it beats scratching myself to death.

  “Mom showed up today,” I blurt out. “She wants to pay Liam to watch me.”

  Dr. Penn snorts. “That woman comes up with creative workarounds.”

  I nod once, then hesitate. “He’s been acting weird, too. Jake, too, but mainly Liam. He actually talked to me for the first time in… forever. And then he broke into my apartment and installed a security system.”

  She frowns. “How did you perceive that?”

  I cross my arms. “As an invasion of privacy. But… sort of better, knowing that at least if someone breaks in, the police will be notified. The girls who went missing, all of them are dead except one named Jasmine. But… what if she’s out there somewhere? Buried like Natalie?”

  Dr. Penn hums. “Only Detective Masters mentioned her, right? I’ll let you in on something that I probably shouldn’t. Can you keep this between us?”

  I straighten and nod. “Absolutely.”

  “Detective Masters has worked on a case with a missing girl before. I think he’s drawing conclusions based on circumstantial evidence in his investigation. When someone can’t remain impartial, it’s important to look at everything as a whole.”

  “So…” I bite my lip. “He could just be making connections on data he considers related.”

  Dr. Penn gives me a slight smile. “All I ask of you, Skylar, is that you continue to monitor yourself through this ordeal. If you need to come home, no one would think less of you.”

  I exhale. “Thanks.”

  “Reach out if you need me.”

  I force a smile and end the call.

  There’s nothing left to do except go to bed, and maybe wrap my hands in mittens.

  Oh, and try not to think about Liam conspiring against me with my mother.

  19

  Liam

  Kathy, Skylar’s mother, stands in front of me with her hands in her pockets. There’s a car running behind her, waiting to take us to her daughter’s apartment. I’m not sure why she wanted to see me first, but I woke up to a text asking if she could meet me.

  So here we are, standing on the sidewalk. Freezing our balls off.

  She extends an envelope toward me, and I balk. Anyone with a brain would realize that it probably contains more cash than the average monthly rent, and I fucking hesitate.

  Because do I really want to be paid to watch Skylar? I’ve already been doing it for a week for free.

  “Take it, Liam,” she urges. “I feel… guilty. Asking as well as paying. I remember how upset you were after Skylar posted that video, and she was devastated at hurting you. If anything comes of this, maybe you’ll forgive her.”

  “So this is bribe money? To reconcile?” An interesting turn of events.

  But I take the envelope and stick it in my back pocket, nodding once. Whether it works out or not is up to Sky.

  “Think of it however you want. I just need to keep my daughter safe.”

  I narrow my eyes. “What if the safest thing is for her to remember what happened to her?”

  She steps closer, and I stiffen.

  “Would it be safe for her to remember the worst month of her life?”

  “It might help her cope with these unexplained emotions,” I say in a level voice. I told Jake much the same, but he only disregarded it with a wave of his hand.

  She, however, stares at me like I’m a stranger. An imposter in the boy next door’s skin.

  “I know her.” I lift my chin. “You recognize that.”

  Quietly, she says, “I do.”

  “Then let me do what you want: I’ll keep her safe. My way.” This is it: she could decide that the risk isn’t worth it. Me being a risk, specifically with her daughter, could cause casualties.

  A low time for jokes, but the thought stirs something in my abdomen. A hunger for more of what Sky has to offer.

  “You have until winter break,” she says finally. “If she’s still acting this way… She’s not coming back to Ashburn.”

  There has been no big blow-up on Sky’s part. No irrationality. A desire to drink after speaking with the police seems perfectly normal to me. Yet,
this has everything to do with how she’s reacted to current trauma. Her gray hair and piercings, a tattoo I’m positive her mother doesn’t know about, the black clothes. Her mom sees it as a form of breaking down, not breaking out. Why would she see those things as independence when she thinks she knows her daughter better than Skylar knows herself?

  She gestures for me to get in the car.

  The conversation is clearly over, with her deadline stamped into my skin. We ride in silence, and Kathy stays quiet the entire way up to Sky’s apartment. We approach to an open door and voices drifting into the hallway.

  “You can’t go,” Sky pleads. “There’s still finals, and—”

  “This is final,” a man says loudly.

  I bristle.

  Skylar’s mom glances at me and speeds up.

  We both reach the door at the same time, and the scene in front of us? Not what I was expecting.

  20

  Sky

  A commotion wakes me up.

  Given the week we’ve had, my skin pricks with alarm. I grab a baseball bat Dad gave me as a joke and quietly crack my door.

  But it’s just Whitney.

  I swing it fully open, and she whirls around. Her eyes are red, but she appears steady. At least for now. Still, I’m not prepared for when she lunges forward, her fingers biting into my arms.

  “The girl in the woods,” she says. “It was Nat. She’s dead, Skylar.”

  I frown. “Did they say that on the news? We can’t assume—”

  She laughs. Loud and in my face, and it’s not a good laugh. It’s the kind that sounds like it’s disguising knives or barbed with poison.

  She says, “God, who even are you? You were just trying to tell me she was gone the other day, and now you want to preach hope? The detectives called me down to the station and told me it was her. They asked me to identify something she was wearing, Skylar. My best friend was fucking murdered and her parents were too out of their minds to see her.”

  I don’t have a reply. I open and close my mouth but in the end decide to go with silence. What would I say, anyway? That I was the one who found her? I could describe every inch of her, including the gaping slash across her throat.

  “My parents are here,” she informs me. “They’re helping me move out.”

  I freeze. “What?”

  She flips her hair back. “Do you seriously expect me to stay?”

  Did I?

  Maybe.

  Up until right this moment, death didn’t feel like anything other than an unstoppable force. But it’s a wrecking ball, too. It just doesn’t snuff out a life—it demolishes everyone close.

  This is Whitney’s destruction, and I’m powerless against it.

  I wander into the living room. Her parents are already laying out boxes in the living room, our furniture shoved aside. Their pleasantries seem mostly cast aside as they work alongside each other.

  My parents would never.

  Any attempts to help each other would be met by snide remarks, and having them both under the same roof for an extended period of time is… unpleasant.

  Whitney rolls out a suitcase, dropping it next to the boxes. They systematically fill those boxes, starting with her room and then migrating to the bathroom, the kitchen.

  I make one last-ditch effort for her to stay. Mom will do something crazy if she realizes I’ll be living alone, and I can’t handle that right now.

  “You can’t go,” I try, facing Whitney. I try to grab her arm, but she maneuvers out of my reach. “There’s still finals, and—”

  “This is final,” her father answers loudly. Quieter, he says, “Just let us do this in peace. We’re taking our baby home.”

  The apartment door, which must’ve been ajar, bangs open. It crashes against the wall. My mother and Liam fill the doorway.

  I suppress my groan. So much for not letting Mom find out.

  “What is going on here?” Mom demands.

  Before the divorce, she was soft-spoken. Somewhere in the middle of that mess, she grew a backbone. It was an impressive transformation, and now…

  Well, it’s harder to lie down and take shit once you’ve stood up for yourself.

  She squares her shoulders back and strides in, pausing next to me.

  “We’re moving Whitney back home,” her dad informs us. “The city is too dangerous.”

  Mom will protest. She’ll say that there’s an alarm system, and the school is taking extra precautions, everything will be fine.

  But she doesn’t.

  “Quite right,” she says. Her attention flips to me. “I simply can’t let you stay here alone, Skylar.”

  Whitney breezes by, smirking.

  “Mom—”

  “You can switch to online. The school will understand.”

  My throat constricts. I cannot go home. While I love my mother dearly, I just… I won’t do that to myself. My eyes burn, and I glare at the ceiling. I will the tears to hold back and am half a second from rushing to the bathroom.

  Losing it right now is not an option.

  “She can stay with me.”

  Mom and I both whirl toward Liam. He hasn’t moved into the apartment much farther than the front entry hallway, and he leans against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

  “What?” I sputter. Stay with… Liam? No. That might be worse.

  “I have an extra bedroom.” He shrugs. “It doesn’t have a bed, but that can be fixed.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Why even offer it?”

  Mom tsks. “It’s a very generous offer.”

  “It’ll help me keep an eye on Skylar.” He’s the picture of charming innocence.

  I’ve never wanted to punch someone more.

  “I think it’s a great idea. Skylar?”

  I grimace. “You’re leaving the final decision up to me?” Of course I’m going to say no. It’s on the tip of my tongue. All the reasons not to flood forward. He hates me. He kissed me. I’m pretty sure I hate him back, even with the kiss counting against that. He has no self-control. Not to mention the time I woke up tied to my own damn bed…

  “It’s me or back to Stone Ridge,” Liam says. “And no one’s there except your mom and my parents.”

  Evil bastard.

  They’re all waiting for my decision. But what kind of decision is it, really? Out of the pan and into the flames.

  “Fine.” I cross my arms and glare at Liam. “You win.”

  He winks. “Get used to saying that, angel.”

  What I had hoped would be a lowkey Monday turns into a clusterfuck. Mom gets on the phone with a moving company and shoos Liam and I out the door. I do my best not to speak to him—it’s better for my anger if I don’t even look at him.

  There are so many other options. Solutions. I could’ve moved back on campus! Or found another friend to room with, like Taryn. Or… I don’t know, someone other than him.

  He steers me to the coffee shop on the corner. It’s not my favorite—I prefer the one in the other direction—but I don’t say anything. He orders us two coffees and points to a table.

  Grudgingly, I sit.

  “Tell me what happened,” he says. “Now that your mom has a job to keep her busy, and no one else gives a fuck.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to.”

  He appraises me.

  “Stop staring at me like that. I’m fine.”

  “You look like you haven’t slept.”

  The barista calls his name, and he leaps up. It gives me a moment to exhale shakily and come up with a better excuse as to why I don’t want to talk about it. When I think about it, it’s sort of like a dream. Like I’m not really here.

  If it wasn’t all anyone could talk about, I would be able to convince myself I made it up.

  There’s a missing poster with Natalie’s face on it attached to the corkboard over Liam’s shoulder. The news is talking about the missing girls from Ashburn on the television, the same as every other morning. The Breaking News scr
olls along the bottom. There’s a video on the upper left corner showing the police tape across the entrance to the reservoir’s hiking trail.

  I’m not sure of the appropriate reaction. My life hasn’t been drastically altered, not split into Before and After. I know for a fact that Taryn probably would’ve handled it differently. She’d be right along with Whitney, packing a bag and heading home.

  But me? Hell, I’m fighting to stay.

  Why?

  “Earth to Sky,” Liam says, waving his hand in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”

  “Back to the woods,” I murmur without thinking.

  He grunts. “Even more reason to talk about it.”

  “So, um, Howl started back up again?”

  His eyes immediately darken. “Who told you that?”

  I shrug and glance away. It was a guess, but his reaction…

  If I thought I might be safe from him in public, I was mistaken.

  He reaches across the table and grabs my jaw, pulling me toward him. His fingers dig into my skin, parting my lips. I brace myself on the table.

  “Who. Told. You. That?”

  And no one around us does a damn thing.

  A tremor goes through me. I contemplate lying, that I was just guessing, but I don’t think he’d believe me. And now that I have to live with the jerk…

  “Your face,” I whisper. “You had bruises when you broke into my apartment the first time. Then I saw you with Colt and RJ…”

  He smirks, possibly enamored at the idea that I was watching him. Of course he’d get off on that kind of shit. “Spying on me?”

  “Not intentionally.”

  The cocky smile is still on his face, so I gently pull back.

  “You want to know where those bruises came from?”

  I freeze.

  His hold softens, and his thumb brushes over my lips. “I’d tell you, but we all know how you are at keeping secrets.”

  I can’t move.

  Blood rushes to my face, and it’s painfully hot with embarrassment.

  He releases me entirely, and I fall back into my seat.

  You know what? Fuck him. I’m a great secret keeper. I’ve kept plenty of my own, and other people’s, too. No one asks me about them because they assume I don’t know. It’s the worst sort of agony to have a piece of information and be unable to tell anyone.