Her hand shakes. She sends a tiny spray of spaghetti sauce over her already stained shirt. “I know how much I can take.”
I laugh humorlessly. “Oh yeah, you know your limits, huh? You don’t even know what time it is. So pardon me if I don’t buy it.”
For a long moment she’s silent, staring at the fork with its few sad strands of spaghetti. Then, finally, she gets it into her mouth and chews. She washes it down with a swallow of hot black coffee.
“Okay,” she says, finally, her voice very small.
“Okay what?” I brace myself against the island counter.
“Okay, I’ll . . . I’ll find a meeting. I’ll stop. I’ll do better.” She puts the fork down with a clatter and rubs her face with both hands. “I’m sorry, Elyse. I really am.”
I bite my lip. We’ve had the same argument before. She always makes the same promises, and I buy it almost every time. I want to believe things can change. I want to believe, so badly.
I pull the plate of pasta back toward me and take a bite. The canned sauce is bland, but it’s better than nothing.
“I’ll call in sick tonight,” I say. “Help you get showered, make sure your dinner stays down. And then tomorrow, we’ll find you a meeting. Okay?”
She looks up at me, her eyes red and watery. For a moment I think about walking around the island to hug her, but I decide not to.
“I swear,” she says again, picking up the coffee mug and cradling it in both hands. “I swear, Elyse, this time I’m going to get clean.”
I know I can’t believe her. I’ve heard the same thing so many times now.
But it’s hard not to hope, when I want to so badly.
FIFTEEN
Gabe
Tuesday afternoon I walk slowly along a residential street, stepping cautiously behind parked cars and doing my best to look as nonchalant as possible.
Six or seven blocks ahead of me Catherine is making her way home from school, her head down, a dark coil of hair down her back.
I haven’t heard from her since last night at the restaurant. I’ve been texting her all day. Sorry if I got you in trouble last night. Your dad’s not mad at you, is he? He looks intense. But no response. I couldn’t find her at lunch, either. I wasn’t even certain she was at school today.
So when I saw her hurry past the window of Ruby’s Donuts, where I was brooding over a jelly-filled after school, I slid off the stool and went out to follow.
The neighborhood is old, the light dappling through big shade trees. I stop abruptly when she pauses and tilts her face up toward the sun. For just a few moments I see her in profile. She encircles her hair with one hand and pulls it back. I haven’t seen her so exposed before. From here I can see the delicate line of her throat, the wide and thoughtful curve of her lips. Then she lets go and vanishes behind that long, dark curtain again.
I feel kind of creepy as I trail after her. After all—according to Sekrit, she’s gotten my messages. If she wants to talk to me, she will. But I have to know she’s okay. And . . . maybe more than that, I want to know where she lives. I want to know what she does when I’m not around. I want to know her stories, her secrets.
She stops at a shabby yellow cottage. It’s the smallest house on the block, with a ramshackle wooden porch and oak roots pushing up through the asphalt walkway. A mailbox at the curb reads Barstow. At the door she pulls out a set of keys and starts to open the door.
I don’t know why she looks around. I don’t make a sound—I’m careful to hold back. But some impulse keeps her on the doorstep as she glances up.
The keys fall out of her hand when she sees me. She gasps, fumbles at them, her whole body going taut as a violin string. Her eyes dart wildly up and down the street.
I give a weak wave as she takes a step toward me.
“What are you doing here?” she hisses.
“I’m . . .”
She doesn’t let me finish. “You have to go. If he sees you . . .”
“Who, your dad?” I ask.
She walks quickly up to me, pushing at my shoulder. “Gabe, please. I can’t talk to you here. If he comes home I’ll be in big trouble.”
My blood pounds in my ear. I’ve made a mistake in coming here. I’ve made things worse for her. But still, I fight the urge to touch her. I want to pull her into my arms and make sure she’s intact. “I’m sorry. I wanted . . . I wanted to see if you were okay.”
She closes her eyes for a moment.
Then she opens them again. “Meet me at Pease Park in thirty minutes,” she whispers. “Near the bridge.”
Then she turns and runs into the house, slamming the door behind her.
* * *
? ? ?
The park is quiet. I sit on a picnic table in a clearing, my feet on the bench, leaning on my knees. I can hear the muffled sounds of traffic in the distance, but closer in it’s just birdsong and breeze.
I force myself not to jump up and go to her when she finally appears.
She glances nervously around, rubbing her shoulders even though it’s a warm day. She sits down next to me, so close our legs touch.
For a few minutes neither of us says anything. I lean back against my hands and look up at the clouds.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” she finally says.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” She sighs. She twists a lock of hair between two fingers. “I didn’t mean to ghost on you. I just . . . I freaked out, and I didn’t know what to say.”
“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have followed you. But I had to see you,” I say.
She picks at a hole in her jeans.
“Why was your dad so pissed, anyway?” I ask. “I mean, that wasn’t my imagination, right? He was definitely not happy.”
“No, he wasn’t.” Her hands fall still in her lap, as if they’ve suddenly gotten self-conscious. “I’m not really supposed to talk to boys, is the thing.”
“What, are you supposed to avoid one half of the population?” I frown. “That’s nuts.”
She gives a hollow laugh. “I’m lucky. He wanted to homeschool me. When we moved here I begged to go to public school. He finally gave in, but it was on a bunch of conditions. No dating, no flirting, no extracurriculars. I have a six P.M. curfew.”
“Six?” I spit. “I mean, what if you want to . . .”
“Want to what?” She looks up at me. “I can’t go out, Gabe. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I . . . I really like you. But this isn’t going to work.”
The words jerk me back and forth. I soar for a moment before the crash. I like you . . . but. “What’re you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t get to be a normal girl, okay? If I were . . .” She blushes, looks down. “You deserve to be with someone fun and easygoing and . . . and normal. Someone who can actually talk to you in public. But that’s not me. My life is . . . complicated.”
“I don’t care,” I say immediately. “I don’t mind complicated.”
“You don’t understand. If we got caught . . .”
“We’ll be careful,” I insist. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Catherine.”
Her eyes fill with tears. She brushes them away with the back of her hand. “That’s sweet. But there’s nothing you can do. He’ll move us again—I know he will. I told you we came here from California, but the truth is, we lived three other places before that. Every time I get attached to something, or someone—every time I might be just an iota out of his control—he finds some excuse to yank me out of school and hit the road again.” She looks up at me, a few teardrops clinging in her lashes. “If he finds out I like you, he’ll take you away from me, too.”
“He won’t find out,” I say urgently, knowing even as I say it that I can’t promise that.
“And Sasha . . .”
“I told you, Sasha and I are through,” I say quickly.
Her forehead crinkles, and I have to fight not to reach a fingertip up, to smooth the worry away. “Are you sure about that?”