I glare at him. “He asked if I would go to the game, and I was just asking Lenora…”
“Sorry, Mrs. Jenkins.” Caleb steps closer to me. Like the last time we tried to go to a game together, he wears the gold-and-black colors of our school, a black shell jacket over his Emery-Rose shirt. To me, he says, “It’s a bit chilly, you might want to change…”
I blush. “Right. If I can go—”
“Of course,” Lenora blurts out. “We don’t want to restrict your social experience, especially now as you’re making more—”
“Thanks!” I lean away from Caleb, shooting Lenora a look that I hope translates to, Please don’t embarrass me.
She smiles sheepishly.
It’s such a startling mom-daughter thing to do, it almost strikes me mute.
I race back to my room and change into black jeans. I find a gold shirt with the Emery-Rose logo on it and a black jacket. Belatedly, I realize that Caleb and I are going to match.
You’re dressed to support the football team, I remind myself. Of course we’re going to match. Us and five hundred other people.
I touch up my makeup and yank on my boots. When I get downstairs, I find Caleb and Robert discussing the lacrosse team, from the sound of it. They both look over at me.
“Ready?” Caleb asks.
I nod, biting my lip. This feels like a trap, but anticipation swirls through me. I’m going to get to see my home again, more than just a glance.
He puts his hand on the small of my back, propelling me out of the house toward his car. “You’re up to something,” he murmurs.
I lift one shoulder. “Not sure what you mean?”
I get in the passenger seat, closing the door in his face.
Once he’s in, he eyes me. “What do you want most in the world?”
I suck in a breath. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do.” He speeds toward his house.
Once we arrive, I follow him down the side driveway. My stomach is cramping again.
This is where my parents used to park. This is where the bus used to drop me off, and I’d rush down the little walkway to get home. Later, Caleb and I would run through his house before our parents separated us for homework or dinner. It wasn’t unusual to spend the entire day together.
I snap myself out of it as he opens the side gate. I can almost smell my mother’s cooking.
I take in the grime on the windows, the weeds and vines crawling up the siding.
It’s abandoned.
Just like me.
Even sitting in Caleb’s family’s backyard, literally yards away from their back door, my old home has turned into a graveyard of memories.
He unlocks the door to my old childhood home and then steps aside. “The past isn’t a happy place,” he murmurs. “Why don’t you want to leave it buried?”
He’s been tormenting me because of this. Because of a past that only he seems to understand. “Why don’t you?”
He exhales, shoving the door open. “After you.”
Stepping inside now hurts worse than before.
Before was shock. Spikes of pain. Relief that I remembered things the way they were.
Now it’s total annihilation.
I stop just across the threshold. Ghosts are here, bringing an icy chill with them. I can’t do this.
You have to face your fear.
I glance over my shoulder at Caleb, but he’s watching me with unreadable eyes. I step in farther, ignoring the dust collecting over every inch of the space. The wine-red rug under the kitchen table. The four chairs crowded around it, one of which has a loose leg. Dad used to stuff it with newspaper when company came over.
Company being Caleb, of course. Sometimes Savannah.
Never Amelie.
The cup is in the exact same spot, so I move past the kitchen. Caleb follows me like a second shadow, past the living room on our right and into the narrow hallway. Mom got a grippy material to put under the rug when I was six, because I slid headlong into the wall with the rug bunched around my feet.
I had been chased there, but I never said so.
The first door on the left is the bathroom, and my bedroom the next door down. Between them, on the right, is the door to my parents’ bedroom. I hesitate, brushing my fingers against the painted wood.
“It’s not going to bite,” Caleb whispers.
Yes it will. The memories will sink their teeth into me and never let me go.
I take a deep breath and push the door open anyway. What I see steals the air from my lungs.
It’s a wreck. Vandalized.
There’s a broken lamp on the floor next to the bed, cracked into three pieces. The lightbulb is smashed. Clothes… everywhere. It looks like a hurricane went through the room.
I take a step back, bumping into Caleb.
“What happened?” My voice is steady, even if the rest of my body wobbles.
He doesn’t answer.
I turn. “Caleb, what happened?”
“This wasn’t part of the deal,” he says. “You wanted to come in here. You’re asking questions you should already know the answer to.”
I squint at him. “What?”
He shakes his head and takes a step back. “Move on.”
I shut the door, leaving it untouched. And then I move down the hall to my old room, where I had run the other day. The door swings open under my fingertips like it remembers me.
I walk into the room and inhale.
When I was twelve, I had nightmares about being locked in this room. In the dream, I beat my fists against the door until they were bloody and bruised. After Caleb follows me in, moving a bit slower than I’d prefer, I close the door.
I don’t expect to find anything.
Hell, it was just a dream that I had when I was twelve.
And thirteen.
And fourteen.
Angela, my case worker, made me see a therapist. The foster families I was with were terrified of the screaming that happened while I was asleep. And with the therapist, I convinced myself it was just a dream blown out of proportion.
But…
There are smudges of blood on the white door, at my chest level. Scratches, too.
I stagger backward. “What the hell happened?”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “You know what happened. You were here. You caused it.”
I shake my head, sinking down onto the bed. “That’s wrong.”
He comes closer, trailing a finger over my dresser.
“Caleb, come on. Did I do that?” I examine my fingers. Would scratches in the wood like that have torn my nails? Whatever happened when I was ten… there’s no trace of it on my skin now.
He lifts something from my dresser, tucking it into his pocket.
At my raised eyebrows, he just scowls. “Just something of mine that you stole.”
“Why has no one come back here?”
He yanks the door open and points. “Time’s up, love. If you want me to explain exactly what happened… that’s another beast entirely.”
“So you do know.”
His nod is short and jerky. “I know pieces.”
“I know pieces, too,” I huff.
“Apparently not.” He guides me out of the house.
A weight is on my chest, and it’s hard to breathe. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the pieces that I have. It’s a puzzle that I’m trying to solve blind. I slowly sink down to my knees, black spots flashing over my vision.