Chapter Thirty-Seven

“That went well,” I deadpan as soon as the door closes behind Annika.

Kai doesn’t smile. He goes straight to the worktable and lifts the paper towels and newsprint, exposing the entire painting, unfinished section included.

He turns to me. “What’s going on?”

I don’t know what to say. I stand there, staring at him, mouth open.

“When I showed up,” he says, “were you . . . were you trying to finish her painting for her or something?” His brow’s tightly furrowed, like he’s saying it but can’t believe it might be true.

I still don’t answer.

“Or is it even worse than that?” he says. “Ravi is convinced . . . I mean, he doesn’t know what, but he’s convinced there’s something you’re not telling us. He talked to me after he ran into you.” Kai crosses his arms. “He’s not even sure you live in that building.”

“What?!” I say. “Of course I do! And I’m not using, if that’s what he told you. Seriously. You have to believe me.”

He hesitates. “Is it something with your mom? Is she not okay or something?” Despite his obvious suspicion, there is such concern in his voice. Such warmth. Like he’s wrapping his arms around me.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t want to betray my mother, to share truths she wouldn’t want shared. But I’m so tired. I’m so tired of lies. They’ve become as much a part of me as my skeleton, and they’re heavy as lead.

I sink down on the floor, rest my back against the wall. Kai sits next to me, quiet. Waiting. Maybe if I was thinking at full capacity, I could come up with a story, an excuse. But not now. Whatever happens, happens. Finally, I start.

“I didn’t know until June that she was having trouble with the paintings.” I go from there, sharing the basic details about our money problems, our tenuous living situation, my mother’s emotional struggles. My desperation to give her back her career. My intentions at the beginning, when I only wanted to start a painting and then get her to take over. The only things I don’t tell him are how I do them, how deeply I enter Wolfwood, and why I can’t finish the last one. I just say I ran out of time.

At the end we sit in silence.

Kai clears his throat. “So . . . you’ve done all the paintings? Your mother didn’t do any of them?”

“Lots of artists have assistants who help with their work.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Why would you have lied about it if you didn’t think it was wrong?”

I don’t answer that. “Please don’t tell your mother,” I beg. “Please. I know it’s a lot to ask. But please.”

“The other night, with Ravi—all your bruises and scratches. If you’re asking me to lie for you, I need to know everything. I’m not kidding, Indigo.” His tone has hardened into one I haven’t heard from him before.

Again, I scramble for a plausible excuse. And again, I decide I have to at least give some of the truth. After a moment, I explain how involved I get when I paint, how deeply I enter my imagination. That I sort of pretend I’m really in Wolfwood. As I talk, I play it off like it’s nothing important.

“You realize how strange that sounds,” Kai says. “Like . . . not okay strange.”

“I know. But I’m sure it’s something that happens to other artists. Just part of the process.”

His brow is deeply furrowed again. “So . . . is it . . . is it kind of self-harm?”

“No!” I shake my head firmly. “Not like that. It’s not like I do it on purpose. I don’t want to hurt myself.”

“But you do it to yourself.”

“No, it happens there,” I say, and he blinks. “I mean, yeah, I do it myself, but not on purpose. More like it happens to me, when I’m attacked by a monster or something. I do it, but not. I mean, not that I’m really there.” My explanation gets all jumbled as I talk. I’m so tired and confused about what he can know and what he can’t. And I don’t even know myself how the injuries happen, so how can I explain it to him?

He rubs a hand across his forehead. “None of this sounds right. You’re scaring me, to be honest.”

I stand up, my back to him. Cross my arms and stare at the wall, eyes burning. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You have no sense of what it’s like to work, no idea what it’s like to hold down jobs and try to save your mother and save your friends and pay the rent and have it all piled on top of you. You have no idea what real life is like!” Even as I say it all, I know it’s not true. Sure, he doesn’t know what pressure I’m under. But he knows some things. His life is real, too.

“That has nothing to do with this,” he says. “I just think you sound like you’re working too hard and are too stressed out and it’s messing with you. That you need to sleep and eat. What you’re saying about getting hurt . . . it’s not healthy. And what ‘friends’ are you trying to save?”

Shit. Did I say that? I must have meant the sisters.

“Not important,” I say. I turn to face him. He’s standing now, too. His jaw is stony. His eyes have lost their usual brightness. “I’m so sorry I lied, Kai.”

“Yeah, it really fucking sucks,” he says. “And, you know, I can’t believe you think this is your responsibility, that you’re willing to do something so extreme for your mother, not even worrying about what it’s doing to you.”

“I’m not just doing this for her. It’s for me. Once it’s over, and she’s painting again, I can go back to . . . I don’t know, I can have my own life. That’s all I want. I just want her to be okay and for us to have some money, so I can have a life. I haven’t had one for so, so long, Kai.” I swallow, throat tight. “There are things you don’t know, about what we’ve been through. Really hard things. And I promise I’ll tell you at some point. But right now, I just need you to know how important it was for this to happen.”

I’m not quite ready to tell him all about being homeless and what really happened to my face. I’ve never said those things out loud to anyone. “It’s not like I could have just . . . let this opportunity slip away. I was drowning even before this. This was the lifeline.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Doesn’t your mother care that it’s beating you up to do them? What’s wrong with her that she’d let you get hurt?”

“Nothing is wrong with her,” I snap. “She doesn’t know . . . I mean, I haven’t exactly told her. She’d be worried.”

“Well, yeah!” He starts pacing. “Wouldn’t she want to know? So she can help?”

“She’d just feel bad. She has a lot of self-hatred. It doesn’t make her productive. It shuts her down.”

“So you’re protecting her by hurting yourself.”

I don’t respond.

“Parents should be parents,” he says. “They should protect their kids.”

“Like your parents protected Hiro?” The minute I’ve said it I know I shouldn’t have, but I can’t stand him being judgmental about my mother. Of course, I’m angry at her myself. Angry she let me do this. Angry that I always have to put her life first. Angry that I’m responsible for keeping us afloat. Loving her and worrying about her don’t mean I’m not also angry at her.

But it’s one thing for me to be angry, and another thing for someone else.

“That’s totally different,” Kai says. His back is to me as he starts taking a painting off the wall, so I can’t see his expression. “And if you’re gonna go there, what about my mother? She’s relying on this show. What if . . . I don’t know, what if someone found out? And she got in trouble?”

“No one will find out if we don’t tell them,” I say. “And I’m doing this so there will be a show. Why are we even talking about this? It’s just one more painting.”

“Honestly?” he says. “I’m worried about you doing it any longer. Even finishing this one. Or redoing it. It seems like you’re on the edge here. I don’t like it. And I don’t like . . . I don’t like being responsible for this secret.”

“I don’t like it, either,” I say. We’re both moving paintings from the wall to a pile on the floor now, but he keeps avoiding my eyes. “I’m so close, though, Kai. And if the show is a success . . . it will change our lives in a way nothing else could. Please,” I repeat, “please let me have this, Kai. You don’t understand. I need to save her. I need to do this.” I hesitate. “I know that it’s terrible for me to ask you to keep this from your mother. I know that. But . . . it’s my entire life, really. Everything is on the line.”

He meets my gaze now. “So what’s going on with the last one? You got all the way here. Why isn’t it finished? I don’t believe that you ran out of time.”

I’m the one to glance away this time. I shake my head. “I can’t do it. It’s too hard to explain why.”

“Try. Try to explain.”

I inhale slowly. “Just . . . it’s not the ending I want to happen, and my mother won’t change it.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You’ve heard everyone. They think this is some big victory story. It’s not. And it’s . . . brutal.”

“Brutal like you could get badly hurt?”

I nod. “I mean, I’m sure I’d be fine. I’m just being a wimp.” Or maybe I wouldn’t be fine . . .

He hesitates, too much behind his eyes for me to read. “I’m not sure what to say. I don’t think you should do it, but I don’t think you should have done any of them, so . . .”

“Are you going to tell Annika?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know this!”

I bite my lip. He stares at the floor, rubbing the back of his head.

“Look,” I say. “I don’t want you to think . . . I don’t want you to think I don’t realize how weird this all is. And how wrong. I do. And these injuries? They scare me. I wouldn’t be doing it if I saw any other solution or thought there was any chance my mother would just finish this last one or change it. I’ve asked her. She won’t.”

He meets my eyes again. “It must be scary. The whole thing, I mean. Everything with your mom.”

I don’t want to listen to his sympathy right now, because it’s making my throat swell and what I need is to keep my shit together.

“Yeah. But I’m not easy to scare,” I say, lightening my tone. “You know that.”

“Right.” His expression closes off and he gestures at the paintings. “Anyway, I gotta pack up and go.”

“Wait,” I say. And before I know what’s going to come out of my mouth, I ask, “What about, you know . . . us?”

His brow lifts. “Us?”

“Can we keep being . . . whatever we are? Friends?” I shift on my feet.

“I don’t know, Indigo. What are we even? I haven’t seen you. You’ve been lying to me in almost every breath. Don’t mistake my . . . sympathy, or whatever, as meaning that I’m not pissed.”

What was I thinking even bringing it up? I don’t need to be dealing with this right now. “Okay. Well . . . If you can’t keep all this from your mom, I understand. But could you just sleep on it? I’m going to stay here, keep working, in case. And we can talk tomorrow?”

“So you’re going to do that last one? Even with the injuries?”

“I have to,” I say, not clear what part of this he doesn’t understand. “I have no choice.”

Zoe presses the record button. Moments later, the Jeep’s headlights appear in the distance. At first, it looks like they’re driving slowly, but as the lights get closer they seem to go faster. Zoe tenses, wishing they would slow down. Still, she tries to do what Colin said. She tries to keep her eyes and camera on the Jeep. When it’s close enough for Zoe to make out a figure—Lila—leaning out the open side, a sudden clatter makes Zoe turn her head toward Colin.

She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. The flashlight is rolling toward the side of the road, away from Colin, as if it’s been tossed, and Colin is lying down, not squatting. Zoe looks back to the Jeep, can’t tell whether the girls see him. The Jeep isn’t slowing down. Zoe doesn’t know what’s happening. Do they see him? Does he have time to move? Why is he lying down? Why hasn’t he moved yet?

It all happens so quickly. Zoe can’t judge anything and can’t make any rational decisions, all she can do is what she does, which is shout loudly, jump into the road, and wave her arms wildly for the girls to stop.