“It was just what I needed,” I say.
“Our daughter died in a car accident a few years ago. Since we had all of this…” she motions all around, “we felt guilty keeping it for the two of us.”
“You had a foster before me?”
“We did,” Robert says. “She was nice, but not quite a perfect fit. Not someone we might consider adopting.”
My lungs seize up. Adoption. The golden word. It isn’t just loving someone until they age out: it’s a forever commitment. It’s… everything.
“Oh,” I manage.
Lenora shoots him a look. “We want someone to be part of our family for a long time,” she says. “We’ve only known you for a week, and we want to take things slow. But we really enjoy your company, Margo.”
I sniff. “Thank you. I like you guys, too.”
They laugh, and we lapse back into companionable silence as we watch the rest of the television show. Finally, my yawns are getting too close together to pretend I’m not exhausted.
“Go to bed,” Lenora suggests. “We’re headed up as well.”
I grab a glass of water and wish them goodnight in the hallway, waiting for them to close their door before I open mine.
I let out a heavy sigh.
I close the door behind me, resting my forehead on it in the darkness. I set the water down on my dresser, ready to change back into my pajamas. I’m not ready to go to sleep and dream about Caleb, though. I’m not ready for…
Him to be in my room.
I tilt my head, blinking a few times in a row, but he doesn’t vanish.
He just smiles.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper-shout.
“Did you dream about me?” He lifts my pajama shorts from where I had dropped them. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Get out,” I snap.
I go back to the door, ready to throw it open and demand that he leave, but suddenly he’s pushing me against the door. He leans into me, his arms on either side of my head, caging me in.
“I think you like the idea of me in your room,” he says. “Isn’t that right?”
“You and your fucking mind games.” I shake my head. “Isn’t tormenting me in school enough?”
He’s solemn when he answers, “No.”
“No?”
“It’s not enough. Don’t think it ever will be.”
I let my head fall back. His eyes are dark, his face in shadow from the lamp behind us. “Why?”
His lips ghost along the shell of my ear. “Because you fucking deserve it.”
He takes a step back, then another. He opens my window and climbs out, vanishing down the side of the house. I creep toward the window and watch him jog across the front lawn, to his car parked in the street. Once he’s gone, I close and lock my window.
I go to my dresser and down the water, inexplicably dry-mouthed. My head is spinning. He knows where I live. Is that why he let me walk home? Because he knew it would take me ten minutes at the most?
Or maybe he followed me.
It’s only nine. I’m sure Riley probably isn’t asleep…
I grab my phone and call her, hiding under the covers.
“Yo, you pulled a vanishing act today,” she says.
“Caleb took me…” I clear my throat. “Home.”
“Did he?”
Kind of.
“He just showed up in my room,” I confess. “And he’s scary and attractive and mean, and I don’t know what to do.”
She coughs. “Excuse me? I mean, I knew he’s always watching you at school, but…”
“I asked why he couldn’t just torment me at school,” I say. “And he said it wasn’t enough.”
“Girl. I think he likes you.”
“Doubt it.”
“Guys in kindergarten pull a girl’s hair if he likes her. Clearly Caleb never grew up.”
I snort. “Riley. Are you listening to yourself?”
“I’m just saying, he’s pretty chill with everyone except for you. In like a broody sex-god type of way, you know?”
I roll onto my back. If I close my eyes, I can picture how his body feels against mine.
I keep my eyes wide open, staring into the dark. “I hate him. I hate how he looks at me and how he makes me feel. God, I’ve never felt such…” Fury. The same I saw reflected in his eyes, mirrored back at me. And on top of that, an aching helplessness.
I can’t stop him.
I can’t control him.
“What am I supposed to do?”
She sighs. “He’s the bully. You’re the victim.”
“Is there a but in there? You’re supposed to be my trusty advisor.”
She snorts. “Yeah, well, you’re not giving me too much help with Eli.”
“You didn’t say what exactly happened…”
The line goes quiet for a moment. I wonder if I’ve pushed my new friend too far. I haven’t seen her since lunch, and before that, the weekend.
“I mentioned that he flirted,” she mumbles. “He said I drive him crazy.”
My eyes widen. “Whoa.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you…”
“Drive him crazy?” She laughs. “Probably stems from freshman year. We were on a debate team, and I was the only one who would correct him.”
“That’s not what I was expecting,” I admit. “I thought it’d be something more… heinous.”
Like what you did, Margo?
“Um, you haven’t checked Instagram by any chance…？”
I sit up. “What? Why?”
Riley groans. “No, Margo, don’t—”
I put her on speaker and open the app. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
She stays silent, so I type in Caleb’s name. Once his profile loads, my breath catches. He posted, ten minutes ago, a picture of him and Savannah. She’s kissing his cheek, and he has a wide smile. There’s no caption.
“So moody,” I manage to say. “When he was just in my room?”
Riley sighs. “You sound upset.”
“No,” I say. “No, this is just psychological warfare.”
“Right.”
“So… I need to fight back.”
She pauses while I scroll through the rest of his profile. It’s from another life: action shots of him playing lacrosse, photos with his friends, one of him in the middle of a backflip off the bow of a boat. That isn’t the Caleb Asher I know.
The one I’ve come to understand is dark and insufferable. He glares more than he smiles. His touch is brutal, his words are harsh…
“How are you going to fight back?” Riley asks.
“I need…” I search through my memories, picking out pieces like starlight in the darkness. “Something will put him off-balance.”
“Okay,” she says. “But… I don’t think I can be involved in that kind of war, Margo. Because that’s what it would turn into, you know.”
I laugh, the wheels in my mind spinning. What would rattle Mr. Perfect? “I’ll let you go. But just warning you: we’re not done discussing you and Eli Black.”
“Yeah, yeah. Good luck with your scheming.”