The Academy - Friends vs. Family (9 page)

I glanced back once at Kota as Dr. Green took my hand and pulled
me out of the room and down the stairs. Kota looked not entirely happy about
the situation, but reserved to the idea that this is what had to be done. I
could only hope they were right.

In my mother’s room again, Dr. Green guided me to the bed. An IV
stand was in place, IV bag and needle set. It actually made me feel better to
see it. At least she was getting fluids.

Dr. Green pointed to the three prescription bottles on her
nightstand. “These are the only ones she should be taking,” he warned. “It’s
what she’s currently prescribed. I think she’s been getting confused because
she talks to so many doctors and she hangs on to old medicine. I’m going with
Nathan to the hospital to dig up some information and we’ll talk to some
doctors about some better treatment options. Stressing herself out so much that
she comes after you is not an option.”

I swallowed, nodding.

“If she wakes up, make her some soup and make sure she eats. Don’t
let her stress out. If she starts to, do whatever she says as long as it isn’t
dangerous. Lie if you have to. Luke and Gabriel will be right here, so no
matter what happens, they’ll pull you out if and when needed. Get her to rest
as much as possible. When does your father get back?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. And I don’t know how to reach him. He
didn’t mention when he’d be back.”

He pointed to the IV stand. “If your mother asks you about that,
say you called a doctor to check her out while she slept. She may not like that
but don’t worry if she pulls out the IV. I’m more worried about her waking up
and if she gets that far, we can take it from there. Gabriel’s on watch to make
sure she wakes up and if she doesn’t, you should use the house phone to call
for an ambulance. We can’t get any closer.”

I sucked in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I understood
what he meant. It was too close now. I knew he meant they didn’t want to expose
themselves to my family, and possibly they weren’t prepared, as they’d said, to
do much more. I wondered at what point they would call in the Academy. I
wondered what difference it would make.

With his green eyes on mine, he closed the space between us,
wrapping his arms around me in a loose hug than the others. The movement
surprised me at first. He was my teacher. A doctor. I often forgot, like with
Mr. Blackbourne, that he was younger, maybe only a few years older than I was.
He was also friends with Kota and the others. Nine guys in all when I sometimes
just counted the seven. I weakly wrapped my arms around his chest to make this
friendly gesture mean something.

“Cheer up, buttercup,” he said.

I had no idea how to respond, but my heart warmed at his words. If
my mother could see us now, she’d claim he was raping me. I blushed at both his
touch and the idea of my mother waking at any moment along with the guilt that
weighed me down like bricks regarding how she would look at me.

He let go, moving away from the bed. I followed. There was nothing
for us to do now but wait.

A
pples

Gabriel, Luke and I stood in the garage as we watched the others
collect in various cars and move on to do what they needed to do. The bathroom
was done. The house was back to what it was before. North took the fractured
wood of the stool with him. No one talked about replacing it, but I worried
that my mother would assume I hid it or got rid of it and would punish me more
when she was ready to do that again.

When we were alone, I relaxed. Having fewer people there meant I’d
have less chances of my mother waking and catching us. Also, everyone else was
so somber and tense. Maybe Mr. Blackbourne was right to keep them busy and away
from here. Everyone needed a break to calm down a little and try to get back to
the almost-normal that we were.

Luke, Gabriel and I collected back up in my room. Luke settled
into drawing out a map of the house on notebook paper and occasionally left the
room to go measure something with the tape. Gabriel kicked his shoes off,
dropped into my bed, pulled the blanket up and fell asleep.

With nothing else to do, I sat on the floor and I finished up my
homework.

About an hour later, Luke crawled over to where I was sitting in
the corner of the room on the carpet. I was finishing the reading assignment
for English.

“Sang,” he said, his eyes big and his hand on his stomach. “Will
you make something to eat? I’m starving.”

I found a pencil and wrote to him so I wouldn’t have to talk.
“What would you like?”

“Anything,” he said. He tugged a band from his blond hair. Locks
tumbled across his face. He raked his fingers through the strands, pulling them
back to redo the pony tail. “I’ll eat bread and water.”

I smirked at him. I thought I could do a little better than that.

A sharp ringing sound cut through the air. Gabriel’s outline
shifted on the bed. “Yeah?” he said in a groggy voice. “No, she’s right here.
Fuck, yes, I’m sleeping. Shut up. Luke’s here. Stop yelling at me. We’re
supposed to be up all night watching her, so I’m trying to sleep now. Fuck
you.” Gabriel’s hand appeared from under the blanket and he dropped the phone
onto the carpet with a thud. “Sang,” he called. “Phone’s for you.” He flipped
over. The top of his hair appeared as the blanket shifted but he settled down,
going back to sleep again.

I looked at Luke. Who expected me to talk to them now?

Luke laughed. He walked over and scooped up the phone. “Yes? Yeah,
she’s right here.” His eyes flickered to me. “No, he’s just napping. You know
how he is when you wake him up. Yes, she’s still asleep. Yes, tell North Sang
finished her homework.” Luke made a face at me. I smiled at him. “What? No.” He
held his hand over the end of the phone. “Silas wants to know your favorite
color.”

“Pink,” Gabriel mumbled from under the blanket.

Luke checked with me to confirm and I nodded. “She said pink. Well
if they don’t have it in pink, go to another store.”

I tugged on Luke’s shirt sleeve, quietly asking him what in the
world he was talking about. He waved me off, holding me back with his hand and
tilting the phone away. I could hear Silas talking but I couldn’t figure out
what he was saying. I blew out a breath, shaking my head. I got up, crossing
the room. If there was nothing else they needed, I was going to make food.

I padded down the stairs. I popped my head into my mother’s room.
She was still in a deep sleep but the color in her cheeks looked better. I was
going to try to get her to take a bath when she woke up so I could wash her
sheets. Usually my dad did it but now that I knew how bad her illness was, I
thought maybe if I helped out more she wouldn’t be so crazy when she was awake.

I meandered into the kitchen. I checked the fridge and started
collecting ingredients to make bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches with apples.

Butter melted in the frying pan when I sensed someone stepping up
behind me. I spun around, nearly knocking into Gabriel.

“Watch yourself, Trouble,” he said. He yawned, rubbed a palm
against his eye. He combed the lock of blond back to mix in with the rest of
his brown hair behind his ears. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Grilled cheese,” I whispered. I slipped bread into the pan,
layered it with cooked bacon and cheese. I thinly sliced Granny Smith apples to
add on top, plus another slice of cheese and another piece of bread.

“What’s with the apple?” he asked. “That’s weird.”

“It’s good,” I whispered.

“Whatever you say.” He folded his arms across his stomach and
leaned against the counter.

“Gabriel,” Luke said softly as he walked into the kitchen. “We’re
not supposed to leave her room.”

“Who the hell is going to tattle on us? Her mom’s still passed
out. We’d hear her coming if she came through here.”

Luke made a face but his head turned as he spotted me cooking. “Oh
thank goodness.”

“She puts apples in her grilled cheese.”

“Cool.”

“Do you not want apples?” I whispered to Gabriel.

Gabriel slipped next to me, dropping a hand on my hip and pressed
his cheek to my shoulder. “Is it good?”

“Try a bite of this when it’s done,” I said. “If you don’t want
it, I’ll eat the rest.”

Gabriel’s phone went off again. He let me go and stepped away from
us to answer it. “What? Yes, she’s here, would I be all calm if she wasn’t?” He
held the phone away from his head. “Sang, Victor’s outside. Run out there.”

I passed the spatula to Luke. He took it and flipped over the
grilled cheese. Gabriel followed me to the side door, opening it for me. He
hung out in the doorway as I ran through the garage.

The gray BMW was parked at the end of the driveway. Victor was
leaning against the side door. Black slacks. White Armani shirt. The fire in
his eyes was lit to a cozy setting. “Hi,” he said.

I smiled at him.

“Are they driving you crazy yet?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

He straightened and turned to open the back seat of his car. He
lifted out a brown leather messenger bag. “There’s two laptops in here. One is
for you to play with. The other is for Luke to work on.”

He handed it off to me. The leather bag was stiff. It appeared
brand new.

He dipped his hand into his back pocket and pulled out an iPhone
with a pink case attached. “This is yours.”

The cell phone was identical to the old one. “Did you fix it?”

“Sweetheart, you demolished the other one. This is new.”

Heat teased my cheeks. “I didn’t… I don’t really need…”

He dropped a finger to my lips, squishing my mouth closed. “Just
say thank you.”

I smiled and mouthed a thank you around his finger.

He encircled me in another hug. “I’ve got to get some things done.
I may not see you tomorrow. Text me.”

“I will,” I whispered, mashing myself into him. I didn’t want to
let go.

He released me and stepped away. I held back and watched as he
started his car and backed out of the drive. I waved as he drove off. How
normal was that? Why couldn’t that happen all the time? Why couldn’t my mother
accept that people weren’t all that bad? I was making lunch for Luke and
Gabriel. We’d been hanging out all afternoon. No death. No raping. Just
friends.

I collected the mail, too, since I was outside. Back inside,
burning bread and butter met me at the door. I dropped the leather bag and the
mail on the floor, sprinting to the kitchen.

The kitchen was empty. Grilled cheese smoked on the pan. I
snatched up the spatula to plate the sandwich. Two additional sandwiches were sitting
on the plate, too. Where did the guys go?

“Sang!” My mother’s voice clattered through my ears. Thudding
footsteps sounded from the hallway.

My heart stopped. I dropped the pan on the stove and shut off the
heat.

My mother appeared from the hallway, hair mangled against her
head. She tugged the IV pole with her. It was on wheels so she could roll it
along. “There you are,” she said. “What’s burning?”

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I left it on when... when I went to go
check the mail. I thought I would get back quickly enough.”

My mother blinked at me. “Why are you whispering?”

She didn’t remember. The worst experience she’d put me through and
she didn’t know. If I had never called Silas and if they never saved me, I’d
still be there now, or dead. “Sore throat,” I whispered. I coughed softly once
but swallowed hard so I wouldn’t go into a fit.

She staggered backward. “Don’t come near me,” she said. “I can’t
get sick.” She paused. “When did the doctor come?”

I assumed she meant the IV. “I called him,” I lied. “You weren’t
waking up so I called. They set you up with that. I hope that was okay.”

She shuffled on her feet, putting her weight on one leg and then
the other. She didn’t look happy about it, and I knew it was because there were
strangers in the house, but to her they were doctors. They were who she saw in
the hospital. I wondered how she rationalized it. She was okay with doctors but
not anyone else? I wonder if she’d like Dr. Green.

She settled finally, as if accepting this answer. “Make sure you
call your father if you need to do that again. Let him call.”

“Okay.”

“Where’s the mail?”

I retraced my steps to the side door. She followed me and I was
worried she’d ask about the leather bag.

The messenger bag wasn’t on the floor where I’d left it. Luke or Gabriel
must have used the back steps to collect the bag. My heart fluttered, hoping
they could remain quiet. I scooped up the mail from the floor and carried it
over to my mother.

She took it from me. “You made three sandwiches?” she asked me,
pointing to the plate I had made.

“I’m really hungry,” I said. She noticed that but she didn’t
notice the bandages on my wrists and ankles?

Now that I was focused on her, I realized she hardly looked at me.
Her eyes darted around me, occasionally looking at my knees or something
similar but always out of focus until she looked at something else. Did I not
notice before? Being around the others, they often touched at my face to bring
my eyes to theirs. Did I divert my eyes too much without realizing it? Was I
looking around others but not really at them?

“You’ll get fat,” she said.

“Do you need anything? Water? I can make you grilled cheese. I
could make some soup.”

She considered this. “Bring me water and some yogurt.” She rolled
her IV pole back to her bedroom.

I collected what she wanted quickly and raced to her room. I was
there before she made it to the bed. I gave her a plastic spoon and her water
bottle. I nudged the plastic trash can closer to her bed. “If you’ll take a
bath, I’ll change your sheets.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What do you want?”

“Huh?” I meant to ask more, but dry air caught in my throat and I
started coughing.

She reeled her head back, taking the top off of her water. “Go
away. You’ll make me sick.”

I swallowed and rushed out of her room. I went back to the
kitchen, grabbing the plate of grilled cheese and three bottles of water from
the fridge and a bag of potato chips, taking them upstairs.

My door was closed, locked. I had to put the water and chips down
to find the pushpin in the wall, opening the door one handed.

When I peeked into the room, the boys weren’t there. I replaced
the push pin and picked up the water and chips. I dropped everything on top of
the trunk by the wall and closed the door again. “Gabriel?” I whispered.

Scuffling noises broke out from the attic and a moment later,
Gabriel and Luke peeked out from around the bookshelf. They looked relieved.

“I thought it might have been your mom,” Gabriel whispered.

I pressed a button on the stereo, turning the volume up on the
music to help mask our noises. I picked up the grilled cheese and passed them
the plate.

Behind the bookshelf, we collected on the floor. Since my mother
was awake, it meant we had to be extra quiet now. We ate together. I took the
burnt one and pulled the burned side off to eat it open faced. Gabriel liked
the apples.

When we were done, Gabriel sat cross legged on the bed near the
window and I curled up on the other end with the pillow. Luke remained behind
the bookshelf on the carpet. Gabriel checked fashion blogs with the extra
laptop. Luke was doing his work. I started texting everyone with the new phone.

Sang: Silas! What are you doing?

Silas: North’s giving me a lecture about spark plugs. Save me.

Sang: North.

North: What?

Sang: Just checking. Tell Silas I said hi and that I think spark
plugs are interesting.