Gabrielle (8 page)

“When is the party?”

Her eyes flashed with surprise. With hope. “You will go?”

“If it's important to you that I go to this one event, that I see this world with my own eyes, I will. When is it?”

“Saturday evening. I will be attending as well.”

She kissed me good night and I suddenly felt too exhausted to even get up and brush my teeth, let alone do any homework. I pulled the covers all the way up over my head and dreamed of forests full of evil witches and innocent maidens who were trying to run away from them, but who never quite managed to escape.

Dylan wasn't at school the next few days. Not until Friday, when he came and found me in a practice room. He looked like he hadn't slept since the last time I'd seen him.

I'd had three days to think about what Missy had said.

Damage.

Looking at him now after his unexplained absence, I knew she had to be right.

“I was wondering where you were. I looked for you everywhere.” God, had anyone ever played it less cool? “Is everything okay?”

“Better now than it was,” he said, before sliding against me on the piano bench.

I knew what he wanted to do. What he needed. And so without even speaking, the two of us started playing songs from the Metallica album that I had listened to at the used record store.

When we'd made it all the way through the songs, I asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Saturday. Are you free Saturday night?”

I couldn't believe I had to say no to him. “I'm sorry. I can't. I've got to go to something with my grandmother.”

He slid off the bench. “It's okay. I get it. It's probably better that we don't do this thing anyway.”

What thing? Us? What was that, anyway?

“Wait a minute. Stop walking out on me,” I told him. “I'm free tonight.”

His eyes moved back to mine. “How about now?”

I looked back at my notepad full of ideas for the song I'd been working on. It could wait.

“Now is good.”

He picked up my bag. “You hungry?”

I wasn't really, but I knew he liked to feed me, that it was one of the ways he was trying to take care of me. So much for being the bad boy he claimed to be.

“I know a place. It isn't fancy but the food will blow your mind.”

“Sounds great.” And it did. Any reason just to be with him.

We took the train to another station I'd never been to. The signs on the stores were in languages I didn't know. After a couple of blocks, he steered me into a restaurant.

“Ever had Afghan food before?”

I shook my head and he smiled.

“Good. I like being your first.”

I was glad the restaurant was dark so he couldn't see how deeply I blushed.

His first.

Despite Missy having teased me before about wearing a chastity belt, the honest truth was that I'd never been with anyone who had made me even consider not being a virgin anymore.

But from that first moment on the piano bench, Dylan had me considering.

He'd make those jokes about not messing with virgins, about not knowing many girls he'd slept with, but somehow what he'd just said took it to a whole other level.

We sat down at a small table in the far corner of the room and ordered. Once the food came just minutes later, I decided to ask, “So where were you this week?”

He didn't raise his eyes from his plate. “It's not important.”

But it was. I knew it.

Damage.

“Did it have something to do with your parents?”

His head shot up. “Where'd you hear that?”

“Nowhere. It's just after what you told me in the park I kind of figured...” I didn't finish my sentence, wasn't exactly sure how I would have.

He stared at me so intently, I almost felt like he wasn't seeing me at all. More like he was looking right through me.

In a low voice he said, “I want to trust you.”

I wanted to reach out and take his hands in mine. But for some reason, even though we had kissed, I felt shy and unsure.

Fortunately, the words, “Of course you can trust me,” came out naturally, without any hesitation. But then, before I could stop my brain from going there, I remembered that I hadn't told him the complete truth about my family yet.

About my own damage.

And yet, here I was telling him to trust me with his.

“No,” he said. “I can't.”

Stung, I automatically said, “You don't think you can trust me?”

He shook his head. “I do, Gabi. It's not that. It's just that you don't need to be dragged into my shit. Especially you. You're so good. So pure. This is exactly why I tried to stay away from you. Because you don't need to know how crappy the world really is.”

Wow. He sure had a way of building up and drawing out the mystery.

Softly, I said, “Whatever it is that's going on, you have to talk to somebody.”

“I've been dealing with it by myself for this long. I'll be okay.”

“It doesn't have to be that way, Dylan.” This time I did reach across the table and take his hands in mine. Three “dates” in and we were already way past coy. Way past flirtatious. “I'm here. I care about you. Talk to me.”

His fingers stiffened beneath mine before relaxing. He scanned the restaurant then returning his attention back to me.

Speaking quietly, he said, “I was giving a statement.” At my confused look, he explained,

“To the police and some lawyers.”

I couldn't have hid the shock on my face if I had tried. “Why? What happened?”

“My dad tried to kill my mom. That's why we moved out here.”

“My God,” I gasped. “That's horrible.”

“Yeah. At least she finally agreed to leave.”

I couldn't wrap my head around what he was saying, not even when he added, “I'm the reason she didn't die.”

Every one of my senses was on alert, but only with regard to Dylan. The restaurant, the waitress, the whirring blenders behind the bar had all fallen away. All I could see were Dylan's green eyes, the pupils dilating and pushing out the color. All I could feel was the tension in his hands beneath mine. All I could hear was the rush of my own breath, my heart beating hard.

I'd heard his last sentence—
I'm the reason she didn't die—
but I didn't understand it. Had his father stopped hurting his mother because Dylan had walked into the room?

Or was it way worse than that?

The answer was written on Dylan's face: It was worse.

“What happened?” I asked again, hating the tentative note in my voice, hating that he might think I was too afraid to hear what he had to say. Even if I was.

Unfortunately he picked up on my reluctance to know more loud and clear. “Forget it, Gabi.”

Before I knew it, he'd thrown down several twenties on the table and was leaving the restaurant. Shoving my chair back, I went after him, but he was fast and I practically had to run to catch him at the corner.

“Dylan, stop!”

I didn't think he was going to at first, but then as I stepped beside him, he said, “I'm sorry. I'm not used to talking about this.”

I slid my fingers through his, my heart aching for him. “You don't have anything to apologize for.”

“First girl I've ever really liked and I'm screwing it up.”

A glow infused me.
He liked me. He really liked me.

“You're not. Not at all.” I squeezed his hand. “And you don't have to be worried about telling me the rest. I'm not going anywhere.”

The light had changed from red to green and back to red as we stood on the corner.

“Come on,” he said, pulling me across the street and up to a badly painted dark red door. He knocked on it three times.

A big, scary-looking guy opened it, saying, “Who out there?” in a rough voice.

I started in surprise, in fear, but as soon as the enormous, heavily tattooed and pierced man saw Dylan, his expression changed.

“What you doing bringing her here?”

“She's okay.”

Dylan led me inside by the hand and it took my eyes a little while to adjust to the darkness. We weren't the only ones in the building. There were several other people, teenagers like us, reading, writing, playing video games.

“It's a place for people like me to go,” he explained in a low voice. “The state set it up, so if something happens to our parents, we'll always have a place to go. At least for a couple of days and nights.”

I shivered at his words.
In case something happens to our parents.
Did he mean in case his father did kill his mother? In case he had to hide?

He took me up the stairs into an empty kitchen. “I'll make you a shake. What flavor do you like?”

Just the thought of ice cream was making me want to hurl. But I was so afraid of doing or saying something that would make him run again that I forced myself to say, “Vanilla.”

Pulling up a chair at the counter, I watched him mix it up in silence.

“You're doing that whole mystery thing again,” I teased gently when he sat down next to me.

Thankfully he was starting to smile as he said, “And you're doing that question-asking thing again.”

We sat there staring at each other for I don't know how long. And then, his fingers were threading through my hair and he was pulling me in closer, lowering his mouth to mine. I kissed him not just with the desire I felt for him, but with something so much more poignant. I wanted to heal him. To wrap my arms around him and never let him go if that meant I could keep him safe.

When we both finally came up for air, I said, “Tell me the rest.”

He tried to pull away, but I refused to drop my arms from his shoulders. I kissed him softly on the lips again, ran the pad of my thumb across a cheekbone.

“I know you brought me here to tell me. Don't back out now.”

“He was strangling her. When I came home from school, I found them in the kitchen. She had tons of bruises across her face, there was blood on the counter, and his hands were wrapped around her neck. I didn't think, I just grabbed one of the knives from the butcher block and put it up to his neck.”

His lips were only a breath away from mine and I could feel every word he said. Seeing that his eyes were closed as he recounted the story, I let a tear fall.

“He dropped her then. I heard her hit the floor, didn't know if she was alive or dead, but I didn't drop the knife. Instead I dug it in deeper.”

“Dylan.”

There was nothing I could say to make it better. Nothing I could do to take it all away from him.

“I would've killed him. If I had to kill him, I would've done it. That's what I was telling the cops, the lawyers.”

“Where is he now?” The words were thick coming from my throat. Whatever I had thought his damage might be, I could have never imagined this.

He opened his eyes and saw my tear. This time it was his thumb running across my cheeks, wiping away the streak.

“They're not sure. He was supposed to stay in California, but when he didn't go to work this week they realized he was gone.”

“Are you safe?”

“They're trying to make sure we are.” And then he was shifting off his seat, picking up my bag in a clear message that sharing time was over and I needed to go home.

I didn't want to leave him, not now, not after everything he'd said. But he was right. I didn't want my grandmother to worry about where I was.

It made the most sense for him just to take me home, but something told me now wasn't the time to introduce him to my grandmother. Not until after I went to her party. Not until I'd fully processed what he'd just told me.

“I've got to pick some things up at school,” I told him, hating the small white lie.

I felt like the world's most obvious liar as I fiddled with a guitar in the music room and said, “I'm going to hang here a little while longer.”

“I shouldn't have told you.”

I went up on my toes and kissed him again. “Yes, you should have. Will I see you Monday?”

“I hope so. Have fun doing whatever you're doing this weekend.”

I so wanted to tell him about the party, that it wasn't something I could get out of. But I couldn't. Because even though my problems should have seemed so small compared to his—and they were since I wasn't dealing with life or death—the truth was they were still a big deal to me.

But Dylan already had enough to deal with. He didn't need me adding my problems to his overflowing heap.

“Thanks. I'll see you Monday.”

* * *

Dylan's story ran on repeat in my head for hours Friday night and most of Saturday. And still, even given how horrendous his revelations were, I couldn't forget where I had to go Saturday night.

The
soirée
.

The courtesan books Missy had given me sat on the floor in the corner where I'd dropped them. I felt like they were staring at me. Calling me a wimp. Daring me to come over there and read them.

I wasn't used to getting this little sleep. It was making me a little crazy, actually thinking a stack of books was taunting me.

Besides, what was having to go to a party compared to what Dylan was dealing with?

And yet, I couldn't make myself believe that it really was no big deal. Not with the hours steadily ticking down to an evening I dreaded.

“
Ma petite
, we should begin to get ready for tonight's party.”

My grandmother sounded hesitant, obviously afraid that I was going to change my mind and say I didn't want to go. But I knew the only way I would ever be able to get her to accept my decision to forge my own path in life was if I let her open the door and I at least peeked inside. I wanted to give her no reason to be able to say to me, “How can you turn your back on something that you know nothing about,
ma petite?
”