by C. L. Stone
I got dressed in the bathroom, putting on a gray wool skirt made of material that felt like a sweater and a thin long-sleeved white shirt. It was dressier than I’d anticipated, but I didn’t want to risk waking Jimmy up.
The sneakers didn’t really match either, being pink. Or maybe it made the outfit casual.
Gabriel would let me know.
I kept Victor’s phone with me. I sat in the bathroom, anticipating going downstairs and summoning up the courage to talk to Carol, especially with a straight face. After listening to her and Jimmy talk about me the night before, I realized I did really seem like a crazy person: no dirty clothes from camp, the way I talked to her, sleeping in the attic. Who knew what Marie and my father had actually said to them—how much was the truth and how much might have been made up?
She’d asked for my help with things, and so far, she’d seemed reasonable. Maybe the boys were right about getting on her good side.
When I left the bathroom, I found the pink notebook North had had me create a planner in. It had been left on the hallway floor for me.
Luke had snuck out here to remind me to take it with me.
I wanted to scold him later for being so reckless, but at the same time, I adored his ability to sneak around the house. I hadn’t heard him at all while in the bathroom.
I took the notebook with me as I crept downstairs, easing my weight to walk quietly and not wake anyone. It was just before seven. We’d gotten up really early. I wondered if leaving alone without telling anyone would be appropriate.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to sneak out, though. I didn’t want to face Carol, but I didn’t want her to have a reason not to trust me.
The master bedroom door was partially open. My dad was still in bed, a lump on one side under the blankets. The other side of the bed had been partially made.
She was awake.
I listened. No noise in their bedroom, but further into the house.
She’d been up for a while.
I found her in the laundry room. The old white laundry baskets we used to have were replaced by taller woven baskets. She was sorting through what looked to be Marie’s clothing. She tossed one T-shirt into a bin marked “Donate.” She picked up another one, turning it over in her hands.
I waited for her to notice me. Eventually she did, and made an effort to smile through a tired expression. Had she been up all night? Yet her clothes were different, another billowy blouse in a different flower pattern but similar in style. She wore tan slacks underneath. Her hair was tied back with a bandana today. It made the excess of blush and highlights at her forehead stand out more.
“Up with the birds,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
“I thought I’d go over early to the diner,” I said. “It’ll give me a chance to talk to Un...the boss about leaving before it gets too busy.” Saying Uncle sounded strange when she didn’t know the reasoning behind it.
“That’s a very clever thing to do. Leaving on a good note with a previous employer is always a good idea. Although by the time you graduate college, you probably wouldn’t have to put a diner on your resume...”
What was wrong with it? I pressed my lips together and nodded slightly to look like I agreed.
She tossed the shirt in her hands into the donate bin and her gaze turned to the notebook. “What’s this?”
“Oh, the...schedule you asked me for. I made a planner last night.”
Her eyes lit up in an approving glow. “You did? You didn’t have to do it from scratch. I could have found a planner for you.”
“I wanted to,” I said quietly, trying my best to come up with what weren’t technically lies. “It saves money...” I was going to give her more excuses, but the less I had to speak, the better. I held out the book to her. “If you wanted to go over it, I thought I’d leave it with you?”
She beamed as she took it from my hands, opening it up to pore over the first couple of pages. “This is very thorough.”
“Someone...from camp had one, and I remembered what was in it. I mostly copied.”
She closed the book to hold it in both hands. “I’ll leave you a few notes. Maybe I’ll get you some stickers and some washi tape to go with it? You could decorate it a little.”
That was a bit of a shock to me. It was nice of her. My stepmother would have never offered to purchase stickers for me for anything. I held my hand to my chest and nodded. “Oh...okay.”
“When you get back, I’ll show you how I decorate my planner.” She looked over my clothes and then scrunched her eyebrows. “Is that what you’re wearing? And you haven’t done your hair. Or your makeup.”
I reflexively looked down at my clothes, wondering what was wrong with them. Too nice? I’d brushed my hair and put it in a clip like usual. “I don’t really have any makeup,” I said. I didn’t know the first bit about it, other than what we’d used to cover up bruises.
She nodded sagely and put down the clothing she was sorting. She ushered me out of the laundry room. “Don’t worry, Sang. I’ve got plenty to share here. We should always look like refined little ladies.”
♥♥♥
Ten minutes later, I walked out of the house with my face stiff, my hair uncomfortable and a hot blush on my cheeks.
Gabriel would be horrified. They all would be.
My hair was puffy around my face, a lot like Carol’s style.
My clothes were replaced with a stiff, itchy dress that she said she loved. The skirt came down beyond the knees, light blue with white polka dots. She had me wear a slip, which was a little snug on me, but it puffed the skirt out a bit. She even let me borrow a string of pearls.
The worst was the makeup. It was layered thick, and my lashes felt heavy after she applied fake ones. I hovered my fingers over my face, wanting to wipe the heaviness of lipstick away from my mouth. It was an uncomfortable feeling.
“This is perfect,” she’d said, asking me to turn around in the living room when she was finished with me. “I never had daughters. You’ll get a lot of people asking who the pretty little doll is.”
I did feel like a doll. Or like someone else.
She didn’t ask how I wanted things, or seek my opinion on it. She just said do this or that.
How different her requests felt from Gabriel’s. While he did pick out clothes for me, he usually asked if I liked them too. He’d say, “How does this feel? Do you like it? What do you think of the color?” Even if I didn’t have an opinion, he always seemed to consider my feelings. If I didn’t like it, it went away.
Sometimes he was demanding, like with my hair clip, but he teased me, and I adored him.
With Carol, I felt like I had to do what she wanted, and agree with her. I was lying to make her happy.
And she never asked once what I thought.
Outside, a thin sheet of clouds drifted across the sun, keeping the morning cool. I took to the driveway and then to the street, after promising Carol walking was just fine and she didn’t have to drive me. She wasn’t totally against it. She thought it’d give me a chance to show off to the neighborhood.
I walked quickly away from the house. It was harder to do in the hard shoes she had given me.
When I got to Nathan’s, I went through the garage to get out of view of the street in case Carol happened to look out the window, but from this angle, she’d have to be standing in the garage. I would have spotted her.
Once I was inside the garage, I rushed to the door, eager to get in.
And embarrassed to be seen like this.
Change
DR. GREEN
(Ten minutes earlier...)
The crash of metal against stone could be heard from the street as Sean rounded the curve of Sunnyvale Court. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from until he parked at Kota’s house, got out of his car and heard it coming from across the street.
Like construction noise.
Nathan’s house was under attack? What were they doing in there?
; Sean jogged across the street. As he got closer to Nathan’s house, he heard shouting, another crack of stone and a large thud. The front door was unlocked. He opened it slowly, waiting and listening.
He had a small bit of déjà vu, expecting Mr. Griffin with all the noise and the shouting. Had he flown back without anyone being notified? Had they missed a notification while focusing on Sang?
It was louder inside, but there was nothing immediately evident in the foyer. Sean tensed, eased against the wall, and peered around the corner.
Just in case...
The kitchen and dining areas were fine. Behind them was a hallway...
North stood in the doorway of the open bathroom, blocking the view. He was in his usual black T-shirt, black jeans and boots. He was clean, so he wasn’t hurt, but his shoulders were squared off. He was ready to fight.
“What’s this?” Sean barked at him, coming forward. His heart was racing, but if North had cornered someone, he needed to get in there and help. “What’s the problem?”
North turned around, face red and tight with anger. “Ask Nathan. I just got here. He’s over here, hammering away at the walls.”
Nathan? Sean wedged himself between North and the door frame to peer inside.
The bathroom light was off, but the blinds were open. Nathan stood halfway in the standing shower. He wore pajama pants, no shirt, no shoes. No safety gear of any sort. He held a sledgehammer up. With a quick flex of his muscles as he lunged, the hammer crashed down heavily on top of the half wall of the shower, shaking the whole place.
The glass divider had already been removed. Slate and drywall lay crumbled at his feet. Gray dust drifted through the air. The wooden supports were exposed; a few more hits and the half wall would be gone.
The last swing had Nathan shoulders shaking, and he paused, catching his breath. He put the head of the hammer down on the floor.
He glared at the wall with bared teeth. An angry tension seemed to rise in him all over again as his muscles flexed. He was only waiting to take another swing because he needed to catch his breath.
“Uh, Nathan?” Sean asked, catching the worn-out expression on Nathan’s face and the dark circles under his eyes. It was like he’d jumped out of bed angry and decided to take it out on the wall.
His face was tight. His blue eyes glinted with determination, and he shot a look at Sean, his intensity something Sean had witnessed only on rare occasions, like when he was at a tournament, about to take on a challenger who was trying to bully him to throw him off his game.
You didn’t want to get between a man’s sledgehammer and his target if he had a face like that.
Sean recoiled a bit, checking in with North. What happened to set him off? And how do we get him to stop to talk to us without getting a hammer thrown at us?
North had no answer for him, only glaring and waiting.
Nathan took a couple more swings at the wall, but each swing came a little slower than the one before.
Once the edge of the wall finally started to come apart and crumble at his feet, Nathan stopped swinging, putting the heavy hammer head down, leaning it against his thigh. He wiped an arm against his forehead, creating more of a streak of damp dust rather than actually wiping the sweat away.
A moment passed. Nathan glowered at the wall.
“Uh,” Sean said in the silence that followed. “S’up?”
Nathan leaned against the wall of the shower, catching his breath. His voice came out cracked and raspy. “No one told me she fainted because of the shower.” He tilted his head backward, closing his eyes. “She didn’t tell me she didn’t like showers.”
Oh.
North’s hard face softened. He slid a piece of fallen slate across the floor with his boot. “No one knew,” he said in a darkened voice.
“Victor knew,” Nathan said, twisting the handle of the sledge in his hand. “Kota told me when he was here dropping off stuff. Victor should have told the rest of us.”
Sean rubbed the back of his neck, looking for the words to say. “We don’t know why he kept it to himself. Maybe she asked him to. Kind of not the shower’s fault, though... No need to hit it.”
Nathan rolled his eyes. “I’m changing it out.”
North pressed his palm to his forehead. “You’re doing this now? Why? She’ll be here any minute.”
“She’s been around while we were doing construction before. She won’t care.”
North reached for the sledge. Nathan tugged it away, dodging but with limited ability to move around in the shower.
North shoved an open palm out expectantly. “Give me that before you break a pipe. We’ve got enough to do without breaking the house.”
“I want to put in a bathtub.”
“You didn’t want a bathtub. You wanted a walk-in shower.”
“Sang doesn’t like showers!” Nathan tugged the sledge closer, holding it up off the floor with both hands, his chest muscles and biceps flexing.
Sean sharply clapped his hands once to get their attention. “Stop talking,” he said, feeling a pang at sounding a little too much like Owen. “Nathan, you wanted a walk-in shower. You can keep it.”
“I don’t want it anymore.”
“Sang’s staying at her old house now.”
“Maybe for now. What if things change? What if—”
“We don’t play the what-if game, remember?” Sean waved toward the door. “She is where she is right now. We deal with the real issues as they come up. Not create more problems on top of the immediate issues.”
“I want to give her a big tub,” Nathan said, the start of a whine in his voice. “One like Victor’s.”
“You don’t have room for a tub that big,” North said.
“I will if I take out my closet.”
North pushed his palm again toward his own face again, covering his eyes. “We’re not taking out your closet.”
There was a small buzzing of the doorbell.
Sean groaned. Nathan had the worst timing. “Is the door locked? Did anyone give Sang keys?” Sean asked and then waved his hand to dismiss his own question. “Never mind. Stay quiet in here and clean this up. Sang is stressed out enough without this.”
North hurried out, grabbed the kitchen broom and brought it into the bathroom. “Keep her out of here until I can fix this.”
“Just a minute!” Sean called out to whoever was at the door, heading in that direction. He checked the bathroom again. There was some dust in the hallway.
North swept it quickly into the bathroom and closed the door, talking quietly to Nathan.
Sean had a lot of sympathy for Nathan. He honestly couldn’t blame him for wanting a tub. He’d been thinking the same thing about his own apartment. Could he fit a bigger one in?
But he’d considered it like she’d be staying the night more often. At the moment, he didn’t know when she’d get another chance.
He checked the front door quickly through the peephole, found no one and then checked the side door in the garage. A girl stood on the steps...but she looked odd through the peephole. Was it really Sang?
He opened the door and paused, looking at her.
It was her, and it wasn’t her.
The makeup masked every naturally beautiful feature of her face. It covered the freckles, the way she’d blush naturally. It even changed her skin tone into something almost orange.
She had a beautiful face, and with the makeup, it became striking, but way too different from Sang’s natural look.
The dress was okay, but it didn’t really suit her. It reminded him of 50s retro a bit. Maybe for Halloween, it’d be a good thing. And the hair? What had happened there?
Had Carol really sent her to the diner like that?
Sang’s expression was the worst: mortified.
He smiled at her, forcing himself to sound overly pleasant. “You look...amazing?” Ick. Hesitating at the last word didn’t sound great. He didn’t want to encourage this look, which she clearly didn’t li
ke, and he didn’t want to say it looked bad.
“Didn’t have a choice,” she said. “She wanted to dress me up.”
Sean had told Gabriel he could experiment on Sang with blushes and lipsticks, if she wanted to. She hadn’t had much of a chance before; let her see if she liked it.
Gabriel had always refused. A light touch of gloss here, a touch of mascara, maybe. She didn’t need makeup, he’d say.
Now he realized Gabriel was right.
Sang cast her eyes down toward the floor. “They’ve probably already seen this on the cameras if they were watching, but can I get something else to wear, at least?”
Sean checked over his shoulder, sensing the others in the bathroom still. “Yes,” he said and reached for her hand, pulling her into the house to shut the door behind her. “You could wash the makeup off, too. But let’s take a photo. We’ll need Gabriel to reproduce this when you leave.”
“She used fake lashes,” she said, pointing to her eyes. “Maybe I should leave those on. Can you reuse them?”
“I think so. I can find out.” He didn’t want her to be uncomfortable now that she was out of the house.
She sighed and followed him in. She started to walk into the kitchen, and he tugged her toward the master bedroom. “Come in here,” he said.
Dark, rumbling voices erupted from deeper in the house and then quieted quickly.
She turned around, shoulders tense. Sean waited too, expecting the guys to continue to argue, maybe even burst out of the bathroom. When it was clear they weren’t coming to see her just yet, she relaxed. “Who all is here?”
“Nathan and North. More may show up soon.” He shooed her into the bedroom and then to the en suite bathroom. He opened the blinds for more natural light. The space was small, with a tub shower, a small sink and toilet, and the tiniest of linen closets. Sean opened the closet to find a towel and washcloth for her.
She stood near the tub, looking around and then glancing nervously toward the doorway. A finger hovered over her lips, but she stopped herself from touching the makeup. “I keep wanting to wipe the makeup off.”
“In a second,” he said. He put the towel and washcloth down and took out his phone. He found the camera app and opened it. “Okay, show me a smile.”