The Taking (11 page)

He didn’t mention this Nancy person, and I didn’t ask, even though I probably should have because it seemed like the polite thing to do. But I didn’t feel like being polite. Nancy could wait.

I’d have to deal with her and The Husband and “my brother” and probably a whole lot of other people soon enough. For now I was still figuring out where I fit into this strange new world I’d been dropped into.

After we left the IHOP, my dad took me straight back to my mom’s place. The edges of the chalk drawing had been somewhat blurred from being driven over, but the birdcage—and the words beneath the bird—were just as captivating the second time around. I was glad my dad didn’t call me on the fact that I’d stood on the sidewalk way too long, taking it all in once more.

Since The Husband had taken “my brother” to day care, or wherever they kept him when they went to work during the day, it was just the three of us at the house: my mom, my dad, and me. It was exactly as awkward as it sounded, so my dad pretty much excused himself right away.

“How was breakfast?” my mom asked, watching from the front window as the van pulled away.

My shoulders tensed. I didn’t want to start this whole small-talk thing with her again. “Good. Fine.”

She nodded and went to the microfiber sofa that I hadn’t even bothered sitting on yet. I knew she wanted me to do what she did, make myself at home, but I stayed where I was, standing stiffly in the doorway.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do now . . . ,” she started. “Now that you’re back?” I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, and I frowned. She kept going. “You know, school? We should probably figure out a way for you to finish high school, and maybe get you started in college.” She ran her hand along the arm of the sofa.

School. I hadn’t thought about that. The idea of sitting in a classroom with a bunch of high school kids, even if they looked remotely like Tyler, was absolutely out of the question. I’d be a total outcast, even if I wasn’t twenty-one. I’d seen the way that Jackson guy from the bookstore had gawked at me like I was an oddity—the girl who’d up and vanished.

“No thanks,” I rebuffed her idea. “Maybe we can find an online school or something. Or I can get my GED and go to Skagit Valley.” The community college was a far cry from the kinds of scholarship schools my dad had once tried to shove down my throat. But it was close to here, and it would give me a chance to sort out what I wanted to do next.

“I suppose that’d be okay. As long as you’re not sitting around here all day, watching
Judge Judy
and hanging out with your dad.”

My heart stuttered, and I blinked at my mom in disbelief. “Seriously? You didn’t just say that, did you?”

“What?”
she asked, getting up from her place and giving me a look that said she had no idea why I was so bent. “What did I say?”

I threw my arms wide and let out a noisy breath. “Did you not even hear yourself? Can’t you say anything nice about him? He’s still my dad.”

Pinching her lips, she turned to gaze out the window. I heard her sigh exasperatedly. I started to tell her I didn’t want to hear her talk about my dad anymore—not another word—but then she whirled around once more, only this time she looked ashen. Her face was masked in the kind of worry only a mom could manage. She finally looked exactly like she should. “Shit, Kyra,” she said. “Austin’s here.”

I wasn’t even sure I registered her words right away. I mean, I knew what she’d said—I understood her and all—but it didn’t sink in right away.

Austin,
she’d said.
He was here. Now
.

I was suddenly more nervous than I’d been since I’d been back, maybe than I’d ever been in my entire life. This was all I’d wanted: to see him, and for him to want to see me. And now that he’d come . . . I don’t know . . . I wasn’t as sure.

Four days ago Austin and I had been destined to spend the rest of our lives together. I’d been willing to turn my back on scholarships and softball and everything in order to make that happen.

Then I woke up behind a Dumpster and found out that he and my best friend, the girl I’d grown up with and told all my secrets to, were living the life I’d always dreamed of living.

Was it really so strange I might be having second thoughts about facing him now?

When the doorbell rang, it reverberated through my entire body. My mom leaned over and whispered to me ninja-quiet, “Do you want me to tell him you’re not here?”

I let out a nervous laugh, but even that sounded too shrill, and I had to remind myself to breathe. “No. I can do this,” I assured her, totally sounding calmer than I felt inside.

Bracing myself, I went to the door. My lungs ached, and I was definitely light-headed, but there was no going back now. No matter what happened, I needed this. I tried to think of one of my dad’s inspirational quotes, but all I could come up with was something about “opportunity knocking,” which was totally inappropriate because it wasn’t opportunity at all—it was Austin, and he was standing on my porch ringing the doorbell.

When I opened it, my mouth went completely dry. Tyler had been right about Austin; he did look older.

His eyes were the same green as always, just shades lighter than his brother’s; but beyond that he was completely different from what he had been that night after my championship game, when I’d kissed him by the softball diamond, promising to meet up later at the Pizza Palace.

His hair, which had always been sun bleached and chlorine damaged from spending so much time in the water, was darker now, and his face was leaner than I remembered. Not sharp, but more defined, as if age had chiseled in the angles.

A part of me had hoped his new life with Cat would have turned him fat and soft and, yes, maybe too hideous even to look upon, like some fairy-tale troll. But he was none of those things. He was older and more matured, but he was also still Austin.

“Oh my god. It’s really you,” he breathed, drinking me in. “I thought . . . we all thought you were gone for good.”

He touched my face, and I flinched. “Can we . . . ?” He shifted nervously, and I was relieved he was at least sort of uncomfortable facing me in person. He looked past me to where my mom was standing at my back like some sort of Mafia enforcer, and his voice rose. “Can we talk someplace private?”

Silently I was grateful to my mom for giving me that—the whole solidarity thing—but I still needed to do this on my own, so I closed the door on her, giving Austin and me some space.

I stepped away from the door and led him down the steps so she couldn’t eavesdrop either, because I wouldn’t put it past her, not if she was anything like my old mom. That mom would have no qualms about putting her ear to the door so she could listen to what we were saying.

We had to cross the street to reach his car, which meant walking over the top of the chalk birdcage, and I tried not to stare, but my eyes kept straying downward, taking in the bird and its feathers, and marveling over every tiny detail Tyler had put into it. Self-consciously, I wondered if Austin knew that his brother had drawn the birdcage or that it was meant for me. I seriously hoped not.

We stood there, each studying the other for what was probably only a few seconds but for what felt like hours. Austin rubbed the thick shadow of whiskers along his jaw that used to be the finest of stubble, and I crossed my arms, mostly to hide the fact that my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I kept looking away to avoid his eyes and his face, pretty much all of him, because looking at him gave me that itchy déjà vu sensation all over again.

“Cat misses you,” Austin said at last, clearing his throat loudly.

And with that, any nerves or worry that
I
might not say or do the right thing evaporated. Maybe it was hearing his voice again, because at least
that
hadn’t changed all that much, or maybe it was the fact that he’d said something so incredibly insensitive to start off our very first conversation, but suddenly I couldn’t see him as anything but plain old Austin anymore. Older, yes, but still just a stupid boy who said stupid things when he opened his mouth. “
Cat?
Really? You drove all this way to talk about Cat?”

Had I forgotten that about him, the way he sometimes bulldozed right over my feelings, not because he didn’t care, but because he was so totally oblivious?

“I mean, no. Of course I didn’t.” He shifted some more, almost like he was doing some sort of dance, and I winced because it was so . . . strangely pathetic. God, he couldn’t even talk to me; he could barely look me in the eye at all. “It’s just that she wanted to come, too . . . to see you, but we . . . I mean,
I
. . . I thought it was a bad idea. I thought I should see you first.”

Inside, in a place where Austin couldn’t see, where he’d never know what this meeting was doing to me, my heart felt like it was shattering into a million little fragments. It wasn’t like I didn’t know this already, that we were really-truly-
completely
over, Austin and me, but to see him here and hear him stammering for something to say to me . . . I guess it finally hit home.

But that didn’t change the fact that I was pissed at him for giving up on me in the first place, or for choosing to go on with his life with Cat, of all people! I didn’t realize I was crying until I heard myself yelling at him. “Why couldn’t you wait, goddammit? Why did you”—I choked on a sob—“have to give up on me?” And then, before I knew what I was doing, I hit him, but it wasn’t a real hit, and we both knew it. My fist struck him square in the chest while I yelled again, tears streaking down both sides of my face. “Why’d you have to do all the things we were supposed to do with
her
?”

I felt his arms go around me, and even
that
wasn’t the same anymore. I should’ve loved that he was finally touching me, hugging me. Except he wasn’t hugging me, not really. He was comforting me, and that isn’t the same thing at all. I felt like a little kid who’d skinned her knee, and Austin was just trying to make it all better.

Thing was, I didn’t want to be comforted. Not by him. I writhed inside the circle of his arms, but instead of realizing I meant it, that I wanted him to let me go for real, his grip tightened. Understandable, I guess, since in the old days I would’ve wanted him to keep hold of me. To wait out my stubbornness.

But not now.

I shoved harder. “Get. Off.” I demanded, making sure he understood I meant it this time.

When he released me, my faced felt flushed, but not in an attractive, you-just-made-me-blush kind of way. I knew it was blotchy and gross, but I didn’t care. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand.

Just then Tyler’s car pulled to a stop behind Austin’s. Austin barely seemed to notice his younger brother, but Tyler was all I noticed now. I hadn’t realized how close I’d been standing to Austin until Tyler got out of his car and his dark eyes moved from me to Austin and back to me again.

I swallowed hard as I took a step back, wishing more than anything I’d never come out here in the first place.

But Tyler didn’t skip a beat. He nodded at me like we were old buddies rather than the kind of people you stay up half the night drawing chalk masterpieces for as he jerked his backpack from his backseat.

When he approached Austin on the sidewalk, he didn’t step around him like a normal person would have. Instead, he bumped into him with his shoulder, shoving his older brother out of his way.

“What’s your problem?” was all Austin said as Tyler passed him, which wasn’t much of a greeting from one brother to another, but I guess neither was the shoulder-bump thing.

After Tyler had slammed the front door behind him, leaving us all alone again, Austin turned his attention back to me and beneath his breath muttered, “Jesus, Kyra, this is really hard for me.”

“Hard for
you
?” I managed when I finally stopped glancing up to their house to see if Tyler was in there, watching us.

Austin exhaled, running his hand through his hair. I knew the gesture. He thought I was overreacting. “Yeah. I thought my girlfriend was dead, and now here you are. I’m confused, but I want us to be . . . friends.”

I didn’t know what to say. Nothing, I guess. We weren’t friends, not anymore. We hadn’t been for a really,
really
long time.

Shrugging and shaking my head, because what else could I do, I turned on my heel and left him standing there.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Day Four

I SAT IN DR. DUNN
’
S EMPTY WAITING ROOM, MY
tongue running over the chipped tooth I was here to have fixed while I continued to rehash my confrontation with Austin yesterday. I’d been replaying it in my head over and over all night, but worse was the fact that I also couldn’t stop thinking about Tyler, and the look on his face when he’d come home from school to find the two of us standing there together.

None of it should matter to me, mostly because it really
didn’t
matter. I was nothing to Austin, and now that I’d seen him again, it was clear Austin wasn’t anything to me either. We were
so
over.

Besides, on top of everything else, Tyler was still just Austin’s little brother. Too young to be anything more than a friend.

So why had my already-fractured heart shattered a little more when I’d stepped outside this morning to leave for the dentist only to discover there was no new chalk drawing for me, only the birdcage from the day before—a little more smudged and worn?

Because if I stopped lying to myself for even a second, then maybe there was a part of me where Tyler mattered more than he should.

I watched as my mom’s son ate a corner from a page of the
Highlights
magazine he’d been maniacally flipping through, pretending he knew how to read. I thought about asking my mom if there was something lacking in his diet that made him crave paper pulp as he chewed off a second piece, but I’d already offended her and The Husband that morning when I’d implied that, perhaps, he needed more practice with a spoon as more of the oatmeal had fallen off it than made it to his mouth.