“No, she owes us Spanish homework,” the leader says, adjusting her thick flannel shirt that’s too heavy for the unseasonably hot day.
“Reagan, it’s okay,” Claire’s soft voice says from behind me. “I told them they could copy my homework.”
“That’s right, now give it up,” the leader thunders, reaching around me and punching a book out of Claire’s hand. The heavy textbook lands with a thud on the concrete and papers scatter at my feet. It’s taking a considerable amount of strength not to knock this girl out.
“Don’t you touch her,” I snap, my finger pointed inches away from the girl’s nose.
“Get your finger out of my face,” the leader says, batting away my hand.
“Touch me again, and we’re going to have real problems,” I assert, doing my best to keep my voice cool and calm.
“I’m warning you, Reagan,” she says. “Back off. This has nothing to do with you.”
“She has everything to do with me. She’s my friend. Now you back the hell off and leave her alone,” I say, inching closer to her.
“Fine. I was going to beat her wimpy ass, but instead I’ll beat your skinny ass.” The leader clenches her fists, cracking her knuckles one by one against her open palm.
“Are those little knuckle cracks supposed to be intimidating or something?” I ask, raising one eyebrow.
“Most people take it as a warning before I pound them into the ground.”
“I’d really like to see you try,” I say and laugh.
“Are you seriously laughing at me right now?” the girl asks, taking a step back. “Don’t you even know who I am?”
“Nope,” I say and shake my head. “I don’t even know your name, so you’ll have to excuse me if I refer to you as ‘that bitch whose ass I kicked’ from now on.”
That did it. The girl’s dark eyes fill with even more fury as she lunges for me, her right fist clenched and heading straight for my face. I can feel Claire’s body tighten beside me. But before the girl’s fist can reach my jaw, I grab her thick wrist with both hands, spin her around, and twist her arm behind her back. The girl whimpers with agony, her arm struggling to break free as I push her up against the wall, smashing her face into the coarse brick.
“Holy…! Stop! Please, let me go,” the girl begs as I push my knee into her back.
“If you ever, and I mean ever, touch Claire again, I won’t just twist your arm,” I whisper harshly in her ear. “I’ll break it. You got me?”
“Yes, yes, I promise. Please let go,” the girl cries out. I loosen my tight grip and let her free. One more twist and her bone would have snapped in two. What I really want to do is use one of my Krav Maga take-downs on her; rapid-fire punches to the stomach, then the kidneys, then her temple. I want to wrap both hands around her forehead and slam her to the ground. But that’d probably be frowned upon.
“So much for being the tough girl, huh?” I say as the leader runs for the cover of her friends. The girl shoots me a death glare, color rising to her pimpled cheeks, as her two friends begin to laugh.
“Shut the hell up,” the beaten bully yells, pulling on their arms. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Oh my God, Tess, that girl really kicked your ass,” one of the girls says as they walk away.
“I could have taken her,” Tess snaps. Name mystery solved. The group argues about the likelihood of Tess beating me up as she drags them out of earshot.
Claire’s small hand touches my shoulder. I turn around to see her still shaking, causing my heart to involuntarily clench. She used to tell me about girls picking on her and never inviting her to sleepovers or birthday parties, but I had no idea girls were putting their hands on her.
“Are you okay?” I ask, pulling her into a hug. Claire puts her tiny arms around my back. As she rests her head on my shoulder, a few teardrops escape her eyes and soak through my cardigan and onto my skin.
“They do that to me all the time,” Claire says, her voice soft.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have stopped them,” I ask, pulling out of our hug and looking into her dark brown eyes. Whatever Claire is feeling, it’s written in her big doe eyes. She cannot fake it and she never tries. And today, her eyes say she’s lonely.
“I didn’t know when to tell you,” Claire says, looking down at the ground.
“You can always just knock on my door. I live literally twenty steps away from you.” We had counted once last spring. Luke, Claire, and I figured out how many steps it took to cross from my house to their house. Twenty steps walking. Fifteen steps running.
“I just didn’t want to bother you with it,” Claire answers with a one-shoulder shrug. “We haven’t hung out in a while. Guess you’ve been busy.”
My stomach twists into a guilty knot. It’s true. It’s been months since I spent quality time with her, introducing her to bands, listening to her talk about the boys she liked. I’ve been spending more and more time with Luke and less and less time with her. I should have noticed the impact that was having on her. Claire’s incredibly sweet and smart but that’s where the similarities between her and Luke end. She doesn’t share any of her brother’s popular-boy traits. Just a last name everyone knows and a reputation she can’t live up to. I should have been looking out for her, protecting her. I’ve completely failed.
“Did you tell your brother?” I ask, taking her cold hand into my own.
“Oh, I don’t want to tell him,” Claire replies, shaking her head. “You know how overprotective he is. Who knows what he’d do. I don’t want to get him into trouble with West Point.”
The first time I ever saw Luke, he was sitting on the back porch with his sister. She was wiping tears from her eyes as he consoled her on the back steps. They sat together, looking out into the backyard, his big arm around her tiny shoulders. It was such a sweet moment between a brother and his little sister that when he looked up and noticed me at the window, I almost fell I backed away so fast, embarrassed by my intrusion.
“I’m so sorry,” I say and bite down on my lip.
“It’s okay,” Claire says, even though it’s not.
“You can always talk to me, okay?” I say, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Okay,” Claire says. She drops my hand and leans down to pick up the books and papers that have scattered on the ground between us. I get down on one knee to help her.
“I’d better go. Thanks for rescuing me.”
“Of course,” I say, handing over her notes and homework. I wipe the knee of my jeans as Claire walks away. After a few steps, she turns around.
“Don’t feel bad about not hanging out with me,” she says, looking back at me. “Luke’s just being a hog. I’m probably betraying a little brother-sister confidence here, but I think he really likes you.”
I feel my jaw unhinge. Harper’s been teasing and prying for months now but Claire’s much closer to the source. Claire and Luke are as close as a brother and sister can get. They had to be with a career-long, high-ranking military officer for a father. The number of cities they’ve lived in are only surpassed by the number of framed photographs of Colonel Weixel shaking hands with the congressmen, senators, and generals that wined and dined him during his military days. He’s retired now. Well, as retired as he’ll ever allow himself to be. He’s a special operations consultant and still spends months at a time overseas advising military leaders.
Because of Colonel Weixel’s training, I watch what I say in front of him. He’s warmer than you’d expect a man of his military status to be, but I know beneath that thinning white hairline is a brain trained to analyze every word and action, just like mine.
Claire’s confession ping-pongs around my skull. I refuse to let her words settle into place. I’m ill prepared to deal with this. Luke is not something I can quickly evaluate and categorize like I do with everything else in my life. I feel my pulse quicken, my vein pounding inside my neck. I bite my lip and study my feet, not wanting to see what’s written in Claire’s
big eyes and not wanting her to see what may be written in my own.
“I’ll see you later, okay?” I say, hoping to end the conversation, not wanting to hear what Claire might say next. I glance back up and try to give her a smile, but it feels crooked on my face. Her lips part to speak; she searches my face and thinks better of it. She closes her mouth, waves, and hurries away. I press the long breath I’d been holding through my lips and dig my fingers into my hips, pushing down any hint of the emotions threatening to break free from the box I lock them in and keep in the darkest corner of my body. I dig my fingers even harder into my hip bones and the flood retreats. I settle back into the comfort of numbness and breathe again.
I look up at the sky. White puffy clouds are moving quickly across the blue. I feel for the double hearts on my bracelet, hold the cool metal between my finger and thumb, step back into the sunshine, and head to the library.
FIVE
“I wanna rewrite my heart and let the future in. I wanna open it up and let somebody in.” Harper is behind the wheel of her Range Rover, driving down the tree-lined streets of the New Albany Country Club community and singing along to an old Miike Snow song from my Spotify playlist. Actually, it’s a playlist Luke made me. He’s always making me little playlists with songs he knows I’ll like.
“I love indie artists who stay indie artists,” Harper says, turning down the music. I crack a half smile. Harper hates it when the indie musicians she loves show up on Top 40 radio. Harper likes to pretend she’s above celebrity gossip and pop culture, but I’ve found Us Weeklys under her bed. It’s ingrained in me to know every inch of my environment and the people I surround myself with. But I’m also kind of a snoop. So I know all about her secret tabloid subscription and the fact that she’s downloaded an embarrassing number of baby-faced, floppy-haired boy band songs and hidden them on a secret playlist. I’ve never called her out because she’d be mortified. So I let her keep up her too-cool-for-school act. I guess it’s not totally an act. She really doesn’t care what people think and never tries to impress anybody. But still, I wonder how much of it she’s faking. How much we’re all faking.
The song finishes and Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” comes on. A slow smile creeps up my face as I look over at Harper, knowing what will come next. She shakes her head, her wavy hair swinging from side to side, and laughs.
“You officially have the world’s weirdest music collection,” Harper says, pulling past the lavish New Albany Country Club. We’re not members but Harper’s and Luke’s families are. My parents occasionally let me escape my Saturday training sessions for a dip in the Olympic-size pool or a match on the clay tennis court.
“I think the word you’re looking for, my love, is eclectic,” I say and sing her a few lines of Frank. “In other words, hold my hand. In other words, baby, kiss me.” I push together my lips and make a kissy face for Harper. She laughs and blows me a kiss back.
“The Wombats are coming to the Newport next Friday night,” Harper says, winding her way around the ninth hole of the golf course. The warm October day has brought out plenty of polo-shirt-wearing golfers hoping to squeeze in one more round before gray, cold November skies roll in and the course closes for the season. “Carlee Abernathy’s brother is bartending that night and said he could hook us up with tickets and a little drinky drinky. Want to go?”
“Depends. If my parents are out of town, totally. If they’re home, definitely not.”
“So when will you know if you can go?”
“Next Friday.”
“What? We can’t get the tickets day of. How do you never know their schedule?”
“They’re journalists. They go where the story is and they go when it’s happening.” The journalist thing was their new cover. My dad was supposed to be a photographer, my mother a writer, for the Associated Press. Saying they worked for the AP made it plausible for them to have to leave at a moment’s notice, be gone for long periods of time, and never have a byline in the Columbus Dispatch. It was a great cover. CIA operations officers usually pose as diplomats while out on assignment, but anyone in the Special Activities Division, especially Black Angels, gets the best and most detailed cover stories. Because unlike CIA officers, who really only collect information from foreign agents, Black Angels are the ones who are in true danger on a daily basis, even on American soil. They’re the group the government pretends doesn’t exist and the president doesn’t even know about. Well, he probably knows something. He’s the president, after all. But there’s sort of a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy with the Black Angels. He knows there is an underground group the CIA calls on to handle the messy stuff the government doesn’t want to lay claim to, but he doesn’t want to know any details. It’s the knowing that could get him in trouble and get Black Angels killed.
“How’s your NYU application going?” I ask. Harper wants to go to one school and one school only so she’s applying early decision.
“Almost done. God, I hope I get in. I’m so freaking excited to get out of this cow town,” Harper answers, coming to a stop to let a golf cart full of forty-something men cross in front of her to reach the next hole. The driver gives us a polite wave with his golf-gloved hand.
“Come on, it’s not that bad,” I reply, suddenly defensive of New Albany. I must admit: I thought of Columbus as a cow town before I moved here, but it’s really grown on me. I’ve lived in so many different places. Big cities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago and small border towns like Derby Line, Vermont, and Laredo, Texas. Columbus has been a perfect happy medium for me.
“There’s no culture here. No art, no diversity,” Harper says, sticking her left arm out her open window and letting her hand ride the wave of the wind.
“What about the Short North? You can’t walk down a block of High Street without running into three art galleries.”
“Well, there’s no outlet here for someone like me who’s interested in filmmaking. Maybe after I finish film school and make a few hit indie films, I’ll come back and shoot one here or something. Culture this place up a bit,” Harper replies. The song changes and Louis Armstrong serenades us.
Harper has her whole life figured out. NYU film school, then move to LA and become the next Sofia Coppola. She knows exactly what she wants to do and she’s so excited about it. She beams every time she talks about the future. Luke too. He’s wanted to follow in his dad’s military-boot-size footsteps and go to West Point since he was a kid. I think if they both had it their way, they’d fast-forward through senior year and get on with the next chapter of their lives. I envy that. Their hopefulness. The fact that their futures are theirs to create. I’m so jealous of it sometimes my body aches. My life has never felt like my own. And my future certainly doesn’t belong to me.
Harper pulls off the main artery of the country club community and onto Landon Lane. Enormous oak trees create a canopy of crisscrossed branches and bright red leaves. Each Georgian brick house is more stunning than the next. Everything in New Albany is brick. No exceptions. It’s very Pleasantville. All my friends complain about it but I secretly like the order and perfection—the manicured lawns, beautifully kept flower beds, and miles of white picket fences.
Our New Albany house is by far my favorite of all the homes I’ve ever lived in. The brick is a rustic red-and-white wash; it makes the house look like it’s been standing since the 1700s even though it’s less than a decade old. Two white columns hold up the roof over the small front porch and black shutters frame every window.
“Still on for eight at Luke’s to study AP bio?” Harper asks as she pulls into my driveway. I pop open the door handle.
“Yup. I’ve got to ace this one if I want to get an A in the class, so no fooling around this time, Harper,” I say, grabbing my messenger bag and waving my finger at her. If procrastination was an Olympic sport, Harper would win the gold medal. Last time we all studied together, we spent the first ninety minutes watching YouTube videos and flipping through In
stagram.
“Oh, whatever,” Harper replies, rolling her eyes and fluttering her long lashes. “You’re, like, the smartest person I’ve ever met. You get an A on every test you take yet freak out constantly that you’re going to fail. It’s annoying to us B students.”
“I got a B on that calculus test,” I say, a smile inching up my face. Harper fake strangles me from across the front seat console and the smile sticks.
“Oh my God! Let’s call TMZ! Reagan MacMillan got a B once on a test,” Harper replies and gives me a wink. “And by the way, I know for a fact … it was a B plus.”
“Truth,” I say and hop out of the car.
“Later, smarty-pants.”
I close the door and walk up the brick path that leads to my porch, turning my head toward the sky. The days are getting shorter and the sun is starting its daily dip toward the horizon. The white puffy clouds are turning a caramel cream and the blue sky is streaked with orange and gold.
Harper gives the horn a quick honk before driving out of the cul-de-sac and down my street. Fallen red leaves blow backward and dance together as she speeds away. I watch her taillights blink red at the stop sign. She turns the corner and heads to her street on the other side of the country club.
I put my hand on the doorknob, but a noisy motor stops me cold. I turn back around in time to see an unmarked gray van pulling slowly down the main street. It pauses and someone in the driver’s seat looks down our cul-de-sac. I strain my eyes to try to make out the person behind the wheel but the trees are casting shadows and I cannot see their face. I feel an uneasy knot tighten in my stomach. I step back out onto the porch and bounce down my front steps but just as I reach the sidewalk, the tires squeal and the van speeds away.
I shake out my arms, hoping to quell the nerves pulsing between my muscles. I open the heavy wooden front door and walk into the two-story foyer, immediately locking the door behind me. I lean my back up against the smooth wood, suddenly out of breath, my mind racing. Do I tell Mom and Dad about the van? Do I tell them about the janitor? What will they think? What will they say? My paranoia has been so much better. Mom and Dad are finally letting me stay at home by myself without Aunt Sam when they go on missions. They finally trust me to control myself.
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