“Wolf - ” Burn starts.
“She’s probably reported everything to him,” I interrupt him. “Your drugs and hacking included, Fitz.”
“You’re being awfully cold about this!” Fitz sniffs and glares at me. “I thought you like her!”
I ignore the burning in my stomach. “Liked. Past tense.”
“That simple, huh?” Burn asks.
“She betrayed us,” I snarl at him.
“And I’m just as pissed about it as you are,” Burn agrees. “But maybe she had her reasons.”
“What reasons? There’s no reason good enough to fake being our friend, to fake being nice to us, to fake smile and fake laugh and –”
All I can think about is the feeling of her stroking my hair, and I hate it. I recoil at it, at the fact it wasn’t real affection. It wasn’t real warmth, and I was an idiot for thinking it was. Fitz explodes suddenly.
“You were the one who threatened to take her scholarship in the first place, Wolf!”
“So you’re blaming me? Me, instead of the person who really deserves it?”
“You did try to take her scholarship,” Burn says. “You know how much it means to her.”
“Yeah,” Fitz interjects. “That was her ticket to NYU. And you tried to screw it!”
“She didn’t deserve to be here,” I snap. “She didn’t deserve to be here, working her ass off for someone else’s mental health! What about her own? What about her own goals and dreams? She wanted to write, you know. Her essay said she wanted to be a writer, to go to school for writing, but she gave it all up for her Dad. What kind of life is that? I wasn’t going to stand around and let her do that to herself!”
“So you threatened to take it all away,” Burn muttered. “And Dad offered it all back, in exchange for spying on us.”
“I’d take it,” Fitz says immediately, wiping his eyes. “If I was her…I’d take that deal, too.”
“So that’s it? All of a sudden I’m the bad guy?”
“You forced her into a corner, Wolf,” Burn says.
“What about you two? You told me she’d been running with you every morning. You think she did that because she likes it? She did it because Dad told her to.”
Burn’s silent, eyes narrow. I point at Fitz.
“You think she was actually failing her History class? You think she actually needed you to tutor her?”
“We had fun,” Fitz defends sullenly.
“Yeah, because she planned it that way,” I insist. “Everything down to the last laugh was planned by her, to get on your good side. Our good side. Every secret we told her went straight to Dad. Everything we did with her went straight to Dad.”
They’re silent. The car ride feels so long and torturous, like I’m sitting in an iron maiden with the lid closed instead of a car. When we’re finally home, Fitz and I retreat to our rooms. And like always, Burn puts his shoes on so he can go for a run, somewhere far away from us; somewhere he doesn’t have to deal with our emotions.
“Seriously?” I snap. “You’re seriously going to go for a run right now?”
“What else is there to do?” Burn mutters, tying his laces.
“We need you here,” I say. “We need to talk about this.”
“Talking won’t fix what’s been done.”
“Well it sure as hell would make us feel better!”
“Us? Or just you?”
Burn jerks his head to Fitz’s door, which is, for once, closed, all the lights off. Usually there’s the pale blue glow of at least one computer shining from beneath the door. He’s hiding. He always hides – in drugs, in girls – to stay away from confronting reality.
Burn takes my silence as an opportunity to leave, and I watch him go with disgust; disgust at him, disgust at Fitz. At Beatrix.
At myself.
I retreat to my room and pull the essay out. I reach for the lighter I keep in my drawer and hold the fire to the well-worn paper, the wrinkles I made and the finger imprints on the sheets eaten alive by the flames. Her words are consumed, once and for all, and I watch the ashes fall into the trash can one by one.
I was a moron.
I was a moron for ever believing someone like me could be loved.
****
BEATRIX
This is where I am now, pen-and-paper.
You’re caught up. That’s all the story I have, leading up to this night. An hour ago, I came home. Mom was, of course, gone, and Dad stared into the distance as he watched TV. I was numb, too, so I sat and watched a good hour of it with him, letting the bright, blaring commercials wash my mind free, for a moment. I’d never be free of what I’d done. But the yogurt ads and car ads let you pretend for a little while.
“Dad?”
“Hrm?” He grunted.
“Are you and Mom getting divorced?”
He went still for a moment, then let out a weary exhale. “I can’t lie to you, Bee. I don’t know what’s going to happen between your mother and I. It’s hard to think about.”
“Yeah.”
We watched another few mindless episodes of some sitcom. The guy lamented about how marriage was a ‘ball and chain’, and I inwardly flinched the whole way through.
“I finished my writing,” Dad said suddenly.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty good.”
“That’s great.”
More silence.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Dad asked. I thought about it, staring long and hard at the scan lines in the corner of the old screen.
“A hug.”
Dad laughed. It was faint, and so tired, but it was nice hearing his voice happy.
“I think I can manage that.”
I leaned into him and he wrapped his arms around my sides, and we stayed like that, unmoving, unspeaking. We were both too exhausted to question the other about what happened tonight. I’m sure when Mom comes home – if she ever comes home – she’ll confront me about taking the car and sneaking out. But that’s wasn’t what was happening right then. Right then, I was hugging dad. If I closed my eyes I could imagine I was young again, small, like six or seven, before he got too sick. Before Lakecrest. Before the Blackthorns. Before all of it.
“Do you remember the old playground?” Dad asked. “The one I took you to when you were young?”
“The one on the bluff? Yeah,” I nodded. “I liked that place.”