Chapter Seventeen Ana
Chapter Seventeen
Ana
Before—Eight Months at The Palace
“Help us!” Jolene yelled. She and Hugo carried Kayla out of the woods, one holding each arm. Kayla’s legs were dragging and her head was hanging, eyes closed, swinging from side to side with each step.
Ana felt a rush of panic that paralyzed her body. Until Indy gave her a shove.
“Come on!” she said, her voice trembling.
They jumped out to help Jolene and Hugo get Kayla inside, laying her on the back seat.
“Kayla?” Ana’s voice barely rose above a whisper.
She climbed back in and cradled Kayla’s head in her lap. Indy got in from the other side and slipped her legs beneath Kayla’s like a pillow.
Hugo and Jolene got into the front, with Hugo driving.
“Go!” Jolene screamed before she’d even closed her door.
Hugo stepped on the gas, maneuvering out of the field between the rows of parked cars, bonfires, clusters of kids. Ana and Indy stared at Kayla, taking in the damage. The swollen eye, already black and blue. Bleeding lip. Her shirt torn open, exposing a red bra, shiny like a candied apple.
Jolene turned to face them, her eyes growing wide as the car jerked forward, then stopped.
“What should we do?” Indy cried out. She and Ana looked to Jolene for answers, but Jolene didn’t have any. None of them did. They were helpless. The four Orphans.
Finally, they reached the access road. Hugo turned left, away from the base of the mountain, and stepped on the gas.
“What are you doing?” Jolene snapped.
“I’m taking her to the hospital!”
Ana caught Indy’s eye. Then they both stared at Jolene.
“No—we can’t go there,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Hugo pulled to the shoulder and stopped the car. “Look at her! She’s unconscious!”
Ana was crying. Please know what to do. Please! Jolene followed Hugo’s gaze to the back seat, where Kayla lay still, draped over Ana and Indy, Ana stroking her hair and Indy holding her hands.
And then Jolene told him what they were all thinking. About how they were kids, and they shouldn’t have been in the field. Shouldn’t have been drinking. Shouldn’t have been hooking up with strange guys in a black van.
That the bleacher bees, the teachers, even Edie—their dorm mother—were just waiting for a reason to send Kayla home.
The girl with the piercings and dark eyeliner, the Orphan who smelled of cigarettes and skated so recklessly, like she was trying to hurt herself.
Like she wanted to feel the pain of falling.
And the hospital was just the kind of place where things could go very wrong for a girl like her.
“She’ll get kicked out of the program,” Jolene said.
Hugo stared at her. “That’s what you’re thinking about? The program?”
“Kayla has nothing else,” Jolene started to say. “She’s got no home to go back to.”
Hugo didn’t understand.
But then a deep groan silenced them. Kayla was waking up.
“Kay! Kay!” Jolene said. And she leaned her body all the way over the seat to touch Kayla’s arm.
“I’m taking you to the hospital, okay?” Hugo said, in spite of what Jolene had just told him.
“No!” She tried to open her eyes, but one was swollen shut and the other was crusted over with eyeliner and mascara. Still, she shook her head, back and forth. “No!”
Jolene yelled at Hugo. “I told you! No hospitals! No Dawn! No Edie! She can’t get kicked out of the program.”
Hugo slammed his palms against the steering wheel. “This is fucked,” he said. He looked back to Kayla, bruised and bleeding, her shirt torn open.
“Here,” he said in a soft voice. He took off his T-shirt and passed it back to Indy, who laid it across Kayla. Then he started to drive the other way—up the mountain. And they all sighed with relief thinking they were headed home to Avery Hall.
The access road was dark, the entire outside world dead quiet, even as the wind rushed past Ana’s ears. Ana used the corner of Hugo’s shirt to wipe the makeup from Kayla’s eye, the black gooey paste making streaks on the white cotton. When it was clear, Kayla looked up at them—Ana and Indy.
Ana didn’t know what she was seeing, but it wasn’t her friend in there.
Not even when she was pissed at Jolene and giving her the silent treatment, or at the bleacher bees, flipping them off the second she cleared the entry to the snack bar, or even Dawn when she left a lesson and called her a c-u-n-t in the locker room.
They drove farther into the silence, until they passed The Palace, and then the dorm.
“You missed it!” Jolene said. But Hugo kept driving, up the mountain, across the switchback.
“Where are we going?” Kayla asked.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Ana said. She looked at Indy, who knew she didn’t mean it.
They locked eyes for a moment longer. Why are we going up the mountain? The question sat between them. Surely they couldn’t be going to Dawn’s house. But then there it was, up ahead. The fifth house along the access road.
Eyes wide, Ana tried to smile as she wiped more of the tears and dirt from Kayla’s face. Why were they coming here? It felt like a trap. Kayla hated Dawn. This would be worse than the hospital.
“Hugo!” Jolene grabbed the steering wheel.
“Stop it!” Hugo yelled, pushing her away. “I know what I’m doing.” And he continued down her driveway to the fork, where he turned right onto the dirt road. The one that led to the guest cottage where Coach Emile lived.
It was hidden from the access road and also from the main house. Surrounded by evergreens and woods, it had no outside lights. Like it didn’t want to be found.
Kayla felt the car slow down and lifted her head.
“No!” she shouted again.
But Hugo pulled to a stop and turned off the ignition.
“Let me talk to him first.” He reached over and placed his hand on the side of her face. “Just trust me, okay? He’s my friend.”
Jolene glanced back at Kayla, then at Hugo.
“Give me the keys,” she said. “If you’re not out in five minutes, we’re leaving.”
Which he did, with a disappointed sigh, like he was trying to take care of them and why wouldn’t she believe him? He would talk to Emile and Emile would just—what? Help them with no questions asked, and not tell Dawn or anyone at The Palace?
They would give him five minutes because that wasn’t enough time for anything bad to happen, even if Emile called the police or Dawn—they could still drive away and get Kayla somewhere safe, miles and miles from here.
Hugo had sacrificed his shirt to cover up Kayla’s wounded body, but so what? Ana thought. That didn’t mean they could trust him.
Hugo walked down the path to the entrance of the guest cottage, and Jolene pulled out her phone and checked the time.
“Five minutes,” she said, like she was asking for their approval. “That’s it.”
Kayla nodded and said, “Okay.” Ana and Indy did the same.
And when the seconds turned to minutes, Kayla started to sit up, the one eye open and now looking at her red bra.
She reached for the sides of her torn shirt and pulled them together, her knuckles scraped and blackened with sap from a pine tree, and Ana sat closer so she could feel her body on one side and Indy’s on the other.
The protector now in need of protecting.
“Just go back to Avery,” Kayla said, giving up on Hugo, but then her eyes shifted to the figure coming down the path, the distinct limp of their coach, which they all knew in an instant.
With Hugo following right behind.
Coach Emile stopped at the side of the car and looked at Kayla.
“Jesus,” he said, his face steeped in concern. “You poor thing. Come on. Come inside.”
He opened the door, and Indy got out, making room for him to reach in and take Kayla into his arms. Even with his damaged knee, he carried her like a small child all the way up the stone path and inside the house.
Hugo and Jolene slipped ahead to open the front door, leaving Indy and Ana to follow behind.
This vision of Kayla in Coach Emile’s arms, broken and helpless, stirred something rebellious inside Ana. They didn’t need him. They didn’t need anyone. They could help Kayla all on their own.
But then came a burst of something else. A feeling so primal it made her vision blur: that she should run to Dawn, who was right down the driveway. Run there, right now, and fall inside her blue puffer coat and beg for help, plead for her to make all of this stop.
“Ana . . .” Indy’s voice pulled her back. “What if he tells?”
Ana shook her head. She had no idea what they would do then. Maybe they would all get kicked out. Maybe this was the end for all of them. Their punishment for going to the field. Mio’s warning coming back to her now. “Nothing good is happening there.”
But it was too late to heed her warning.
They went inside to a room with a couch against the wall. A round table with two chairs in front of a refrigerator that buzzed, and a wood cabinet with a stove on top.
But it was the bed that Ana’s eyes returned to, a plaid duvet twisted up with white sheets, two pillows piled on top of each other.
Unmade. Emile, their coach. A grown man.
And why did this send a shiver through her body—being this close to the bed where Coach Emile slept, where he had just been sleeping?
He carried Kayla to it and laid her down on the pillows.
“Get me a towel from the bathroom,” he said to Jolene, who followed where he was pointing. She came back with the towel, and Hugo brought a glass of water from the sink while Indy and Ana stood side by side, staring at their friend in their coach’s bed.
As if this wasn’t completely messed up.
Emile took the towel and began to clean her.
Wiping away the blood from her mouth and the rest of the makeup from the one eye.
Jolene brought ice from the freezer, and Emile gently placed it over the other eye.
He drew a bath so she could clean the rest of her.
Then he gave her a button-down flannel and a pair of gym shorts to wear.
He took her clothes, said she didn’t need to see them again. He would get rid of them for her.