She pauses with the door half-open. “What about me?”
“Do you ever ask for help?”
She very nearly smiles. “Mind your own business. Meathead.”
The CLOSED sign jangles against the glass as the door shuts behind her.
I sit on the curb, letting the sun bake the hate out of me, feeling like a rug dragged out for an airing. I reread the thank-you note a few more times and try to picture it: Jasper in a crisp navy uniform, sitting at a desk without cuss words carved into it, breathing air without coal dust in it. Jasper, all taken care of, launched like a ship onto the bright seas of a better world.
I want it, I swear I do. It’s just that I can’t see myself in that picture. I’m somewhere else, off-screen or under water, drifting in whatever abyss waits for you when there’s nothing left on your list. I wonder if I’m truly angry, or just scared.
I slide my phone out of my back pocket and type why did you do it.
He might not answer. He might pretend not to know what I mean. He might have smashed his phone to pieces and gone to make war on Hell itself, because that’s the kind of dramatic fool he is. But I wait, sweating into the sidewalk, phone held too tight in my hand.
Because I didn’t want you to come back.
I type a reply but don’t send it. It sounds too much like asking a question, and to ask is to hope.
But later, when I wake from a tangled nightmare of mist and blood, with the taste of river water in my throat and the shape of his name on my tongue, I press send. i think you do.
He doesn’t answer.
It takes three days before I stop checking my texts every ten minutes, and even then I don’t really stop. I keep my phone tucked beneath the counter at Tractor Supply, hidden behind a roll of paper towels, and my heart seizes every time the screen lights up. （It’s only ever Jasper texting me pictures of friendly dogs or early tiger lilies; he seems to think I need cheering up.）
I don’t even know what I’m hoping for—an apology, a plea, an excuse to go marching up to his front door and ask him how the hell he could let me work under his roof for four months without mentioning the monsters under the floorboards which, by the way, are the reason my mom is dead.
But I suppose he has nothing to say to me, after all. He’s alone in Starling House again, just like he wanted, a mad knight readying himself for a battle he’s bound to lose.
Honestly, I’m lucky I made such a clean getaway. I check my phone again.
“You waiting on a text?” Lacey asks over my shoulder.
“Tell Frank I’m taking lunch early.” I shove the phone in my back pocket and slide out from behind the cash register.
I used to time my breaks to overlap with Lance’s so we could get high and make out behind the Tractor Supply dumpsters, but it turns out the availability of the weed was dependent on the making out, so now I spend my breaks stalking restlessly around town. Today I find myself passing the high school just as kids are shuffling toward the cafeteria, gossiping and bitching and flirting.
Technically you’re supposed to sign in at the front desk and get a guest pass, et cetera, et cetera, but Jasper won’t be in the cafeteria.
I cross the crisp white lines of the football field, sweating, fighting the dizzy time-warp sensation of visiting your old school: a glutinous sucking at the soles of your feet, as of quicksand, and the nagging suspicion that you never really left and never will.
Everybody else in my grade is either married with two kids or long gone, and here I am, spending my lunch break with a brother who won’t be here for much longer, hunted by hungry Beasts, waiting for a text I’ll never get and shouldn’t want. No wonder I still dream of Starling House; even a bad dream is better than nothing.
Jasper is alone, an empty blue plastic tray beside him in the grass. He must be catching up on homework—nerd!—because his laptop is open and he’s frowning down at a yellow notepad full of cramped writing.
I stare very hard at the notepad, neurons screaming. I know exactly who it belongs to, but it seems to take my brain a long time to accept its existence here, now. It’s like seeing a teacher at the grocery store or a cat on a leash, something inimical to the order of the universe.
“Jasper?”
Jasper startles, sees me, and startles worse. He shoves the notepad under his backpack, centuries too late.
“Where did you get that?” My voice sounds ominous in my own ears, like the cool rush of air before a good summer storm.
Jasper tries out several different expressions—guilt, denial, pure panic—before settling on a tired honesty. “Where do you think?”