XII

Mom doesn’t have a job, she never though she needed to get one, so I don’t have any solid or logical explanation for why she starts to spend less and less time at the house. Dad, however, told me he was taking more hours to volunteer around the region, and for that I don’t harbour any hatred for him.

Mom, however, is a very different story.

A few days have passed, and the week has come to its end and Saturday night finds me pushing my microwave rice across my plate as I browse websites for a gala dress, since apparently Ethan requires me to go now. And because Mayor Smythe hasn’t cancelled it. Each one is further and further out of my price range, and seeing as I don’t have any money to my name right now and the public pool isn’t open so I won’t have any money until June, I won’t be going to the gala.

It’s not like Ethan invited me anyways.

I place my phone onto the table and hang my head in my hands. Why can’t things just be easier?

I throw out my untouched dinner and stalk upstairs to Ava’s room: Mom can’t interrupt me this time, and that’s the one thing I’m thankful for right now. Ava’s room remains untouched from the night I stole two granola bars; there are still my fingerprints on her bedside table where I swept up some of the dust, the comforter is slightly disturbed from where I put my hand on it while I rooted under her bed, and her fan still remains running.

It’s a small reassurance that Mom is still too afraid to take the next step. I have a bit more time then.

I sit down on the foot of Ava’s bed and lean back. Then something crinkles under my weight. Something that sounds a lot like paper.

I put my hand on it, and sure enough what must be paper rustles under my hand. I’m immediately off my feet and tearing the comforter away. Nothing. So I tear the sheets away. Still nothing. But after I unloop the fitted sheet, there it is: the paper all scrunched from my weight lays otherwise undisturbed on her bed.

Snatching it up, I turn it over. In what I know is Ava’s messy scrawl it says: ‘Stop looking, Charlotte’.

I drop the page back onto the bed and stumble back a few steps. My heart thurms in my chest, and I think my knees might just give way. Then an idea comes to mind and I’m digging through her dresser and sure enough there’s another paper saying the same thing tucked under one of her wool sweaters.

There’s another one in her pillow case.

Another folded in the pages of one of the books on her bookshelf.

Another taped on the underside of her desk.

Frantically, I lay all four out on Ava’s floor. ‘Stop looking, Charlotte,’ they tell me, ‘stop looking, Charlotte,’ Ava tells me.

This isn’t the first sign Ava doesn’t want to be found, I’m not that thick. Taking our car and my keys, and taking my license, and taking my money. She’s made herself an impossible find to the point that I shouldn’t want to try, maybe that’s why she did that. But she wrote these notes for me because she’s my sister, and she knows me better than to think that taking the material items would also take my will and reserve. She wrote these letters as a final means of telling me: it’s for good, just give up, I don’t want to be found.

This is her goodbye? Do I have to say goodbye to her now? I don’t want to, and she can’t make me. But through the printer paper on her floor, she can ask me too.

I back up until my back hits the edge of her bed and I can’t get any further from them. From her parting words.

For a flash of a moment, I can’t control my voice and I sob, and after that I can’t control anything. I cry as the paper’s words seem to blur beneath the blinding tears rolling down my cheeks. I choke out sobs to the point I gag. I shudder until I’ve strained my muscles. I shake until I’m too tired to do it anymore.

Is this her goodbye? Don’t make me say goodbye.

Around me, her room is a mess from my time searching for her notes: there’s clothing I’ve thrown throughout the room, her bed is completely unmade, and the books and notebooks from her bookcase have made new homes in all the corners of the room.

In the midst of the mess, I mirror the room’s look.

Then, when I finally think the sobs have ebbed, the doorbell rings and I choke at the thought of having to face someone right now.

Go away, I want to scream, go away and never come back!

But the ringing persists and I can’t ignore the chime of the doorbell forever. It’ll drive me crazy if it keeps going, well, more crazy I guess would be the right way to put it.

Still, as I stumble out of Ava’s room and down the stairs, resting more of my weight on the railing than I care to admit, I wonder what I’ll say when I open the door. First off, I need to know who it is. I’ll not tell Amelia to go away, but if it’s Ethan it might be a different story. He doesn’t need to see me cry and nor do I want him to see me cry, least of all this kind of crying. The soul raking, heart-shattering kind that would make me feel bad for the worst people if I watched them hurt this way.

“Stop ringing the bell!” I yell as I reach the last step of the stairs. “I’m coming!”

I unlock the door with a twist of my wrist and tear the door open, ready to give the person on the other side a piece of my mind. I falter, however, when I see the person who stands on my porch, clearly having cried the same way I’ve been.

“Blake?” I ask, reaching my arms forwards and grabbing his bicep. Worries gone, sortched sensation of my eyes forgotten, heartache no more, I touch his cheek and he pulls back, and just as I suspected, there’s a red handprint on the side of his face. “C’mon inside.” I move my hand from his arm to his hand and pull him inside my house.

For once, I thank Mom for not being home.

He takes my welcoming words and runs with them, kicking off his muddied running shoes, he walks to the living room and lands heavily down on the couch. I trail after him as if this was his home and I’m the unwelcomed one.

From the edge of the room I ask, “What happened?”

Blake leans his upper-body forwards and shuts his eyes so tight I imagine even the harsh light of the LED table lamps don’t make it to his sight. “Noah and I had a fight.”

I heave a breath. “Blake,” I sigh, “let me help you. Tell me, please.”

Sitting on the couch next to him, I don’t reach out for his hand. I don’t put my hands anywhere near him, I can’t do that knowing the handprint on his face started back at me.

His lips distort and I wonder if he’s going to tell me off, that it’s none of my business when we both know it certainly is now that he’s shown up at my house hurt and crying. “I don’t even know how we got arguing but Noah and I were arguing about something and I mentioned you and Ava⸺it’s a touchy thing with him and I knew that⸺so he stormed off.”

The red mark, Blake, what’s that from? Tell me, please. I bite my tongue and let him guide the conversation.

“He went to my parents and I thought he was going to tell them I’m hanging out with you and Ethan since my mom can’t stand yours but he didn’t.” His voice, which is oddly level, is roughened by crying, and is deepened by the burden which he carries. “He didn’t mention you or Ava.”

For a moment I worry he’s going to be sick as his body sways forwards and backwards.

Then he finishes this though, he says, “Noah outed me to them. And my mom looked at me and told me to leave and not come back.” His chest heaves and my worry of him vomiting on the hardwood returns only to be forgotten about when he lets out a sob. The muscles on his neck tense and relax as he holds back the shudders that come with his tears. I just watch Blake Weber at seventeen sob on my couch dumbstruck.

My hands itch and I want to touch him, comfort him. Not because he’s Blake Weber but because he’s a crying person and I can help. Can’t I?

“I begged for her to let me stay. Told her Noah was lying.” He shakes his head and rubs his nose. I pass him the tissue box. “She backhanded me.”

Mom never had the audacity to lay a hand on me or Ava to the best of knowledge. Mrs. Weber, however, is decidedly beneath Mom in the way that I thought Mom had in the bag. Being a disgrace to your kids.

I keep my mouth shut, because if I don’t I’ll cry and say things I’ll regret. It’s always easier to cope with sitting still than it is making things worse.

“I’ve done such awful things to you, Charlotte⸺my mom would use the word sins and maybe they are sins⸺and I’m sorry.”

My face contorts. “You are welcome here, Blake. No matter what you’ve done.”

His upper lip lifts and his jaw shakes. A tear runs down his cheek and I wipe it away with my thumb. Slowly and gently, I adjust my tense position on the couch: I angle my body towards him, I reach out, and I wrap my arms around Blake Weber in an embrace I would never have thought he deserved. He rests his head on my shoulder and cries into my cotton tank-top, leaving water stains on the fabric. I rub my hand in the back of his hair and rest my head on top of his.

Ava always knew Blake better than I did, she probably knew him better than she knew me. So holding him now in my arms, I can almost pretend it’s her I’m protecting. He’s the last link to her I tolerate and respect. He was her family. So he is mine too, not because I have to choose to let him in, but because she trusted him enough to confide in him over her boyfriend and to trust him enough to push him towards me. He is my family because Ava wanted him to be.

“You can’t blame yourself for something only other blame you for. Don’t be ashamed of yourself. Don’t be embarrassed.” He’s done nothing wrong. “People are too afraid of the real world in this town.”

Blake lifts his head and looks me in the eye. “I know your mom: she might not have hit you yet but physical abuse isn’t the only form of abuse, Charlotte.”

I push his head back down and tighten my hold on him. I’m only slightly fazed by his words. “Thank you for looking out for me,” I say rubbing his head. “I can’t promise you can stay long, my parents aren’t home but I don’t know when they’ll return.”

I move him away from me and smile sadly at him.

“But I have your back,” I say.

With wet eyes and red cheeks, and a broken heart, Blake still manages to smile at me and take the hand I offer to him. Even if I can’t pull him to his feet on my own, I’d like to think it’s my hand in his that makes him stand.

“Go up to my room,” I insist. “Sleep there tonight and I’ll sleep in Ava’s room or on the couch.”

He doesn’t protest, he’s too tired to. So he just drops my hand and walks back to the base of the stairs in the foyer. Blake looks at me for a moment and then he’s off up the stairs.

As soon as he’s out of earshot, I’m in the kitchen and scrolling through my contacts for Ethan’s number. Do I need an unbiased opinion of the situation to help me and Blake move through this? Or do I need Ethan’s opinion to help me move through his?

Pressing my phone to my ear, I wait as it rings.

“Waters?”

Thank you for picking up for me. “Hey, is this a bad time?” Oh, I hope it isn’t.

“No, no, it’s fine. All is fine all the time, right?

I tighten my jaw. “I’m serious.”

I move to the sink and fill up a glass of water I’ll take to Blake after the conversation. It gives me a moment to prepare myself if Ethan tells me he doesn’t care for my worries.

“What’s wrong?” His tone has shifted and I would thank him if I had the courage.

“How do you feel about Rosemary?” I ask.

“She’s nice,” he says, “in an obey-me-or-I’ll-strangle-you-with-my-crucifix-necklace kind of way.”

I would have laughed if there hadn’t been a boy without a home in my bed upstairs. “I know you, Ethan.” The words leave an odd sensation in my mouth because despite being true since I’ve known him for over a decade, this is far more personal. Much more personal than I think he would appreciate.

Ethan, however, surprises me by saying, “I know and trust you, Charlotte.” He pauses to heave a deep breath. “And I can tell you don’t like or trust her, and I don’t either. But you have to promise me you won’t do anything to jeopardize the progress we’ve made.”

What progress? Nothing has changed, really.

It offends me anyways, because I think I’m better than to put this whole thing at risk for a petty fight for dominance. But then again that’s what I did at the diner.

“I won’t,” I say.

“Promise me,” he begs.

I can’t deny him such a simple wish. “I promise.”