I giggle in spite of myself then stop when dread weighs down my entire body. “Yeah, I’m vexed.”
Noah edges my ignored latte toward me. I pick it up and attempt to disappear by pulling my legs along with me onto the seat. “Dad doesn’t get it.”
He says nothing and glowers at the mountains in the distance. Noah overheard most of the conversation between me and Dad, at least my side of it. I drink, and the latte is like little shards of heaven in my mouth. A part of me relaxes with the introduction of caffeine into my system.
“What if I told you I don’t get it, either?”
With the coffee still poised at my mouth, I have to force the swallow. “What?”
“I don’t get why you’re interested in talking to your mom. What she did...it’s not forgivable.”
My forehead wrinkles as I set the cup on the table. “I never said I’ve forgiven her. I told Dad that maybe I should answer if she calls again. Maybe I should listen to the voice mail instead of deleting it. She’s my mom.”
“You talked to her before and didn’t get anywhere.”
“But maybe I should talk to her because...because...” Because...I don’t know, but I do know that there’s a hollowness inside me. This dull ache that screams that something’s missing. I felt this before—after I lost Aires and before I recovered my memories.
I believed that the cure would be this summer. That leaving home and spending time with Noah would heal the wound.
“I did get someplace the last time Mom and I talked. I remembered what happened that night, and I learned that she’s on her meds again, and that she’s being responsible about her condition. You don’t understand what life’s been like for her.”
“She tried to kill you.” He says it as if he’s telling me something new—something I don’t agonize over every single time I look in the mirror.
“Really?” I thrust my scarred arms into the air. “Guess I forgot.”
Noah swears and glances away. Two guys our age walk past, gawk at my scars then stare at each other. Ashamed, I lower my arms to my lap and close my eyes when I hear the whispered “freak.”
The table slams into my knees, and metal cracks against the sidewalk. My eyes flash open to find Noah’s chair flipped backward. I’m trapped by the table, and I press my hands against it, desperate for escape.
Noah grabs the nearest guy, twists the material of his shirt near his neck and pounds him into the wall. “Say it again, asshole. Say it to my fucking face.”
The table screeches against the sidewalk as I push it away and scramble to my feet. “Noah! No!”
The guy trembles in Noah’s grasp and his friend, thankfully, isn’t much help as he gapes at a distance. If this had happened to Noah and Noah’s best friend, Isaiah, had been here, it would have been a bloodbath. But then again, Noah would never disrespect a girl.
I place my hand on Noah’s biceps. His eyes flicker to mine and soften the moment our gazes connect.
“Let him go.”
It takes a second, but Noah releases his white-knuckle grip, though not without an extra shove. He refocuses on the guy then jerks his head in my direction. “Apologize.”
My lips flatten, and I wish I could disappear. One minute here. Another gone. Into thin air. No longer freaking existing.
The guy’s eyes linger on my arms, and it’s not too different from the way Noah stared at me the first time he saw my scars this past January when I’d fallen on the ice. Except back then, I was hiding them from the world. This spring, I gave up trying to care what the world thought, but moments like this...I have to admit I care.
“I’m sorry,” the guy whispers.
“It’s okay.” But it’s not. He called me a freak. I heard it, and so did Noah. Once an insult like that has been released, there’s no way to take it back. It becomes one more cut on my soul.
Noah slides away and the guy runs off, his friend trailing close behind. Around us, people have stopped what they were doing to focus on me and Noah. What’s worse is that when they reanimate, they lower their voices and talk to one another as their eyes zero in on my scars.
My foot taps the sidewalk. Somehow I thought graduation was going to be the end of this torment. That the moment I walked across the stage, all the demons that haunted me during high school would somehow be exorcised.
I can handle the questioning looks and sometimes the appalled shock, but the words still hurt. Even if they’re whispered. Especially if they’re whispered. I wonder if I’ll ever fit in.
Noah reaches over and touches my cheek, but I lean back, not allowing him the opportunity to seek redemption. Noah should have let the taunt go, but he didn’t. He drew more attention to my scars. He made more people stare, made me more of a spectacle than I already am. Instead of two guys thinking I’m a freak, an entire crowd of people thinks the same thing. For the first time since we left Kentucky, Noah did something that made me feel worse.
My younger brother Jacob inherited my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile. I normally love the familiar sight on the computer screen, but today it slowly strangles me from the inside out. If my parents had survived the fire that claimed their lives three years ago, today, July twenty-seventh, would have been their nineteenth wedding anniversary.
It doesn’t help that I’ve pissed off Echo.
I glance out the window of the coffee shop. Echo sits on the hood of her Honda Civic and burns a hole into the sidewalk with her glare. It’s hot out there and cool in here, and that shows the intensity of Echo’s anger. She’d rather roast in the sun and inhale gasoline fumes than be with me in an air-conditioned building that smells like ground coffee beans.
If I were a great guy, I’d be out there instead of in here chatting with my younger brother, but I suck at the boyfriend thing. If I went out there, I’d succeed in ticking her off more.
I lower the picture of me and Echo at the Great Sand Dunes, and Jacob remains transfixed like the photo is still there. “Mountains of sand in Colorado?” he asks.
“This is in southern Colorado,” I answer. “The forests are north. You’d like it here, Jay Bird. Enormous dunes of sand right next to towering mountains.”
I don’t know if he would or wouldn’t like it, but I pretend that I do. These Skype visits and phone calls have been a summer-long reintroduction to each other. Until last week, I didn’t know that he was allergic to peanuts. Until last month, he didn’t know that I have a long scar that snakes up my biceps and down my back.
His eyes got big and moist when I explained I got it by protecting him and our youngest brother, Tyler, from falling debris when our home burned down at the end of my freshman year of high school. The same fire that killed our parents.
I saved him from the play-by-play of how I hauled Tyler and Jacob through the choking smoke and fire. They didn’t see much as I had swaddled them in blankets and half pushed, half carried them out of the house, using my body as a shield.
I also left out how I failed him and our parents—a secret only a few that were at the scene know. Some hero I’d be to him if he knew the truth.
Jacob stares at his picture at the bottom of the screen when he talks. “Did you know that there’s an entire planet of sand in Return of the Jedi?”
“Yeah.”
Jacob leans closer to the computer, and his baseball cap hits the monitor. I chuckle and in the background, his adoptive mother, Carrie, whispers for him to take the hat off. “Dad