Twenty-eight #2
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Kieran, can we just . . . can we talk about this tomorrow? Sleep on it?”
“No,” I said. Tomorrow, I might cave. “It’s over. I’m going to hang up now.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
I did. I turned my phone off for good measure.
***
I snuck into my bedroom through the window.
Somehow, I slept, and I woke up feeling empty in a way that seemed physical, underneath my skin.
There was nothing where my bones should have been.
Hollow wasn’t the word; nothingness wasn’t all of it.
There was also pain. I felt like someone had carved out my insides.
As if that wasn’t enough, I stumbled to the bathroom and heaved over the toilet, coughing up a few drops of blood that landed on my face more than in the bowl.
When I could stand, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and walked purposefully down the stairs, all the way to the basement.
Cedric was reading a book on one of the cabriole sofas, legs kicked over the arm like he didn’t have a care in the world. I stormed up to him and snatched the book out of his hands.
“You got what you wanted,” I spat, throwing it to the floor. It landed face down; I expected it to be from his collection, but the book was Little Women. He was mocking me. “So you can stop,” I said.
“Stop . . . reading?”
“No more,” I said. “Tell me right now that you’ll leave him alone.”
“I’ll leave him alone.”
“Swear it.”
Cedric raised his arm at ninety degrees, holding up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
I yanked him up by the collar. “Swear.”
“You sure you want to make a scene here?” Cedric lowered his voice. “So long as you and I understand each other, I have no interest in the mutt. Now let go.”
I didn’t. There was a red ring around my vision, and I didn’t think I could. Now that I had him, I wondered if I could hurt him.
“Kieran!”
I jumped back at my dad’s sharp call. Cedric smoothed his collar.
“What’s going on?” Dad demanded. Behind him stood Tim Marino, who was twice his age but didn’t look a day over thirty.
He worked night shifts at the hospital and served as the clan’s healer—a role that predictably demanded very little of him, except when somebody was pregnant, sunburnt, or preparing for the Trade.
Judging by his scrubs and the gloves he was currently taking off, this was one of those occasions.
As our chief and the next closest thing to a doctor, my dad usually accompanied him. Dad sighed, pinching his nose, knocking his glasses. “I didn’t think, at this age, I would have to remind you two to keep your hands to yourselves.”
I pushed between them and up the stairs, earning a scandalized huff from Dr. Marino, and made it out of the basement and halfway to the second floor before my dad called my name.
“Kieran.”
I stopped on the grand staircase to the second floor. The chief stood at the base, hand on his cocked hip.
“What?”
My dad raised his eyebrows.
“Sorry,” I grumbled. “Yes?”
“What was that?” he asked, exasperated.
“Nothing important,” I said. “It’s over.”
My dad raised a hand to stop me before I could turn around.
“My room,” he said with the quiet command that had made him a respected chief.
When I was younger, it had made him an intimidating father.
Between the two of them, Mom had been prone to yelling, but I had dreaded a scolding from Dad way more.
Now, I let him pass me on the stairs and followed him to his bedroom.
I didn’t go past the doorway. He obviously noticed, settling in the nearest armchair and waving toward the one beside it. I waited for more of that tone of his, but it never came.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, not commenting when I stayed standing.
I hate your other son.
I used to think I didn’t—or couldn’t—hate anything.
Now I hate that you love both of us.
I had the irrational urge to tell my dad to choose. Me or him.
In the interest of being dismissed as quickly as possible, I said, “I had a boyfriend. We broke up.”
My dad said, “Oh.”
He shot a panicked glance toward his bookshelf like he might find an adequate response in the titles on the spines.
“Are you . . . okay?”
“Not really.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Hard no.”
He nodded. “I can tell you care a lot about this boy,” he said. “I’ve never seen you—never mind. Not helpful. You’re entitled to your privacy, of course, but I hope you know you could have told me if you’d wanted.”
Hugging my arms, I said, “I did. Want to. I wanted everyone to know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I turned toward the door, realizing I was going to cry again.
“You all would have hated him,” I said acidly. I left without being dismissed, ignoring his calls after me.
In my room, I locked the door behind me. The window was still open from last night. I drew the curtains, and they ruffled in the breeze. I lay face down in my bed, smothered in a pillow that slowly dampened underneath me, and allowed myself to stop breathing.
My dad came by at some point and knocked gently. I ignored him until he left. Hours later, Annalisa banged on my door. When I said nothing, she slapped the wood loudly with her palm.
“I know you can hear me,” she said. I threw the pillow at my door. “If you’re ignoring me to sext your boyfriend—”
I tore the door open.
“Finally,” she huffed. “I have so much to talk to you about. I’ve been thinking. For a while now. A long time, actually. And then last night, Lara took the reveal weirdly well—she’s kind of scary—and I really think—”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said and shut the door.
Annalisa didn’t bang again, but she did knock, calling my name with quiet questioning. I went into the bathroom and turned the shower on its hottest setting. At the sound of the running water, she gave up.
In the mirror, I looked deader than ever, skin pale gray like ash, blood still smeared on my chin. Dim eyes. I stared into those eyes in the reflection until the mirror fogged with steam.
The hot water was unpleasant, stinging like too much time in the sun, but I needed to feel clean. Clean of all of this.
My phone stayed off all weekend.
They each tried again, Annalisa and my dad, on Sunday. I turned them away with silence each time, not caring if it made me an asshole. Cedric had done it for years, and everyone had let him. We had let him become a devil.
Cedric had built an arsenal under our noses. I was allowed to be sad.
I rotted in my bed, sometimes with my headphones on and plugged into my laptop, listening to the dire playlist. I started watching a National Geographic documentary about the tundra, only to tear up and slam my laptop shut the instant an Arctic wolf appeared on the screen.
It was such a low moment, I didn’t even want the FBI agent in my camera to see.
Someone tried my doorknob. Still locked. The visitor began to knock, not once or twice but an ongoing tap, tap, tap against my door. They were knocking to a beat. Definitely not my dad. Fed up, I shouted at Annalisa,
“Will you fuck off?”
The knocking stopped. I thought I was free until I heard a sniffle.
“Shit,” I said and hurried to open the door. Casper had a piece of paper in his hand and two perfect teardrops at the tops of his cheeks. “Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
“But I knocked to the phone song. From the dentist.”
“Right. Of course.” I felt bad for his parents’ receptionist if Casper was calling often enough to memorize the hold music. I scrounged up a half-hearted, “What’s up, little man?”
Casper held up the paper, crumpled at the top from his fist. He had moved on from just sharks to drawing other toothy fish. These crayon sketches looked like torpedoes, so I guessed he was going for barracuda. “I can’t get the eyes right.”
I tilted my head, trying to find the eyes in question.
“Can you help me?”
“Look, Casper, now’s not . . .” Casper’s eyes welled up again with alarming speed. “Um. Okay. Just for a bit.”
I had to raise my desk chair all the way for him to reach the surface.
If Casper noticed my head was everywhere but the lines on the page as I guided him, he didn’t seem to mind.
I tried to make it quick. But when the eyes were done—literally just dots—he continued to work on his drawing by himself, mouth pursed in focus.
I didn’t know how to tell him I wanted to be alone. Resigning myself, I got out my sketchbook and lay on the floor by my desk with the small pot where I kept my charcoal. The drawing started as they always do, with the stem.
Somehow, the stem became a leg. The bloom became a smile.