Scare Crow (12 page)

“Oh, hey, Emily,” he said, “I
need—”

“I don’t have your damn rent money, Hunter. Can’t you just give me a goddamn b
reak!”

And Hunter stopped in his tracks, his eyes rounded and his mouth slack-j
awed.

I stormed into my room, wishing I had a door to lock mysel
f in.

But after a few seconds, Hunter knocked on the doorframe before coming through the
cur
tain.

“I was just going to tell you that I got your mail and left it on the table downstairs.
And Griffin already paid your rent for the year. He even paid for half of mine and
half of Joseph’s since he’s crashing in our room. I thought you knew that alr
eady.”

I didn’t, and I wished Griff hadn’t paid my rent because I wanted to l
eave.

“Is everything
okay?”

I grabbed Meatball’s leash and marched past him. “I’m
fine.”

I kept my head down as I made my way out of the house and took my bottomless-stomach
monster for a long walk. Getting my mail would have to wait until I didn’t have an
audience of drunk
ards.

Meatball’s ears stayed flat against his head the whole time. Eventually, after the
twentieth time he nudged my hand, I gave in and rubbed his sweet spot under his chin.
His little tail wagged jubilantly as I forgave him, though I had no idea what I was
going to do when we got kicked
out.

By the time we got back, the party had left for the school pub. I put my pajamas on
and crawled under the covers, thankful for the peace and q
uiet.

When I heard the front door open, I knew it was Griff just by the heaviness of his
steps. I got out of bed and pulled my curtain open as he was heading into his shared
accommodat
ions.

“G
riff?”

He paused at the door before turning ar
ound.

I ga
sped.

His face was bloody and swollen. He had a gash on his chin and over his eye. His bottom
lip was p
uffy.

Griff smiled, revealing bloodstained t
eeth.

I put my hand to my mouth, and he put the palms of his hands out between us as a white
flag.

“Don’t freak out, Em. I’m fine. It’s not as bad as it l
ooks.”

“Not as bad as it looks?” I exclaimed, trying not to yell and wake up the whole h
ouse.

He pushed me back into my room and forced me to sit down on my
bed.

“Nothing comes without a price. Not all my loan sharks were content with just getting
paid back with
cash.”

“So? What? They put you in a cage and made you fight a
lion?”

To my astonishment, he nodded. “Maybe not a lion, but yeah, some of them wanted their
interest paid in b
lood.”

“
Your
blood? Griff, this is
nuts.”

“If I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be able to walk the street without having to look
over my shoulder every two seconds. And you wouldn’t be safe wit
h me.”

I got up, made him sit on the bed, and went downstairs. I grabbed ice out of one of
the beer coolers, stuffed it in a Ziploc bag, and grabbed a washc
loth.

“There has to be another way,” I said as I walked back into my room, still stunned
at the state of his
face.

“There wasn’t. But don’t worry. It’s all taken care of now. I’m free and clear and
don’t owe anyone anything
else.”

“That’s a small re
lief.”

I sat next to him, examining his face, unsure of where to start. Griff was doing the
same with my face. I wiped the blood under his nose, which sent a new stream of red
flowing
down.

“Put your head back,” I ordered him and started tugging him down with a little more
force than needed. He laid his head on my legs, and I brought the bag of ice to his
fat lip. He stared at me while I held the ice with one hand and cleaned the blood
out of his scruffy beard with the other. His hands were laced over his chest. I noticed
that his knuckles were also bloodied and
raw.

“For a guy who’s in such bad shape, you don’t seem too upset about it,” I rema
rked.

He smiled from one side of his face to the other. “I’m free, Em. I haven’t felt like
this in a really long time. I feel as though I’m starting with a brand-new
life.”

I wiped the rest of the blood away, focused on my task. I had to scrub pretty hard
to get the dry blood out of his
hair.

“You’re worried,” he surmised. “What are you worried a
bout?”

I chuckled. That was a loaded question. What wasn’t I worried about? “You come back
with your face beaten to a pulp, and you wonder why I’m wor
ried?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been beat up far worse than
this.”

“That’s really comforting. I suppose we’ll have to keep a bucket of ice around if
you’re going to live
here.”

“Fighting used to be my life. But not anymore. I’m starting over, starting right now.
I’ll never go back to that life a
gain.”

I stopped and held on to the blood-soaked washc
loth.

And he looked at me. “
What?”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Griff wanted out of the underworld. And I wanted
bac
k in.

I sighed. “Never ever say n
ever.”

He grabbed my hand and steadied it over his face, so that I was forced to look at
him.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I won’t ruin this chance that I’ve been given. I won’t hurt
you like
that.”

Yeah. Like I’d never heard that be
fore.

“You don’t believe me?” he a
sked.

“Close your eyes,” I grumbled. I put the wet cloth over his eyes, partly because his
right eye was starting to swell shut, partly because I couldn’t stand him examining
me like that anymore. It was like he was trying to get to me, to the Emily who was
hiding behind the armor. It made me want to cry. And I was done cr
ying.

It didn’t take long for Griff to fall asleep. I would have loved to follow suit, but
he was taking up most of my bed. He emitted so much heat that it was like sleeping
with roast beef. I finally gave up and left Meatball and Griff to fight each other
with their sn
ores.

I grabbed a spoon and jar of peanut butter from the kitchen and went to find my mail.
The “dining room” was the place where we had a table, one that someone had put on
the side of the road with his or her garbage and that my roommates had rolled back
to the house, balancing it on two grocery carts. There were no chairs around it, but
it made a great surface for gathering everyone’s junk and for storing empty beer c
ases.

I pulled a stack of boxes from under the table and sat on the stack, cuddling my jar.
I was beyond starving. It was as though my stomach had grown a hole and everything
I had ever eaten in my life had totally disappe
ared.

The carpet was sticky and crunchy. Someone from the party must have spilled something
on the floor and used newspaper to soak it up or try to hid
e it.

And they criticize Meatball for being an animal
, I sneered to my
self.

While I was digging into the peanut butter jar, I was kicking at the newspapered floor.
A picture on the front page of the paper diverted my attention. With the spoon still
in my mouth, I bent over and pulled the paper off the f
loor.

I slid my fingers along its edges and got a paper cut. At least I knew I wasn’t drea
ming.

There were allegations of corruption, of embezzlement, of fraud. Millions of dollars
had been misappropriated … allegedly. Someone had been arrested and set free on bail.
And in the middle of all this was a picture of a gray-haired man in an Armani suit—my
father, in handcuffs, being led out of his office building. He was smiling, and so
was his lawyer at his
side.

I could probably count on my fingers the number of times I had seen my father growing
up. He was more of a mythic figure in our household. On par with the Easter bunny,
I supposed. But I always knew he wasn’t a figment of my imagination, because the father
I had made up as a girl was a dentist who came home every night to make sure that
I brushed my t
eeth.

Whether my father was at the office or he decided to stay home one odd day, there
was always a reason. All reasons always lead to business. If he was home, that meant
that someone important was coming over and I had to ensure to appear and disappear
on command. Apart from the fact that he had been to a fancy law school—something that
my mother would never let me forget—and had taken over the family empire, I knew very
little of what my father did for a living. The newspaper article enlightened me on
what he actually did, or at least how he was making so much money, alleg
edly.

From the smile on my father’s face, it seemed as though this had all been one major
misunderstanding, one that the government would be paying dearly for. I wished I knew
my father well enough to know if he were guilty or not. If he were guilty, the newspaper
reporter surmised that the Sheppard empire could imp
lode.

The paper was dated a few days earlier. How was it that I hadn’t heard of this until
now?

While I was engrossed in my father’s smile, a glass of milk had come around my shoulder
and been placed on the table in front o
f me.

“Milk might help that peanut butter go down even faster, if that’s possible,” Griff
whisp
ered.

I stashed the paper between my legs and yanked the spoon out of my mouth while Griff
pulled a stack of beer boxes from under the t
able.

“Can’t sleep?” he a
sked.

I shook my head and took a big gulp of
milk.

“I’ve been told more times than I can remember that I’m a blanket hog. Sorry. Should
have warned
you.”

I cracked a smile and arched a brow. “So, you’ve stolen a lot of other girls’ blankets,
huh?”

He laughed. “Yeah. That’d be a better story.” Then he cleared his throat. “Nah. I
used to have to share a bed with my two older brothers. They used to beat me up in
the middle of the night when they got cold. That is, until I got bigger than
them.”

Griff’s face was swollen, scratched, and bruised in spots. His hair went every which
way. And he was completely relaxed. I could see the boy that he had once been, that
he was becoming again. I couldn’t help myself from staring at
him.

While I had been studying Griff, he had been studying me. Under the light of the kitchen,
in the quiet darkness of the house, with nothing else to do but look at each other,
I had all of a sudden become a little shy. By the ruddiness of Griff’s cheeks, I wasn’t
the only
one.

I smiled, and he smiled back. And we both chuckled a bit at our awkward
ness.

Eventually, the smile left his lips, and he really assesse
d me.

“You’ve changed in the past couple months,” he tol
d me.

“Have I?” I remarked, while I took up my love affair again with the peanut bu
tter.

I could feel his eyes on my face. “You seem older. And a little sadder, I g
uess.”

“And here I thought the dim lighting was doing me a favor,” I
said.

But Griff remained ser
ious.

I had about a million questions for Griff. And I knew he had a million questions for
me too, none of which I was prepared to answer. Where was I supposed to start? How
much could I tell
him?

“I’m sorry,” he said, interrupting my thou
ghts.

I cocked my head. “Whatever
for?”

“I wasn’t there for you. I didn’t keep my promise of getting you out. Before it was
too
late.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m a
live.”

He searched my face. “Are
you?”

I gave him a blank look when I really wanted to stick out my to
ngue.

“Your roommates are worried about you,” he
said.

I had a hard time believing this. “When did you have time to talk to my roommates?
I’ve hardly seen you in the last
week.”

“That Hunter kid won’t shut up. If he doesn’t let me sleep soon, I may have to choke
him to s
leep.”

I couldn’t tell if Griff was kidding. “Was this before or after you paid my
rent?”

He only shrugged in answer to my question. “Do you really think no one notices
you?”

Meatball came up and laid his head on my lap. I gave him a spoonful of peanut butter,
which had him smacking his lips and tongue lo
udly.

“I’m not exactly tight with my roomm
ates.”

“You come back, bruised up, with a dog. You hide in your room. You don’t
eat—”

“Is that what they told you?” A demand more than a ques
tion.

“I can see for myself, Em. I see how skinny you’re getting. I look at you, and I’m
afraid you’re going to turn into a ghost soon. What happened over the summer … you
can’t keep that stuff inside. Do any of your roommates know what happened to you this
su
mmer?”

“Did you tell them?” I hi
ssed.

“Tell them what?” Griff was trying to keep his voice low. “
I
don’t even know what happened. One day I’m guarding some sleazeball’s house, thinking
that my life is basically over. I’m in the darkest place I’ve ever been, and all of
a sudden, this beautiful girl shows up. She’s this amazing person, and she makes me
want to stay there forever. Then I realize that she’s not there of her own free will
and I’m ready to put my life on the line to save her. Just as I’m planning to escape
with her, to set us free, I get shipped off to a barn in the middle of nowhere where
I have nothing to do but worry about my girl. I imagine the worst, and there’s nothing
I can do because I’m being watched all day and all night. Until a couple weeks later
when that beautiful girl walks in with the sleazeball, the worst person in the world.
She smiles at me. Even though she shouldn’t be smiling. I smile back because I can’t
help myself and she’s clearly delusi
onal.”