Between These Lines (A Young Adult Novel)

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Between These Lines (A Young Adult Novel) Page 10

by Murgia, Jennifer


  We walked to the car, and once inside, Evie was silent.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said finally whispered. “They’re never home.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “I’m not sure.” Evie responded.

  A few seconds ticked by.

  “I think my mom is cheating on my dad,” she breathed. “No, I’m sure she is.”

  I looked at her for a moment, not quite sure what to say. “Evie . . .” nothing else seemed to follow. At least nothing that sounded right. “I’m sorry.”

  She looked at me and sighed deeply.

  “Does your dad know?” I asked. The topic of her parents was as touchy for me as it was for her, especially when I spent the last couple of years wishing I had my own to talk about.

  “I think so. I think it’s why he stays away.”

  She was incredibly calm. Maybe she was used to having parental issues. Maybe she was numb over what was going on between them. Either way, her quiet attitude eased my own discomfort; I just couldn’t find the right words to offer to her.

  “I’m going to Jake’s tomorrow.” It was out now. “I don’t really have a choice about it, considering I’ll have to make sure I create a link between Ty and Shane that can be traced.”

  Then it hit me. “Tomorrow night, I’m going to ruin the lives of two kids, how does that make me any better than Shane?”

  She looked at me with deep hazel eyes filled to the brim with reassurance. “You are better.”

  I shook my head. “It just feels wrong.”

  “But it isn’t. Tomorrow will help fix what Shane’s done to everyone, don’t you see that?”

  I nodded back, but couldn’t tell her it didn’t seem to make it any easier on me.

  “I keep forgetting about the other project we’re doing together,” she whispered, “the one that’s supposed to show us how alike we are.”

  I shifted closer to her. “And if you were to write it up right now, what would you say?”

  “I’d say we’re cut from the same mold.”

  I gave a chuckle. “The popular girl and the nobody, huh? Who would’ve thought?”

  “You’re not a nobody. You’re . . .”

  “I’m what?” I asked her.

  “You’re a million times better than me.”

  I felt her fingers reach across the console. They settled softly on my own.

  “That’s Mr. Floyd’s point, isn’t it?” she whispered. “To prove there are no lines. As soon as we all mixed together, we’d start seeing the truth; just like I didn’t see it with Shane. I didn’t catch it.”

  I watched her face as she worked through the epiphany; the way her forehead creased then smoothed; the way her lips parted, only to have her bite down on them moments later in frustration and anger and disgust.

  “Don’t you see? It was so we could compare ourselves to each other, so we would see how alike we are, how different. But Mr. Floyd knew all along it was so much more than that.” She shook her head. “I’m not supposed to let you into my life to involve you, or to make you feel more popular. I’m supposed to become part of yours, to see how fake mine really is. The project is about me, not you.” She sat shaking her head. “It’s opened my eyes—Shane used me like he used everyone else.”

  Her words came crashing down, and then, there was silence. I held her hand as I drove home to my house. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and played with them in my hand. “Since we’re being honest tonight, I think you should come in. There’s something I want to show you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Evie

  Mr. Floyd was a freaking genius.

  This was about seeing how real Chase’s life was in comparison to mine. This was about getting every student who felt they were on the other side of the superior line to face reality, and to see they were as normal as the kids they were assigned to.

  I couldn’t help feeling the incidences in my life lately were closely related to the slap Shane had given me on my face; that Shane’s moment of rage was actually a metaphorical premonition of what my life was to become.

  Well, thank you, Shane, I bitterly thought to myself.

  On the other side of the coin was the ever-widening rift between my parents, thanks to my overly-dramatic mother. I couldn’t even remember the last time my parents and I spent an evening together, much less an evening we actually enjoyed. For months my mom made everything look like my dad’s fault—all the badmouthing, the late nights at the office. She was neglected. She was lonely.

  But tonight at dinner, I saw a totally different side to it all. I saw a man struggling to keep up, a man spending time away from his family because he’s felt displaced, forgotten . . . blamed.

  The sorrow in my dad’s eyes was almost too much to bear and so, at dinner, I spent half of the meal with my head down, staring into my napkin, and the other half trying to look up because I didn’t want to appear like I was avoiding him.

  I looked over at Chase and wondered whose situation was worse. Mine: who had parents who couldn’t stand each other? Or his: with no parents at all?

  “Ready?” Chase asked. He had a way of breaking the spinning thoughts that threatened to do me in the longer I let them fester.

  Chase’s house looked lived in. Lights glowed warmly from the windows, a broom rested against the porch railing, an opened bag of potting soil had a handle of a trowel sticking out of it. It was obvious they took the time to care for their home, because it meant something to them. My house, on the other hand, was whipped into impeccable shape by a man my mom hired once a month.

  “Evie, you okay?” Chase asked me.

  I nodded. I would be if I could only remember how to breathe. I didn’t want to tell him I was nervous, because I suddenly didn’t know who I was anymore. Would his aunt see me as a stuck up girl from school? Did I look like one?

  “What is it?”

  What is it? My brain repeated back to me. It’s everything . . .

  “Nothing,” I said with a tiny smile. I looked into his eyes. Chase was nothing but gentle and smart and giving—despite what life had offered him. He was the complete opposite of the one I thought I loved—who I thought loved me back.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chase

  I fumbled with my key in the backdoor lock and opened it, and stepped into the best room of the house. The kitchen was Aunt Claudie’s lair. The hub of our home. It was where she baked cookies and breads and made soups. It was where we congregated every evening, providing a normal life for me so I would believe surviving the accident that took my parents happened for a reason. It was a room full of hope that miraculously fed my dreams and filled every space inside me to capacity.

  This was where Evie needed to be right now, I could feel it.

  She was so starved on the inside, not from lack of food, but of not knowing where anything in her life fit anymore—Shane, her parents.

  “Your house smells delicious,” she exclaimed the second her foot stepped into the kitchen, and I couldn’t have agreed more. We both seemed intoxicated by the exquisite aroma that greeted us, as if a combination of every sweet delectable ever baked had been trapped in this one room, assaulting our senses. I was so used to the wonders Aunt Claudie whipped up that Evie’s reaction took me by surprise, making me step back and appreciate my aunt’s culinary abilities.

  A smile crept to my mouth. “Cinnamon buns,” I pointed to the glass dome on the counter, a few feet from where we stood, taking our coats off.

  Evie looked at me wide-eyed. “Cinnamon buns?” she asked. “Homemade? Because my mom’s cinnamon buns usually smell like the box they came in.”

  I gave a shrug and laughed.

  Shuffling slippers sounded from the living room, and soon, Aunt Claudie padded her way in to greet us. I shot a quick look at Evie, knowing my aunt’s peculiar, deliberate smile blooming across her face could mean only one thing: that the universe had finally spoken—but I didn’t say anything.

>   “No library tonight?” she asked as she fluffed her hair, which must have flattened while falling asleep on the sofa.

  “This is Evie Cunningham. We have English together.”

  Evie waved a little hello to my aunt, who responded in turn with a warm squeeze to her hand. It was obvious Evie instantly liked her. Aunt Claudie had an infectious smile and a way about her that was pretty hard to resist.

  “I thought we’d work here since the library’s closing soon. You can’t use the copier after eight thirty.”

  “That’s fine. Would you two like some tea?” Aunt Claudie asked over her shoulder, and I watched with amusement as my aunt shuffled her way over to the stove to grab the kettle, as if having a girl in our kitchen was an everyday occurrence. If I knew Aunt Claudie, she was beaming on the inside and would probably pop from excitement at any moment. This was the first time I had ever brought a girl back to our house. Heck, it was the first time I brought anyone home.

  I was about to grab two orange Powerades from the fridge when Evie’s soft-spoken voice agreed to Aunt Claudie’s offer. A tea-drinker. Aunt Claudie has a new best friend. With a promise to come down when the kettle sang, I lifted the dome, placed two cinnamon buns on a stack of napkins, and motioned for Evie to follow me upstairs.

  My room was dark, but warm, full of deep woods and blues. It was a typical guy’s room as far as I was concerned. I had a shelf of books, a desk, and a laptop.

  “Your aunt is very sweet,” Evie said, as she stood looking around my space.

  “She can be a bit overprotective.”

  My nerves had the best of me, so I began reorganizing the trinkets on my desk to make room for our snack, and for working on the timeline. The fact that Evie was in my bedroom made me dizzy and I needed to busy myself, which she noticed. Before I could prepare for what I knew would eventually happen, she was standing beside me, reading the newspaper cutouts hanging on my wall.

  I watched the side of her face as she slowly read the clippings; how her expression changed as she digested it all—the ruined car, the headlines about a boy who was a survivor. I had read them over and over, so many times that I had become desensitized by the words—reading about a boy who couldn’t possibly be me. When I noticed the tear falling from the corner of her eye, it finally sank in how much I’d been hiding away from the world—how I’d been hiding from my own self. Her reaction was entirely opposite of what Shane’s had been years ago, and the one I needed all those years ago.

  “Some kids collect trophies . . .” It was a lame thing to say.

  “April 18th.” She reached out to touch one of the curled papers, noting the date of the accident. “I had no idea.”

  I watched as her head shook back and forth.

  “The poem—it means more to you than anyone realizes.” Evie’s tender voice whispered as she continued to stare at the wall. “I can’t imagine what you went through. You must have been in so much pain.”

  I followed her face to the clipping in line with her eye. It was the one that described my stay at the hospital.

  “I don’t really remember it. Most of what I do remember is from these articles. They’re the only way to convince myself the accident ever happened at all.”

  My room felt still and heavy as she reached out to touch a yellowed paper, the one that mentioned the burns.

  “. . . over 30 percent of his body . . .”

  My heart pounded wildly in my chest. This was why I brought her here. This was what I meant in the car when I said I had something to show her. When she looked back at me, having finally torn herself from the wall of excruciating memories, I knew she could be the one person I could trust with my past.

  I swallowed hard. “It’s funny. I don’t remember one detail about the accident, other than what I’ve read in these articles. Yet every day I’ve lived since then has been one big reminder.”

  “I overheard Shane and Jake in the hallway.” Her voice was so low it was almost hard to hear. “I was on my way to the library to find you. They said something I didn’t understand at the time, something about how you and I were damaged goods.”

  “Not you. They were talking about me.”

  Never in a hundred years would I have guessed I would do what I was about to, especially in front of Evie Cunningham—but something told me to go with it. Something told me it would be all right to trust her.

  I reached up to the collar of my shirt and let my hand rest at the button near my neck. My fingers trembled, but I stared at her, refusing to look anywhere else. She said nothing, not a single word, watching with eyes that burned me like the flames had long ago. I let my thumb put pressure on the little white button and pushed it through the hole. The next one slipped easier, followed by the next, until before I could change my mind, half my shirt was hanging loose from my body, leaving me exposed from the waist up.

  I heard her draw in a deep breath. That’s when I closed my eyes. I knew when I opened them she could be gone. She could silently slip downstairs, past the almost boiling tea kettle, and leave without a single word. She could go to school tomorrow knowing what no one else knows about me.

  I was a freak, a monster.

  Hands smooth and cool as silk were on my arm, moving upward toward the large pink mass of twisted skin. I felt her fingers trace along the edge of the giant scar that bloomed just beneath my throat; the one that fanned out across my chest and wrapped around to my back. I knew I was hideous, yet I couldn’t understand what prompted her to want to touch it for herself.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes, stunned to find that her face wasn’t contorted in disgust like Shane had so surely predicted she would be. Instead, her features gleaned with curiosity. Her fingers were gentle, like air kissing my skin, and I watched, mesmerized that she could be so captivated by the lines the fire had carved into my flesh. I waited for the revulsion to strike her, for her hand to recoil from my skin, but instead, she stepped closer, reached up to place her hand behind my neck, and drew my face toward hers.

  I pulled her closer, cautious that she might change her mind and step away from me. But Evie was calm as she ran both hands along the tops of my shoulders, carefully pulling my shirt down to catch on my bent elbows. I watched as she circled behind me, her eyes never leaving my skin, and for the first time in my life, I let someone really see me.

  “I don’t scare you?”

  She shook her head, “It’s amazing, not scary.”

  “I never showed anyone what I look like,” I admitted, still nervous that her reaction could be swayed, causing her to run.

  “Does it bother you when I touch it?”

  “No, your hand feels nice. Warm.”

  Evie smiled up at me sweetly. Just then, the kettle screamed from downstairs, and I began to button my shirt, hiding my scars from the world once again.

  ***

  She brought the cup to her lips as I pulled the last of the timeline from the printer.

  “Finally finished,” I held the white paper in the air and waved it triumphantly.

  She smiled slyly from across the room and shook her head, “You had everything done before we even started, didn’t you?”

  “Of course not,” I lied. I never told her my paper was finished before she suggested working on it together, but I played along with her now, letting her have fun with her little accusation.

  Evie carefully rose to her feet, collected the crumbs from the cinnamon bun into her hand, and placed the cup down on my desk. She held the plastic report cover open for me as I placed the papers inside, not letting the collection of clippings on the wall grab her attention as she did when she first came in.

  “Voila,” she said with a smile that faded all too soon. “I guess you’ll need to take me home now.”

  With a bit of caution, I reached out to her, still worried I would overstep any boundaries. I wanted to cup her face in my hand, and my throat grew thick as she willingly leaned into it, reminding me how remarkably easy it was to feel comfortable around he
r. I settled my chin on top of her soft hair and let it sink in that she was here, this was really happening.

  “Are you sure you’ll be ready for tomorrow?”

  I pondered her question with closed eyes, refusing to answer just yet. I didn’t want to face what was coming and ruin what was happening right now. Reluctantly, my body tensed against hers as the answer finally took shape within me, no matter how hard I tried to hold it in.

  “You don’t have to do this. Headmaster Whitley will understand.” She whispered with a fierce hope tangled in her voice. Her arms tighten around me as if to keep me out of harm’s way.

  “I already said I would.” I pictured this afternoon in my head and knew there was no way out of the promise I grudgingly gave. No matter how tomorrow night would shape up, there was no backing out. Besides, exposing Shane for who he really was would make Evie rest easier.

  “This could be really bad if Shane finds out. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”

  “I’ll play it safe, I promise. Besides, I’m going to have a wire on me. The police will know where I am at all times, just like a real drug bust. It’s kind of cool.”

  That’s when she lifted her eyes to mine, and no, it wasn’t cool to her at all.

  “You know what you have to do, don’t you? You have to act like you’re one of them if this is ever going to work.”

  I nodded, allowing her cheerless voice to pull me into the grim picture of what tomorrow would be like.

  “That means you have to be insensitive and obnoxious and . . .”

  “Evie,” I edged my way in, cutting her off. “Even if I have to be like that tomorrow, you know I’m not any of those things. It won’t be me.”

  “I know it won’t. It’s just . . .” She shook her head. “Shane is persuasive and I’m just afraid you’ll get caught up in his game. Shane plays a good part around school, which means you have to be just as good. You have to be convincing.”

 

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