But if he doesn’t move
if he doesn’t breathe too deeply
he might be OK.
A bus arrives and he gets on behind a group of struggling shoppers who are tangled in bags of baguettes and tinned tuna. No one notices Sam. He leans his head against the window and closes his eyes. Obviously he should go steal another house. But he’s not staked anything out. It could take for ever to find one. And he hurts.
He hurts too much to pick a lock.
He hurts too much to rob a family.
He hurts too much to breathe.
If he goes to hospital, they’ll get his name, his details, call his aunt, call the police – he can’t. If he goes back to the mechanic’s, Avery’s boss will ask questions. If he goes back to the De Laineys’—
What is he thinking? That’s not an option. One stolen day doesn’t equal him crawling on to their doorstop looking like he ran through a cheese grater. He doesn’t even know them. They don’t know him.
They wouldn’t want to know him.
He puts a hand to his side and his skin feels hot and tight and ragged.
Yet somehow, probably because the pain is screwing with his common sense, he ends up back in front of the butter-yellow house.
He leans against their fence, hidden behind thorny rosebushes, and watches the occasional figure move behind the windows. A battered jeep sits in the driveway and the sound of the TV spills out of the open windows. Sam can’t just sneak back in. He doesn’t even have his backpack since it’s still at the mechanic’s. A small pang presses against his chest as he realises Avery might go through it without him around. Please no.
His backpack is proof he’s just as screwed up as Avery. Worse. If you count how he hits things.
He wonders if Moxie is back. If she recognised him. If Toby is really all right.
He can’t just go in. Unless …
Unless he says he’s Moxie’s friend.
Or Jeremy’s.
Depends on who’s asking.
Pain and desperation eat up his sense and he slips through the front gate. He finds a tap around the side of the house and splashes water on his face. Nothing to do about the gravel burn on his cheek, but at least the first thing they see won’t be blood. He has to come up with a story. He … fell? Good one, Sam. No one will see through that.
He shakes water out of his eyes and slowly walks up the front steps.
It’s all in the body language, Sam realised a long time ago. You want to con someone? Be confident. Act like you’re supposed to be there, like you know what you’re doing, like your hand is supposed to be slipping down their bag, their pocket.
So Sam walks on to the De Lainey veranda like he belongs. Like they’re expecting him. It hurts to stand straight, but he’ll do it.
The front door is already open. He raps knuckles on the doorframe.
A hand shoots up from the sofa and waves vaguely. ‘Come in,’ says a tired voice. ‘Unless you’re an axe murderer. Then stay out or whatever.’
‘Wow, Jeremy. That was convincing. No axe murderers will come in now.’
There’s a muffled thump and yelp and a body falls off the sofa.
Sam steps in, muscles coiled. ‘It’s Sam.’
Jeremy’s head pops up from behind the sofa. A soft grin spreads across his face. ‘Hey, Sammy! Here for Moxie?’
Sam comes in a little further. One step. Two. He’s committed now, isn’t he?
‘I just came to pick up my clothes.’ It tumbles out of his mouth in a rush and it’s a solid excuse.
‘Oh, right.’ Jeremy flops back down. Perfect. He can’t see Sam at all now. ‘I thought it was weird you forgot them.’
Please don’t notice I’m still wearing your shirt.
‘Moxie is out,’ Jack says. He appears to be lying on the floor, eyes still on the TV. ‘Dad’s bribing her with gelato. Favouritism.’
‘They’ll be back soon, though,’ Jeremy adds. ‘Make yourself at home.’ He nudges Jack’s head with his foot and his whisper isn’t so subtle. ‘How did our little sister make a friend?’
‘Weirder things have happened.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like your face.’
‘Dude, you’re literally insulting your own face right now.’
Another muffled thump and yowl.
Sam realises they don’t know what happened to Toby. It’s been an hour, maybe two, and Moxie hasn’t returned. Maybe Toby is actually hurt? Maybe Sam thought he looked OK but what if there’s a broken little De Lainey boy in a hospital somewhere and it’s Sam’s fault because he didn’t move fast enough he didn’t help he didn’t he—
He closes his eyes so tight they burn.
He slips towards the staircase. He takes them two at a time and ducks behind a corner as Grady, headphones on, jerks a vacuum cleaner into a bedroom and kicks the door shut. The roar of the vacuum covers Sam snatching a nondescript black tee off the floor and then shutting himself in the bathroom. His heart rabbits so fast he can scarcely think. What the hell is he doing? He can’t just … he can’t be doing this.
But he is.
The De Lainey bathroom is in that strange limbo land where someone obviously just vacuumed the floor but didn’t actually tidy. Piles of dirty clothes spill out of a hamper and rows of shampoo bottles have been carefully cleaned around without disturbing them. Buckets of bath toys block the way to the sink. Sam has to stand half in a pirate ship while he peels off his shirt and sponges down his side. There’s antiseptic under the sink and he splashes it liberally on the sponge.
He presses that to his side
and nearly passes out.
For a second he doesn’t know if he’ll hold in the scream. He shoves the clean T-shirt in his mouth and bites hard. When is he going to grow some freaking brains? He pulls away the antiseptic sponge and gazes blearily at the damage. He’s scraped raw from the bottom of his rib cage down past his hip. His face has a palm-sized scrape over it and his arms are flayed from elbow to wrist where he twisted to hit the road. Like the glorious idiot he is.
In summary, half of Sammy Lou still clings to the bitumen downtown.
He keeps the shirt shoved in his mouth, and pours antiseptic on the rest of the wounds. He closes his eyes but tears still sheet down his cheeks.
The vacuum shuts off.
Sam slides the fresh shirt on over his feverishly shaking body. He stuffs the bloodied sponge in the bin and then waits with sick agony for his cover to be blown.