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Page 13
I shove my paper out of the way, and it flies off the desk. “Why don’t you just let them be? I’m sure if they like each other, they’ll get together eventually. And you definitely didn’t need to drag me into it.”
Victoria reaches under the table and grabs my paper off the floor, smoothing it out in front of me before she walks away.
****
When the lunch bell rings I race to the office, thankful to have something to do other than sit in the cafeteria staring at my sandwich. The secretary looks up from her magazine when I walk in.
“Can I help you?” she asks, annoyed.
I swing my backpack onto one of the chairs and lean against her desk. “I’m interested in the tutoring program. With the middle school? Who should I talk to?”
“Ms. Mulberry takes care of that, but she’s away today. You can come back tomorrow.”
“I was hoping to sign up today. Is there someone else?”
The secretary licks the tip of her finger and flips a page in her magazine. “I suppose I could see if Mr. Casey will accommodate you. One second.” She sighs and presses a button on her phone, speaking so low I can hardly hear her. “You can go in.” She waves me toward Mr. Casey’s door, and I knock tentatively. I’d sworn I’d never have a reason to go in there again, but this kind of trumps it.
“Ah, Miss Masterson,” he says when I push open the door. “Didn’t expect to see you back so soon. I was sorry to hear about your house. And don’t worry about your textbooks. We’ll get you new ones.”
Right. Like my textbooks were the first thing I stressed about when I saw my house burning down. “Thanks,” I say, sitting up straighter. “I’m actually here to ask about the tutoring program we have with the middle school. I want to join.”
“Wonderful! I think that’s a great idea to get your record here back on track.”
“Of course,” I say, forcing a smile. “And I’d love to help other students.”
He opens his filing cabinet drawer and pulls out a pink form. “Just get this signed and you can join next week. It’s Wednesdays after school. You meet in the middle school library.”
“But today’s Wednesday. Is there one today?”
“There is, but you’ll have to get that signed first. We can add you to the list for next week.”
I stuff the form in my backpack. “But if I get it signed today, can I go?”
“Well, I suppose. But I don’t want you missing any classes. You’re already on thin ice here.”
Only because of you, I think. But I smile sweetly. “Great. I’ll bring it back soon!” I throw my bag over my shoulder and run out before he can say another word. The secretary doesn’t even look up from her magazine.
I dial my dad and beg him to drop by the school in between his house showings. He makes it just before the end-of-lunch bell rings, and I dash back in the office and drop the signed form in the inbox.
****
Melody stops dead in her tracks when she sees me. I’ve been waiting at her locker since the last bell, debating between staying there and forgetting the whole idea. She stares at me, and I stare at my feet. If she wants to get her books, she has to come here.
Her feet move toward me, and all the air inside me lets out.
“What are you doing here?” she says. I move aside to let her open her locker.
“I wanted to apologize. For the whole Taylor thing.” I hug my arms around my chest but keep my shoulder glued to the locker beside hers. Victoria might be partially to blame, but I was the one who kissed him, and I need to make this right.
Melody slams her locker door shut. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We don’t have to talk about it. But I’m sorry. For what it’s worth.”
“I was nothing but nice to you,” she says, spitting out the words.
I slide one locker down, putting another foot between us. “I know,” I say. “I thought you and Taylor were just friends. I didn’t know…” I trail off. I want to blame it on Victoria, but I know deep down I didn’t believe her. I knew they were something more. I knew it, and I went for him anyway.
Melody grabs her bag and stares at me. “Stay away from him.”
I watch her walk away and try to blink back the tears.
When she’s gone, I push myself away from the lockers and fly out the door, taking a deep breath of air when it closes behind me. I lean against Taylor’s tree, the word betrayal circling in my head. I betrayed Melody like Julie betrayed me. Maybe not in the same way, but it doesn’t matter. I kick a cigarette butt with my toe, and then bend down and toss it in the garbage.
I glance at my watch. Crap. The tutoring.
I start running. My muscles stretch with every movement, the way they used to when I was dancing. I’m in complete control of my body without even thinking.
When I spot Laura’s school, I don’t want to stop. I could run forever – away from Melody and Victoria. Away from Jay and everything that scares me about him. But mostly, away from my past. Instead, I stop and scan the crowd of kids. I can’t run. Not anymore.
I slip into the library just as a teacher is reading out a list.
“Megan, you’re with Maddie. Josh, with Katie. Emily, with Cassadee, Jocelyn with Laura, Kelsey –”
“Can we switch?” I say. I glance around the room searching for Laura, and find her at a desk in the far corner.
“I’m sorry?” The teacher says.
“Can I switch with Jocelyn?”
“And your name is?”
“Kelsey,” I say, my eyes still on Laura. Her head’s in a book, and she doesn’t look up.
The teacher laughs. “I haven’t even gotten to your partner yet.”
“Right,” I say, blushing. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re with Jackson – over there.” She points to a boy at the front of the room. He can’t be much older than ten. I wait for the students to take their seats first and then approach the girl who sat beside Laura. I think I recognize her from school.
“Hi Jocelyn,” I say. “Would you mind switching with me? I think I’d be better with someone older.”
Jocelyn opens a notebook on the desk. “We’re not allowed to switch,” she says. “Sorry.”
I stare at them for a moment, watching Laura giggle at something Jocelyn says, and then make my way over to Jackson. I help him through half of his multiplication homework before I rip off a square from the back of his notebook when he’s not looking.
Meet me in the bathroom in 5. I’m a friend of your brother’s. I fold up the paper and toss it on the side of Laura’s desk on my way to the garbage can. Then I sit back in my chair and watch her read it. Five minutes later, she heads out of the room, and I follow her.
“I’m Kelsey,” I say, when the door to the bathroom closes behind us.
She washes her hands and looks at me in the mirror. “You really know my brother?”
I nod. “You can’t tell your – uh, Mrs. Dawson though. She might not let me see you if she knew.”
Laura scrubs her hands so long, you’d think she was just cleaning toilets, not doing math homework. “They think he’s a bad influence,” she says.
“I know.” There’s a yellow bruise at the bottom of her neck by her shoulder, and I try not to stare at it. I want to shake her – tell her to get out of there. That she doesn’t deserve it. She meets my eyes in the mirror, then turns to dry her hands. I stare at the mirror until both our images become blurry and start to blend together.
“Jay misses you,” I say.
Laura looks at me, hopeful. “Do you think you can bring me to see him?”
“Maybe. Not now though.” I’m not sure if Jay told her about being in the detention center and I don’t want to be the one to spring it on her.
A door slams somewhere out in the hall, and Laura flinches. “We should probably get back,” I say, my stomach tightening. I can’t remember what I wanted to say anymore. Everything seems too inadequate
Laura nods and
backs away from the sink. I meet her eyes again. They match Jay’s. The sadness is there, but something else too.
“Would you rather get out of here?” I say.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Just for a walk. I think I need some air.”
Laura shrugs. “Sure.”
I follow her back to the library where she tells the teacher she feels sick and makes a fake phone call to Mrs. Dawson telling her she’ll be walking home now. I wait five minutes and complain of a headache before packing up my own things. We meet in the parking lot, and I glance back at the school to make sure no one’s watching us leave.
“Are we going to see Jay?” Laura asks, hurrying to catch up with me.
“We can’t right now,” I say.
“Why not?”
I let my bag slide off my shoulder and take my time to adjust it again. “He’s in juvie,” I say. “He was on a day pass the other day when he came to see you.”
Laura stops walking. “What happened?”
“A fire. It was an accident. He should be able to get out soon.”
Her eyes go wide. “A fire?”
I nod. Laura glances down at the sidewalk, and rolls a stone under her shoe. “It was our house, wasn’t it?”
“You heard about it?”
“I saw it on the news. I wanted to go there, but Mr. and Mrs. Dawson wouldn’t let me. It’s gone, isn’t it?”
I nod and her face falls. She seems way older than thirteen now. She’s been through too much to have only lived that long. “I lived there actually,” I say. “When it burned down, I mean. That’s how I met Jay.”
She looks at me. “You did? I thought it was still empty.”
“We weren’t there for long before the fire.” I start walking again, and Laura falls into step beside me.
“Jay didn’t do it, did he?” She pulls at a piece of hair that fell out of her ponytail and twirls it around her finger. I stare at it – the shade an exact match with Jay’s.
“Kind of,” I say. “He was burning something and then the whole place caught on fire.”
“But he’s okay, right? I mean, I guess he is because I saw him, but he didn’t say anything.”
“He’s fine,” I say. “He probably didn’t want to upset you.”
“If it was an accident, why is he in juvie?”
Because I practically begged him to plead guilty, I want to say. But I don’t. “It’s hard to prove it was just an accident.”
She studies her feet again. “It’s because he stole that money before, isn’t it?”
“That probably didn’t help.”
“I don’t know why he did that. He messed everything up.”
I stare ahead. I don’t tell her he did it for her – to save her, or try to at least. We walk another block in silence, and for a second I wish I could take her away right now.
“Why are you friends with him if he burned down your house?” Laura asks.
I stop in front of a café, but don’t go in. “I don’t know,” I say. I stare at a bunch of cigarette butts on the ground outside the door. I bend to pick them up, even though it’s probably unsanitary, and I have nowhere to wash my hands. “Want to go?” I ask.
“Where?”
“To your old house. Or at least, what’s left of it.”
Laura nods, and we turn down the next street toward the house.
“I used to walk this way to school,” she says after a few minutes. “Jay used to walk with me before he started high school. There used to be a dog at that house who would chase us.” She points to a small, brown brick house. “Jay always chased him off with a stick before he could get close to me.”
“Must be hard on you to be separated from him.”
She nods and looks away. I think I see a tear slide down her cheek, but the back of her hand erases it before I can be sure.
“Jay told me what happened to your parents.”
She doesn’t look up.
“How do you like Mr. and Mrs. Dawson?” I ask. Laura’s quiet for a second, and I can almost read her mind – how she’s debating which version of the truth to tell me, the way I used to when people asked me about Wes.
“They’re not my family,” she says after a while. This time, I’m sure I see a tear – not just one, but two or three. She wipes them away. “Jay promised he’d help me and now he can’t.”
“Help you with what?” I ask.
Laura just shakes her head.
I rub my eyebrow and decide to go for it – ask the question no one bothered to ask me.
“Does Mr. Dawson – does he hurt you?”
She stops walking and reaches her hand up to the bruise I know is at the bottom of her neck, even though it’s covered up by her jacket. “Did Jay tell you?” she whispers.
I nod and close my eyes for a second. This is when I could tell her what happened to me. Maybe it would help her trust me. To know she’s not alone. I open my mouth to speak, but it feels full of cotton.
Laura studies the ground. “I don’t know what to do. He said not to tell,” she says so softly I barely hear.
“Jay’s going to get you out of there. I’m going to help him. But you have to trust us.”
She looks up. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But Jay is coming up with a plan.” I rub at the scar on my arm. And if Jay can’t come up with one, then I will.
We’re only two blocks from the house now, and we both fall silent. If there were more of us, it would feel like a funeral procession. I don’t know how old the house was, but I can imagine the line of people who might have lived there once. There’d be the oldest residents, ghosts now, who’d lead the way. Then further along the line, the people would still be living – older people with canes and walkers. Then it would be Laura and Jay and their parents, united again to put their house to rest. At the end of the line would be my parents and me.
Some of the families might be related – the house passed down through generations. Others might have no connection, other than the fact that they once lived within the same walls, and walked on the same floors. Like Jay and Laura and me.
I glance behind us, half expecting to see a trail of people. Instead, there are only leaves drifting across the road and a squirrel stopping to flick its tail.
The lot comes into view, and I almost walk into Laura. It looks different than it did when I came here with Jay – like a wasteland. There’s a huge Dumpster at the edge of the lot, holding what was left of the house. A lifetime’s worth of memories in the trash.
“It’s really gone,” Laura says, walking toward it. I stay back and watch from the sidewalk. There’s not much to look at anymore – no debris to sift through. Just an empty space with a Dumpster. Laura walks toward the chain-linked fence at the back where a swing set used to be. My dad had someone remove it before we moved in. It must have been Laura’s and Jay’s once.
Laura sits on a small patch of grass. Most of the lawn has been either burned or dug up by the firefighters and workers. It’s the only patch of grass left, and it seems out of place – the only green among the expanse of dirt and leftover ashes. I walk toward it and sink down beside her. I try to remember what I was like at thirteen. Back then I still believed high school would be the best experience of my life, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than Tulsa.
Laura lost all of that much earlier than me. And she lost much more, too.
She sniffles, and the tears slide down her face again. She slips off her shoes and socks and lets the grass spike up between her toes. I don’t know if she’s trying to soak up the only thing left of her house, or just trying to feel something again. I spread my own palms over the grass. It’s the only life left on this lot – the only sign not everything is completely gone. There are still roots underneath. Grass that might grow up again one day to join a newly sodded lawn, pieces left behind that can never be erased.
“You must miss this place,” I say.
“Were the Dawsons your first home?”
“No. They were the third. The first one I only stayed at for two months.”
“What happened?”
Laura shrugs. “I don’t know. Foster kids get moved around a lot. I didn’t like it there anyway. They had two other kids and the parents were always yelling.”
“What about the second?”
“They were okay. But then the mom got pregnant and they decided they didn’t want a foster kid around anymore.”
“Then you moved in with the Dawsons?”
“Yeah. It was okay at first.” Laura looks away, and I know she’s done talking.
I stand and brush myself off. “Ready to go?”
Laura nods and lifts herself up off the ground. I wish I could lay something over the small patch of grass to protect it for when the workers come back. But if I cover it, it won’t get any sunlight or rain. It will just die.
I stop walking when we’re a couple blocks from the Dawson’s and take out the rest of the scrap of paper I tore from Jackson’s notebook. Using my knee as a table, I scribble down my number. “In case you need to reach me. For anything.”
She nods, folding it in her hands. When I watch her walk up the driveway from a few houses away, I wish more than anything I didn’t have to bring her back.
Chapter Fourteen
The phone is ringing when I get back to my house, and I drop my bag to answer it. Where are my parents? My mom’s car was in the driveway. “Hello?”
“Kelsey? It’s Jay.”
My heart stops. “Jay? How did you get this number?”
“I looked it up. We do have computers here.”
“When did I tell you my last name?”
“You didn’t. It was in the case file about your house. I saw it when the lawyer made me sign something.”