The Year We Hid Away (10 page)

“Don’t say
if
,” I cried, the tears falling.

“Sorry, Scarlet. But in my life there’s a big fat gap between what I want and what I can actually have. And I don’t see how that’s going to change any time soon.”

“It just sucks,” I shuddered.

“It does,” he agreed. “It absolutely and totally sucks.”

Bridger left soon after that. And, coming down off my adrenaline rush, I felt ill again and ran to the toilet. Eventually, I took the two Advil he’d left out for me, and slept about ten hours, only to wake to the most crushing headache I’d ever experienced.

When I finally turned on my phone, around noon, it was to find that Bridger had peppered me with texts and calls for three hours. Just like he’d said he had done.

Disgusted with myself, I tossed the phone aside. Then buried my aching head in my hands.

—
Bridger

Sunday morning I woke up halfway when Lucy began to wiggle on her mattress, which lay on the floor beside my bed. Keeping my eyes slammed shut, I rolled into my pillow. We’d been sharing a room for more than three months now, so the week had a rhythm to it. On the weekends, my sister woke up at seven, which was just the same time she woke up on school days. So while I ignored her, she would get up to putter around, sneaking extra time for cartoons on my computer while I pretended not to notice.

I was just dozing off again when her little voice quavered up to me. “Bridge…?”

“Hrrmff,” I said.

“I don’t feel so good.”

My consciousness buzzed to life in a hurry then. Because Lucy was not a complainer. I opened my eyes, startled to realize that it was still dark in our little room. It wasn’t even morning.

“Bridge…”

And then I heard a telltale gurgle, and was on my feet even before my brain caught up. In the dark, I jumped over the corner of Lucy’s mattress to grab the wastebasket from under my desk. But Lulu had also taken action, lurching toward the door. She made it as far as the door handle before bending over to hurl on the floorboards.

Diving forward, I caught the second heave in the trashcan. Lucy began to cry before she even stopped puking.

“Aw, buddy,” I sighed, pulling her hair out of her face. “You’re okay. It sucks, but it’ll stop.” This was the second time in forty-eight hours that I’d comforted a puking female. Go figure.

“I… threw… up…
on your shoe,
” she sobbed.

Christ, she did. Fuck my life.

“It’s okay.” I kicked the offending shoe aside and opened the door. “Quiet, all right?” I whispered. Not that anyone else was going to be awake at five o-fucking-clock on a Sunday to hear us. I steered her into the bathroom. “Rinse out your mouth, but spit, okay? Don’t drink the water, even if you’re thirsty.”

“Why?”

“Because your tummy is pissed off right now. Trust me.”

“You said a swear.” Her voice was small.

I turned on the tap for her. “You can say one, too. Anyone who’s throwing up gets a free swear.”

“Shit,” Lucy said.

“Good one.” I cleaned out the trashcan, which took a few minutes. But now I had to see to the floor inside my room. “Lucy, stay here for a minute, would you? Just in case it happens again.”

Obediently, she slid down the tile wall until her little butt hit the floor.

“Be right back.” I reeled several long sheets of the coarse brown paper towel out of the dispenser on the wall and went to take care of some business. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t that bad. When you’d drunk as much as I had the past two years, a little puke wasn’t that big of a deal.

When I came back into the bathroom, Lucy was leaning over the bowl, hands on the toilet seat, her little body heaving. There were tear tracks down her face. But her crying was silent.

Even puking her guts out in the predawn hours, Lucy knew the rules. She was supposed to stay quiet. Because children weren’t allowed to live here.

“Rinse one more time,” I said when it finally stopped. “And let’s wash your hands.” Seeing her hands on a toilet seat shared by four guys gave me the willies.

Afterwards, I steered her back into the room. Fishing one of my clean t-shirts out of my dresser drawer, I said, “strip.” She yanked her P.J. top off, and I dropped the men’s size large over her little shoulders. The shirt hung past her knees.

“Lulu, the trash can is going to be right here, okay?” I set it beside her mattress. “Let’s try to get a little more sleep. Your stomach might leave you alone now.” Weary, I stretched out onto my bed.

Lucy sunk down onto her mattress and wrestled her covers. “Bridge?” Her voice was shaky.

I sat up quickly. “Do you need the bucket?”

In the dark, she swung her head from side to side. And then her small shoulders hunched over and I could hear her crying again.

“Come here.”

About one point five seconds later, she was in my bed, her skinny arms latched around my neck. I tucked her head under my chin, and began to think uncharitable thoughts. Namely:
For the love of God, don’t let me catch this flu
.
Because we will be so very screwed
.

As if we weren’t already.

“Shh,” I said. Because that’s what you say to a crying child when there’s no other comfort you can give. Her tears were beginning to soak through my t-shirt.

And then she opened her mouth and cut me in half. “I want
Mama
.”

Lucy hadn’t mentioned Mom for weeks. She was a smart little girl, who had followed me out of the only home she’d ever lived in without a backward glance. And I’d thought she was okay with it. But didn’t that just prove that I was an insensitive ass? She was
eight
. She wanted Mommy to hold her when she was ill. “Of course you do,” I whispered against the tightening of my throat.

Because you can’t help what your heart wants.

“We should tell her I’m sick,” Lucy muttered into my chest.

I waited for the familiar surge of anger I always felt when I thought about Mom. But instead of an anger tsunami, all I got was a sad little ripple. “It’s the middle of the night,” I explained, congratulating myself for providing a semi-logical excuse. Because I couldn’t tell Lucy the truth. That her mother was a drugged up bitch who didn’t give two shits about us.

The panicky, ill Lucy wanted to believe that Mom would somehow wake from her self-induced nightmare and pull herself together on account of a virus. But I knew she wouldn’t. And in the morning, Lucy would probably know it, too.

My sister fell asleep without saying anything more. But I just lay there, watching as the gray light crept in through the leaded windows. This year was just so fucking hard. And it wasn’t going to get any easier.

Being with Lucy wasn’t the hard part. I was thirteen years old when she was born — a surprise to my parents. But things were going well for my father’s plumbing business, and so we moved out of our apartment and into the little house on the outskirts of Harkness.

Because of Lucy, I’ve always been good with kids. I was the fifteen year old holding the toddler in the grocery store while my mother shopped. Lucy let my father teach her to tie her shoes, but she wanted me when it was time to take the training wheels off her bike. Her preschool graduation was on the same day as my high school graduation. There’s a picture somewhere of the two of us, both wearing caps and gowns.

She was easy company. Even at her worst — sick in the night — she wasn’t any trouble. But money was tight. Time was tight. And hiding her from everyone else was fucking killing me.

The stress monkeys began climbing around inside my head, swinging from problem to problem. Luckily, Lucy slept.

Chapter Seven:
The Monkey Nutter

—
Scarlet

When I saw Bridger again on Tuesday, he was pale and quiet. “Are you okay?” I asked him during Calculus.

“I feel off,” he said. “Though it might be nothing.”

But then, after music theory, he was still looking peaked. “I don’t think I can do lunch,” he said. “My head is killing me.”

“I have ibuprofen in my room,” I offered. “Do you want a couple?”

He sighed. “You know, that would be great.”

Bridger climbed the Vanderberg stairs at half his usual speed. He sat on my bed, and I brought him a cup of water and two pills. “You look exhausted,” I said as he swallowed them. “If you put your head down for a few minutes, I promise not to jump you.”

His smile was weak. “I shouldn’t be here, Scarlet. There’s a 24-hour bug going around. I wouldn’t want you to catch it. Christ…” his eyes closed. Even as I watched, he grew paler. “Fuck a duck,” he said. Then he stood up and strode purposely out of the room. I heard the bathroom door open and shut. He didn’t return right away, although I heard the plumbing groan as he flushed the toilet a couple of times.

Eventually, he walked slowly back into the room, his face a gray color.

“You poor thing,” I said. “Is there anything I can get you?”

He shook his head. “I have to go.”

“Okay,” I said. “But you don’t look like somebody who’s ready to dash out of here. Give yourself a minute.”

He nodded, miserable. “I’ll just rest for a sec.” He slumped onto my bed, his head at the wrong end, his knees tucked up as if someone had punched him in the gut. He was the picture of misery.

“I’ll be out here if you need anything,” I said, taking my laptop into the common room.

Our suite was quiet that afternoon. So when Bridger began to snore, I could hear him. I lost myself in some research for my history paper until his watch began to beep. But unlike every other time, he didn’t shut it off. I got up and tiptoed to the threshold of the bedroom. He lay there asleep, his strong chest rising and falling while the timer complained.

There was no way that boy was going to make it to work — not in that state. I just couldn’t make myself wake him. And as I stood there hesitating, the alarm gave up too, silencing itself.

I went back to my homework. But thirty minutes later there was a groan from the bedroom. I heard a rustle, and then Bridger sprinted through the common room and into the bathroom again. Once more came the probable sounds of abdominal dismay, the flushing and washing and spitting. When he came back in, I opened my mouth to ask him if there was anything I could do. But that’s when he looked at his watch. “Shit!” he cursed. He stumbled back into my bedroom and fumbled with his backpack.

“Bridger,” I started. “You can’t go to work like that.” I stood in the doorway watching him saddle up. “Your hands are shaking.”

“No choice,” he said. He rose to his feet unsteadily.

When he came to the door, I was in his way. Putting my hands on his chest, I made him look me in the eye. “Stop,” I said. “Give yourself a break.”

“Let me go, Scarlet.” The cold sound in his voice was nothing I’d heard before. “I’m so very late, and it’s not okay. I have to run.
Literally
.”

Chastened, I moved out of the way. “Can I drop you anywhere at least? My car is just across Chapel.” I didn’t expect him to take me up on it. But I had to offer, if it was so effing crucial that he get to work. I’m the one who let his alarm go off without waking him.

He surprised me. “Could you? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

I grabbed my keys off the desk and plucked my coat off the chair. “Let’s go.”

“
This
is your car?” Bridger asked.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“You drive a brand new Porsche Cayenne with a turbo engine? In Harkness?”

“Sure,” I said, my voice testy. “But only if you tell me where to drive it.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Make a right.
Please
.”

The tone he took made me want to cry.
He’s just grumpy because he’s sick
, I coached myself.
And stressed out about work
.

There was no way for me to explain to Bridger that the car was just another farce in my life. I’d overheard my parents’ lawyer advising them to put assets in my name. In New Hampshire, I’d driven an aging Toyota Camry. But when my mother told me which car they’d picked out for me to keep at school, I wasn’t exactly shocked. The Porsche was a way for them to hide something like seventy thousand dollars from the families who would eventually sue my father in civil court.

I could either explain this to Bridger, or merely let him think I was ridiculously wealthy and out of touch.

Is it all that surprising that I chose the latter?

Bridger’s face was still a ghostly color as he directed me toward a distant corner of town. We were in a residential area, where old wooden houses sat close together. Some of their porches sagged under the weight of time, while others had been spiffed up within the last century.

“Just let me out here, thanks,” Bridger said stiffly.

“Bridge, there’s nothing
here
,” I complained. “Except these houses. And that school.”