Cornerstone (24 page)

“But how do they keep going? ”

“They constantly search for new members and they feed on one another. They’re always looking for new financial resources, new relationships and anyone who is still willing to put others before themselves. The Fury are master manipulators. They see themselves as victims of life, like it owes them instead of the other way around.”

I gulp, thinking of my father. I wonder if he is deformed beneath his ski mask. Garrett steps closer, disregarding the whole thing with one soothing laugh. “But my parents never had to worry as far as Sean’s concerned. He’s a brainiac and he definitely knows what’s what. Guy’s got some serious amps upstairs.”

“I can see why your mom and dad would be scared of Sean getting into that.” I say, my thoughts spinning a hundred miles away from Sean and his brains. “Especially if there’s no chance of escaping it.”

“There’s always a chance.” Garrett says.

“Why do they stay in The Fury then? If it gets so bad?”

“Well,” he begins reluctantly. “There is a trap to it. After a while, a person in The Fury withdraws totally from loving or caring for anyone else. Once that happens, it doesn’t take long before they decide they can’t trust that anyone loves or cares for them either. Reaching out to one another is the same as working a see-saw, but jumping off is like diving straight into a void.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. Garrett rolls his tongue against a cheek and looks away like he doesn’t want to say. He rubs the base of his neck.

“Spiritual isolation is hell. It’s not a physical place. It’s complete separation from everyone else. Total loneliness. At that point, unless a person can reach back out and find use for relationships again, they go insane.”

A sadness I don’t want to feel for my father roots itself in my stomach. I watch the tops of the trees, swaying in the breeze.

“Not reaching out is a choice too.” Garrett reminds me, nudging my shoulder with his. I nod and give him a grin, but we walk back in silence to the French doors.

We let ourselves into the usual chaos of Garrett’s house. Brandon is playing Hacky Sack in the living room, counting out loud while Iris tries to grab it in mid air. Sean and Mr. Reese are debating the validity of Biblical translations from original Hebrew. The phone rings. Mr. Reese shouts for Mark to check caller ID.

“It’s local!” Mark shouts as he races to pick up the phone. In his goofiest voice, he says, “Reese’s! Who you wanna talk to?”

As Garrett and I enter the kitchen, Mark holds out the receiver to Garrett.

“It’s another giiiiiiirl.” Mark says, batting his eyelashes.

Garrett grabs the phone and gives Mark a half-hearted kick as he says, “Hello?” and then in a dull tone, “Oh, hey Jen.”

I walk past him and lean on the counter, pretending not to be hanging on every word of his phone call. Mrs. Reese is dunking a tea bag and I zone-in on what she’s doing like it’s the most fascinating thing on Earth. When she sees me watching, she gives me an awkward smile that says
tea is not this exciting
. She glances at Garrett and then winks at me as she takes her mug into the living room, which leaves me with absolutely nothing to stare at.

I hop my gaze all over the dining room in search of anything, besides the wall where Garrett is having his conversation with my arch nemesis. I look at the chairs tucked around the table, the weird collage of broken dishes mounted on the wall, and I still manage to run right smack into Garrett’s eyes, which are staring directly at me. Before I can skitter away, he makes a goofy face. The kind I’d make over a bowl of boiled okra. Or over a conversation with a cheerleader I can’t stand. His grin makes me hold myself down inside, anchoring my legs from spinning around the room on tip toe. Whether or not Garrett is into me, at least I know he is way less into Jen.

“I’m not really the one you need to apologize to,” he says. He sweeps back his hair and stuffs a finger in his ear to block out the mounting argument going on between Iris and Brandon. Iris comes tearing into the dining room, gripping Brandon’s Hacky Sack as she yanks out a chair and dives under the table. I try to keep tabs on Garrett’s conversation while feigning interest in Brandon trying to swipe back the bean bag from his sister. “Yeah, okay. You’ll talk to her? Mmm hmm…Last senior party, huh?...I’ll have to see...oh yeah?”

I glance again at Garrett and his eyes are still on me. Thinking all my bad thoughts of Jen seems pretty petty since I’m the one who’s here, seeing him wink at me. I look away, but my cheeks prickle like needles in a voodoo doll.

“Huh, okay...” Garrett finally says into the receiver. “Okay, I’ll find out...mmm hmm...okay, yeah, see ya.”

Brandon wrestles the toy away from Iris and she comes out from beneath the table, howling. Mrs. Reese shouts from downstairs that everyone should be playing nice. I try to puzzle-piece the conversation together as Garrett hangs up. It’s against the universal, we’re-just-friends rule for me to even ask what Jen wanted, so I am totally relieved when he tells me anyway.

“Jen called to apologize for what’s happened. She said she’s going to call your house and talk to you. I guess she doesn’t know you’re staying here.” he says. I wonder if the way his lips curl down at the edge means he wants her to know. Flutter. “And she wants us to come to her party.”

“Us?” I feel myself gaping. I actually have to concentrate on shutting my mouth.

“Well, she invited me and she said I could bring a friend. And she knows we’re friends, right?”

“No way.” I make a sound that sounds exactly like I’m trying to blow a kernel of corn out of my nostril. My cheeks instantly flame again. “I mean, yeah, we’re friends, but you know Jen totally doesn’t mean me.”

“I think she’s just trying to make peace, but,” he shrugs. “I’m not sure I’d even want to go.”

Not sure
? How can he not be sure? Didn’t he see Cora’s video? What I want him to say is that he’d rather eat nails. Finger paint himself with battery acid. Or that there is no way he’d go without me because he can’t stand to be away from me that long.

Brandon and Mark start a vicious argument in the living room.

“It’s over!” Brandon hoots. “It hit your arm! That was sooo your arm!”

“You’re nuts.” Mark shouts back. “You just don’t want to fork over your allowance.”

“What did we say about betting, boys?” Mr. Reese booms over the top of them both. Garrett turns to me.

“Want to go hang out in my room?” he asks, one eyebrow quizzing me. As if I could pronounce ‘no’ when he looks at me. Still, I try to make it sound like it’s no big deal but I’m already thinking of his soft, reclining chair and the concentrated scent of his cologne that makes me feel like his arms are around me.

“Sure.” I follow him downstairs. Mrs. Reese is reading a book on one couch and my mom is sitting on the other, hunched over, writing. Neither of them look up as we pass.

I notice the pile of paper, neatly arranged against the far wall, beneath the windows. I can’t help but shudder at the sight of it. The dead, stacked in sheets and starting to fill up the Reese’s lively space. I wonder if the human race could eventually be snuffed out not by nuclear bombs but by the overcrowding of the dead. The entire Earth, nothing but one big storage garage for all of us. I shiver again.

“You cold?” Garrett asks as we go down the hall.

“No.” I say and he nods like he understands anyway.

“Long day.” he says as we enter his room. He leaves the door open. The recognition of how long a day it’s been, mixed up with the concentrated scent of his cologne makes me feel tired and dizzy at once. I stand in the doorway like an awkward totem pole until Garrett pats the bed for me to sit and then slides into the chair himself. I hobble in and take a seat, sinking into his mattress. The scent of him wafts up from the comforter and I inhale so deeply, it feels like stealing.

“Music?” he asks and I nod, unwilling to open my mouth and miss one dizzying breath. He turns on his old stereo and the music hums from the speakers. “I’ll go grab us something to drink. I’ll be right back, okay?”

I nod again and he goes. I hear him pad down the hall. I push down on the comforter to send another wisp of his scent into the air. It’s like a drug. My whole body relaxes and my head feels too heavy to stay upright. I listen for Garrett to return and when he doesn’t, I slump down on my elbows, closer to the comforter. It seems like hours are going by, even though looking at his alarm clock, I see it’s hardly even minutes. I let myself sink down into the soft trench, the comforter puffing up around me, trapping my body heat. I yawn.

That’s the last thing I remember.

~ * * * ~

Waking up on Garrett Reese’s bed is like waking up in the middle of a deserted carnival. I shoot straight up, knowing I have no idea where I am, for exactly three seconds, and then I remember and I’m happy and then I panic because I know I shouldn’t be here. I thump around, half expecting and mostly hoping to find Garrett beside me, but the bed is empty. There’s only me, wound up in a wad of comforter and sheets belonging to the most handsome, best-smelling boy, who is also no where to be seen.

Everything is quiet until I stumble down the hall and hear the rest of the house, banging cereal bowls and popping the toaster. Everyone is wide awake. There is a cold panic right in the center of my chest, pressing down hard on my lungs, as I feel the humiliation of emerging from Garrett’s room. I mean, I’m not a girl that does that. Especially in a house full of both our families.

My mom is still at work, in the same place on the couch that I left her last night. She’s hunched over a five inch stack of paper. Garrett is sleeping on the love seat opposite from her. He’s on his back, his feet dangling over the arm. My mom doesn’t look up when I drift to the edge of her couch, but when I reach out and rub her shoulders, she groans with gratitude.

“Thank you.” she says. “You can’t imagine how much I needed that.”

Instead of talking, I keep rubbing and let myself sneak another look at Garrett. I’m hypnotized by the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest that seems to keep time with the scratch of my mom’s pen on the paper. His hair has dropped back from his face. My eyes slide over his profile. His nose is so smooth and straight that my fingertips tingle with the urge to touch it. I stand there, floating in the idea of what it would feel like, both on my skin and in my heart, to be able to trace the bridge of his nose whenever I wanted.

“Garrett said you fell asleep pretty hard, huh?” my mom asks. Even his name scrambles my breathing a little.

“Yeah. I guess so.” I knead her left shoulder with my free hand so it doesn’t interrupt her writing.

“He said he couldn’t wake you up.” she says. I think of him standing over me, watching me sleep and I feel a spark of excitement followed with a pang of anxiety. I hope I wasn’t drooling on his comforter. She grins dryly in his direction before resuming her writing. “I think it was very kind of him to let you have his bed, considering he had to sleep on that love seat.”

I listen to the scratch of her pen on the paper. I know she worries about how much I like him, but by the way she lets the grin stay on her face as she writes, I think she’s having a hard time not liking him herself.

~ * * * ~

Garrett is up and showered by the time I finish breakfast. Mr. Reese takes Brandon and Mark off to the gym with him and Mrs. Reese herds Iris out the door to ballet class, despite all Iris’s pleading to stay with ‘Evanchline’.

I’m at the table, clinking the palm of my cast against my empty tea mug, when Garrett comes upstairs. Slicked back from his face, his damp hair appears even darker than usual and his eyes are so purely blue, I imagine they would be the exact color of a waterfall in the middle of Eden. It makes me forget that I’m still kind of tired, that I should be sleeping in because it is Saturday, that Jen called yesterday, that I slept in Garrett’s bed, that I need to go back to the Addo’s today, that the world is falling down, that I made a Simple choice and still didn’t, that I am the daughter of a murderer.

“What’s on your mind?” Garrett asks as he pulls out a box of granola. He dumps some into two bowls and roots around in the fridge for the milk.

“We’re going to the Addo’s, right?”

“Yeah.” Garrett splashes milk on the cereal and puts the gallon back. “I can take you as soon as we eat. Have some.”

He leaves one bowl near my elbow before he grabs us each a spoon and takes a seat across from me. Instead of putting the spoon in my bowl, I lay a finger on the rounded part and push it against the table, lifting the handle. Garrett swallows a mouthful, watching me.

“So what are you going to tell him?” He looks away when he asks as if he shouldn’t be asking at all. But what I’m going to tell the Addo isn’t personal to me. I let go of the spoon and the handle clinks against the table. I glance back at the stairs and lower my voice.

“I’m going to say I need to protect my mom.”

“You most certainly are not.” My mom’s voice startles me as she materializes from the family room downstairs. I drop my forehead into my palm and look across the table to Garrett. He’s just casually chewing his granola, unaware or maybe genuinely unconcerned, that he’s about to see my mom combust. “You don’t need to have this kind of a life.”