To be fair, it was a terrible explanation and an even worse apology and he doesn’t think a bobbin is really going to fix this. But he has to try. He doesn’t have anything to lose.
He doesn’t have anything.
His shoulders ache for his backpack. He rubs a thumb over bruised knuckles on his right hand and wishes he’d done more to Vin.
No. You’re not allowed to think about Vin. Or how you scared Avery so much he stayed.
Sam needs to get himself together, get Avery someplace safe – a home. They need their own home. How much longer can he dream about this before he suffocates?
Sweat soaks the neck of Sam’s T-shirt and the sun raps an unfailing rhythm on his shoulders. His borrowed shirt is too tight and his undone shoelaces are still coated in glitter.
This can’t go well.
He formulates a different apology to a lamppost that sounds like, ‘Hey Moxie, I’m not a creep, I swear,’ which is exactly what a creep would say.
He’s so screwed.
He sits in the gutter in front of the De Lainey house, fiddling with the yellow thread. Behind him the house is awake with alternating peals of laughter and shrieks. Moxie shouts, ‘EAT YOUR PEAS’ and there’s a wet thwap of, presumably, peas hitting the floor.
Has Moxie told her family about catching him in the office? It’s been over a week and he’s been in and out of a few stale houses. He didn’t take a single key. He feels sick whenever he sees them now. He should hurry up and knock before the De Lainey brothers get home and beat the holy hell out of him.
Get up, you spineless coward.
He picks himself out of the gutter, dirt and gravel sticking to his jeans, and forces himself to the front door. His fingers curl to knock and then hesitate. From behind the door come strains of the TV and then the whir of the sewing machine.
He knocks.
His heart stutters.
The sewing machine shuts off and there’s a muffled growl of, ‘If those girls are fake-knocking again, I’m going to turn Dash into an Elven mop—’
Then the door rips open and she’s right there, all long tanned legs and wrists full of hair ties, in a patchwork shirt of rusty orange.
Sam awkwardly holds out the thread. It’s so tiny. He’s such an idiot.
Confusion fades from her face and fury washes down. Betrayal stings in her eyes and her lips part, but she hesitates like she doesn’t know what to scream at this boy who hid in her house.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam says.
Moxie slams the door in his face.
OK.
Well, that’s fair. He deserves that.
He hesitates a second, rocks on his heels, and then leaves the spool of thread on the welcome mat. His feet march him away on autopilot, which is good because his anxiously hoarded courage is gone. He feels weak and sick and like the most filthy, pathetic worm to ever crawl the earth.
He’s reached the gate just as the jeep pulls into the driveway. Boys covered in concrete dust vault out. Doors slam.
‘Hey, is that Sammy?’
He can’t do this. He doesn’t want to be hit.
Sam rips around the front gate, his shirt catching and tearing on the latch.
‘Sam, wait!’ One of the twins strides around the rosebushes.
Sam runs.
He’s fast fast fast and when he glances over his shoulder, Jeremy stands in front of his house, one hand shading his eyes as he stares after Sam’s flying legs.
Sam’s stupid to come back.
It doesn’t occur to him until he’s three streets away, that Jeremy’s face was puzzled, not angry. That his fists weren’t raised. That maybe he wanted to talk, not to hit.
He can’t go back to Avery. Or the De Laineys’. And the last empty house he broke into made him feel like the air has been crushed out of his lungs.
He’s tired. He’s so, so tired.
He ends up outside Aunt Karen’s crumbling little house, made of whitewashed bricks and a leaky roof, pea-green curtains hiding sparse furniture. He scuffs the toe of his shoes against the letterbox again and again while he waits for her car to pull into the driveway. It’s nearly five. She knocks off from the petrol station around now.
She used to.
He hasn’t been back in over a year.
A blue station wagon rattles into the driveway and Aunt Karen gets out. She’s fighting with the name badge pinned to her shirt and doesn’t see him. Instead she rips out the pin and circles the boot of the car, jerking at the sticky lock until it pops. She’s dyed her hair lighter, but her throat still sports loud jewellery and the frown lines are the same.
Her fingers close around shopping bags before she sees him.
For a second they just stare at each other, her eyes narrowing and his widening. Like maybe he can make himself look younger, innocent, sorry.
What should he say? I’m so out of options and I’m so tired of screwing up, that I came back?
He forces his feet forward. ‘Hey, Aunt Karen.’
She gives her head a little shake, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. The hems of her black slacks are frayed and her grocery bags are pitifully light. Tuna, it looks like, powdered milk and rye crackers.
‘Are you in more trouble?’ Her voice is as sharp as the tins rattling in her grocery bags. ‘Are the police chasing you?’
Well, obviously. They haven’t caught up with him from last year at school when he … he can’t think about it.
‘I’m not being followed,’ Sam says, ‘if that’s what you mean.’
He thinks of doorknobs, unscrewed like puzzle pieces on the tiles, and Avery’s brightly proud smile over what he’s done.
He thinks of sprawling over the scratchy carpet with homework drenched in red crosses.
He thinks of curling up at the foot of Avery’s bed because he’d wet his and he was too old for that and neither of them wanted to wake up Aunt Karen and ask for help and get punished.
‘Where’s Avery?’ Aunt Karen says.
‘Living with some people …’ Sam leans forward and takes a shopping bag from her. She lets him. ‘He’s OK.’ No, he’s not. ‘He, um, works a real job. With a mechanic.’ A lie now.
‘I never threw him out, you know.’ Aunt Karen folds her skinny arms. ‘Just you.’
Sam looks down. His shoelaces are undone. Perpetually.
‘If he needs to come back, I’ll do something about him.’