My dad had never made me feel anything but wanted, loved . . . cherished. Suddenly the comment about her name made me feel like I’d sucker-punched her for no good reason. “Sorry,” I said, wishing I could take it back. “I didn’t mean . . .”
She tried waving it off. “Don’t give it a second thought. I don’t. Water under the bridge, so to speak. Old news.” But the waver in her voice made me think it wasn’t such old news.
She recovered like a champ, and came back with that same smile she’d been wearing when she’d first walked in, like she was trying for a do-over. “So here’s the thing,” she said. “I feel like we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. What can I do to fix that?” I wondered if she knew how transparent she was.
But I wanted answers, and maybe if I played along, I could get a few before she revealed her true intentions.
What was it Thom had said? There was always an end game with Griffin.
I plucked up a slice of apple and leaned back on the bench. I had to tread carefully. Griffin wasn’t stupid. “So if you guys were friends—you and Simon and Thom—then why are we being treated like this? Why ambush us at all?”
She took her spot on the bench again, facing me, and I tried to gauge her reaction. She was definitely suspicious, and regarded me warily. If we’d been predators, it would have been hard to tell just who was circling who. But I knew she was the one who held all the real power here. She might want me to answer some of her questions, but ultimately, we were in her custody.
“First,” she started, “I never said we were friends. I said I knew them. Second, you were wrong when you said you’re being held prisoners. You’re not. But look at this from my perspective: You guys just show up here, with absolutely no warning at all, saying you’re being chased by the Daylighters. For all I know, you’ve just led those sons-a-bitches right to our doorstep. You can’t fault me for wantin’ to take some precautions.” She took a grape from my plate and slid it into her mouth. “We can never be too careful. Surely you’ve learned that much?”
I nodded. “Fair enough. But I have some questions too.” When she gave an unenthusiastic shrug and turned to inspect her cuticles, I took that as my cue to continue. “Why aren’t you friends?” Her eyes slid up from her nails, so I elaborated. “You said you knew Thom and Simon, but you said you weren’t friends. Why is that?”
“Actually,” she corrected smugly, “I didn’t say that either. You need to pay better attention. I never said whether we were friends or not.” She put extra emphasis on the “or not,” and I got the sense she got off on playing mind games, twisting everything around until you weren’t sure what your original point even was.
I decided to play my own game—the waiting game—and I refused to give her the slightest hint that she was getting to me. Instead of checking my nails, I tapped my foot to a song only I could hear, settling on “Womanizer” by Britney Spears, not because I loved the song or anything but because it was the first beat that popped into my head.
I felt a huge sense of satisfaction, like I’d just won the lottery or something, when Griffin blinked first, saying: “We were once—the three of us. We were close. I thought I could trust them back then, that I could count on them.” She made a sour face. “Turns out you can never count on anyone but yourself. They were as undependable as everyone else I’ve ever trusted.”
I tried to attach that word to either of them, Simon or Thom—undependable—but I couldn’t make it fit. They were a lot of other things . . . things she’d said. Simon was secretive, plus he was annoying as hell, and Thom was soft-spoken and reserved.
But undependable? Not in my experience.
“What happened to change things between you?” I asked.
“Did you know they used to be the best of friends?” Griffin asked, her brown eyes glittering like she was telling me something off-limits.
I was stunned, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Maybe I should’ve guessed all along. Only people who really knew each other, and who cared what the other thought, could get under each other’s skin so thoroughly.
“They once considered themselves brothers. Better than brothers. They used to say their bond was stronger because it hadn’t been forged by the mere circumstance of birth, something as incidental as a shared womb.” It’s true, her nod confirmed. “No, they shared something even more important: experiences. They’d chosen to be family, to stand side by side and have each other’s backs, no matter what.” My curiosity was ripe. The idea of Simon and Thom once being brother-like was almost as impossible as the idea of sharing DNA with aliens.
Griffin kept going. “They believed those bonds were the hardest to break. Except that wasn’t exactly true. They might not break, but they could certainly be stressed—tested and weathered—and those stresses could cause chinks that ultimately led to fractures.” It was almost as if she were repeating a story, the way she spoke. One she’d repeated again and again, like some twisted fairy tale. She reminded me of an elementary school teacher reading during story time, dropping her voice for effect and using exaggerated facial expressions.
Griffin was like that: theatrical.
I asked again, “What happened?”
When she blinked, her composure faltered and her vision drifted back into focus, and she seemed surprised to find me sitting across from her, almost as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “A girl,” she answered haltingly. “It all came apart over a girl.”