MISSED CALL: DAD CELL
MISSED CALL: HOME
MISSED CALL: DAD CELL
MISSED CALL: DAD CELL
It went on like that, until the very bottom of the screen. Back to back calls, just a few minutes apart.
“Let me guess: your boyfriend wants to know where you were last night?”
Riley’s head snapped up. “JD! What are you doing here? Did you come back?”
He yawned and Riley noticed his rumpled hair, last night’s clothes wrinkled.
“You stayed here last night too?”
“What did you think? That I was going to dump you here and then just leave you?”
Riley’s surprise obviously amused JD, because a bright smile cracked across his face.
“I don’t know—I guess.”
JD just shook his head, his tone softening. “So how is she? Any change?”
Riley swallowed and saw Shelby’s broken body in her mind’s eye. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get that image out of her head. “Bad. No change.”
“Do you want to stay here? I could go by your house and pick up some clothes for you or something.”
Riley thought of JD driving up to her house, her parents, Gail, Hempstead, and whatever SWAT team he had hired pulling out their guns and throwing JD to the ground. “No, no, you’d better not.”
She pulled her phone from her pocket and wiggled it, showing off the screen full of missed calls and messages. “I think I need to get home.”
“I’m going to get a drink of water. Call and let them know we’re on our way.”
JD disappeared down the hall and Riley stared at her phone. She had never been frightened to call her parents ever before, but suddenly, she was paralyzed—and angry. If she went home, she’d be boxed up, stamped with a new name, and sent to God-knows-where. She’d never know when—or if—Shelby woke up.
“So, they call out the National Guard?”
Riley’s stomach dropped. “What?”
JD strolled up behind her and glanced down at her phone. “Your parents.”
“Of course they didn’t call out the National Guard. They wouldn’t do that. They’re just regular. We’re just regular people. Why”—Riley worried her bottom lip and dropped her voice to a low whisper—“why would you say that?”
JD looked around suspiciously then lowered his voice too. “Because I thought it’d be funny. Note to self: National Guard joke? Epic fail.”
Relief—cold and sticky—crashed over Riley, and her heart started to thump at a normal pace again. “Right.” She forced a laugh that was both too long and too loud. “Right. National Guard. That was funny.”
JD’s smile was quizzical. “OK…so, home?”
“Uh, no, actually.” Riley held up her phone again as though it were definitive proof. “I called my parents. They’re fine, you know, because I checked in. They just want me to help Shelby out.”
JD shifted his weight. “OK, so are you going to stay here?”
Mrs. Webber poked her head around the corner. “Riley, why don’t you and JD go out for a little bit? Maybe grab some sandwiches?”
Riley’s stomach rumbled. She realized that since the few bites of half-solid spaghetti she had the previous night, she hadn’t eaten. “Are you sure? We could just grab something at the cafeteria.”
“I’m sure. It’s not healthy to stay cooped up in here.” She looked over her shoulder, her eyes traveling toward Shelby’s room.
“Sure, Mrs. Webber.”
FOURTEEN
JD leaned against the far wall in the elevator as they coasted downward. He looked Riley up and down. Her cheeks burned. “What?”
He shrugged. “I’m just surprised you don’t have a problem with elevators.”
Riley tried to look nonchalant. It wasn’t that she didn’t have a problem with elevators—it was that she had learned to control it. She remembered her mother’s hand closing over hers.
“Come on, Riley. You and me, together.”
Riley stared down at the threshold where the industrial gray carpet met the silver thread of the elevator doors’ track. Her mother gave her arm a little tug and looked down at Riley—four or five years old then—her eyes soft and encouraging. Riley sucked in a deep breath and willed her right foot forward. She stared down at her glossy Mary Jane shoe on the floor of the elevator. And then the doors started to close. Panic rose and exploded across her chest, each finger of fear reaching out to pinch the air in her lungs. Her head throbbed and her eyes watered and her mother seemed so, so far away. Riley’s hand was still in hers but the door was cutting through them, shoving Riley into a square metal coffin, tearing her mother away from her. Locking her away. She could feel the walls coming closer, could feel the cool metal brushing against her shoulders.
“No!”