Damage Done (17 page)

“Run interference?” I echoed. “What does that even mean?”

“I thought I’d go talk to the people waiting and distract them so they wouldn’t see you leave,” Alane chirped. “It could be fun. I could give them fake interviews.”

“Please don’t do that,” I said. “I feel that might turn into rats chewing on my toes really fast. Anyway, the principal said there weren’t reporters out there yet.”

Alane’s smile faltered. “The parental brigade’s shown up,” she said. “Maybe a couple reporters, too. Not a ton of people, but I peeked out the window after practice.”

I sucked air through my teeth. “How many?”

“Fifteen people, maybe twenty?”

My laugh was dry. “That’s nothing,” I said. “I’ve seen way worse.”

“Yeah, I don’t think we need any interference run,” Michael said. “Julia, put on my hoodie and slump a little. We’ll be fine.”

Michael’s hoodie was warm and a little damp on the inside and smelled like the pool’s locker room—sharp chlorine and mildew and sweat—but I hunched inside it anyway and pulled the hood over my head. I held my books against my chest and ducked my head. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

The wind met me in a roar, and I hung back for a moment, afraid it was a wind made of voices, but sometimes the wind is just the wind. I could only see a small crowd: just as Alane had said, there were fifteen people, maybe twenty, clustered out in front of the school. Still, I didn’t want them to catch sight of me, so I ducked my head and rushed.

“Go,” Alane said, dancing a few steps backward. “I’ll stay here to run interference if I have to.”

I gave up. If I had to read about rats chewing on my toes throughout my childhood tomorrow, then so be it. It would be worth it. I drew Alane into a quick, hard hug. “Thank you,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a men’s bathroom.”

Somehow we made it to the car without interference. I slouched in my seat as Michael peeled away, leaving the rats behind.

My mom’s car was in the driveway. My stomach tied itself in a knot. “Hang out here for a second, okay?” I said to Michael, and climbed out of the car.

The house smelled like bleach and disinfectant. “Mom?” I called. My voice echoed off the high ceiling of the entryway. “Are you here?” I had a sudden vision of Ryan holding a knife to our mother’s throat, a thread of red peeking through, and then banished it. My brother would never hurt our mom, because she’d never done anything to hurt me. Not actively, anyway. “Mom?”

The squeak of a rag against an already clean floor announced her presence in the upstairs bathroom. She was scrubbing on her hands and knees; her hair was tied back in a low bun, but sweaty tendrils had escaped and stuck to her flushed face. “Mom?” I said cautiously, pausing in the doorway. The floor had turned into a mirror. I could apply liquid eyeliner looking in it and have it come out completely even. “Is everything okay?”

My mom sank back onto her toes and dropped the rag to the floor with a sodden thud. “Everybody knows,” she said. “How did this happen?” Lines had etched themselves into her face over the course of the day. She looked as if she might be made of glass and shatter with the slightest movement. “Julia, Lucy, Julia, I can’t do it again. I can’t move again and start over again and become a new person
again.
”

A crack ran down me, too. I crouched on the floor beside her. “We are not going to have to move,” I said firmly. “I’ve got it under control.” Still, thoughts of the crowd of people outside the school tingled at the back of my mind. Would my plan be enough? Yes, I told myself. It would have to be. Because if it wasn’t, I would have to watch my glass mother shatter into shards all over the floor, and there was no way I’d be able to escape getting cut. “My friend Michael is here, and he’s going to make us soup. You like soup.”

Her eyes had turned into pits. “Michael, that boy? Your boyfriend?”

“Soup, Mom, soup,” I said. “You love soup. Isn’t soup your favorite food?”

A tremulous smile crept onto her face. “I’m glad you’re together,” she said. “I’m glad you have someone who loves you.”

I gave a short laugh. “Love? I don’t know about that,” I said, but the second the words left my mouth, I did. Know, I mean. Michael had held me and believed me after what happened in Elkton, and he’d stuck to my side like lichen even after all his friends wouldn’t come anywhere near. When he looked at me, I saw the same glow I’d seen in the faces of his family as they’d sat around their kitchen table eating his lasagna. That was love, I was pretty sure. Love. He was in love. And it tasted like chicken soup.

My mom was watching me with a funny, tentative little smile. “I can see it dawning on your face right now, my dear,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

“My face?” I asked.

“No,” my mom said. “I mean, yes, of course you have a beautiful face. I meant the realization that somebody loves you. That’s beautiful, too.”

I reached over and picked up the rag. Soapy water and something that smelled astringent dripped through my fingers. “Come downstairs and eat. Michael is going to make us soup.”

“Ooh la la, he’s cooking for you? Sounds like a keeper.” My mom grabbed the rag from my hand and wrung it out, sending water spattering over the clean floor. “No, I’ll let you two have the kitchen to yourselves. Just no going in your bedroom with the door closed.”

“Really, Mom.” The thought of her staying in here, on her knees, scrubbing the spotless floor, was too heavy for me to bear right now. “I want you there.”

She gazed at me for a moment, misty-eyed. “I’m happy you have him,” she said. “Go eat your soup.”

“Please…”

She looked back down at the floor. “Go eat your soup,” she said. “It’s probably getting cold.”

I left my mom on the bathroom floor. She’d talked to me, and she’d put the rag down for a few minutes. That was progress. Right?

Michael was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. “Sorry,” he said. “When you didn’t come out for five minutes, I was afraid something horrible had happened.”

“And you thought you would save me with a carton of broth and a bag of vegetables?” I raised an eyebrow.

He waggled his. “My soup is deadly delicious.”

This time he let me help him cook. Though my father had taught me how to chop an onion when I was young (you cut it in half first and then rest it on the flat sides, so it doesn’t go slipping and sliding all over the place and you don’t lose any fingers), I let him instruct me anyway. I waited until we had three perfect piles of diced carrots, onions, and celery, all ready to be dumped into our pot with some olive oil and garlic, before I broached what I’d been thinking about all day. “So, Ella,” I said.

“Ella.” He gathered each pile neatly between his hand and knife and dropped it into the pot, where the vegetables sizzled and released a cloud of savory aroma. “I’m sorry she told. I told her how angry I am.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and leaned over the pot and inhaled deeply, more so he wouldn’t see my distress than anything else. “That smells amazing,” I said. “How long does it have to cook?”

“Just five minutes or so,” he said. “Just long enough to release all the tasty odors.”

“Tasty odors does not sound very attractive,” I said. “I need to talk to Ella, but I don’t think she or her friends will come anywhere near me. Everyone’s afraid of me. Can you help?”

I moved out of the way so Michael could give our mirepoix a stir. “She has no reason to be afraid of you, right?”

The pain came back, dull and throbbing. He loves you, I told myself. He trusts you. He doesn’t mean what he’s saying. “Of course she has no reason to be afraid of me.” I must have sounded wounded, because he dropped the spoon and leaned over to take me in his arms. “I understand where she’s coming from. I just want to talk to her.”

“That came out wrong,” he said. His words vibrated against my hair. “I mean, you’re mad at her, and you have every right to be.”

“I’m not going to kill her,” I said. “I shouldn’t even have to say that. Jesus. I just want to talk to her and show her I’m not my brother.”

He pulled back, then touched his forehead to mine. I closed my eyes and felt his breath, hot and damp, against my lips. “That sounds reasonable. I could do that.”

“Have her bring some of her friends,” I said. “I want them to see everything, too. And you, of course. You come. And don’t tell her I’ll be there. Obviously.”

“That can be arranged.”

“And I don’t want the black suits there, either.”

“Black suits?”

“The undercover police, whoever’s been following me around,” I said. “There’s one outside right now. You didn’t see him as you were coming in?”

His silence was answer enough.

“You should be more observant,” I said. “Otherwise you might get yourself killed.”

He barked a half laugh, which cut off abruptly as he realized I was completely serious. “Maybe it’s good they’re following you,” he said. “At least they’re keeping you safe. Wouldn’t your brother go for you first, if he showed up?”

My entire body went stiff; bones locked in their joints, and my muscles turned to stone. I stepped back slowly, carefully, worried I’d shatter myself into a million pieces. “My brother would never, ever hurt me,” I said. My words sounded strange—warped, almost—like I was listening to them from the other side of a long tunnel. “Never, ever, ever.”

“Okay,” Michael said uneasily. “Okay, I’m sorry. Sorry. Ah!” There was a sharper tinge to the smell from the pot. “The mirepoix is burning.” He gave it a few quick stirs, then poured in the carton of chicken broth. “It’s homemade,” he said. I suspected he just wanted to fill the silence, as I couldn’t possibly have cared less whether the broth was homemade from the bones of chickens he’d decapitated himself or whether it was straight off the shelf at Safeway.

The warm, salty, savory scent of roasting chicken filled the air. “Is there going to be chicken in that soup?” I asked.

“Um, there’s supposed to be,” he said. “But I forgot about it. It should still be good. If you really want chicken in it I can go pick up a rotisserie. Do you want me to?”

“Do you love me?”

I blinked. He blinked back. My question had stunned both of us into silence. “It’s pretty soon for that, isn’t it?” he said finally, stirring the soup.

“I guess,” I said. “I just wondered.”

He stirred the soup again, then added a sprinkling of salt and black pepper. Some crinkly green leaves followed. “I don’t know,” he said.

“That’s fair.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

He’d turned back to the soup; steam puffed over his face, dampening his curls and reddening his cheeks. “I love you,” he said, his words tumbling out as quickly as the bubbles roiled over the surface of the pot. “Yes. I love you, Julia.”

A shower of warmth flurried from my chest to my knees, and my insides exploded into a shower of glitter, sparkling and flashing and making everything purr. But.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“What?”

“How do you know you love me?” I was watching him intently—the soft look in his eyes, the way his forehead furrowed even as the corners of his eyes crinkled.

“You’re supposed to say ‘I love you, too.’ ”

“But how would I know if I loved you?” I asked.

“You just know,” he said.

“But
how
? How do you know you love me?”

He tapped the corner of his mouth with his finger. “Because I just want to be around you all the time,” he said. “Because I lied to my dad for you.” His voice grew thick. “Because I’ve never felt more at peace than when I have you in my arms and I know you’re safe.” Before things got
too
serious, he waggled his eyebrows. “And it doesn’t hurt that you’re smoking hot.”

I laughed and obligingly let him fold me back into his arms. It felt nice—he was warm and strong around me. And I did feel safe, sheltered from guns, knives, and anything else that might try to hurt me—the bulk of his body would stop anything dangerous, or at least slow it down. I still didn’t get it, though. How did he know he wanted to spend all his time with me? And what made him think I was worth dying for?

I pulled away and pasted a smile on my lips. “I love you, too,” I said. I hoped it was true.

Over our soup, which we spooned into each other’s mouths (a messy process), we decided we’d gather Ella and her friends tomorrow. Or, rather, I decided we’d gather Ella and her friends tomorrow and he nodded okay. He’d ask Ella and several of her closest friends to meet him in the woods at the end of the day. Ella would, naturally, say yes, because she was half in love with Michael and knew he was mad at her for what she’d done to me. I’d emerge from the trees and make my case. They’d fall to their knees in apology and beg my forgiveness. I wouldn’t say no if they wanted to kiss my feet. I’d no longer be a pariah. The end.

My brother had other plans.