My heart drops clear out of my body. I’ve never heard a parent talk to their child this way, with actual hatred.
Hunter turns and glowers at his stepdad. “Get out of my room.”
“Your room?” his stepdad demands, lifting dark, bushy eyebrows. “You own this house now? You paying the bills?”
“I could say the same to you,” Hunter fires back, still glaring. “My mom pays the bills, not you. Now, get out of my room.”
That infuriates the man, and he steps across the threshold. “You little fucking smartass. You think you’re real funny, don’t you?”
Finally, Hunter’s mom appears in the doorway. “Just stop it, Dennis. Just stop. Hunter has a friend over, leave them alone.”
My cheeks burn when they look over at me. I’ve tried to make myself as small as possible to avoid notice, and I’m hugging my backpack in front of me like a protective shield.
“Stop it,” his mother says again, her eyes pleading as she looks up at her awful husband.
“Someone needs to teach this boy some fucking manners,” he says, pointing in Hunter’s direction.
Venus nods in a placating manner and approaches her husband, giving him sort of a sideways hug and trying to pull him back out of the room. “Come on. We’ll talk to him later. Come on, leave them alone.”
Hunter’s stepfather remains where he is for a minute, staring Hunter down, then he finally backs out of the room. Hunter’s mom ducks her head back in, saying, “I’m so sorry about that,” to me.
I get the feeling she’s used to apologizing for her husband. I get the feeling this sort of thing isn’t a rare occurrence.
As desperately as I want to leave, I feel cemented to the spot. I can leave and escape this mess, but Hunter can’t, and that’s all I can think about.
I don’t know what to do. I want to tell Hunter he can leave, that he can come back to my house if he doesn’t feel safe here. We might have a “no boys allowed” rule, but this goes way beyond that.
Hunter isn’t safe, and that’s not okay.
Awkwardness hangs heavy in the air around us, but when I finally gather enough courage to look over at Hunter, he must feel it, because his gaze swings to mine.
“You can come to my house, if you want to,” I offer. “Me and my mom aren’t doing anything tonight. We can finish our homework there. My mom will make us some dinner, and then we might watch a movie. It would give your mom some privacy to deal with all this.”
For a moment, he looks tempted, but then his gaze drifts back to the door and I can practically feel the weight of responsibility holding him hostage here. “I can’t,” he finally says. “I have to stay and make sure he doesn’t hurt her.”
I know it’s his choice, but I want to force him to come with me. “I’m afraid you’re not safe here, Hunter. I… I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’ll be fine,” he assures me, that same hard-edged defensiveness I saw on the bridge starting to rise up all around him. “I can handle myself.”
“He’s a grown man, Hunter, he could really hurt you. Clearly, he has anger issues or something, and your mom didn’t protect you, she just distracted him.”
His gaze whips back to me angrily, protectively. “She’s handling it, okay? Just back off.”
I shrink back, nodding my head and glancing at his desk to make sure I didn’t forget anything. All that’s left of mine is my copy of Hunger Games, but I leave that for him to read. “All right. Fine,” I say, since I can’t make him leave with me. “I have to go home.”
He doesn’t say anything right away, just lets me walk toward his door to leave. Before I make it out to the hall, though, he calls out, “Riley.”
I stop and look back at him. “Yeah?”
“Remember, you promised you wouldn’t say anything.”
There’s a sort of desperate vulnerability in his gaze that I would bet isn’t there often.
He’s afraid I’ll betray his confidence, but I’m afraid I’ve betrayed him more by making that promise in the first place.
Swallowing down a lump of dread in my throat, I nod my head in acknowledgment. Then, without another word, I escape Hunter’s vicious mansion and practically run back to my small, safe home.
Chapter Three
Days pass like they always do, but now I’m worried about Hunter and I have no way of knowing whether or not things are changing for him. He insists his mother is handling the situation and kicking his stepdad out, but that’s not how it looked to me.
All I want is for him to run up to me the next day at school and assure me his mom has kicked his stepdad out and that vile, awful man won’t be around anymore. I want the problem to go away so I don’t have to keep thinking about that stupid, thoughtless promise I made not to tell Hunter’s secret.
A secret like this shouldn’t be kept.
When someone is getting hurt, when someone is in danger…
Someone needs to intervene, and I’m worried Hunter’s mom isn’t going to.
He still has faith in her though, so maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I hope next time I see him, that weight will be off his shoulders and I won’t have to feel terrible about keeping my mouth shut about his dysfunctional home life.
Over the next few days, though, Hunter doesn’t say a single word to me. I try to catch his eye a couple times in class or in the cafeteria, but it’s like I don’t exist again.
I don’t know if I like that he has that power. I don’t know if I like that he dictates whether or not I exist on a whim, that he can show me attention and fill me up with butterflies and nervous energy, or he can ignore me right out of existence. What’s worse is I don’t know why he does it. Is it because he’s afraid of what I know about him? Or is it just because he’s a jerk?
I spend entirely too much time thinking about it, and clearly he spends no time at all thinking about me.
Thursday at lunch, I’m sitting where I always sit, in the cafeteria on the emptier side of one of the long tables with my best friend, Sara. Since we became friends in first grade, the only time we don’t sit together is when one of us is out sick. Sara misses more school than I do, so normally I’m the one who ends up alone, but today both of us stare wistfully at the cool table.
Sara, because she has a massive crush on one of the basketball players, Wally Kazinsky. Me, because, well, that’s where Hunter sits. I’m not saying I have a crush on Hunter, but I’m definitely preoccupied by him.
“You know how you can just tell that some guys will be really handsome older men?” Sara asks suddenly.
I glance over at her in question.
Nodding decisively, she says, “You can just tell Wally will be so handsome when he gets older. I mean, he’s so handsome now, but he always will be. You can just tell.”
I adore Sara, but I don’t understand why she likes Wally so much. He hardly knows she exists, and not in the way Hunter sort of pretends I don’t exist—I doubt Wally even knows her name.
I’ve also heard about her obsession with him for so long, I struggle to show continued interest in her repeated Wally talking points. “Yeah, probably,” I offer, glancing down and picking at the offerings on my plate. Some cold fries and a truly mediocre chicken patty sandwich.