Chapter 11
Vale
THE PAST
I’m shaken out of a deep, black sleep—the kind where nothing exists.
A warm, sweaty hand is slapped over my mouth just as I go to scream. It’s small, about the same size as mine, and when it’s thrust against my teeth and smushed against my tongue, I taste something sweet.
Candy maybe.
My eyes bulge from my head, but it doesn’t help. I can’t see a thing, except for a stripe of faint light stretched out under the window. I’ve been living here long enough now to know it’s just a nearby streetlamp peeking in.
My breaths are choppy, nearly drowning out the hissed voice in my ear.
“Shh!”
I whimper, and he tightens his grip on my face to the point I can’t even breathe. He’s practically laying on top of me, holding my squirming body down.
He shakes me. Hard. “Stop!”
Spit hits my ear, and my face tries to scrunch up. Gross.
“You need to be quiet!” he grits out in a hush. “You’ll wake them up.”
My body trembles. It feels like fire’s licking up my throat, and if I could, I’d be grinding my teeth. But instead, my jaw just throbs against the heel of his palm with nowhere to go.
I seethe hotly against his hand, digging my short nails into my palms, wishing it was his wrists instead.
He pants in my ear and seems to be waiting for something. So I hold still, remembering what my dad told me when he took me hunting last year. “Hold still. Watch. Don’t move a muscle.”
I asked him why, and he said the best predator knows how to be patient.
“Let it come to you.”
My new foster brother is far from being a clueless deer walking to its death, but for whatever reason, it does the trick. My patience wins out, and suddenly I can taste air again.
Turning my head, I glare at what I assume is Aston’s face. Now that my eyes are adjusting, I can sort of make out the outline of his body. See the change in shades of gray as he moves away from me.
But he doesn’t leave the bed.
It’s a twin and not very soft, but I’ve mostly gotten used to it. I miss my bed though. I wonder what happened to it.
“Sorry,” Aston mumbles quietly, and I feel more than see him settle onto his back. His shoulder knocks mine, and I tense. “You were whimpering. Could hear you through the wall. Thought you were gonna start screaming.”
Blinking, I try and fail to see him more clearly.
“Bad dream?”
I say nothing.
It’s a long moment before he speaks, his voice so hushed it’s a struggle to hear him.
“I used to get them too. Was it about your parents? The crash?” he whispers.
Again, I don’t speak. I chew the inside of my cheek.
How did he know about that?
This isn’t the first time he’s spoken to me, but it is the first time he’s being…nice. Nosy.
I scowl at the thought and roll my head away from him to face the window. I can just make out the faint lines of light between the blinds.
It’s been two months now since I moved in with the Baders.
Before this, I was with my grandma for four months. But she was old, and I was apparently too much for her to handle, and my only other living family now that my parents are gone, is an aunt who lives in Texas. Not sure why they didn’t try her. I didn’t ask.
“Do you talk at all?” Aston asks after a while.
I almost forgot he was here.
I blink at the blinds, wondering if I’ll ever talk again. Sometimes it just seems so pointless. Hold still. Watch. Don’t move a muscle.
Aston squirms, growing restless, and I purse my lips.
There’s a huff, then, “Fine. Whatever. Be weird.” I feel him sit up, but he seems to be hesitating.
Turning my head, I find his shadow angled toward me. Sense his gaze, like maybe, somehow, he can see me perfectly fine.
The thought has me hackles rising.
“Just make sure you’re quiet like this all the time, though, ’kay?”
I frown, not sure I know what he means.
“You can’t be screaming and carrying on during the night,” he whispers. “You’ll wake him up.”
Who? I almost say, but of course, I know who he means.
Rick.
So far my foster dad seems okay. He smells like the beer my dad used to drink, but he smells like it all the time. Like he takes baths in the stuff.
He smokes a lot too, and his teeth are yellow, and he’s got a gut so big he looks pregnant.
But he’s…nice, I guess. He tells me I’m a good boy and pats my head or shoulder when he passes by sometimes. Louise just ignores me, unless my caseworker’s visiting. She doesn’t talk much to Aston either, but he doesn’t seem to care.
Rick, though…
Aston hates it when I get his attention.
He’s been here longer than me. Not sure how long, but long enough that he clearly doesn’t want me here, sharing his home with me. Sharing any kind of attention. Sharing the food that we don’t always get because they don’t have the money to buy groceries.
At least when Rick isn’t around, Aston leaves me be, for the most part.
Or at least, he did.
I’m not sure I like this any better than the mean looks I normally get.
Curling my shoulders, I wait for him to say more or finally leave. The bed shifts, creaking faintly, but then it stops. And it’s quiet.
A beat passes before he speaks. “If you’re having bad dreams or scared or somethin’, just knock on the wall, okay?” he says slowly. “I’ll come stay with you. Make sure nothin’ gets you.”
My eyes have adjusted enough by now that I can see his body turn and an arm come up to where he taps the wall just above the headboard.
I’m not scared, I want to tell him.
He’s the one who had to come in and shake me awake.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been told I was crying or screaming in my sleep, though it’s been a while since it’s happened. Not since my parents died.
Night terrors.
That’s what they said they were called. Not nightmares, because those kinds of bad dreams you remember.
I don’t ever remember my dreams. Good or bad.
I’m not sure I dream at all.
“But if you ever hear me knocking…” he goes on, pulling me out of my memories. There’s something to his tone, a stiltedness. It’s almost like he’s…warning me of something. Speaking in code. “Just ignore it and go back to bed.”
My face pulls down in a deep frown. And before I can stop myself, I blurt in a raspy voice, “Why?”
He stills, and my mouth opens, only nothing more comes out.
“So, you do talk,” he murmurs so quietly, I feel like the words aren’t for me.
I try to swallow but can’t.
He huffs again, but this time it sounds almost like a laugh.
I wait, wondering if he’ll explain.
A car passes by outside, despite how late it is. Or early…
The whooshing sound seems to pull Aston out of his head, and once it’s passed and it’s deathly quiet once more, he says, “My room isn’t right next to theirs like yours is. And my bed’s on the other side of the room. He won’t hear me. You might though, so just ignore it. Because he will hear you.”
Again, I frown. He’s…confusing.
“He’ll be really mad, okay? If he hears you, he’ll hurt you.”
At those three words, I freeze.
But…
“I mean it, Vale,” he says, and a hand grips my wrist, squeezing so tight, it hurts. I try to shake him off, but he just tightens his hold. I’m a year older than him, but he’s taller, stronger, his fingers long enough to wrap around my whole wrist.
And I’m small. Smaller than I’m supposed to be at this age. A late bloomer, they said at my last physical.
Aston could break my bones if he wanted.
“He’ll hurt you.”
I blink a couple times, and again, I hear myself speaking, my voice light and fragile like it could shatter. “Does he hurt you?”
A long moment passes. His fingers clench around my wrist, and I can feel the thud-thud of a pulse. His or mine, I’m not sure.
“No,” he breathes. “He doesn’t, because I’m a good boy.”
And I’m shaking my head before I even realize what I’m doing, because no, no he’s not…
Last week, when Rick was trying to get me to talk, asking me how my day was, if I was liking my new school… Aston threw a glass at the wall above Rick’s and my heads.
Aston had smirked, though his eyes remained weirdly blank. Rick exploded, shouting expletives before stomping toward him, grabbing his arm, and all but dragging him out of the room.
Before they disappeared around the corner, Aston met my gaze over his shoulder, and for one brief moment, I saw… something. I don’t know what.
It’s like he was trying to tell me something. His eyes pleading…
But then he was gone, and I was sure I just imagined it.
He asked for it…
He wanted his attention.
To be punished.
If he was scared and asking for my help, he wouldn’t have misbehaved in the first place.
“I’m a good boy when I have to be,” Aston says quietly, slowly, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
Climbing off the bed, he moves like a ghost across the room. The door opens with the quietest of clicks, the wood creaking faintly.
Just before he slips through and disappears, I hear him say softly, “Just keep being a good little mouse. Not a peep. If you need anything, you come to me. No one else.”
And then he’s gone.
And all I’m left with is the heart pounding in my ears.