“Huh?” My voice is thick with emotion. Just talking about this is surfacing unwanted memories that are supposed to be forgotten.
“Just barely, you said, ‘from what I can remember.’” She shifts in her seat, leaning back. “Can you not remember your old home?”
Seeing no other way out of this than to lie to her—which I won’t do—I nod. “Some of my memories are foggy.”
“Does Mrs. Gregory know about this?”
“Vaguely. I think social services and the therapist I’ve been going to told her some details.” I clench my fists as my chest starts to constrict.
Links of metal wrapped around my wrist and brain.
Driving me insane.
Begging me to cave.
They whispered they knew the truth.
Marked it forever on my flesh.
Told me to give in.
To surrender.
But I couldn’t.
I blink from my thoughts and massage my wrists.
“Maybe I could help you find them,” she says, thrumming her fingers on top of the desk.
“Who?”
“Your brother and sister.”
“And how would we do that”—my fingers curl around the armrest, desperate to hold onto something, because I feel like I’m about to have a panic attack—“when Mrs. Gregory couldn’t even find them?”
She slants forward, crossing her arms on top of the desk. “There’s a little thing called the internet, Ayden. We could do some research on our own.”
“You would help me do that?”
“I would help you do anything.”
Even though the concept doesn’t feel possible, I believe her. “Where would we start?”
Her eyes elevate to the ceiling as she contemplates. “You know their last names, right?”
I nod. “My brother’s name is Felix, and my sister’s name is Sadie. Our last names used to be Stephorson, but I’m not sure now if theirs still is, since mine’s changed.”
“Okay, we can start there. And it’d probably help if they had something distinct about them.”
My fingers travel to the homemade tattoo on my side, put there without my permission. “They have the same tattoo as me.”
Her lips part, but no words come out. I’ve shocked Lyric beyond words, which doesn’t seem natural.
“We didn’t choose to get them,” I mumble, completely clueless why I’m telling her this. “They were put on us, from what I can remember.”
She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, as if she’s trying to physically restrain herself from asking.
“What happened to you?” she finally asks.
I grind my teeth so forcefully it actually hurts my jaw. “When I was younger, we were taken by these … people who had these really strange beliefs. They put the tattoos on us.” My voice quivers almost as intensely as my heart as I speak of the day my mother betrayed her three children. It’s the same day that my memories start to break apart into charred fragments that barely make sense.
Lyric swallows hard. “Ayden … I …”
“Can we please talk about something else now?” I plead in desperation, barely able to breathe. “Please. Something happy.” I need my happy Lyric back. Need my happiness before I fall back into the darkness that I carried around for two years after that day.
Silence stretches between us before Lyric says, “Did you hear about Maggie?”
I exhale, my muscles loosening. “No, but I’m guessing she’s dating someone new now.”
She smiles as she rests back in the chair, making the shift of attitude so breezy. “How’d you guess?”
I give a half shrug. “Because she dates someone new every day.”
Lyric giggles, but her laughter silences as she opens the desk drawer. She squints at something inside it, and a pucker forms at her brow. “What on earth?” She pulls out a bottle of scotch along with a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray. “Dude, I know my parents drink”—she shows me the pack of cigarettes—“but I never knew they smoked.”
“I’m not surprised. I’ve smelled it on your dad before.” I stretch my legs out and slant my head back at the ceiling decorated with hundreds of guitar picks. “It must have been so cool growing up here,” I remark as I spin the chair around, imagining what it was like living here. Probably pretty great since she’s so damn happy all the time.
“Yeah, I guess it was pretty fucking awesome.” Lyric unexpectedly starts hacking.
My gaze darts to her. I have to bite my lip to restrain my laughter. “Did you just take a drink of that?”
She wipes her lips, shuddering as she stares at the bottle of scotch in her hand. “Yeah, so what?”
“Have you ever drank before?”
“No.” She twists the cap back on. “Have you?”
I shrug. “A couple of times.” That’s all I say, not wanting to relive the things I’ve done when I was losing it, like fighting, drinking, and stealing stuff. “You shouldn’t start with scotch. That’s strong shit right there.”
She meticulously eyes me over. “You want a taste?” She extends her arm across the desk, with her fingers enclosed around the bottle.
Even though I probably shouldn’t, I snatch the bottle from her and swallow a gulp or two as Lyric watches me with inquisitiveness. When I remove the mouth of the bottle from my lips, she grins.
“You didn’t even gag.” She grabs a cigarette, along with a lighter that’s inserted into the pack.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. He’ll be able to smell it.”
“I’m just curious.” She relines back in the chair and pops the end of a cigarette into her mouth.
“Well, you shouldn’t be. That stuff is bad for you.”
“I’m not curious about smoking,” she says, cupping her hand around her face as she flicks the lighter and tries to light the end, “but about you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can never figure stuff out about you.”
“Like what? If I know how to light a lighter?”
She shakes her head, still struggling to light the cigarette. “No. Like what you like to do. If you really are a bad boy at heart. If you’ve ever smoked before.”
I elevate my brows at her. “That’s what you want to know about me? Out of all things?” After the conversation we just had?
Giving up on the lighter, she rises from the chair and ambles around the desk toward me with the cigarette still resting between her lips. “Well, I have this theory that this good, obedient guy I know isn’t the guy who pulled up in that sedan a month ago.” She leans over me and taps the hollow of my neck. “I mean, the collar’s gone. You took it off at day three, and I could never figure out why—why it was so easy for you to give up your Goth side.” She slides her hand to my ear and traces her finger across the lobe, moving her body close enough that I get a straight view down the front of her shirt. I try not to look, but my eyes stray more than a few times, my heart rate quickening. “And the gauges, too. All you have now are these tiny scars.” Her hands travel down my arms, causing goose bumps to sprout across my skin as her fingers come to a rest on the tops of my hands. I start to panic, thinking she’s going to ask me about the scars there; instead, she grazes the pad of her thumb over my fingernail. “I really do kind of miss the black nail polish.”