“All right. Touchy touchy.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at Raleigh, anyway?”
Zander assesses me coolly. “Not unless the powers that be are now expecting us to attend that shithole during the Christmas break.”
“So you thought you’d blast the most offensive music I own as loud as you could, just to really piss off the neighbors?” I grumble.
“It’s six forty-five in the morning. There won’t be anyone downstairs for another two hours. At least that’s what you told me last night. I thought some upbeat tunes might help you wake up in a good mood. Gotta say, you’ve rudely dashed my hopes. And you used to be such a morning person.”
That is a blatant lie. Back in Denney, the juvenile detention center where Zander and I met, I was a walking zombie until I’d managed to bribe one of the screws into giving me a double serving of coffee. And Zander just said it himself: he sat and watched me put away a bottle of tequila last night. He knew full well I was going to have a sore head this morning. I calculate the energy it’ll require to twist around and thump him squarely in the jaw, but then decide the satisfaction of hearing him yelp isn’t worth it. “Help me up. I need a cold shower. Then I’ll be able to take the bike—”
“It’s too dangerous to ride, man. Fuck! It’s like an ice rink out there. And anyway, I took your keys off you last night.”
“You’re gonna give them back.”
“I’m not, actually. Friends don’t let friends do stupid shit.”
This time, I don’t bother to do the math. I spin on him and launch my fist into his side, grinding my teeth together as I make contact. Zander huffs out a winded breath, his silk robe slipping off his tattooed shoulders as he doubles over, groaning.
“Do I need to ask again?” I snap.
“No, no,” he wheezes, his eyes rolling up into his head. “That should do the trick.”
3
SILVER
It’s amazing how many times a person can stave off death and still not feel like they deserve to live. Every morning, I wake up with the same question burning in my mind: Why? Why me? Why have I escaped death, when there have been so many times I could easily have bitten it.
Leon Wickman’s Spring Fling party.
The shooting at school.
Being kidnapped and hung from the rafters of the Raleigh High gymnasium roof.
Eighteen people died at Raleigh the day Leon decided enough was enough. Eighteen. Sarah Gilbert did charity work every weekend. Charisma Wells spent last summer in Ghana, teaching English to children in poverty stricken remote villages. Lawrence Harding was one of the smartest kids in school. He’d already scored himself a full ride at Duke. He was going to be a doctor. Chances were he was going to cure cancer or something, but his bright and promising future was snuffed out with the simple compression of a random fucking trigger.
I’m nothing special. I’m averagely smart. On a good day, I’d say I’m not too hard on the eyes, but the world sure as hell isn’t going to change for the better because I’m not hideous. I won’t grow up to make the world a better place because I am in it.
So…why? How have I survived so many disasters and dangerous situations, when there are innocent eleven-year-old kids bleeding to death in the back of cars with five-star safety ratings?
Careful, Silver. Don’t fall. Don’t slip down that rocky slope. Don’t imagine his face. Don’t imagine his pain. Don’t imagine his fear. You won’t survive that.
The only thing frightening or shocking enough to pull me back from the brink of the dark precipice yawning open in my mind is the face of the boy who raped me. Sick that I have to resort to picturing him, but it works. The moment his smug, cruel smile flits through my mind, I shut it down, all of it—every tender and aching thought that’s been swirling around the inside of my head for what feels like an eon.
I’m left standing in my room, hovering in front of the full-length mirror by my bathroom door, staring at a black dress in my hands. God knows how long I’ve been clutching it to my stomach. God knows how long I’ve been standing here in my underwear, hip bones jutting out a little too far, face a little thinner than it ought to be, drowning in thoughts of death and misery.
I’m a sight to behold. Day by day, my body’s been repairing itself from the litany of injuries Jake inflicted upon me…but I’m far from healed. The sickly pale ghosts of my bruises still linger, a myriad of unsettling colors that stubbornly will not fade no matter how much arnica I slather on them. My ribs protest violently whenever I cough, sneeze, or breathe too deeply. I can’t laugh without having to double over and grit my teeth while I ride out the pain. Not that I’ve had to do that over the past week, of course. There hasn’t been much to laugh about.
I shake out the dress in my hands, stepping into the fabric and pulling it up my body, eager to cover up all of the marks and blemishes that still mar my skin. If I can’t see them, I can pretend they aren’t there. If I can pretend they’re not there, then I can pretend none of it ever happ—
“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“Jesus Christ!” I slap my hand to my chest, bracing myself against my chest of drawers. “Dad! Quit sneaking! You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”
My father stands in the doorway, dressed in a formal black button-down shirt and heavily pressed suit pants. The thin black tie knotted around his throat shirt looks like it’s trying to strangle him. He’s never exactly been tan, but his cheeks usually hold a little more color than they do right now. At his feet, Nipper sits, his black coat scruffy and wiry, his dark eyes sad. He whines softly as he gets up and limps across my room, giving my foot a little lick with his raspy pink tongue. Like me, he’s recovering from his ordeal with Jake, but he will probably bear the scars of his injuries for the rest of his life.
“I sang Sweet Home Alabama all the way up the stairs to let you know I was coming. You were in your own little world,” Dad says.
Jeez. Poor guy. He could have been blowing into a tuba and banging a drum as he approached my room and I probably wouldn’t have heard him. The world’s been slipping away a lot recently. “I don’t think it’s right, you two heading over there on your own. I think I should come with you,” he says, propping himself up against the door jamb. He looks like he dressed accordingly this morning, just in case.
I huff down my nose, trying to smile and failing miserably. Reflected in the mirror, my face looks comically contorted. If this is the best I can do at forging a simple smile, then it’s a good job I never wanted to pursue a career in acting.
“Stay here, Dad. Get some work done. I feel bad that you haven’t been able to make any progress on the book in, well, weeks now.”
“Book? What book? Fuck the book.” He laughs quietly. “This is big, Sil. You’re so grown up, way too grown up, but this is bigger than you. It’s definitely bigger than Alex. Maybe…I don’t know. Maybe having me there will help.”
My eyes prick, burning the way they’ve been burning for the past week, every time I think about the knock on the door that echoed through Alex’s apartment. I’m barely holding onto the strands of my sanity right now. I’ve unwittingly found myself participating in an unwinnable game of tug-of-war, and every second I have to fight to keep my hands wrapped around the rope, to keep pulling, to drag myself back over an imaginary line in the sand, where I might be able to think and breathe and exist without feeling like I have a knife plunged into the fragile meat of my heart.