How We Fall (36 page)

281

How we Fall

I blinked a third time and Marcus dove for us. I plunged the scissors backwards into Mitch’s stomach.

Mitch screamed and Marcus crashed into us. I flung my arms up and his knife sliced my arm instead of my neck. Pain tore through me. Mitch stumbled and slipped on the wet floor.

We fell. His head smacked into the table. Marcus grabbed the knife and grunted as he wrestled it away from him. Mitch thrashed but Marcus knelt on his chest and had his knife at Mitch’s throat before I could untangle myself.

“Jackie, get my knife and the scissors and everything else you see and take them out of here. Sylvia, it’s okay. Put your shirt back on. Both of you just stay away.” His voice was firm and his hands gripped the knife, the blade pressed against Mitch’s neck.

The blade was bloody.

I stood up, my knees unsteady, and moved anything Mitch could grab, then wound the only dish towel around my arm. It hurt like the devil, but it was better than being dead. I moved over to Sylvia and slit the rope so it unwound from her leg.

Mitch’s breathing rasped and he struggled to throw Marcus off him. His voice cracked. “Sylvia. Don’t do this to me.”

Sylvia sank to the floor and seemed to finally be out of tears.

Shock, probably. She closed her eyes and didn’t respond.

I didn’t know how Marcus was so calm. I’d always gotten the nervous shakes. Had I not put those scissors in my pocket, one of us could be dead.

I wasn’t going to stand back while Marcus handled this himself. I grabbed the roll of duct tape from my bag.

“Jackie, stay back. Don’t come over here.”

I ignored him. The duct tape made ripping sounds as I unrolled it. I grabbed Mitch’s feet and wound a figure eight of tape around them. He kicked when he felt what I was doing but Marcus slammed Mitch’s head back to the ground. “I swear to God, if you move again or say one more word, I’m sticking 282

Kate Brauning

this knife in your neck and then I’ll stab you in the balls.”

I finished his feet and moved to his hands. Pulling and ripping the tape sent pain burning through my arm.

Marcus’s shirt was splashed with red. I did a double-take and let the tape fall to the ground. A horizontal rip in his shirt right in the middle of the red patch. I touched him on his shoulder so he’d know what I was doing, then moved the hem of his shirt. Blood stained his jeans, a thick red trail spreading from an inflamed slice above his hip.

Stab wounds could be bad. I gently touched the angry skin above the wound, and he sucked in a breath. “Your hands are cold.”

“Sorry.” I moved my hand.

“No,” he said quietly. “It helps.”

I glanced up, but he wouldn’t look at me. “We have to get pressure on this. You’re bleeding everywhere.” My hands had stopped trembling. I unwound the towel from around my arm and carefully pressed it to his side. The knife had cut muscle.

He stiffened. The towel grew warm from the blood almost immediately. Out the big kitchen window, headlights pierced the rain. Blood, so much blood.

I’d put gauze from the emergency kit in my bag. I grabbed my bag and pulled out the white roll, folded it into a square, and pressed it carefully to his stomach. The red stain soaked through, so I pressed a little harder.

Marcus jerked. His skin was turning unnaturally pale and clammy. I peered into his eyes, checked his pulse. It was faint and far too fast. I pressed harder on the gauze and kept talking to him. “Hey, Marcus. Keep your eyes open, okay? Hey. Look at me.”

Feet pounded up the steps. Three men in blue uniforms.

One of them pulled me away from him, tried to look at my arm, but I sent him back to Marcus. The other two men had 283

How we Fall

hauled the coach to his feet. The officer tore open a first aid kit and pressed a clean dressing to Marcus’s side.

I leaned my head back against the base of the counter.

Sylvia hadn’t seen something, like I’d thought. Ellie had seen something, she’d been killed for it, and now she was the silent ghost who lived in the threads between Sylvia and me and Marcus.

The cop came back to me and checked my arm while I glanced around the room. This was where Ellie had died; I was sure of it.

If I waited long enough, maybe she’d walk through the doorway to the kitchen and ask me where I’d been.

284

The doctors kept Marcus overnight at the hospital. We’d both gotten stitches, but he’d lost a lot more blood than I had. I talked to the police four times, said a hundred times that yes it was a dangerous thing to do, and answered every question at least twice.

The white truck turned out to be borrowed, and the volleyball jersey was Ellie’s. When our parents and Sylvia’s dad arrived, everything started all over again and nothing I could say would make Mom stop crying or Uncle Ward stop hovering.

In the hospital, left alone for a moment by both the doctors and the police while they talked to the parents, I turned to Marcus. “You followed me when I called you, didn’t you?”

He looked a little less pale now. “You wouldn’t come back, so I grabbed the gun from Dad’s closet and told Chris to watch the kids. I was maybe three miles behind you, so it wouldn’t have taken me so long, but you didn’t park your car where you said you did. I missed the turn.”

I played with my fingernails. “I couldn’t sit there in the car.”

A nurse came in to check my stitches, and after she left, I said, “We never finished our conversation.”

He moved his arm but winced and stopped. “That’s true.”

I had to leave, but he’d be home soon. I hated the way he looked in that white bed, hooked up to an IV. “You take getting better seriously, okay? None of this halfway stuff.”

His smile was tired, but it was real. “You know me. All or nothing.”

Lately, that was me, too.

285

How we Fall

• • •

I sucked in a breath and checked it. The bandage was still fine.

It just hurt.

Claire took off work and came home that afternoon, arriving shortly after Will. By the time Aunt Shelly came back from getting Marcus, I’d told the story so many times I’d lost count and I really couldn’t handle one more person asking me one more question. When Marcus saw me curled up in the armchair in the corner of the living room, he smiled and was more than happy to take over the storytelling. By the time Angie and Candace were done with him, the story had gained a machete, an M16, and a skateboard. Chris listened skeptically, but only rolled his eyes once.

I walked outside to get away from the chaos. Will and Claire were helping Mom with dinner inside; the clatter of plates and cupboard doors drifted out to where I sat down on the front step. The cement had dried after a full day of sun. I was playing with my charm bracelet when the door creaked open and Will came out.

He sat beside me, but didn’t say anything. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on them. “So, I told Marcus we weren’t together.”

He nodded. “That’s probably good.” He nudged me with his shoulder. “But you’ll still wear my necklace, right?”

I touched the yin-yang symbol around my neck. “Already am.”He pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket and tapped the pack, but didn’t pull one out. “You and Claire get along pretty well, right?”

286

Kate Brauning

I shrugged. “We’re really different, but I think sometimes that helps.”

“So.” He paused again. “I have an awkward question for you, and it’s going to make me sound like a horrible person.”

I glanced sideways at him and waited. He pulled out a cigarette and took a long time lighting it. He looked at me, then down, then played with his lighter.

Because he looked so guilty, I took pity on him. “You know, you should ask Claire out. I’m ninety percent certain she has an enormous crush on you.”

For once, he didn’t have a comeback. He just blinked.

“Well?” I asked.

Relief showed in his blue eyes. “You think she does?”

“Ask and find out.” I wasn’t sure what I thought when the idea first occurred to me, but it made sense. Will and Claire would be great together.

He grinned. “You’re okay with that?”

“I’m definitely okay with that.”

He stood up, a giant silly smile on his face. “I’ll go inside and see if I can help your mom. I gotta make her like me for real now.”

“Dude. If you want her to like you, leave that out here.”

He groaned and ground out the cigarette on the step. The screen door banged behind him when he went inside.

Marcus came out, talking on the phone. To Sylvia, it sounded like. He walked past me. She must have been talking a lot, because he wasn’t saying much. He climbed into his truck and sat there for a while, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and occasionally saying something I couldn’t hear.

He looked tense when he climbed out of the truck, but I couldn’t tell if it was from his wound or the call.

“How’s Sylvia?” I asked.

He leaned against the truck. “Her dad’s freaking out. He 287

How we Fall

didn’t know any of this until last night. He’s been in and out of the police station all day. She says they might move again.”

His dark hair stood on end, and he’d shoved up the sleeves of his long-sleeved t-shirt. He stood awkwardly, leaning his weight on one foot. His side would be hurting for a while yet, and the stitches probably pulled.

“Oh.” I stood up and walked over to him.

“She told me her dad’s going to have her see a therapist or something.”

“That might be a good idea.” Seeing my life in a book that way had scarred me for life. I couldn’t even imagine what the whole thing must have done to her. “Did you tell her about us?”He shook his head. “I figured I shouldn’t. But.” He looked down. His face flushed and his eyebrows drew together. “The day before yesterday—after that night I came home—I told her I cheated on her.”

I wanted to step closer to him and take that look off his face, but we were right in front of the kitchen windows. “But it wasn’t like that, Marcus. It’s not the same—”

“Yes, it is. It’s exactly the same. I was with her, and I kissed someone else.”

I stared at the bricked driveway. “What did she do?”

He rubbed his hands on the legs of his jeans. “I tried to be as honest as I could about it. I told her there was someone else, and I’d kissed her, but that was all.” He shrugged. “She dumped me.”I kept my glance on the bricks. No wonder Sylvia hadn’t looked good in school that day. She’d been meeting up with her coach to keep Marcus safe, and then Marcus came and told her he’d kissed someone else. “I’m sorry.”

He was quiet until I looked up at him and found his gaze pinned on me. “It’s a good thing. She’s not the one I want.”

288

Kate Brauning

Now that he’d said it, we had to do something. “Can we go somewhere?”

He followed me down the driveway to the gravel road. I didn’t want someone coming outside and interrupting us.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” His pace matched mine. His arm brushed me as we walked.

“I’m thinking we’re stuck, because we can’t do this again and hide it.”

His voice was quiet, hesitant. “Would you be okay with not hiding it?”

I put my hand on his arm, and he flinched. I hadn’t been thinking about his stitches when I asked to go for a walk.

“Let’s sit down.”

He looked relieved. “Sure.”

We walked off the road to the side of the hill and sat down in the long grass. It was still damp, but I didn’t care and he didn’t look like he did, either. “I’m not ashamed of us. If my friends can’t understand something this important to me, then I don’t need them. And I don’t care what people would say behind my back.” That night he’d kissed me, he’d asked what I’d do if he wasn’t my cousin. But if he wasn’t my cousin, he wouldn’t be Marcus. There was no way to separate the two, and I was done thinking I should. “There’s no reason for me to care if people know. You’re what I want, and the rest of it doesn’t matter enough to make a difference.”

The tiredness lifted from his eyes. “You still do? You still want me?”

“I still want you.”

“I would never cheat on you. I don’t want you to be worried because—I wouldn’t.”

289

How we Fall

That hadn’t even crossed my mind. “I know you wouldn’t.”

He was quiet for a minute. “We have to make this work.

Somehow.”

“But our families are different from our friends. We can’t—”

The way his hand closed over mine stopped me.

“We don’t know what they’ll think. We haven’t told them.”

“They’d lose it.” Aunt Shelly especially. Mom would try to understand, but I had no idea what Dad or Uncle Ward would say.“I’m not saying it would go smoothly.” He smiled halfheartedly. “All Mom’s healthy living, and look how I turned out.”

“Maybe if she’d fed you more tofu.” I bit my lip to keep from smiling. “You know, though. The twins. They’d grow up knowing about us and thinking it was normal. By the time they’re old enough to know it’s unusual, they might not care.”

“You know this would make you not normal, right?” He was teasing me, but I could see the hesitation in his eyes.

“I’m starting to think being normal is abnormal.” Maybe my mother was right about that. Being normal was just a thing in people’s minds, and something no one really was.

He took my hand and gripped it. “I missed you like crazy.”

Something trickled through me, and it wasn’t until I smiled that I realized how happy the thought made me. “So we’ll figure it out,” I said. “We can think about it, and figure out a way to make it work.”

And the thing was, if we could handle our families, we probably could make it work. Being together wasn’t illegal. Our parents might not like it, but we were seventeen, almost eighteen. If we both wanted it, if it was worth the complications, then we could.