“Why are you staring at me like that, Victoria?”
I closed my mouth. The sound of my own saliva crackled in my ears. “You … looked different. For a second.” I realized my pulse was still jackhammering the inside of my wrist. I rubbed my neck, trying to shake away the sense of fear that’d overtaken me. Like I’d just escaped a moment that had been teetering on the edge of something very, very dangerous. “How do you feel?” I asked, then cleared my throat. And for some reason the clearest image in my mind at that moment was a faceless missing boy.
“I feel better.”
Almost immediately, the pools of blood began to disperse underneath his skin, and the yellow faded out of the whites of his eyes. The more normal he looked, the more normal I felt. I wanted to laugh at myself for being so uptight. I couldn’t quite laugh, though. Not when the hairs on my arms still stood on end.
“Really? Because that looked like it hurt,” I said with an out-of-place, breathless chuckle that sounded forced even to me. “I don’t want to get too graphic, but I thought you were in choking-on-your-own-vomit territory. Not usually a good sign.”
He cracked his neck. The bones sounded brittle. “It hurt a little, but not now.” I latched onto the word hurt. He’d felt something. Something had come back. He had hurt. “Thank you, Victoria.”
He put his hands on my shoulders. There was a zap of static between us that made me jump. “You saved me. Again,” he said, and my throat closed off, trapping any words that I might have had left. Saved.
Crickets chirped on my short walk back to the main house. As had become my habit, I scanned the open road that ran alongside our lawn, looking for a car and somebody who knew the truth about me and Adam. But the scattered lampposts that dotted the neighbors’ fence lines gave away nothing. The road was empty, and I left it behind to go inside, where Einstein greeted me with her wiggling stub of a tail.
“Come on, girl.” I beckoned her into the kitchen. She snorted and sniffed at the linoleum tiles.
This morning’s skillet still sat on the cold burner, a layer of eggs caked onto the bottom. I tossed it into the sink with the rest of the dishes and ran the faucet for a few seconds. Two empty wine bottles and a heap of red-stained napkins littered the countertop. With a sigh, I brought the trash can around and scraped the counter off into the garbage.
Dusting my hands off on the back of my pants, I wandered into the living room, Einstein in tow. The blue light of the television flickered on, silent. A mess of crocheted blankets draped from the couch, spilling onto the carpet. Einstein circled and plopped down on the edge of a pilling gray one. I picked the remote off the ring-stained coffee table and sank down into the sofa. I recognized the anchorwoman of the late news and flipped on the volume. The events of the day buzzed in my ears, and it felt good to let her voice drown them out. I was just tilting my head back to rest my eyes when I heard a name that I recognized. Trent. Jackson. Westover.
I jolted upright and clicked the volume louder. Einstein stared up with droopy eyes and shook her collar.
“After the break, we’ll give you the tragic latest on Lamar High’s missing teenager,” the woman said from behind the news desk just before the screen faded into a car-insurance commercial. I laced my fingers together and twiddled my thumbs. The next two minutes lasted an eternity. Car-insurance commercial, cereal commercial, commercial for world’s coldest beer. My knee jiggled up and down. I jammed my finger into the fast-forward button even though I knew I was watching the show live.
Headlights swept through the living room, and my heart constricted. I hurried to the window and peeked through the blinds. I let out a long breath when I saw it was Mom’s station wagon pulling into the drive. Behind me, the simple melody of Channel 8’s theme song came on and I abandoned the window.
The anchorwoman appeared behind her desk with her helmet of blond hair and bright red lips. “Good evening again. This morning’s vote on the water bill passed five to two.”
“Who cares, who cares…,” I muttered.
Outside, the engine died, and moments later, the screen door clanged shut. “Tor!” Mom called. “I’ve got pancakes.”
“In here,” I said, and turned up the volume once again. The woman was now describing how the water bill would affect our county in minute detail. The grooves of my teeth wore into one another.
Mom set a Styrofoam box full of pancakes down on the coffee table in front of me. She wore her blue pinstripe uniform with the cuffed sleeves and white tennis shoes. I craned around her to see the screen.
“And now for the heartbreaking case of the missing high school student, Trent Jackson Westover.” My breath froze in my lungs.
“Mom, you’re blocking the screen.” I shooed her away.
Mom shuffled around to the couch beside me and, before I could react, took the remote and flipped it to her nighttime soap operas.