Mom and Dad aren’t home yet, the twins probably loving their time at college. They have to be. Neither of them has made any attempt to reach out to me since the message they left me the first day of school. It’s been weeks alone here and I think I’m really starting to go mad.
Flinging myself on my bed does little to help, nor does studying. A quiet dinner with Mom and Dad where I mutter “I’m fine”, “it was good” and “no thank you” ends with me back in my room, closing the door behind me.
I hear them talking downstairs so I sneak my door open a bit to listen in at their low and tense tones. My socks shuffle over the hardwood as I creep out further to make out their words.
“—this would happen.” Mom sounds afraid, almost. “With the twins gone, she has no one.”
“She’s a big girl.” But Dad doesn’t sound all that convinced, either. I cup my hands over my hot cheeks as they go on below, oblivious to the fact I can hear them.
“What if she…” Mom stops, draws an audible breath. “You know what I’m talking about.”
Dad doesn’t answer right away and I catch myself rubbing at the line between my brows. What if I what?
“That was a long time ago.” His tone is soothing. I hear him moving, but into the living room, the click of the TV coming on. His voice is muffled under the cheer of the crowd watching a game show. “She’s sixteen, for goodness sakes. Give her the benefit of the doubt, Joanna.”
“She’s sixteen,” Mom says, heading up the stairs. I don’t want them to know I’ve been eavesdropping, so I duck into my room again and close the door almost all the way, pressing my ear to the crack. “Going on twelve, the same age she was when it all ended. But if we’re getting a repeat of last time, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
She disappears into their room at the end of the hall and I quietly close my door, turn to lean my back against it. What was that all about? I ignore the tiny ball of horror growing in my stomach as I push off and pace up and down a few steps. What were they talking about?
And should I know? Ask questions? I don’t remember anything from when I was young that might—
She’s pretty, tiny, with pale blue eyes and a smile that makes me want to smile, too—
Shudder. Whoever the girl is from my memory, I won’t think about her. Not ever again.
I have a math test tomorrow. And while I know I could write it in my sleep and still get full marks, I sit down to study. Because school, yo.
By the time the sun sets, I’m ready for some air and a chance to escape the cramped closeness of my room. Dad is still watching TV, though from the faint sound of snoring coming from his chair, he’s decided napping is a better use of his time. I don’t see Mom and can only assume she’s still upstairs.
I pause by the living room door. Should I tell him I’m going out? I let Dad sleep and slip into the kitchen, though the fear in me now feels like I’m slinking around, doing something wrong. Even though a walk to the park was a nightly ritual for me and the twins.
I shake my head at myself as I slip on my old boots and out the patio doors to the yard. It’s a short circle around the house to the street, and another two blocks to the park. It’s dark, but only early yet, really, the evening warm enough in late September it still feels like summer might come back for another visit. I cross the grass to the swings and hop on mine, the far left, turning as I do to imagine Clare and Calvin laughing and pushing each other on the remaining two.
“Miss you guys.” Is that what Mom and Dad are so worried about? The fact I’m an only child all of a sudden? I slump in the swing seat, feet scuffing the shallow ditch beneath me countless sneakers have made over the summer. Maybe they’re right. That could be the real cause of my discomfort, my loss of self. If Clare and Calvin were here, they would have found a way to help me get back at Tom and save Tate from whatever was happening.
But, I’d lost my backup. Just like Kitalia lost hers.
I’ve misplaced interest in the swings almost as quickly as I sat down and, with a sad glance around, turn for home. I duck under the chain hanging from the posts bordering the green space, hands tucked into the pockets of my jeans, head down. It’s funny, I’ve always felt like I had the whole world in my hands, like everyone loved me, that I had more friends than I knew what to do with. But, as I make my way home, I find myself feeling the most alone I ever have in my entire life.
A footstep scuffs behind me and someone laughs.
***
My head jerks up from my contemplation of my most unsatisfying day, mind sharpening as I reach out to feel the darkness. Someone is out there. Watching me. Following me.
A large number of someones.
What is this? I pick up my pace, bracing myself as three, four, five assailants pace me, their minds shuttered but locatable thanks to my power. I’ve kept my nose clean, kept myself out of trouble since being accused of countless indiscretions in that joke of a meeting three weeks ago. For my bosses who I trusted and who I thought trusted me to take the inconsistencies listed in my reports as some kind of impropriety was the utmost in agony, a dagger to the heart. I’d sat there, Tatiana handing over folders looking guilty and apologetic, but passing on the lies therein just the same. There was nothing I could do to defend myself—somehow, T.B. had found a way to tap into my reports and alter a few key notes, just enough to make me look bad. Nothing actionable, but as a whole, enough to put me on desk duty.
Desk duty. Me. Their most powerful psychic. They’d lost their collective minds. And so had I, clearly, letting him take me out that easily. But, without proof of his wrongdoing, any step I took would be seen either as a deflection from my guilt or jealousy.
It sucked so much. Yes, I was still looking for proof and you’d be damned sure I was going to find some. But, as the weeks went by and nothing turned up, my time chained to a desk making me crazy, I’d lost my patience and gone digging today.
And now, tonight, as if right on schedule, I was being followed. By ninjas.
God damn it.
You can’t hide from me, Kitalia. His voice is in my head. I know every step you take. Have a nice walk home.
I pick up my pace, almost running now, but not yet. I’m not ready to bolt. Still considering if I need to fight just to purge this desperate fury from my system. As I near my new safe house, they melt away until I’m left standing outside the brownstone I’ve called home since abandoning the last place I’d laid my head.
Looks like I need to move again.
***
I stop, panting, on the edge of my driveway, looking back over my shoulder. The night is quiet, and now I’m sure I imagined being followed from the park, the hammer of shoes on pavement mine, the laugh just a night bird’s call misheard.
My phone vibrates. I glance down at it.
You looked at Tate. Don’t think I didn’t notice. Here’s another reminder of who owns you.
I jerk my head up as something hard hits me in the chest, cracks and breaks open. Shattered egg shells and innards drip from the front of my t-shirt as someone—a male someone—laughs in the darkness.
I stand there, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes, jaw setting as the anger returns.
I didn’t do anything, I kept my nose clean, my head down. Yes, I looked at Tate today. I looked at another person. I have the right to do that. And yet, Tom just made it clear to me he’s not going to let this go. Ever.
Kitalia growls her fury inside me while the angry part of my soul wakes and joins her. I’m done playing whipped girl. He’s gone too far, taking this to my house, my back yard. To the park where I can at least feel connected to my brother and sister.
I’m so done. I stomp one foot, loving the feeling of it, the aggression. Would be so much better with my boots, though.
My boots. I think of them, their innocence, their loss, like they were my best friends. And I grow angrier by the second. Come on, Kit. You’re a genius, aren’t you? Why are you taking this crap from a wannabe computer nerd with a God complex? He owes you a pair of boots.
He owes you an apology.
If I’m going to survive grade eleven, I’m going to have to find a way to make him stop.
***