Chapter 37 Vale
Vale
THE PAST
Something bad is coming.
I don’t know how I know that, I just do.
It all starts two weeks into summer break, when Rick comes home early.
He lost his job.
After ranting and raving and tearing apart the house, all while screaming back and forth with Louise, the two disappear for hours. Leaving us to fend for ourselves. When they eventually stumble back in later that night, they’re not alone.
It’s not the first time they’ve thrown parties here. Far from it. Yet I can’t shake the feeling that something else is going on here. For one, I don’t hear any female voices. Only male.
For another…
Aston.
After he all but drags me down to the basement to grab Chloe and the boys, and sneak them upstairs into my room, where we give them applesauce with crushed Benadryl to help them sleep through the noise, he turns to me and shoves a small pink pill in my hand.
“Here. I have a feeling it’s gonna be loud tonight.”
I don’t tell him it doesn’t really work for me.
It’s not until after I’ve popped it into my mouth, and swallowed it dry, that I notice he doesn’t do the same.
Gripping my shoulders, he bores his gaze down into mine, making me acutely aware of how much taller he is—a whole head. “Lock the door and go to sleep, okay? Don’t come out, no matter what you hear.”
I frown, widening my eyes and reaching for him when he turns to leave, tugging him by the arm to a stop. “Wait, where are you going?”
The first time he had us bring the little ones up here, I’d asked him why, and he just shrugged and said, “It gets loud. I don’t want them to wake up scared and wander upstairs.
It’ll just piss off Rick and Louise if they bother them when their friends are over.
They can just stay with us when they have parties. ”
I didn’t question it—it made sense; same goes for the Benadryl—but I did ask why my room and not his. To which he just blinked and said, “Your room is bigger.”
He wasn’t wrong. And yet…
Now, he won’t meet my gaze as he mutters at the floor, “I, um, I’m gonna go to bed. In my room.”
I make a face. “What? Why? You can’t leave me alone with them.”
He shrugs, lifting his head just enough to look past me. “They already fell back asleep. They won’t bother you.”
Following his gaze, I find all three of our younger foster siblings curled up on the rug, wrapped in the blankets they brought up here with them.
A door creaks open, and I whip around.
“Aston!”
He’s already halfway through. “Just… go to sleep, Vale,” he says quietly, more serious than I think I’ve ever heard him speak. The pale eyes that lock with mine are pinched around the edges in a way that has my hackles rising.
I take a step toward him. “What’s going on?”
He shakes his head, and forces a small, thin smile down at me. “I’m just really tired. I think I ate something bad,” he whispers. “Lock the door behind me.”
And then he’s gone.
I press my ear to the door, straining to hear the telltale click of his door shutting. When it does, I breathe out a sigh of relief.
I don’t know why I worried maybe he’d go downstairs—or why the idea of him joining the…party or whatever rubs me the wrong way—I just know I’m glad that doesn’t seem to be the case.
And confused.
Is he really sick… or is he avoiding me?
Scowling at the thought, I stomp over to my bed and climb under the covers to lay on my back and gaze blankly at the water-stained ceiling. Waiting for sleep to pull me under.
He’s been acting odd all day, ever since Rick got home and we caught wind of what happened. We were out back at the time and heard everything through the open kitchen window.
The football we’d been throwing back and forth forgotten, I’d watched in confusion as Aston backed himself against a tree, slid down, and curled into a ball. Tugging on his hair, shaking his head, muttering under his breath.
When I approached him and poked his shoulder—he wasn’t answering to his name—he flinched so hard, I flinched.
He’s always a little on edge when Rick’s in one of his moods, so it wasn’t all that unusual. But there was something in his eyes when he met my gaze… something that had a chill shooting down my spine.
Things were tense after that. Quiet. Even after Rick and Louise stormed out and drove off with a squeal of tires, Aston remained distant. Out of it. Twitchy, like I’ve noticed Louise and Rick get sometimes when they’ve smoked that gross sulfur, chemically smelling stuff.
Now, I toss and turn in bed for what feels like hours, grinding my teeth against the music blaring from downstairs, vibrating the walls.
Usually, I have no problem sleeping through the noise that sometimes fills this house.
Be it the television downstairs, or when Rick and Louise have people over, like tonight, or the occasional whine and thumping sound I’ll hear faintly through the walls…
the knocking Aston told me to ignore all those years ago, and claimed was a gutter that was loose and would bang against the side of the house when it was windy.
But tonight, I can’t get my head to quiet. And it feels like bugs are crawling under my skin, making it impossible to hold still for more than a few seconds. It feels like I need to get up and run.
I know it’s probably just the Benadryl. It did this last time I took it.
At least, it seems to still work for the others, if their snores and steady breaths are anything to go by.
Kicking off the blankets, I glare at the ceiling when I hear that familiar rhythmic whine and thud against some distant wall. It’s only then I notice how quiet it is. The music stopped.
Did everyone leave?
My stomach twists with a feeling I can’t really place, but has me feeling sick like maybe I, too, ate something bad. And I find myself counting each thump, mouthing the numbers silently, my chest squeezing tighter and tighter by the second.
I looked for it once. The source of the sound.
Wandered around the perimeter, seeking out a dangling piece of the house.
I never found it. And when months passed without hearing it, I figured someone finally fixed it.
But the sound would always return eventually.
There’s no wind tonight. If there was, the tree outside my window would be brushing the glass with its branches. Was it windy all the other times?
I sit up, chest heaving as I stare around the darkened room. A look at the floor shows the kids still fast asleep, their backs rising and falling steadily under the blankets.
My hands ball into fists and I grit my teeth, straining my ears. The thumping stopped. I wait for it to pick up again.
It doesn’t.
Floorboards in the hall creak under someone’s heavy steps. I wait for the sound of Rick and Louise’s bedroom door closing…but it never comes. Instead, there’s the distinct fading thud-thud of someone going back downstairs.
That wasn’t Rick, is all I can think, heart pounding. I know how it sounds when he walks past, and that wasn’t him.
I wait several more minutes, ears strained.
Someone else comes upstairs. I know this because their gait too is different. Uneven and unfamiliar.
My eyes remain wide and frozen on the ceiling, stinging from not blinking the whole time I wait for the rhythmic whine-thud-whine-thud down the hall to stop once more.
Time passes…slow, like molasses.
I don’t think I so much as even breathe.
And then it’s over.
A door slams shut. The music cuts out. The house is…quiet.
Rick and Louise still haven’t come up to bed…but I can’t wait any longer. I jump out of bed and charge for the door. Hesitating only when I’ve got my hand gripping the knob. Questions racing through my mind…ones with answers I don’t think I want to know.
All I do know right now, is I need to see him.
Aston.
Everything will make sense again when I lay eyes on him.
Chewing my lip, I look over at my dresser, debating…
Screw it, I think, heading over there and digging out the gift I’d planned on giving him for his birthday in a few months. It’s a plastic display box, no bigger than the palm of my hand, about half an inch in thickness. And taking up the center, pressed between plastic film, is a butterfly.
It’s a real one. Just dead.
I lifted it from Mrs. Davis’s desk, the school guidance counselor assigned to me. Her office was full of all sorts of trinkets. I doubt she even noticed this one disappeared. I snagged it while her back was turned.
Shaking it out of the sock I hid it in, I clutch it in my hand, and head once more for the door. I wait a beat, straining my ears to make sure the coast is clear, before sneaking into the hall, quietly shutting the door behind me, and padding down the hall to Aston’s room.
His door is cracked open, and my steps slow, alarm bells going off.
I gently push it open, bracing myself for what I might find.
But when all I see is a motionless lump under the covers, I blow out a breath of what feels like relief.
Closing the door behind me, I approach the bed. It’s not until I draw closer that I realize he’s awake.
“Aston?” I whisper.
He’s on his stomach, face rolled toward the window, his eyes wide and glassy as he stares straight ahead. It doesn’t even look like he heard me.
I round the bed and sit down on the edge. “Look.” I lean over him to open the blinds, so the light from the streetlamp can shine in. I hold the little butterfly display to the light. “Aston, look,” I say more forcefully.
Slowly, slowly, he rolls onto his back, a slight furrow between his brows. I wiggle the thin box-like frame side to side, so the wings trapped inside catch the light, making it look as if it’s glowing in the dark.
It’s teal, like the one that landed on the tip of my nose that day at the zoo last summer, in the butterfly garden.
Fingers reach for it, brushing mine. I don’t miss their slight tremor. My fingers twitch, losing grip of the frame, and he scrambles to catch it. He sits up so fast, he sucks in a sharp breath when we come dangerously close to bashing heads.
Our eyes clash in the dark.