She never thought he did.
If school ever starts up again, he’ll probably tell everyone that he did have it but got the vaccine. Everyone at school hates him now, or at least the good people do, and the bad people had to shut up or get shunned along with him. The video has gone viral, which means people all around the world hate him, too. And since videos of actual people with the Violence are all over YouTube, anyone with eyes can see that he’s just straight up being an asshole, not actually storming. She wants to block him, but at the same time…as much as she hates these emails, she likes knowing where he is. What he’s thinking. It’s like checking the social media feed of someone you hate, rage-scrolling secretly late at night so you always know what your enemy is up to.
The moment he hit her, Hayden became her enemy.
And she will spend the rest of her life not letting him get anywhere near her.
Her mouth goes dry as she realizes that this must be how her mom feels about her dad. Like there’s an enemy out there, and you want to be far away from them while knowing exactly where they are, tied to them, tethered by fear and this odd new awareness. With her dad, he’s just always been there, this dark presence that she’s learned to work around. But with Hayden, she doesn’t have those schedules and rituals, doesn’t know the right words. She has no idea what he’ll do when he gets out of quarantine.
“What’s wrong?”
She looks up from her phone, and Brookie is staring at her, worried.
“Nothing, bud.”
“You look like you’re going to cry.”
Does she?
She does. Is. Shit.
Ella scrubs at her eyes. “Allergies, I guess. I didn’t bring my Flonase.”
Brooklyn wrinkles her nose. “Is that the icky flower spray?”
“Yep.”
“I’d rather be sick.”
But Ella knows that as time goes on, she’s going to get stuffy and puffy and get a headache without her meds, so she needs to go through her stuff and find that bottle. It was on the list, so Mom must’ve brought it.
“Stay here and don’t move, okay?”
Brooklyn’s eyes don’t leave the screen. “Okay.”
Ella goes back inside and tiptoes down the hall and up the soft white carpet on the stairs. Nana’s house demands silence, especially when Grandpa Randall is around. She heads to the guest room where she and Brooklyn will sleep on matching twin beds, noting that she’ll have to quietly scoot Brookie’s bed against the wall or she’ll fall out. Her allergy spray is in her old duffel bag with her other bathroom things, and she immediately feels better as the scent of ancient flowers shoots up her nose.
As she’s heading back out, she hears rustling and cursing coming from down the hall. The deep carpet muffles her bare feet as she sneaks down to see what could possibly make Nana sound that…not Nana-ish.
“Stupid goddamn asshole!” Nana murmurs. Ella peeks in the room—this door is usually shut and off limits—and sees Nana spinning the wheel of a wall safe, the dreamy landscape painting that usually covers it swung open like a door.
She knew Grandpa Randall and Nana were loaded, but a wall safe? That’s next level.
She can’t stop herself from watching. She wants to see what someone like Nana, who always has the latest iPhone in rose gold and is strung with real diamonds, needs to keep in a heavy-duty safe.
After a few minutes of fumbling and cussing with a scratchy southern accent Ella has never heard before, Nana gets the safe open. She pulls boxes out, some velvet, some leather, some bright teal blue, opening each one, muttering about it, closing it, and placing it on the low dresser under the safe. Ella sees rings, earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, all glittering and real. Nana seems relieved to find them, which is pretty weird. They’re her things in her safe, so why would she care?
“There you are,” she says to a ring with a red stone the size of a grape, sliding it briefly onto her finger and holding it up to the light. “You goddamn beauty.”
When all the boxes are out, she slides a heavy bag with a zipper out of the safe, unzips it, and pulls out a stack of bills. Ella can’t see what they are from where she’s hiding, but they are definitely not ones or fives.
“Excellent,” Nana murmurs.
Lastly, she pulls out a gun, small and elegant and a pretty bluish silver. She holds it between two fingers like it’s a roach carcass she found in her shower. “You never know,” she says to herself, and Ella almost makes the mistake of laughing because Nana sounds like some dame from an old gangster movie.
Nana reaches into the safe again, feeling around, and then huffs that very specific sigh she uses for when something has disappointed her. There’s a big weekender bag open on the bed—not one of her Birkins or even a Coach, but something older and beat-up. Nana puts the bag of money on the bottom, then layers all the boxes on top of it with a sort of reverence. The gun goes on top of it all before she closes the safe, spins the dial, and closes the painting so the room goes back to looking like a perfectly normal guest bedroom that no one ever sleeps in because Nana hates guests.
Before Nana turns around, Ella darts down the hall, light on her feet, to hide in her room. She kneels by the garbage bags, heart thundering in her ears, hoping Nana didn’t hear her. The last thing she needs right now is a lecture on being nosy or walking like an elephant or pretty much anything that Nana thinks Ella needs to know about her own flaws.
But Nana is walking with the same softness, the same care. She quietly shuts the door and tiptoes down the hall barefoot.
“That you, Patricia?” Grandpa Randall calls from his study, that sacred, manly, forbidden room with wood walls and bookshelves and a desk the size of a dead rhinoceros.
Nana tosses her bag into Ella’s room, swinging it around the corner toward where Ella hides behind the garbage bags. Nana must not’ve looked in here first, because she’s not the sort of person to toss her things like that.
“Yes, Randall?” Nana calls using her regular voice again, cold and formal.
A creak and groan suggest Grandpa Randall has stood up from his fancy office chair, and Ella can hear his footsteps as he walks into the hall. He moves like he’s never had to be quiet, like he’s never been forced to hide or scamper or run.
“You didn’t leave those fool granddaughters of yours in the pool unsupervised, did you? I can’t tell you how many lawsuits I’ve seen about drowned children.”
Ella can imagine Nana rolling her eyes. “Of course not. They’re drying off on the patio before I let them back inside.”
As if they’re dogs.
Ella looks down. There’s a wet spot where her jean shorts are settled on the white carpet.
Oops.
“I’ll be taking my essentials tonight, and I’ll send Diane around soon to collect most of my things. Don’t let those children into my study.”
“Of course not, Randall.”