Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
BY THE TIME JAMIE AND I get to the car, we can’t find Sawyer anywhere. We circle Starr and Leni’s neighborhood, trying his phone until our calls start going straight to voicemail. We do one last lap before we finally give up and head home, hoping he’ll find his way back.
But an hour rolls by, and another, and then the others arrive, Felicity and Andres catching a lift with Mikey in Denny’s van.
“I rode home with a drum stand digging into my spine,” Felicity says as she flops down next to me on the couch.
It’s after midnight now, and a glance in Jamie’s direction tells me we’re both getting worried.
I go to the sliding door to check the parking lot; my brother’s car still sits at the back, where it’s been since his arrival.
“What’s wrong?” Andres asks, leaning out the door.
“My brother isn’t back yet.” I rub my arms as a chill works its way through me, completely at odds with the night’s wet-hug heat.
I pull out my phone and call my brother again, but it goes straight to voicemail again, as expected.
“I’m going to look for him,” I say, stepping back into the apartment.
“I’m coming,” Jamie says, getting to his feet.
“We should split up.” I go to my room to grab my keys. “We’ll cover more ground that way.”
“Blair—” he says, but I’m already walking out the front door.
I’m rolling down my windows to let the long day’s heat out of my car when Jamie appears at my window. He leans down, his expression folding in concern. “Hey. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll find him. He has to come back here at some point to get his car. So no matter what—”
“I know,” I say, cutting him off. “I’m just—I don’t want him to do something stupid right now.”
“Listen,” he says gently. “He’s not the loose cannon you think he is, okay? He isn’t out picking a fight or getting in trouble. He’s probably just cooling off somewhere.”
“Don’t tell me not to be worried, Jamie.”
“I’m not saying that.”
I put my car in reverse. “I’m going. Call me if you find him.”
I’m halfway out of my parking space when someone yanks my passenger door open. I slam on the brakes as Felicity jumps in.
“I’m coming with you.”
Before I can protest, the back door opens and Mikey dives in. “Me too.”
“I’ll go with Jamie,” Andres calls as he climbs into the Jeep.
“You don’t have do this,” I say to Mikey and Felicity. “He’s pissed at me. It could get really messy.”
“We love mess,” Mikey says. “And Liss is a super calming presence.”
Felicity grins at me. “So where to?”
We split up the area around Starr and Leni’s house and work our way from the outside in. Jamie takes the late-night spots—the convenience stores and fast food places that are still open—while I check the neighborhoods for a lone walking figure.
I make it all the way back to Starr and Leni’s without a sighting, and when I pass their house, defeated shivers are working their way through my muscles again.
Even Felicity looks worried now.
“It’s okay,” Felicity says as I turn around to head home. “Like Jamie said, he has to come back eventually. His car is there.”
I’m about to respond, but we’re passing the neighborhood park and playground, and something tickles the back of my brain. The crawl space in his closet. Sawyer’s hideaway.
My brother, the only person in the world who finds small spaces comforting.
I look to the playground again, my gaze flicking from the enclosed slide to the crawl tube at the top of the tower.
Two battered Nikes stick out of one end, toe-tapping lazily.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I park at the curb and climb out, crossing the playground and taking the stairs to the top, two at a time.
When I lean down to peek inside the tube, Sawyer lifts his head, eyes narrowing into a glare.
“What the f—”
I grab his ankles and pull, and he slides halfway out with a yelp. I hear a plasticky clunk as he struggles to sit up and bangs his head on the top of the tube.
“You idiot.” I lean over him, smacking his shoulder as he tries to clamber out. “What is wrong with you! Why wouldn’t you answer your phone?”
He puts his hands up to block me. “Ow! Hey, stop it!”
I get one more smack in before I scuttle backward to the other side of the platform, sticking one foot out to keep him away. “You’re a moron.”
He flips me off, and I flip him off back, both of us holding the pose.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You could’ve been hit by a drunk driver. You could’ve been lying half dead in a ditch somewhere!”
“If only,” Sawyer says.
I lower my middle finger. “That’s not funny.”
Sawyer stows his middle finger too. “Why not? You’d get to find me and play hero. They’d probably give you a medal. You could hang it up with all your first-place prizes and blue ribbons, and maybe Mom wouldn’t totally ream me for dropping out of school. A win-win.”
I frown. “Sawyer—”
My brother scowls. “Gross. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you feel bad for me. It’s freaking me out.”
“You’re hiding out on a playground after admitting you’re scared to tell Mom and Victor you dropped out of school. This is a little cry for help. Sorry if I’m responding to what you’re putting down.”
“That’s even weirder. Since when do you give a shit about me? Oh, don’t give me that wounded look. This is a next-level one-eighty for you. You’re the one selling me out to Victor all the time.” He spits Victor’s name like a swear word.
“I am not!”
“Yeah, you are. And you always take their side. Even when I’m getting in trouble for the dumbest shit—even when it’s something you did—you’ve never defended me.
It’s not like I expect you to throw yourself under the bus, but they treat you like you’re a perfect angel, and you’ve always seemed more than happy to let me be the scapegoat.
I’m the problem child, and that makes sense, because I’m the one who had to do anger management—I get how that makes people see me.
But I don’t think that absolves you of everything. ”
“I’ve never said it did.”
He gives me a flat look.
“You’ve never even talked to me, Sawyer! How do you know how I feel? You’ve shut me out our whole lives.”
“Not our whole lives.”
I glare at him. “Since Mom and Victor started dating.”
“Because you loved him! And he’s an asshole!”
“I know your relationship with him isn’t the best, but he’s always been good to me. And I wanted a dad.”
“We already have a dad.”
“You’re joking.”
“I know he’s not the greatest dad—”
“He’s not a dad, Sawyer! We haven’t spoken to him in years, let alone seen him!”
Sawyer’s expression changes, the most minute flicker of something before it shifts back to tense irritation. But it’s enough to give me pause.
“Have you…?”
Sawyer swallows, looking away. “He’s in treatment. In Reno. He emails me sometimes.”
My limbs grow heavy, and I slump back against the bars behind me. “Wow. He… did he, like, look for you?”
I don’t know why the idea makes my heart hurt. Maybe because he obviously didn’t look for me.
“No, I looked for him. A long time ago. After Mom and Victor got engaged, but before they sent me to anger management. I got it in my head that I didn’t have to stay? I had another option? So I looked him up, and it was surprisingly easy to find him.”
“You were going to leave?” I don’t have to say what I’m thinking; I can hear it in my voice. From Sawyer’s expression, I can tell he does too. You were going to leave me?
“I was suffocating in that house, Blair. Every day felt like a battle. I think that’s why I was so mad all the time.
Because I thought I’d found a way out, and I asked Dad if I could come live with him, and he just flat-out said no.
Not a good idea. Then I put my fist through my bedroom wall, and the next thing I knew, I was in group therapy.
Which at the time I thought was the worst thing that could happen.
But then I met the guy who’d end up being my best friend, and I finally didn’t want to leave anymore. ”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this? About Dad?”
He gives me a look. “Because you loved Victor, and you were never on my side. Dad was going to be the thing I had to myself. You got everything else.”
Tears drip off my chin, and I try to subtly wipe them away. “So if he’d said you could go with him, you wouldn’t have even asked if I wanted to go too?”
He hesitates. “Probably not. But you wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be alone either, Sawyer.”
“You would’ve been alone? I’m the one who was on my own! Every day was another fight with Victor. I was being buried alive, and you never helped me!”
“You can’t fight every battle! What was I supposed to do? God, I was only eleven!”
“And I was twelve! From the moment they got married—do you remember how Mom and Victor bragged about you at their wedding? About your grades, the awards you’d won, how you were already reading at the high school level?
No one asked me what I was up to, and Mom and Victor acted like I was something to be hidden away until I could learn to control myself.
Do you have any idea what it was like for me? Did you ever even ask yourself?”
I swipe at my eyes. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I just wanted a family.”
He sighs. “God, Blair. We were already a family. I know we didn’t have any money, but we had fun with Mom.
Remember grilled cheese night, when she’d put out seven different cheeses for us to try?
And watching every Disney movie that one summer?
And when the pipes would make that train whistle noise, and she’d start the train game? ”
The train game. She’d put on a baseball cap like it was a train conductor’s hat and take us on a trip to elsewhere.
We’d go to Mexico City or Buenos Aires or Berlin, and she’d take us to the international grocery store to pick out snacks from our destination, and when we got home, we’d find a movie from that country to watch.
“Mom was struggling, though,” I say. “We were having fun, but you know she was stressed.”
He droops. “I just wish it hadn’t been Victor, of all people. She’s different with him. Would Mom have pushed us the way she does now without his influence?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the reason she pushes us is because she doesn’t want us to go through what she did. If we come out of school with stable careers ahead of us, we never have to struggle.”
“I’m struggling right now, though,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’m fucking miserable.”
I swallow hard, my heart aching for him. Because don’t I know exactly how that feels? Trying to talk to Mom about my feelings and being steamrolled? Asked to sacrifice my rest and my time in Stone & Spiral, all to reach the goal she’s set for me?
“That’s why you withdrew from school?” I ask.
He nods, looking away. “I wouldn’t have even done summer session, except I didn’t want to be at home.
But I hated it so much, I could barely talk myself into getting out of bed in the morning.
I missed enough classes that one of my professors finally told me I should withdraw rather than fail.
So I just went all in and withdrew from everything.
“I tried telling Mom I was having a hard time, but you know Victor had to weigh in,” he continues.
“He said I was being lazy, that it’s a privilege I get to go to college, that they’ve allowed me to do that without the burden of student loans.
And Mom agreed! Because this is how it is with them—as soon as we step out of line, it’s all, We’re doing you a favor right now.
And the more they give us, the more they can use it to control us.
Why do you think they threw a fit when I bought my own car? ”
“Because your car is a junker, Sawyer.”
“No, it’s because a car is freedom. It’s in my name, bought with my money.
They can’t take it away, which means it’s not useful to them.
Remember when they took off my bedroom door?
That’s because they wanted me to get my GPA up, and it was the only thing they could take that mattered more to me than my car.
I haven’t felt that trapped and angry since before they sent me to therapy.
And the way I was feeling this summer was worse.
I couldn’t get myself to feel mad about anything.
I just—I couldn’t—I just wanted everything to stop. ”
He swallows hard, tipping his head back. He scrubs his arm over his eyes, and when he looks at me again, they’re wet with unshed tears.
“I was miserable, and when I tried to talk to them about it, they told me to suck it up. That I’m being ungrateful, because so many people have it worse than I do.”
“I don’t think you’re being ungrateful. I also don’t think you did anything wrong withdrawing from your classes. You can’t pour from an empty cup. They should’ve asked if you’re okay.” I reach out and touch his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
He shakes his head.
I get to my feet, tugging his sleeve until he stands, and then I hug him. It’s maybe the first time we’ve hugged since we were kids, which is probably why he goes stiff as a mannequin.
“Just try to be normal about this,” I whisper.
He huffs out a laugh that breaks off in a sob and leans into me, resting his head on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry you’re having a hard time.” I pat his back slowly, feeling his tears soak through my T-shirt. “I’m sorry they didn’t ask if you’re okay. I’m sorry they made you feel like you weren’t allowed to struggle. I’m sorry I made you feel like I wasn’t on your side.”
“I wasn’t on your side either,” he says thickly.
“I—I get why you didn’t tell me. That you were here.
” He sniffs, pulling away to wipe his face with his collar.
“I would’ve sold you out, because it would’ve made them look at you for a minute instead of me.
So I can’t really be mad that you didn’t tell me.
I was mad at him”—he jerks a thumb over his shoulder, and when I look, I spot Jamie and Andres parked behind my car now—“but I get why he didn’t tell me either. Someone had to look out for you.”
Jamie glances over and catches my eye, but I can’t read his expression from here.
“We can be on the same side now,” I say. “For each other.”
“I am.” Sawyer sighs, stretching his neck. “I’m not going to make a big deal out of you two dating.”
“No, that’s not… Well, actually, that’s appreciated too, but there’s something else.”
His brows arch in silent question.
“That program that I got into? I, um, also dropped out.”
Sawyer stares at me. Then he starts to laugh.
“Oh, man,” he says. “We are so screwed.”