Hassan gusted out an exhale. Only he could flee violence in Boston to get gunned down on a Kentucky farm. Well, he didn’t care what Edy’s grandfather said. No one would shoot him naked. Which meant he had to actually get up. Hassan toed around for his boxers in bed, found them, and jerked his foot upward, all the while keeping an eye on her stoic grandpa. He jarred Edy as he managed to pull the underwear back on.
She stirred and yawned leisurely. “Hassan! Awake or asleep. You get so fidgety sometimes.” She elbowed and half missed, face dreamy. But was she crazy? Did she think them back in Boston? He wanted to scream at her to at least wake up and watch him die.
That’s when she opened an eye, made a crazy cat sound, and sat bolt upright, dragging all the covers as she pinned them to her chest.
“Oh my God, are you serious?” Edy cried.
Her eyes brimmed as he climbed out of bed and into yesterday’s jeans. For Frank’s part, he stood as still as if painted on a wall. Except, he still had an eye on Hassan and a hand on his rifle. Was this a mind game of some sort? If so, dude had already won.
“Listen,” Edy said. “It’s not his fault. I pushed him into this. I always push him into … this.” She cringed. “Take it out on me. Please. I’m begging you.”
“Cake,” Hassan said as he shrugged into a sweatshirt. “Don’t.” He wouldn’t be able to walk out if she didn’t hold it together. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
“You’ve got what?” she cried. “Getting shot?”
She had a point there. He didn’t have the Green Mile thing down.
This would’ve been comical had it not actually been happening. But this was bravado, right? Frank couldn’t expect to get away with murdering him. Not that the thought held any comfort; he had to die for someone to try and get away with it all. He supposed the man before him could pull it off. He looked sharp and determined. Technically, Hassan figured, tons of people got away with murder all the time. He watched TV enough to know that. At that moment, he imagined a guy eating popcorn with a grin of accomplishment spread wide. It would only take Frank a pull of the trigger and a good idea to be that guy and ‘good idea’ was assuming Gaitlin police were sharp in the homicide department. He didn’t even want to get into the farmland good for burying behind the Reynolds’ house. So, yeah, rest in peace Hassan Pradhan.
“Let’s go!” Frank said and Hassan jumped right into his Nikes.
Now would be a good time to form a plan.
“I’m coming,” Edy announced. “Wherever you’re talking him, I’m going.”
She jumped up; blanket and sheets wrapped around her, and made life a thousand times worse. Look. He loved her. Loved her past mountain tops, over desert ranges, and through shark-infested seas, yadda yadda. But the last thing he needed was her flaunting her nakedness right now.
“Outside,” Frank said and about faced out the door.
Edy maneuvered within a cocoon of blankets as she worked on getting dressed. Hassan grabbed his coat and followed Frank. He sped up when Edy shouted his name.
Around back, the property sloped well past the chicken coop. They followed it down and into a thicket of trees. Hassan counted and measured his breaths as they walked: in, out, slow. A branch snapped underfoot and Frank swung round, rifle ready. Hassan threw up his hands in defense. Nothing. Frank shot him a scowl and moved on, deeper into the woods.
Hassan thought about his mom as he walked and how her last thoughts of him had, no doubt, been angry ones. He thought about his dad and that oversized voice of his, booming with pride if Hassan got something half right. He tried to imagine not seeing either one of his parents again and couldn’t. He tried to imagine a way out of this situation and couldn’t.
Fangs flashed in a streak before him and Frank’s rifle swung for it. Hassan jerked. One snarl. One bang. One thud. Done.
“Whew,” Frank said. “Damn stray’s been harassing my chickens forever. Diseased by the looks of it, too.”
Hassan’s ears rung from the shot. He told himself he shook from the cold and only stood, immobilized, to gather thoughts.
Edy’s grandfather gave him a once over and snorted. “Now, that you’ve been sufficiently scared, let’s you and me talk expectations, you understand?” Hassan’s head bobbed in agreement. “I’d like to know the boy stupid enough or in love enough to lay down with a girl in her Kentucky granddaddy’s home. You see, this walk is so I can figure out which one you are.”
~~~
Edy flew from the bedroom as she buttoned her jeans and vaulted right in pursuit of Hassan. She found her grandmother boiling water in the kitchen.
Boiling water at a time like this.
“Where are they?” Edy demanded.
Her grandmother stood on tiptoe to reach for an overhead cabinet. Once open, she squinted at an assortment of boxes. “I’m looking for a small wooden container with Chinese—”
Edy wanted to fling herself from the kitchen, but her grandmother was that quick. She gripped her arm and squeezed. “What’s between them is theirs. You leave those boys to it.”
She stared at the woman. What brand of craziness was this? Hassan needed her; therefore, no one would get in her way.
Edy snatched free and rushed for the door. A gun blasted and she screamed.
The screaming didn’t stop. Not as she rounded the house at top speed. Not as she slipped when the ground gave way in an unexpected slope. Only when she tumbled into a roll and choked did Edy’s screams subside.
Face down in the dirt, her heart detonated, eviscerating itself on a kamikaze mission. Pain slapped her blind, gutted her hollow, and tossed her soul to the wind. A slow tremor built from her belly up; pressure like a ruptured dam. Hassan, she thought. Oh, please, don’t leave me Hassan.
Edy looked up to find her grandmother, grandfather, and Hassan standing over her.
“A chicken ran by. Did you see it?” her grandmother said.
“Let the girl alone,” her grandfather said. “I obviously scared her killing that wild dog. Not my intention.” He extended a hand.
Edy’s mouth sputtered. “Not your intention!” She scrambled off the ground, body juddering like a clock with slipshod springs. “Are you crazy? Did you take him out and pretend to shoot him as some form of discipline?” No wonder her mother was hardcore.
Her granddad, for his part, looked uncomfortable. “The plan wasn’t to make either one of you think I’d shoot him, especially given what you’ve been through. What I wanted was to talk to Hassan, man to man, about his intentions toward you. Yes, I’m old fashioned. I’m an old man and I don’t apologize for that. Now, I recognize times have changed, but no kin of mine will get taken advantage of under my roof on my watch.”
Edy willed herself to still, and found amazingly, that she did. “He’s not taking advantage of me. He never has. He never would.”
“Yes. I get that impression, too.” Her grandfather started for the house with his rifle. His nutty wife scurried after.
Later, much later, after Edy had worn herself down with pacing, her outrage melted to relief. Her relief melted into shame. She owed her grandparents an incredible apology and when she found her grandmother in the living room, she made it known.
Edy put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry about earlier. I’m sorry we … disobeyed. I don’t know what we were thinking.” Her cheeks sparked and overheated.
Her grandmother smiled faintly. “I probably can guess.”
Edy doubted that, but she appreciated the sentiment. Especially when she was so far past wrong.
Her grandmother lit the fireplace. “We’ve been wondering why you’re really here. The two of you looked like folks on the run from the second I saw you. I wonder if the people you’re running from know how far you’re willing to go.”
She didn’t mean Reggie Knight and his gun. She didn’t mean police or the media either.
Edy’s grandmother looked up pointedly, pinning Edy at the place she stood.
“Whe
n the voices tell you to start trusting someone, you ought to perk up and listen.”
Edy swallowed. It seemed rude to ask if she was being figurative or literal.
“No more sleeping together under our roof, not unless you’re man and wife.”
Edy agreed. It didn’t seem like much to ask. As she had the thought, Hassan and her grandfather came in. He was without the rifle.
“Okay,” Frank said. “Let’s sit down and have a family discussion. Don’t leave a thing out.”
Family? Discussion? Edy looked around. Both grandparents looked so expectant. Hassan hovered, lips parted.
“I don’t understand,” she said. What could they possibly want from her?
“Trust us,” her grandmother said.
She exchanged a look with Hassan, then nearly lost her eyes when he nodded. He actually wanted to talk them. Had Frank thumped his head?
“They’re not so bad,” Hassan whispered. “And he wasn’t really going to shoot me.”
Edy made eye contact with him. Did he want to confide in them? If so, to what end? Did he think the answer to their problems—and they had plenty—would be solved by dumping their burdens on an adult?
Hassan met Edy’s look of disbelief with a shrug. Why not try? They were already on the losing team, in a relationship constantly facing extinction. Could they give honesty a try?
Their story flowed down in streams for her grandparents, stopped up with occasional questions. Both she and Hassan unloaded as the fire ebbed and blazed. They told the story of a girl and boy who could never be and only wished they could, of a girl and boy who dared try anyway. And here they sat with Wyatt dead or dying and uncertainty ahead.
“You could get her pregnant,” Edy’s grandmother said.
“Okay, what? No!” Hassan’s head swiveled round as Edy jerked, burned by the proposal.
“Mary, shush.” Her grandfather waved an arm before turning back to the two of them and rubbing his chin. He’d been doing that the whole time they told their story. “She thinks she’s a romantic,” he apologized. “And she doesn’t think things through.”
“A shotgun wedding,” her grandmother blurted. “Your daddy probably needs a shotgun on account of being from Boston, huh?”
“Why would he need …”
“Because that’s the way it works!” Her grandmother jerked back and sprayed the room with her imaginary machine gun, Capone-style. “You marry my daughter, copper, or get the lead,” she said in a voice with absurd bass.
“What?” Edy said. “Can someone help me with her?”
Edy’s grandfather shook his head. Hassan wore the grin of a man thrilled.
“I want her to do that again,” he said. “Let me film it this time.”
Her grandmother looked ready to cooperate until Frank waved her away. “No shotguns or portrayal of gun usage, pearl. I think we need options more civil than violence.”
Mary dropped to her favorite seat, the coffee table, and made a great show of pouting. “Well, that’s silly. What’s happening to them is not all that ‘civil.’ Being forced to turn away from your true self is, in itself, an act of violence.”
Edy thought of dancing, classically or otherwise, and how she’d treated it like a hobby on instruction. She thought of Harvard and not going there; she thought of arranged marriages and Hassan. She thought of pressing to the wall, cornered, beaten down, knocked out with worries. No more. Not for her.
~~~
Edy powered on her laptop and a pinpoint of light whirled and pin wheeled before igniting into a sunburst. She logged on and got dumped at her desktop, where she stared at a pink ballet slipper until it faded into oblivion. The massive screen with its backlight scorched into her retinas. She dimmed the settings and went back to staring in the dark before wondering what she waited on.
She logged onto Facebook, but it so wasn’t her thing. It was so not her thing, in fact, that her last status update read:
edy phelps: Leahy? West Roxbury? Please. South End’s coming for you! #Pradhan #Dyson
The West Roxbury game existed on another time continuum altogether, in a life where safety came with seat belts and passwords or double checking before crossing the street. Edy deleted her status with a heavy hand.
She moved on to staring at her profile picture next. She looked stupid. Stupid and young. Could she possibly have aged in the span of a few days? She thought of those people who went into shock and turned their hair white. That was real, wasn’t it? What was ‘real’, anyway? These days, not even she felt real to herself.
She poked at the screen with a finger and drew away at the rainbow prism she made. In the pic, she wore a purple knit cap with a fishtail braid peeking out. Her grin sat big and Hassan’s bigger as he injected himself sideways.
The laptop’s cursor blinked in expectation. Why had she brought the machine, if not to use it? She shoved it back and pushed away, only to wonder what had happened. Edy inhaled, exhaled, and decided to try again. She’d update her status if nothing else.
edy phelps: Had to get away for awhile. Be back in time for school. Keep Wyatt Green in your thoughts.
She stared at the screen as Hassan slept on the floor, snoring like some great lion at rest. What had made her put the part in about Wyatt? Better still, should she delete it?
The notifications chimed in almost immediately; Edy decided to turn her back on them. Light illuminated the cut of Hassan’s t-shirt covered shoulder as fabric draped the peaks and valleys of chiseled chest and rigid abs. Black hair tumbled carelessly into his face and whatever he dreamed about twitched his mouth in a frown, nose crinkled as if something smelled foul.
A tangle of words of escaped his lips. Only ‘kamina’ or ‘distrustful’ was decipherable. Edy sighed and turned back to the computer.
chloe castillo: OMG. Edy, are you OK? Is Hassan with you?
Edy’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. She had strict instructions not to divulge her location, but she could give Chloe some info, right? Unlike the other losers on the thread—Sandra, Eva, Aimee Foss—who she still thought of as Hassan’s redhead, yuck, Chloe wasn’t standing by pop eyed, gawking at the ten-car pileup. She really did care about the two of them and waited by anxious.
Edy decided on an inbox message:
edy phelps: I think ‘OK’ is a pretty strong word. But we’re cool.
Chloe’s message came back instantly:
chloe castillo: I didn’t think you’d write! Lawrence said to give you a minute and let you gather your thoughts.
So they were together. Edy glanced at the time. It seemed she and Hassan weren’t the only ones into late night tree hurdling. Or had she made a leap in thinking?
She asked if Lawrence was with her.
chloe castillo: Yeah. He wants to know where you are. Now.
Edy imagined someone trying to murder her closest friend, then that same friend disappearing. She’d demand answers, too.
edy phelps: In Kentucky at my grandparents’ house. We’re safe.
The answer took forever.
chloe castillo: You don’t have grandparents in Kentucky.
edy phelps: I do now.
Nine
The days trudged in cold quiet one after the other, with only the faintest reminders of a holiday season. A crooked, branch-starved tree went up one day and on the next, they adorned it with shatterproof ornaments and a single string of lights.
The holiday season hung like a veil without all the trappings of Christmas. Edy found herself staring out the window at a dirt covered ground, heart heavy with the absence of snow. Brilliant lights twinkling her house and the rush of holiday bustle coursed like withdrawal through her veins. Edy needed a downtown where she could window shop with Hassan and ogle decorations and a pond where they’d skate hand in hand ‘til fatigued. She wanted twin Dysons all handsome and teasing in crimson ties with Lawrence burying a blush when they got up to their stupidness. The swollen, towering, festive tree, practically blinding with lights at t
he Dyson house and that five-foot gingerbread replica that had been everything from Buckingham Palace complete with guards to Rockefeller Plaza over the years. They made Christmas grand, Edy realized, and she missed that now that it was gone.
A draft ran through the Kentucky house and right through her. Some small, sullen part of her wondered if she were the source, with all these thoughts of Christmas and missing home. Edy steeled herself with a blanket around the shoulders, gave Hassan a glance as he slept, and geared up the laptop for a peek on Facebook. There really wasn’t much else to do on their farm. Anyway, it didn’t take long to fire up. Or to see that she had an arsenal of notifications and inbox messages. Getting shot at made a girl irresistible, it turned out.
Edy heard from her father on Christmas morning in a conversation that skidded to a meandering end when she asked about her mom. Campaigning. Campaigning on Christmas Day? Without her husband? That sounds was weird even for her. Hadn’t she dragged them around as a family because she needed to present an ideal political image?
On the up side, her father had news about Wyatt. Real news.
“Well,” her father said carefully. “The bullets hit his sternum and lungs. In fact, he’s had to have surgical repairs made on one of his lung. He was on a ventilator, but he’s doing better now. He’s already moved on to respiratory therapy.”
Hassan let loose a rocket of an exhale when she told him. And it hit her. Wyatt had taken a bullet for meant him. One life would have been traded for another. How do you begin to repay such a debt? Who do you owe it to, exactly? To the life taken away or to those grieving and left behind? Well, on that day they wouldn’t find out.
Edy whipped Hassan into the fiercest embrace and squealed at the rare bit of luck that let her catch him falling off balance. They tumbled together in a tangle of limbs and he shifted to bear the brunt of the fall with his shoulder.
They lay on the floor of her grandparents’ kitchen, smiling sort of stupidly and content with that. His gaze swept her face in little arcs, like a brush painting on canvas, delicate in strokes.
“If you’re not going to kiss get off my floor,” Edy’s grandmother said as she appeared, upside down above them. “Anyway, I haven’t mopped in ages.”
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