Frankie
News of Erica’s trip to the police station spreads like wildfire, but unfortunately, so does our little venture out of the house, which makes Mom and Dad extremely pissed even though, as I told them, I was only trying to make sure Lucy didn’t get hurt.
No one thinks the youngest can protect anyone. Ridiculous.
“You are not to leave this property until I say so,” Mom says. “Is that clear?”
“What about to go next door?” I say, pressing my back into the couch in the living room. It’s mostly to piss her off. I don’t have any interest in seeing Alex since he sniped at me yesterday.
Mom shakes her head, standing in front of the TV. “Unbelievable. Alex can come here.”
“But we practically live there, too,” I say.
“Just listen to your mother,” Dad says, resigned, and I decide it’s not worth it to fight. Lucy’s basically in a coma, silent next to me with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Are you okay?” I ask her when Mom and Dad leave the room.
“No.” She stands and walks out the side door into the backyard. I’m about to follow her when I hear Millie’s footsteps behind me, so much softer than Lucy’s, like she’s trying to tiptoe around the house without being heard.
“Trevor texted me that he and Alex want to come over,” she says.
I sit up and bang my knee on the coffee table, a fissure of pain radiating down my leg. “Gah,” I say, then turn to her. “Really?”
Her eyes move to the space behind me, and she inhales sharply. “There they are.”
They’re both peering through the glass door that leads to the deck, looking rather sheepish, and as Millie lets them in, I realize it’s the first time I’ve been so close to Trevor since finding out all this information about him.
Heat rises in my chest, and suddenly, I’m embarrassed, like I don’t know what to say, like I know too much about him.
Usually, I’d rush over to Alex, but I’m still miffed at him for the way he spoke to me in the pool, so I look away and hope Millie can do all the talking.
“Let’s go to my room,” she says.
The four of us file upstairs, and when she shuts the door behind us, we’re all awkward and quiet for a moment as we find our places far away from one another.
Millie settles into her armchair while Trevor falls into her desk chair.
Alex sits crisscross on the floor, so I take the bed, burrowing in Millie’s pillows.
“This is weird,” Trevor says.
“Clearly,” I mumble.
“I’m sorry.” Alex blurts out the words like he’s been holding them in for a week. “Frankie, I’m sorry I blew you off. I hate fighting with you.”
Something softens inside my chest. I hate fighting with him, too. Everything is so much better when we’re on the same page.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Especially now. There’s too much other shit going on. You know, like Erica being hauled into the police station.”
Trevor’s face falls, and I realize that was probably not the right thing to say.
“Sorry, Trevor. But, uh, now that we broke the ice…” I pull at a thread on Millie’s quilt. “We know about you two, about everything.”
Millie grips a pillow, her eyes wide, and I can tell she’s worried about him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks. “I would have been there for you.”
“We wanted to keep it secret,” Trevor says, tapping his foot on the ground. “She thought Billy would lose his mind, and we didn’t know what we were yet. But now…”
“What are you going to do?” Millie asks.
“Me?” he asks.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to make her do this all on her own,” I say. “If you’re the father—”
“He’s not,” Alex says, his voice more confident than usual. “Trevor’s not the father.”
“You knew about this?” I ask, incredulous, and Alex shrugs. It dawns on me then how foolish I was not to assume that the boys told each other things they would never tell us, kept each other’s secrets.
Trevor runs his hand through his hair. “We only got together a few weeks ago. The timing doesn’t line up.
” He takes a slow exhale. “It’s Billy’s, but his parents wanted her to take a paternity test. She refused, so they court-ordered one.
She texted me this morning saying she thought she was going to be forced or something.
Mr. Godwin’s behind it all, I know it. He’s such an asshole.
Honestly, makes me think he’s hiding something. ”
I press my fingers to my forehead and close my eyes, trying to understand. “Wait, so that’s why they brought her into the police station? To take a court-ordered paternity test?”
“I think so,” Trevor says. “She’s already been through so much.” He bites his bottom lip and Alex lets out a weary sigh.
I reach inside my pocket, the corner of Erica’s note pricking my finger. I could show it to them, but Lucy already told me it was stupid. There’s no way they would listen to me either. So I leave the note hidden, and instead ask, “You don’t think she killed Billy?”
In the quickest moment, Alex and Trevor exchange a worried look, almost a blink. A suggestion of a glance.
“No,” Trevor says. “No way.”
But that look, I fear, tells a different story.