He’s too small for an adult one and guesses they didn’t want to give him one with kid patterns because he’s a criminal. He’s trouble. They don’t want to see him as a child.
‘Do you know where my brother is?’
‘Sleeping in the waiting room around the corner. Do you want me to fetch him?’
‘When is—’
There’s a slight scuffle at the entrance to Sam’s room and a jumble of tense whispers. The nurse frowns and pushes past the curtain around Sam’s bed to see. He curls tighter into a ball. Every sound, every scrape, every crisp tap of shoe on the floor, makes him think they’re coming for him. His lips move to ask the nurse to get Avery, but she’s too far away and he’s too hollowed out to do more than whisper.
‘Excuse me, but you can’t be in here.’
Sam tenses.
‘But it says family, right? I’m family.’
‘Uh. You look nothing like—’
‘Oh, just five minutes. I’ve run across the entire city to find him. Please.’
Sam’s fists clench around the blankets and he struggles upright, a cry on his lips – a desperate, pleading cry.
Let me see her.
A whimper escapes instead, but the curtain shoves back and Moxie De Lainey appears.
It’s a fist to Sam’s already pulverised stomach. He isn’t sure if he wants to hide or fling his arms around her neck or sob his heart out.
‘Thank God.’ Moxie skids to a stop at the end of his bed. ‘Sam.’
His name is a sob, a prayer, an accusation all at once.
She looks frazzled, her hair loose and dishevelled, her shirt damp with sweat – like she truly did run across the world to find him. For a minute she just sucks in air and her eyes devour Sam and he thinks maybe maybe maybe he will keep it together.
But then she frowns and her mouth punches out words that tear him to pieces.
‘How could you?’
He shrinks against the pillows.
‘Was it all true?’ Moxie’s fingers tighten around the end of the bed frame. ‘What you did? I figured out your parents are abusive assholes and you had to run away, but it’s actually more than that. It’s you—’ She stops.
It’s you who’s the monster.
He wants to say sorry but he knows it’s pitiful and nowhere near enough.
Slowly, like she doesn’t want to, she sits on the very corner of his bed. An ocean away. ‘We looked everywhere. We were out till dawn just driving up and down the coast. I was so scared.’
‘Moxie.’ His voice cracks on every letter.
She lays her hands in her lap. Doesn’t look at him. ‘I told my dad everything. I should’ve done that a long time ago.’
She thinks the whole summer was a mistake.
Sam pulls the blanket up to his chin and buries his face. He wants to curl under it completely, disappear. He grips this world with two fingertips and he’s tired and he hurt everyone and he should just let go.
Her voice is tight. ‘Dad said he could’ve helped.’
Too late now.
‘He couldn’t.’ Sam’s heart punches holes in his chest. ‘The police have looked for me for a y-year and your dad would’ve had to hand me over—’
‘What? And you don’t deserve to be caught? Like because you beat someone up for a “good reason” that makes it all right?’ She whips to face him, a blaze that scalds his soul. ‘You need serious help.’
What he hears is,
You can never be forgiven for that.
He knows. Look what he did. Look at his hands. Look at his eyes, carved with lines of violence and crime.
She slips a phone from her pocket. ‘I’m calling Dad and he can—’
‘No.’
Moxie looks at him.
Sam’s mouth is cotton and ash. ‘I don’t – I don’t … you should just go.’
Her jaw trembles. ‘Seriously? You’re going to be like that?’
‘I don’t need your help,’ Sam whispers, cutting his heart out in bloody strips. ‘Just leave it, OK? My brother’s here and you could get into a lot of trouble for … you know, sheltering a criminal.’ He already has to bury mountains in his pockets to try and keep Avery’s name clean in this.
Avery. Avery. Avery.
All waif and damp eyes and fluttering fingers.
‘And your brother?’ Moxie says, stiff now. ‘I passed him sleeping in the waiting room when I came in. How is he going to help you? You said he needs help.’
He does.
‘We’ll be fine.’ Sam rubs his knuckles over his eyes.
‘You know Griffin’s family is pressing charges, right?’ Moxie folds her arms, phone tucked against the crook of her elbow. But at least she didn’t call anyone. ‘Not that I didn’t feel like punching him too – but you were way, way overboard. And then … then what even happened?’
Sam feels sick. ‘I got stabbed.’
Moxie’s eyes widen. For a second she looks like she’ll puncture the distance between them and take him in her arms. But she doesn’t. ‘What? By who?’
Sam closes his eyes. He couldn’t tell her, even if Avery hadn’t already said to keep his mouth shut until they get a lawyer.
‘Someone who hit Avery.’ Sam rubs his eyes again. They keep filling up. He’s so soft.
The trick is to not be so soft.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so so sorry.’
Moxie backhands her eyes furiously. ‘I know Griffin hit you first. But … Sam, you scare me.’
He scares Avery too. He scares himself.
I want to stop, he could scream. I don’t want this to be my forever.
But instead, he tugs threads of the blanket and wishes there was a way to say sorry. It took golden thread and squares of cloth and a box of caramel chocolates last time. This is infinitely worse.
He’ll need a ladder into space and a bucket to collect sunbeams so he can stitch her a dress with his bruised, broken fingers. And even then, would it be enough?
‘I don’t want you—’ she begins, but cuts off as three adults stride into the room.
Sam knows she hadn’t finished the sentence, but all that repeats in his brain with razor barbs is I don’t want you—