Push and Shove: The Ghost Bird Series: #6 (The Academy) (12 page)

There was a stack of dirty dishes by the sink. The trash was almost overflowing. I listened quietly for a moment. Even though I knew the boys weren’t here, I listened for them anyway, expecting one to appear, hearing me moving around.

I loaded the dishwasher, took out the trash and wiped down the counters. I was tired, but I was wasting time hoping maybe a boy would show up.

I started wiping down the kitchen table when I heard footsteps going toward the downstairs bedroom.

I followed the noise quietly. Old habits had me tiptoeing, and my hands were up, ready to defend myself. Flashes of my mother creeping through the house, trying to catch me doing something wrong swept through my mind, but I shut them down, burying them away. She wasn’t here. I knew that.

I poked my head around to peek inside. The room appeared to be untouched. The bed had been stripped, the mattress bare. Everything else was as it was the day my stepmother had been taken under the Academy’s care.

A rustling started deeper in the room. My hand crept up to my chest, reaching for my phone and I leaned in, trying to catch who it was.

Marie was in our mother’s walk-in closet scrounging through the top drawer of the chest of drawers.

“Marie?” I asked quietly.

Marie jerked back, her eyes going wide. She spotted me, frowned and then ducked her head around, looking beyond me. “What?” she asked.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for anything useful,” she said. She slammed the drawer shut. “What are you doing in here?”

“I heard noise,” I said. “I just came to see–”

“Well, don’t come in here.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s nothing in here that belongs to you,” she said. She pushed her arms out like a barrier. “This is my mother’s. So stay out of it and keep those boys out of this room.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure how to argue with her because she did have a point. There wasn’t anything in this room I’d wanted, but knowing she was excluding me from it felt so awkward. I backed up a few feet but stalled, considering. “Is everything okay?” I asked, unsure how to be delicate about it.

“What?” she asked.

“I mean, you seemed a little down and...”

“My mother’s in a hospital and I don’t know where she is,” she said flatly. “My father’s gone. Boys show up at random and dig through stuff and get in the way. What the hell
isn’t
wrong?”

“They help out,” I said quietly. “They clean and they buy us food. They give us rides to school.”

“But where is my mother?” she asked. “Is she dead? Because I haven’t heard anything in weeks. I can’t reach dad. The phone’s down.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to me that she could be dead. I pressed a palm against my chest. “Mom’s in the hospital.”

“Which one?”

Not too long ago, when Volto had kidnapped me, he asked a similar question, and I didn’t have an answer for him either. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her she was with the Academy and she would be safe, but I couldn’t because I wasn’t allowed. “I could find out.”

“How?”

“We could ask the boys,” I said. I didn’t want to impose on the guys, but thought they would understand. “We can get them to take us.”

I was concerned about my stepmother. Despite everything she’d done to me, even if she hated me, I felt bad that she was sick, and blamed a lot of her anger on her illness. Leaving it in the dark was how I dealt with it. But the longer I went without asking, the more awkward I felt about saying anything at all.

The fact that we weren’t asked to go see her was a strange feeling, too. I sensed if she’d had asked to see anyone, the Academy would have notified us by now.

Wouldn’t they?

Marie pressed her fingers to her eyebrow. “I can’t see her,” she said. This was her way of telling me she wouldn’t consider asking the boys for help. “I can’t call dad.”

“Did you want to?” I asked. I pulled the phone from my bra, presenting it.

She frowned, but took the phone from me. “What’s his number?”

I showed her the directory and punched the button for her to get it to dial out.

She held it to her face, waiting. “Answering machine,” she said.

“Leave a message,” I told her. “Maybe he’ll respond.”

She shook her head, pressing the button to disconnect. She tossed the phone back at me. “Just stay out of here.” She slunk off. I stayed downstairs, listening to her footsteps as she retreated to her bedroom.

What else could I do? I looked at my phone, wondering who I could talk to about this. Maybe Kota, and even then, I wasn’t sure what to say. Volto had challenged me with a way to test the boys about their honesty, by suggesting I wanted to see my stepmother, or find a way to allow Marie to see her. I’d avoided it because I didn’t want to believe Volto was right. Now it felt wrong to deny Marie access if I could possibly find out for her. Surely Kota or someone would take her. If she didn’t want to go with them, wasn’t there some other way?

Would that help Marie out of this slump?

I went back to the kitchen, collecting the tip jar from the counter and crept up to the second floor and to my bedroom. I placed the tip jar on the top of my bookshelf. There was at least a hundred dollars in there. Was that normal for a few hours of work? It felt like a lot to me. It was more money than I’d ever held at one time. In a way, it didn’t feel like I’d really earned it at all, more like Gabriel’s and Luke’s money.

I put Gabriel’s shoes on top of the trunk so I’d remember to give them back. I changed into shorts and a soft T-shirt to wear to sleep, and sat on top of the bed, feeling out of place. I hadn’t been alone in bed since my mother was still around, since the night I was locked in the closet.

I shook off the thoughts because I didn’t want to start thinking about her or my father right now. The anger in the pit of my stomach eased a bit more every day the longer I stopped thinking about it. It turned into numbness, and from there, it became easier to examine – from a distance.

I forced myself to get up and turn off the light, but when I returned to the bed, I simply sat on it. Still waiting. Still hoping one of them would show up. I touched my phone, but I knew where the boys were, and they were all busy.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs. A heavy tread, a boy.

“Sang?” Nathan’s voice traveled to me.

My heart leapt and I spun around. For a moment, I thought I’d imagined it, only wishing hard that one of them could have been here with me. “Nathan?”

The door opened and Nathan appeared. He was still in the red T-shirt and jeans. From the light behind him in the hallway, his face was shadowed. “Right here,” he said.

I crawled over until I could step onto the carpet. I reached for the light switch, but he caught my hand before I could. He backed off, turning slightly, but I spotted the swelling on his cheek.

My fingers darted toward his face, hovering over his skin. I wanted to make it better, but I was afraid to hurt him. “Are you okay?”

He opened his mouth, his lips moving as if to start talking, but his lower lip started trembling instantly.

In a quick move, his arms surrounded me, hugging me tight to his body, and he buried his head into my shoulder, sucking in air hard.

My arms encircled his neck. He hugged me so tight that I was lifted off the floor. He stumbled a little. The strength in his hug hardened against my bones until it was almost crushing. I waddled around backward as he walked, trying to hang on to him

“Nathan,” I called softly against his ear. I wanted to say something, anything. The way his blue eyes had looked, and the trembling lip, and how his body now shuddered against mine, it scared me more than seeing his father. “I was worried. I thought...”

“I hate it, Sang,” he said, the words bursting from his lips in a rush. He buried his face in the crook between my neck and collarbone. “I hate that house. I can’t stand it anymore.”

“What happened?” I asked softly, unsure if that was the right question. I didn’t know how to comfort him.

“He hits me, and all I can think of is I could hit him back. I could. I know I can do it.” He sniffed hard. “But I know if I do, I might not stop. I’ll hit him and I’ll keep going.” He squeezed me hard enough that it knocked most of the air from my lungs. “It’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I try not to. I’m supposed to defend myself. I’m supposed to show him he can’t hurt me. Most of the time I can take it.” He sucked in another breath and pulled his head from my shoulder and lowered me until I was standing. He tilted forward, until his forehead met mine. “But tonight he wouldn’t stop talking about you, and I almost lost it. I looked right at his throat. One hit.”

“You can let him talk about me,” I said. “Ignore it. I don’t care what he says.”

“I couldn’t stop myself. He kept calling you a bitch and other things and I couldn’t listen to it.”

“Honey...” I wasn’t sure how to help him. Family first. I knew that part. My heart ached at seeing him all torn up. I wished Kota or Mr. Blackbourne was here to help. “He shouldn’t hit you. You should get away from him if he tries.”

“I used to,” he said. “I used to run over to Kota’s. I had to stop because my dad figured out where I was going and I didn’t want Erica or Jessica getting hurt. I didn’t want to drag the fight over there.” He let out a frustrated groan and lowered his head against my shoulder again. “I can’t go back. I can’t look at him. He forced my mom out. When she left, he lost his shit, and now he can’t...”

“Don’t go back,” I said. “He’s hardly ever there, right? Can you stay away until he leaves?”

“I didn’t expect him this time,” he said. “Most of the time he calls. When he is home, he wants me there cleaning the house. It’s what he used to do to my mom. If she wasn’t on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor or something like that...” He trailed off as if he didn't want to finish his sentence.

“Do you have to live there?” I asked. “Would he come after you if you moved out?”

His hands massaged my back. His mouth twisted and he focused on some spot on the wall behind me. “I don’t know, Sang.” He broke away from me, walking a few steps and stopping, running his fingers through his red hair. “But I can’t move in with Kota. I mean I could, but with Erica and Jessica, I don’t want to put them in the middle of this.”

“What if you moved in here?” I asked.

“I can’t do that.”

“You can,” I said. I clutched at his red T-shirt. I was desperate to help. If I had to beg, I would. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it felt like the answer, and I needed to give him one. “It’s just Marie and I here. We can’t do this alone. I couldn’t do it without you.”

“Sang,” he said, groaning. He pulled my hands to his chest, squeezing them. “Marie doesn’t like me. Staying over is one thing but moving in...”

“You can stay here until your dad leaves,” I said. “How long does he stay?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “A week? Maybe a couple? It depends. Sometimes they force him to take time off from work because he flies so much.”

“Stay here until he leaves.”

“Peanut.” He groaned again, starting to pull away. “I can’t–”

“Please?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to offer him. I didn’t know how to fix this. I couldn’t beat up his father for him or fight him. I clung to him, anxious to help but not knowing how. Wouldn’t Kota agree he should stay away? Would Mr. Blackbourne encourage it? Family first. Keep the family safe. “We’re by ourselves,” I said. “We’re alone and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I wouldn’t leave you alone, Sang.”

“Stay here with me, Nathan. Please? I need you here.” I wasn’t sure how else to convince him. If this didn’t work, I was going to ask Kota and possibly make him persuade Nathan that he should stay, or at least leave his father if he could.

Nathan sighed. He ducked his head again until his forehead rested against mine. His hands held onto my arms, holding me still. He massaged my muscles, tightening and loosening his grip over and over. “I can’t let him find out where you are, or that I’m here.”

“We won’t go over there,” I said. “We’ll sneak over tonight and get what you need.”

Nathan straightened, his blue eyes darkening. “I’ll go alone.”

“You can’t go by yourself.”

“I’m not letting you anywhere near him.”

“Then take Kota,” I said. “Take him with you.”

He nodded. “I’ll get your stuff, too. We’ll move your clothes.”

“Just enough until he leaves,” I said. “I’ll hide your things in the attic wardrobe. It’ll be cramped but–”

“I don’t think Danielle is interested in guy clothes.” He breathed out heavily. His arms encircled me again, hugging me tightly around the shoulders. “We have to be careful,” he said. “We can’t let Mr. Morris figure out what we’re doing if he’s watching the house. They might think...well it might be bad if this gets back to Mr. Hendricks. They’re going to know something isn’t right if I’m here all the time. I’m here often enough, but I’ve been able to go home a lot, he’s going to start figuring this out. I don’t know if Mr. Morris has noticed there’s not a car here and that your dad isn’t around. He spends so much time watching Kota’s house. We don’t want him to get curious about what we’re up to.”

My arms went around his waist and he pulled me in until we were tight together. “So you’ll stay here with me?” I asked.

“Yeah, Peanut. I’ll stay.”

My heart lifted, relieved and excited all at once. Nathan was going to move in. Maybe only for a couple of days, and maybe longer if I could convince him. It meant something to me. I was contributing. Not really. I wasn’t doing much. I just felt like there was nothing else I could offer. And I really didn’t want him to go back. In my heart, I knew. As long as there was a space on the floor or any tiny bit of room, I’d always let Nathan or the others stay with me.

I grasped tighter to him, lowering my head until my cheek was against his chest. His hand found the back of my head, and he held me still against him, his fingers threading through my hair as he massaged gently. A moment later, his hands dropped until he hooked an arm under my knees and lifted me off the ground. He carried me over to the bed.