Chapter Forty

AT THE END OF THE DAY, I fill my backpack while dread settles into my stomach. My mom is taking the girls to dentist appointments, so if I get on the bus and go right home, I’ll just be there alone with him. Normally, I would hide in the newspaper office for a few hours, but Mrs. Riley is already gone and the office is locked for the night.

Liam joins me at our lockers and kisses my cheek.

“I have something for you,” Liam says. “But it’s kind of a private gift and I don’t want to explain it here.”

A junior next to us looks over but doesn’t say anything. I raise my eyebrows as a gentle reminder that she can mind her own business, and she hurries away.

“Okay. Well. My bus is leaving soon,” I say.

“Yeah, but your sisters have dentist appointments. You can’t go home.”

I’m surprised that Liam even remembered that from when we talked on the phone last night. It was just casually mentioned. I’m more surprised that he has taken it a step further and understands the implications of no one else being home after school.

“Office is closed for the paper, and I don’t have a ride,” I explain.

“We have weights and game tape viewing until five. Is that too late?”

“No, that’s fine; are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Yeah. I’ll be in the weight room, but the gym will be open. You can hang out and read or whatever.”

We start walking toward the gym as we talk, and I know I’ve already made up my mind.

“Thanks,” I say.

Liam pauses outside the gym.

“You can’t be late—Coach will kill you. Or make you run sprints, which in my book is the same thing.”

Liam laughs. He looks nervous. Oh, right, the thing. He has something for me.

“What is it?”

He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a phone.

“It’s an older model. It’s actually my old one. But it works perfectly fine.”

Everything clicks into place at once. He got me a phone.

A lifeline.

To use in an emergency.

I sniffle and try to ignore the gigantic frog in my throat.

“That’s really thoughtful, Liam. I can’t even tell you . . . thank you.”

“If you keep it charged, it can at least call 911, until next week, and then it will work for normal phone calls and texting, too.”

“How?” I ask.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. But this is a smartphone, which means it needs an actual plan. And data. And the truth is, I could swallow my pride enough to ask for help like this, if I knew it was safe.

But it isn’t.

I look at the phone in my hand.

And then I give it back.

“I can’t,” I say. Tears now threaten everything. I suck in a deep breath and steel myself.

“What?”

“I can’t take this, Liam.” A tear spills over, and then another. Dammit.

“Leighton, it could—” I hear the ghost of the sentence even though he doesn’t finish.

Save your life.

And he’s right, it could.

Or it could get us killed.

“He’s weird about phones. And police. If he found this, Liam . . .”

“So hide it really well.”

“There’s nowhere that’s safe, Liam. I—I appreciate the offer.”

“You really aren’t gonna take it?”

I don’t answer, but I make myself meet his gaze. And I know that, tears and all, he sees my resolve.

He shoves the cell phone into his backpack.

“I’m late for practice,” he says, and walks around me.

“Liam—”

“I get it. I do. I’m not upset with you, it’s just—”

It’s a lot. It’s a lot to ask him to know and not do anything.

“I’ll see ya after.” He’s gone through the doors to the gymnasium and turning right into the guys’ locker room.

That went well.

In the gym I sit at the end of the bleachers. I pull out our lit textbook and work through review questions.

For most of Liam’s practice, I study. There is some constant white noise coming from the closed weight room—the clanging of weights and the easy, low talk of the players. I finish my homework too soon, and pass the last half hour trying—and still failing—to write the Auburn scholarship essay. It’s frustrating. I’ve never really struggled to find the words before, but this one essay is defeating me.

I pack up my backpack and climb off the bleachers. I trade my bag for a basketball sitting in a bin on the side of the court and start to shoot at the net. I miss nine of ten shots, but it feels good to move my body when my mind gets stuck, so I think about Auburn and I throw the basketball, again and again. Then the doors to the weight room burst open, and a group of guys emerges. I walk all the way across the court before I realize it isn’t the football team, but wrestling.

I make eye contact with Brody as he comes out. I turn away, but not soon enough.

“Hey, did you guys hear that the ice queen is finally dating someone? I guess she isn’t as frigid as we thought after all.”

A few chuckles. Mostly not. I guess even Brody’s own teammates think he’s a jerk.

“Or maybe she just doesn’t like white guys,” Brody says.

“Shut the hell up, Brody.” I turn back as I say it, and realize he’s followed me across the court.

“Maybe when you’re done with Liam, you can give me another shot? Now that you’re a little thawed out by McNamara.” Brody reaches out, probably just to make some stupid comment about my skin not being ice cold, but I step backward.

I throw the basketball as I move, and it hits Brody in the center of his face.

Really hard.

A waterfall of blood starts to pour out of his nose.

And that’s when the football team comes out of the locker rooms.

“What the fuck, Leighton?” Brody yells.

The football coach joins us, shouting for someone to get some paper towels for the blood.

“What the hell is going on here?” Coach Tenley asks.

“That bitch broke my nose!”

“Hey, hey!” Coach holds up his hand. “Language.”

The sight of Brody being scolded for cursing in front of a teacher while bleeding profusely might actually be worth the trouble I’m in.

Liam is at my side. “Leighton?”

“He was . . . he was being a jerk. He was going to touch me.”

“Did he touch you?” Coach asks.

I shake my head no.

“Did you think he was going to hurt you?” he asks.

Again, no.

I just reacted.

“Detention tomorrow,” he says to me, then turns back to Brody. “Go get cleaned up. Your nose isn’t broken.”

Coach walks away, shaking his head as he goes.

Liam picks up the forgotten basketball and gives Brody a cold look.

“Leave Leighton alone. Enough is enough.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending her. She’s totally unstable.”

“Or maybe you just shouldn’t touch girls if they didn’t say you could.”

“Whatever, man.” Brody spits blood on the floor. “Enjoy fucking an ice queen.”

Liam lifts the basketball so it’s level with Brody’s face.

“Think fast!” he yells, shooting his arms out but releasing the ball as he does it, catching it with his forearms.

Brody throws his body backward before he realizes Liam never threw the ball, and the other guys laugh at him.

“Just leave her the fuck alone, Brody.”

Liam and I leave, grabbing our things and hurrying out into the cold. The car ride to my house is silent, but it’s the loudest kind—where every breath and turn-signal click and scratch of gravel under a tire is a reminder of the fact that we haven’t said a single word to each other. I’m embarrassed by what I did. I never respond to people like that. And I didn’t think I had that kind of violence in me. I wasn’t even angry in the moment. I just reacted on fear, or instinct.

Liam parks just before Mrs. Stieg’s house, because I asked him to. He’s the kind of guy who would insist on walking me to my door every night, if my door were the kind where that would be okay. My dad knows I have a boyfriend, but hardly any other details. I’m trying desperately to keep those worlds from colliding.

“I’m not like him,” I say. My voice is tight with the threat of tears.

“Like Brody? God, I know.”

“No, like him.” I shrug toward my house.

A few beats of silence pass between us.

“I know that, too,” he says, softer this time. “Brody’s always been an asshole to you. Part of me is surprised you didn’t throw something at him sooner.”

I laugh through the tears now falling down my face.

“I have detention.”

“Yeah. It’s okay. You are long overdue for some rebellion, Leighton.”

A few more beats in the quiet car. Leave it to Liam to have me laughing not twenty minutes after that whole thing.

“You really won’t take the phone?” he asks.

I turn to him in the dark, and I can see just the outline of his face, stark against the porch light on at Mrs. Stieg’s house behind him. I don’t want to tell him no again, but it’s the only answer I have.

“It’s dangerous, Liam. The last thing was over towels, and I’m not taking unnecessary risks with my mom and sisters there.”

“Just unnecessary risks for yourself, then.”

“Liam . . .”

He sighs and runs his hand over the top of his head. “I’m sorry. I’m being an ass. I’ll get over it by tomorrow.”

“You’re not an ass. It’s a really nice gesture.”

He laughs without a trace of humor.

“I hate that you don’t feel safe, Leighton.”

“Me too, Liam. I’m working on a plan. I promise.” I kiss him goodbye and climb out of the car. Liam always waits until I get into the house before driving away. It’s such a weird protective quirk when we both know I’m probably better off outside.

I stand in the front yard a moment longer, staring at the house. Most haunted houses are plagued by the dead, not the living.

Except this one. This one is possessed by all of us, even when we aren’t here. Like it’s taking little parts of us, storing us in its foundation and nails and the wood where it’s gone soft.

Run. I pause on the step.

Run, something deep down inside of me screams. It shakes the bars on its cage and tells me to turn around. No, not just something. I know what’s locked in there. What shouts my darkest worries at me as I’m trying to fall asleep. The thing that freezes when I talk back to him. And it’s still there on days when things are all right and the sun shines on my face; even when I’m safe, there’s a part of me always wondering when it’s going to start again. And it’s there in my chest—that thing.

It’s fear.

And I’ve locked it away, like the dangerous creature it is. Because fear makes me act stupid. It makes me weak. I’d run, I want to tell the fluttering thing inside of me, if there were anywhere to go. There’s no place. Noplaceintheworldtorun.

My chest is tight in the cold air, and my breath catches every time I breathe. It’s already too full, with that creature in there. Too full to make room for oxygen, for life.

I step into the house.