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  “My parents go to sleep around ten. My bedtime is nine, but I can stay awake for you if you want to come over. We’d have to keep the lights off, so you wouldn’t be able to talk to me, but we can just lay here together. Or I can talk and you can listen.”

  I squeezed her hand to offer a silent response, letting her know I was okay with that.

  “When I looked on the computer about your scars, it said something about it being Scottish or Irish. It’s called a Chelsea smile. Other websites called it a Glasgow smile. Are you from there? From Scotland or Ireland? I’ve wondered if you’d have an accent like they do.”

  I shook my head against the pillow.

  “So you’re an American?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you from Tennessee?”

  I shook my head again, wishing I could’ve given her better answers.

  She hummed for a second, and then asked, “More north?” When I nodded, I could sense her smile. This had just turned into a game for her. And I had to admit I began to enjoy it as much as she did.

  After a few rounds of yes or no questions, she finally guessed Pennsylvania. That’s when the game ended because there was no way she’d guess the town I’d lived in with my parents. Not to mention, I never would’ve told her the truth. I’d already given her more information about the guys who’d broken into my house than I had told anyone else, and I didn’t want to risk her playing detective.

  I couldn’t risk it.

  For me—or for her.

  Our conversation began to slow, her voice becoming softer. Her words were more spaced out and I could tell she was falling asleep, so I ran my fingertips over the back of her hand until she stopped talking completely. Until her breaths deepened and evened out. I didn’t want to go. I had no desire to crawl back out her window and leave her alone. But I knew I had to.

  I gave myself a little while longer to watch her sleep. Listen to her soft snores. And then I carefully pulled myself from her bed, her warmth, the friendship she offered. The friendship I wasn’t sure I deserved.

  The friendship I refused to give up.

  By the time I slipped inside through the back door, it had to have been past midnight. Most of the lights were off; the only one left on was the one in the kitchen over the sink. I didn’t pay attention to it and made a move to head back to my room, but something stopped me.

  Someone.

  “Killian.” Her soft, broken whisper froze me in place. It sounded so much like Mom—except sad. I’d heard Mom sad before, but it wasn’t often. Most of the time, she was happy, always laughing. But this voice—the one so much like hers—made it feel like a bomb exploded in my chest.

  I turned toward the kitchen and found Elise leaning against the counter. Her expression was horrifying, like she’d been crying…or on the verge of tears. I hated the way it made me feel. It reminded me of the one person I’d never get back. Elise and my mom only shared one parent, so most of the time, they looked nothing alike.

  Except now.

  They were spitting images of each other.

  “Where have you been?”

  I glanced down at the notebook in my hand and then held it up.

  “You can’t just sneak off like that without telling me where you’re going. I’ve been worried sick all night. I thought you were in your room, but when I checked, it was empty. You can’t do that.”

  I couldn’t look at her, so I averted my gaze to the countertop between us.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here with you. I have no idea how to raise a kid, let alone an eleven-year-old. I’m trying my best but…” She blew out a long sigh, and even though we stood across the counter from each other, I could feel it hit me with the strength of storm winds.

  When I glanced up, my eyes met her glossy ones. And my heart sank. This was it. This was where she would tell me she couldn’t handle me. Elise was my last hope—the last family member I had who hadn’t already given up. And here she was, throwing in the towel.

  I took the pen out of my pocket and flipped the page in my notepad.

  Are you going to give me back?

  Her whimper filled the room, but I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t want to see the truth in her eyes. The pain. The pity. It’d be worse than the words, the confirmation of her abandoning me like everyone else. They all had their reasons, and they were all valid. But that didn’t stop it from hurting every time they told me I had to leave. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I tried to be good. I didn’t talk, didn’t argue, kept my room clean, and never bothered anyone. But apparently, I wasn’t good enough.

  Mom thought I was good enough.

  No one else did.

  Elise stepped around the counter and reached out to touch my face. I didn’t like it when people did that, so I turned my head. Her hand fell to the counter and she blew out a sigh once again. She wanted me to look at her while she told me she couldn’t handle me, and I wasn’t going to give that to her. I underlined my question a few times, angrily pushing the tip of the pen into the paper.

  “Give you back? No. God, Killian…no.” Her cracked voice, coupled with her shaky hand, led me to believe the question hurt her as much as it did me. But I wasn’t ready to believe that yet. “Please look at me. Listen to me.”

  She waited while I slowly slid my eyesight up to her. We were the same height, so standing next to her, we were eye to eye. Her tears shone against the soft, yellow light in the kitchen. Her bottom lip trembled, the shallow dimples in her taut, quivering chin apparent. They made my breathing halt with anxiety for her next words.

  “I’m not sending you anywhere. You’re here…for good. This is as new for me as it is for you, but we’re going to make the best of it. You hear me? It’s me and you, kid. Against the world. I love you. I’ve loved you since you were a tiny little thing who’d fall asleep every time I held you. Your mama used to say we had a silent bond, you and me, and that’s why you’d zonk out minutes after I picked you up. I told her you were a narcoleptic nugget and I was your trigger.” She smiled shakily through the tears, and it wasn’t long before I felt my own lips curl up. The damaged muscles in my cheeks hardened around the shadow of a grin I displayed.

  You don’t ever talk about my mom.

  She read the note I’d pushed toward her. After wiping away a tear, she met my gaze again. “I’m sorry, Killian…but I’m not used to your tone yet. Are you telling me not to talk about her, or making an observation that I don’t?”

  I shook my head and began to scribble as fast as I could, needing to get my words out before the misunderstanding caused her more pain. Observation. Why don’t you?

  Her hand covered mine, stilling the pen between my fingers. “I don’t know. I guess it’s hard to sometimes. Especially with you. It’s been three years, and sometimes, I question if I’ve truly dealt with her loss yet. When it happened, I was twenty-three and starting my own life. I couldn’t give up, because I had no one to pick me up if I failed. My daddy is long since gone, and as you know, my mother passed when you were young. Your mama was the only one I had left…and when she was taken from us, I didn’t know what to do. I think I suppressed a lot of the grief in order to survive. I know I dealt with some form of depression, because I buried myself in work and friends. That’s why I didn’t take you sooner. I think I just blocked out the world. And I’m so sorry for that, Killian. I wish I’d been better, done better for you and for her.”

  I’d like to hear about her sometime. I miss her.

  A fat tear raced down her cheek, stalled at her trembling chin, and then fell hard to her shirt, where the material soaked it up and left behind a wet spot. It fanned out through the material, and in an instant, my mind had been taken back to the blood soaked into my dad’s shirt as he laid on the floor in his room, staring at me.

  “I miss her, too.” Elise’s soft voice drifted into my memories, as if she were there that night, standing next to me, holding my hand while my life fell apart around me. But then her hand m
oved up my arm, catching my full attention, and the horrific, imagined scene vanished. “I’d be more than happy to talk about her with you. She loved you more than life itself…you know that, right?”

  I nodded, wondering why she was so blurry, like I was looking at her through a puddle of water. I turned back to my notebook, and that’s when everything cleared. Drops of liquid fell to the paper and distorted the blue lines on the page. My hand was heavy, making lifting the pen difficult. However, I needed to push through. Mom told me I’d grow up one day to be a man, like Dad, and there would be times when things were hard, would seem impossible, but I had to keep going. She said persistence, determination, and hard work separated a man from a boy. At the time, I didn’t really know what that meant…but now I do.

  I know. I want to make her proud. I don’t want her to see me and be upset.

  “Oh, Killian. She’d never feel that way about you. You’re remarkable. A survivor. I know she’s proud of you every second of every day. And I know she’s happy we’re doing this together. I may mess up. You may mess up. But that doesn’t define us. That doesn’t mean we’ve failed. It means we’re learning. And we have a whole bunch to learn about one another.”

  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was. I just wanted to be alone.

  “I understand, and I’ll do my best to give you space, and pull you back in when I think you’ve had too much. Just please, tell me where you’re going next time. I think we can do this as long as we have rules and boundaries. Both of us. You should come up with a list of things for me, too.”

  I nodded and then wrapped my arms around her when she fell into me.

  “I love you, Killian,” she whispered into my ear.

  I love you, too, Elise, I mouthed into her hair.

  Five

  Rylee

  The bus slowed as it neared my house. From the window next to my seat, I watched Killian hop over the fence into the woods. I hadn’t seen him in several weeks. I’d gone to his house a few times, wondering where he’d been, but I was either met with silence or his aunt gave me some excuse why he couldn’t come to the door. I’d knocked on his window, only to be ignored. I’d searched for him in the woods, yet came up with nothing. It didn’t make sense.

  Over the last year and a half, Killian and I had grown really close. After the night he snuck into my room and laid with me until I fell asleep, it became somewhat of a ritual for us. He’d crawl into my bed, hold my hand, and listen to me tell him stories of school, my friends, and what I was learning. Three or four times a week, he’d leave me letters between the screen and the glass. He never tapped on my window to let me know, so I’d wake up in the morning to his words. Sometimes they were short notes telling me about a dream or something he saw, others were longer, offering me a piece of him through a memory. And then there were his sketches. I had a drawer full of them. The moon, trees, landscape, a building…but most of them were of me. One time, he’d drawn himself—the way he saw it—and I cherished that one the most. It was a boy, a happy kid, without scars, without the heavy grief weighing down his features. He had a smile on his face, a real one, and next to him was the outline of a girl with curly hair. No face, no features, just this presence of someone next to him.

  But all that stopped about a month ago. Without warning or cause that I knew of.

  As soon as the bus came to a complete stop and the doors opened, I jumped out of my seat and bounded down the steps. I didn’t even bother heading to my house to put away my book bag. I ran through his yard, followed his path, and dropped everything in the grass. My breathing had turned ragged and the cold air burned my throat. The sun had warmed the weather enough to tolerate the chill—nothing like the frigid temperature after night fell—but with as fast as my heart pounded in my chest and the anticipation rolling through my veins, I felt overheated beneath my hoodie.

  I made it over the top and landed hard on the dirt below. The trees had lost their leaves, leaving the space more open this time of year. It shouldn’t have been hard to spot him, although I didn’t think he wanted to be found. Ever since he turned thirteen, it was like he wanted nothing to do with me. I thought it might’ve been because I was still eleven…but I’d be twelve in a few short weeks. He knew that. He didn’t have any problem last year during the six weeks he was twelve and I was still ten. But for some reason, now it was an issue. An issue I was determined to squash.

  I glanced at my watch, feeling like I’d been searching for him for hours. I had no idea what time I’d gotten off the bus and chased after him, but I knew it was generally around two thirty. If that were the case today, I’d looked for him for fifteen minutes. I decided to go a little farther into the woods, more than normal, desperate to find him. It wouldn’t have been too hard to find my way back, but I still worried about getting lost. Mom was gone for two more days, Dad wouldn’t be home for hours, and Jason was off at college. So I knew I had time, but it didn’t stop the fear of being lost from consuming me.

  Finally, I spotted his grey sweater behind a tree trunk. He was crouched down, probably hiding. He wouldn’t get away that easily. I snuck up behind him, careful about where I stepped so I wouldn’t break a twig beneath my shoes and alert him of my presence. I managed to make it to the other side of the tree unnoticed, but when I peeked around the trunk to see what he was doing, my gasp broke my cover.

  He jumped up, turned around, and quickly pulled down the sleeve of his jacket to hide what I’d already seen. I couldn’t speak as I stared at his arm, knowing what was behind the material. My mouth hung open, and something I’d never experienced before filled my chest, tightened it, and beat against it all at once. Killian only stared at me with hardened eyes. His nostrils flared, his lips flat and tight.

  “Let me see.” I reached out for his arm, but he pulled it away from my grasp. “Killian…let me see. Please.” When he shook his head, I took a step forward, then another one to match his retreat. Eventually, I stopped and put my hands on my hips, offering him the sass he used to find so funny. “I won’t make fun. I promise. Can you please show it to me?”

  His chin dropped, his hair falling around his face to hide it. It was still the color of sand, but now it was longer. It reached just past his earlobes and usually curled out. I loved to watch him tuck it behind his ears. I don’t know why, but I thought it was cute. My dad said long hair was for girls—and earrings—although there was nothing girly about Killian Foster. He now completely towered over me with much broader shoulders than before. His legs were long, and even though it’d been a while since I’d seen him in shorts, I knew he had curly blond hair from his knees to his ankles, and the muscles beneath it had become defined. I was no stranger to older boys, considering I was in middle school with plenty of kids Killian’s age, but he didn’t look like any of them. If I didn’t know him, I would’ve assumed he was in high school.

  I took a step forward, careful not to scare him off. He seemed so skittish, I wasn’t sure what would make him run and what would make him stay. So I kept my hands to myself and stood directly in front of him. “Why don’t you want to show me?”

  His eyes met mine, but without his notebook and pen in his hand, he couldn’t communicate with me. No matter how many times I’d suggested we could learn sign language together, he refused. He kept saying learning it would be pointless. I never understood what he’d meant, and he never gave me an answer.

  Slowly, he pulled his sleeve back, just enough to grant me my wish. Black ink stood out on his light forearm, on the soft skin between the crook of his elbow and his wrist. It wasn’t his typical handwriting—the chicken scratch most people probably couldn’t read. It was neat and fancy, some lines thick and others thin and delicate.

  Without thinking, I reached out to trace the R with my fingertip. He shivered as soon as I touched his skin, but I refused to let that stop me. I continued to follow the lines until I finished tracing my name. When I met his gaze, I found him watching me with bated breath. His greenish-blue e
yes focused solely on me, narrowed and intense, regarding me with caution and maybe a slight hint of curiosity.

  “I–I don’t understand, Killian. Why are you ignoring me, yet you draw my name on your arm? I’ve tried to come see you. You’ve pushed me away. I don’t get it. Did I do something wrong? Did your aunt say you can’t hang out with me anymore?” Hysteria filled my voice with each scenario I threw out, worried one of them would be right.

  Killian shook his head with enough force to cause his hair to whip across his face. He reached up with both hands to tuck the wayward strands behind his ears and bit his lip. His gaze fell to the ground between us while his shoulders lifted just enough to offer me a shrug. However, a split second before I gave up hope for a response, he bent down and grabbed his notebook.

  It’s not you.

  “Then what is it?”

  He glanced all around, as if searching for something. His nervousness worried me until he put the pen to the paper again. I like you.

  I couldn’t contain my giddy laughter from erupting. It’d be a lie if I tried to say I hadn’t had some sort of crush on him since the day we met. But I was young, and our friendship wasn’t what people would consider normal. My parents still didn’t even know I knew him. Our meetings were always in private, behind their backs. And the thought of us ever being more frightened me. Because I didn’t know how to have a boyfriend, especially one nobody knew about.

  “You’ve been ignoring me because you like me?”

  Something’s happening with me and I don’t know what it is.

  “Like what?”

  His cheeks flamed and he refused to meet my eyes. But at least he didn’t stop writing. I can’t talk to Elise about it, and I don’t know who else to talk to. I’ve tried to look it up, but I don’t understand.

  “Maybe I can help. Tell me what it is.”