Not a baseball.
“Are you scared?” Farrow asks since I’m not speaking.
“No…” My pulse pounds, but not out of fear. “I just want to know what the fuck it is.” I turn off my flashlight, and I draw open the curtain. Revealing the shut blinds.
Thwack.
A hard object bangs the glass, and I hear something else from outside. Buzzing. But not like a phone vibration. More like whirling…
“Shit, this is killing me,” Farrow says, close to pained. His unsaid words: I wish I were there.
I glance back at the phone on the bed, my stomach coiling. If he were here, he’d be right next to me, and he wouldn’t stop me. We both would do exactly what I’m about to do. Only we’d do it together.
“I’m not opening the window,” I assure him. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Stay on the line with me.”
“I will.” Wind howls, and I use the blade of my knife and lift up a blind. And then I peek out. Thwack. I don’t flinch. The heavy, whirling object…
“It’s a drone,” I tell Farrow as this mechanical helicopter thing flies into the window again. Thwack. “It has a sign. It says…” In big bold letters, someone wrote on a piece of paper. “…I see you.” A chill pricks my neck.
I see you.
Farrow goes quiet.
I back away uneasily, the blind shutting. “I think there’s a camera on the drone.” It could belong to anyone, and I don’t care which human decided it’d be fun to film me in my bedroom.
It’s fucked up.
Flying drones over private property is a gray legal area, but coming onto private property to shoot footage of me is pretty much illegal.
Paparazzi always stay on the sidewalk for a reason. As long as journalists don’t use telephoto lenses to look into my bedroom and don’t harass or trespass, they can get away with a hell of a lot on public property.
“You okay?” Farrow asks.
“I’m going to check on Luna and Jane, and then I’ll call the Tri-Force to handle it.” Anything that veers into lawsuit territory, they deal with.
“Okay, but that’s not what I asked,” he says in that matter-of-fact voice. I miss the face that goes with it.
I stand in a darkened room with wailing wind, creaking wood, and a camera drone thwacking glass. And the only thing that frightens me is loneliness.
I wish you were here.
I can’t tell him that. I can’t make this harder for him than it already is. Because I know it’s already destroying him that he can’t be next to me. I’m not stabbing another blade into the wound.
Three years.
“Yeah,” I say, “I’m fine.”
“I’m going to try to come home early—”
“No,” I cut him off. “You don’t need to do that, man.” I toss my flashlight on the mattress and pick up the phone.
The line deadens for the longest second. “Can you spend the night in Jane’s room?”
If it gives him peace of mind while he’s at work, then my answer is a no-brainer. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“I’m being paged…I have to go,” he rushes.
“See you—” I cut myself off before I say soon. I’m not sure when his shift will end.
“I love you, wolf scout.” It’s the last thing he says. Five longing words that ache greater than silence.
23
MAXIMOFF HALE
Charlie is the only one who agrees with my new plan.
That should be a red flag.
Jane and Farrow have excised themselves from the situation “on principle” while the cousin I’ve been feuding with for years has joined my party of one.
I’m heading into the ER. It looks busy. Won’t be able to text. I’ll call when I can, but I’m going to remind you for the sixteenth time: it’s a bad idea. – Farrow
I reply: Got it.
We can talk about your unreasonable stubbornness later tonight. – Farrow
We don’t see eye to eye on this issue, and it’s not the first time. It won’t be the last. But it does twist me up knowing the two people who should be in my corner have left it. My fingers hover over my cell, trying to think of something to say.
I land on this: OK. Love u. I text back.
Love you, too. – Farrow
Soon after that text, another pops up.
Still a bad idea, wolf scout. – Farrow
It reminds me of his feelings about my sling. I took it off permanently one week earlier than all the doctors advised. Bad idea, wolf scout. We kind of had a fight about it.
A short fight, but Farrow shook his head at me and said, “Give me a second.” He went into the bathroom, and I could tell he was upset. My stomach felt like it dropped out of my body, and I didn’t know how to course correct.
I wanted him on my side, but I also recognized that we’re two different people. And we won’t always agree. As he came out, he checked my shoulder, and the quiet tension strung between us just grew and grew and grew.
And he said, “I wish I’d been here.”
“You wouldn’t have stopped me.”
Farrow looked at me, his eyes reddened. “That’s not why…” That’s not why he wanted to be with me. He just wanted to be with me. And I heard his voice in my head: it’s as simple as that.
Pushing out that raw memory, I take a shallow breath and lean against my parent’s mailbox. Wind whistles inside the gated neighborhood, but the air is a little too hot for early June.
Last night, Farrow was working at the hospital, so I joined in on a movie night with my family. Instead of going home to an empty bed, I ended up crashing in my old room. It was supposed to be my second chance to talk to Xander.
The do-over.
He finished his LARPing costume. A fantasy elf-inspired look: a fur-lined hood, long trousers, a distressed red tunic, leather armguards, makeshift bow and a leather quiver for his arrows. He dressed up, and even let me take some pictures like a mini photo-shoot. Just thinking about that night, my eyes sting.
Because he was happy.
And I didn’t say what I needed to.
I couldn’t do it.
Maybe that makes me a coward, but I’m protecting the good days he has. It’s all I can think about. I just want to ensure that he’s okay, and I feel like if I say something, I’m pushing him in the “not okay” territory.
Farrow is right about one thing. I can’t do nothing.
Which brings me to my new plan. A different plan. I don’t know if it’s better, but it’s something.
In the distance, I spot Charlie ambling down the street, crutches underneath his armpits. He makes slow work of it, so I kick off from the mailbox and meet up with him.
“I thought you were going to take the golf cart,” I say while I pull my Ray Bans to the top of my head, and he stops walking, out of breath.
“I was.” He squints from the sun. “Until I learned Tom and Eliot took the golf cart on a joyride and crashed it into Aunt Daisy’s porch.” I knew that happened, but I thought the golf cart wasn’t too fucked-up to drive.
I nod a couple times. “I heard about that.”
He cringes. “Of course you did.”
I try to s
tay calm. “Please don’t make this hard today. I’m already tense. You have no idea what it’s like going against Farrow and Jane’s advice.”
Charlie stares at me blankly. “Not Farrow, but Jane, yes. My sister has offered plenty of bad advice that I’ve ignored.”
I glare. “Alright, let’s start over.” Otherwise, I’m going to throw a fist, and just the thought of hitting my cousin is making me sick to my stomach. “Which house is Easton’s?”
“According to my brother, the stucco mansion two streets over.” Charlie rotates and hobbles forward using his crutches.
Keeping pace with him, it’s slow, but I don’t run and leave him behind. Even if I’d like nothing more than to rip this off like a Band-Aid. In my head, confronting Easton Mulligan is the second-best solution to the problem. He’s the neighborhood kid asking my brother for pills, and once he stops, this will all be over.
It’ll be good for Easton who shouldn’t be taking other people’s meds and for Xander who needs them. On top of that, Xander won’t have some asshole teenager coming around who he feels the need to impress.
Only problem is that Charlie’s entire right leg is wrapped up in a cast, and despite being out of a sling, my right arm looks weak and lifeless. I can’t lift or stretch that well.
I tell my twenty-year-old cousin, “We don’t look threatening.”
He stares straight ahead as we pass the Cobalt Estate. “We don’t need to threaten him.”
I stop abruptly on the pavement. “That was the fucking plan, Charlie.”
He faces me. “That was your plan—”
“This is about my brother,” I snap. My fingertips squeeze onto control of this situation because I need it. And want it. Giving Charlie the reins wasn’t on my to-do list for the day. He’s here as backup. Support. I’m taking lead.
My brother is in trouble. It’s all I think. My brother is in trouble. And I have to help him, and Charlie is unpredictable. As much as I love my cousin—and I know you may think I hate him, but I love him too damn much—I can’t see where his head is most of the time, and I have no goddamn idea what he’ll do in charge. I’m not playing a chess game. I’m dealing with people.