“I’m not going to force it out of you. It will happen when you’re ready. Hell, I spent years keeping my secret just as fiercely as you’re keeping yours. So I get it.” She got up and patted my shoulder.
“Things have a way of working themselves out, whether you make the effort or not.” With that she shut the door quietly and left me alone again.
Chapter 22
“You look like shit,” Hannah said when I showed up to Pam’s class on Wednesday. Renee had insisted that I take off Tuesday as well, but I thought it was so she could keep an eye on me.
I sure as hell wasn’t suicidal, but that didn’t seem to matter, no matter how many times I told her. My razor and all the knives in the kitchen and even the aspirin vanished mysteriously, and I suspected her and at least one other member of the house, but I pretended not to notice.
I’d emailed Brett that I couldn’t come for my first day of work because I was sick, and Hannah helped me out by laying it on thick with him as well, so he just said he’d see me next Tuesday.
“Thanks. You’re the first person who’s told me that.”
She pulled a Ziploc bag out of her backpack and held it out to me. “I figured all that candy shouldn’t go to waste.”
“No, thanks,” I said, swallowing a roll of nausea. Candy had never made me sick before, and it was a damn shame, but I couldn’t look at that bag without thinking about Dusty. He had ruined my enjoyment of candy. Honestly, that kind of pissed me off, which made me grab the bag from her and shove a handful into my mouth. No one, not even Dusty, was going to take that away from me.
“That’s my girl,” she said, giving me a huge smile. “And you don’t look that bad.”
“I appreciate that.”
Wednesday was hard to get through. Mostly because I was so distracted with thinking about the past and Dusty and things I’d struggled for so long to repress and put away. People had to repeat themselves and I was totally off in Pam’s class and the look that she gave me wasn’t pretty. It was worse on Thursday and by lunch on Friday I was so ready for the weekend so I could just hole up in my room and not have to fake it anymore.
“Dude, if you want to come over, my roommate is gone for the weekend.” Hannah had been the missing half of my brain, which was exactly what I needed. “We could do a Buffy marathon and just camp out in my room and order food whenever we needed it. Or we could just live on that bucket of candy. I mean, we are college students. It’s kind of expected.”
“That sounds awesome, but I don’t think Renee is letting me out of her sight. But you could bring all of those things to Yellowfield, and we could camp out in the man cave. I’m sure we can rope some of the girls into keeping the guys away. Actually, the guys have been kind of avoiding me, now that I think of it.” Maybe they thought that I hated all men now, and them by association.
“Good. Then we can do just girl time. Who needs ’em?”
“You’re preaching to the choir.” Not that I’d ever been really boy crazy, but I definitely could do without seeing one of them for the foreseeable future.
My birthday was also fast approaching. I hadn’t forgotten about it, really, but it wasn’t at the top of my priority list. Besides, nineteen wasn’t that great of an age anyway. Not like eighteen or twenty-one. No one had mentioned it much at the house, either, apart from that one time when the girls went out shopping. I still hadn’t found where they’d stashed the results of that trip. Probably in the attic, which I wouldn’t go near if someone paid me. I’d found a mutant spider the size of my hand once when I was a kid and had been hiding in one, and as a consequence I avoided them.
Still no word from Dusty. I hadn’t seen him on campus, either, even though I’d had several close calls where I thought I saw him and had to duck behind a bush, but it never turned out to be him anyway.
Hannah and I spent most of the weekend holed up in the man cave watching endless episodes of Buffy and ignoring the calorie count for everything we ate. I’d gone nearly ten minutes without thinking about Dusty when Hannah brought him up.
“I know I’m supposed to be all friend-y and not ask you about what went on with you and Dusty, but it’s been killing me for days. Will you tell me what happened?”
“You’re one to talk about sharing secrets, Hannah,” I said, shoving another handful of salt-and-vinegar chips into my mouth. I really needed to shower, and I’d been wearing the same sweats since Friday night.
“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Did you—” I said, moving away from her on the couch.
“No, I did not mean to make it sound like that. Despite the fact that I haven’t gotten any action in I-don’t-care-to-remember how long, I don’t swing that way. Do you want to hear this or not?”
“You’d be willing to do that?”
“Sure, it’ll bond us for life or some such shit like that. I’ll go first, if you want.”
Was I ready for this? I hadn’t told a single person.
“Sure.”
She sat up and turned the television volume down.
“So you know I’ve got these awesome burns? Well, the truth is that my brother tried to set me on fire when we were kids. I was four at the time and he was eight, and we were out in the backyard. He’d always had a thing for fire, and had nearly burned the house down several times, but no matter how many times Mom hid the matches, he always seemed to find them. Aaron is smart. Like, really smart. Like, hack-into-a-government-database-with-one-hand-tied-behind-his-back smart. Anyway, so he told me to stand real still. I had no idea what the hell was going on, except he told me that he was going to give me candy if I stood real still. I just remember the snap as he struck the match on the box and the look on his face as he threw it at me.”
I couldn’t even breathe.
“From there things get a little fuzzy, but I think I somehow remembered something from one of those kids’ specials about stopping, dropping and rolling, so that’s what I did, and it saved my life. My mom ran out when she heard me screaming and stopped Aaron from completely lighting me up. A trip and a long stay in the hospital and tons of skin grafts and surgeries later and here I am.” She gave me a smile, but it was dark. Haunted.
My mouth was so dry I had to take a drink of water before I could say anything.