Don't Breathe a Word (19 page)

Chapter 39

When we got back to the house, it was like a mirage—so huge and light and clean—looming in front of me. It was unreal. Back in my own room, all of my clothes were in the closet, bed made, toiletries arranged as if we had company coming.

The company, I realized, was me.

Now I had fresh air to breathe and an unending supply of hot water and pillows, but my parents watched over my every move. Jonah clung to me like a second skin, afraid I might leave any second and never return.

I watched out the windows for Asher, wondering the same thing. When the phone rang, I jumped. Every engine, every shadow made my scar burn with his proximity. It was just a matter of time.

My mom decided to take time away from work until things stabilized. They were trying to keep up some semblance of normal, even though life was everything but.

“You didn't have to take off work, Mom,” I said one day after we dropped Jonah off at preschool.

“What am I supposed to do? Leave you here alone?”

“What do you think I'm going to do?” I knew exactly what I would do. I would go straight to the hospital, find Creed if I could.

My mom stopped at a light, and I instinctively checked the mirrors to see if Asher was following. Did he know I ran away? How long would it be before everyone heard I was back?

“It's not about what you're going to do, Joy. It's about what could happen to you.”

She turned to me tenderly and wiped a wisp of hair away from my face. “Don't worry, okay? Things are going to be fine. It's all going to be back to normal pretty soon. I called Jesse. He's coming home.”

Jesse arrived that night, even though it was a Wednesday and Thanksgiving was still a week away. If he'd been angry when I showed up on his doorstep with Neeta, right now he was furious.

“Why are you here?” I asked, remembering the last time I'd seen him.

“Isn't it obvious? I'm here to take care of
you
.”

He pushed past me up to his old room as Mom greeted him at the stairs. Jonah came racing in from the family room, shouting Jesse's name and leaving a trail of Lego parts.

Jesse was storming around the house, Mom was asking me how I was doing every five minutes, Jonah was on the verge of building a Lego metropolis, and I was curled up in a daze when Dad came home with the news.

“Peter, what's the matter?” Mom asked.

A vein was working in my dad's neck. “I
resigned
from my job today.”

“What?”

Asher
. Asher did it. My throat started to constrict.

“Jonah, why don't you go up to your room to play with those?” Mom said quietly.

“But I'm not doing anything!” Jonah whined from the living room.

Dad threw today's edition of the
Seattle Times
on the table in front of us. The headline read,
LOCAL GIRL WITH VALEN VENTURES TIES FAKES KIDNAPPING
—like the runaway bride but worse, since I'd hooked up with a drug dealer, a pimp, a prostitute, and various other characters. They knew I was connected to Asher, even though his father claimed I was only an acquaintance and his son had broken off ties with me long before I ran away.

Asher would know I was home.

“This is wrong,” my mother whispered, shaking her head. “That—that man—Jesse found the backpack! We saw the dirt, Peter!” She was almost crying.

My dad growled, “She wasn't
kidnapped
, Elena. Let it go.”

“She was in the
hospital
! She almost
died because of that man
!” Tears were streaming down her face and she shoved the paper away. “That's why I called Jesse. Maybe he can come home from Western for the quarter—”

“Hell, no!” Jesse shrieked. “I am not coming home to take care of her!”

“Jesse!” My mom gestured toward Jonah.

But Jesse would not be stopped. “You people need to deal with your problems. You're the parents here.”

“You're in denial, Elena!” Dad shouted. “Asher told us what happened.”

Oh, God
. I didn't want to know what he'd told them. My scar ached at the memory.

Dad kept talking. “When the police were investigating, the first person they went to was Asher. That's how we found out he broke up with you.”

“What?”

“We thought you were abducted—we didn't want to believe you'd run away because of a breakup . . .”

So that's what he'd told them. That's why he hadn't called. I was too stunned to speak.

Then came a mixed flood of anger and relief—anger that he lied to save his own ass, and relief that maybe it was over. Maybe I hadn't heard his car outside my hospital window, and it was just my imagination. Maybe, if he cut me loose, I could finally be free.

My voice had lowered to a whisper. “It wasn't for the reason you think.”

They all turned to me—angry, frightened.

Something shifted, like light that streamed into the bedroom I'd shared with Creed and illuminated the dust particles, imperceptible in the darkness.

I could stay here and change everything, with you
.

But I had one chance, here with my family, to tell the truth. There was a window of clarity, a gap, when words might make a difference.

Or one word might.

“Look,” I said.

Ashes
spread across my hipbone.

And they saw.

The letters were thick and pink and twisted now, but they stood out against my skin.

My parents reeled in confusion.

“You mean this was all about Asher?”

My dad looked back at my mom, suddenly grasping what she'd said.

I was spent, all of me ground into particles like sand. They knew nothing about him, not really. “I was suffocating,” I said.

Jesse nodded, as if he understood.

“Did he do that to you?” my dad wanted to know. “Has he been hurting you?” The pain on his face was almost unbearable.

Hurt
was such a relative word. Creed had so much hurt, he had to leave his abusive father and let his mother fend for herself. Santos had endured years of hurt, and now he was hanging by a thread. May's own mother had rejected her and May punished herself every time Maul hit her, every time she gave her body again. Had Asher hurt me?

If he'd hit me, that would've been
something
. Something I could point to. Words, words were nothing. But every word he spoke taught me to fear him and his threats, his touch, his constant reminder that he'd rescued me and my family. Like a fairy-tale girl sacrificed to save her father, only in this story the prince turned out to be the beast, who would tear her with his claws from the inside out. He even made the girl wound herself.

Were words enough to count as hurting?

My dad reached over, putting his arms around me, and all at once, I was his little girl again.

“Yeah,” I whispered, “Asher hurt me. I mean—he never hit me. He hurt me in other ways. He threatened me . . . threatened Dad's job. And he did other things.”

“Did he . . . did he do that to you?” my mom asked.

I felt that familiar fear rise in my chest that ached to keep my own words in. I'd failed when I'd asked Santos where he went at night. My words wouldn't help May when she went back on the street with Maul. Worst of all, my words drove Creed away, only moments before I had abandoned him.

But words had power. I needed to learn to use it.

“I did it,” I said. “He made me do it, as punishment. And . . . there was going to be more.”

I glanced at Jesse, his eyes filled with sorrow. He knew.

“I never really did like him,” Jesse muttered, and I let it go. It was his job to know everything, my big brother.

My mom joined us, and even Jesse put a tentative hand on my back while Jonah ran to throw himself around me. Later we could talk about how they'd been suffocating me, too—how keeping me from dying had kept me from living.

But this was enough, for now.

Chapter 40

There was something liberating about losing everything. When the worst happens and you still survive, it sets you free from fear. We had no survival skills—we'd spent our lives depending on everyone else—and now it was time to learn them ourselves.

My family adjusted to the new me as I adjusted to my life, old but now new. I had changed, just like Neeta said.

School had already been going on for a couple of months, so I struggled to catch up at home with online classes. I didn't mind so much, because it kept me out of the spotlight as the press inferno and gossip died down.

In the meantime, we weathered the storm.

I might have stayed in the safety of my room forever if Neeta hadn't called and begged my mom to let me meet her at Starbucks, the one we always used to go to, one night.

My mom hesitated. “But then,” she said, “if you can survive on the streets for two months, you can probably handle Starbucks.”

I sat at an empty table toward the back of the café—busy, on a school night, full of kids I knew, when I had been that other Joy. An image of Asher and Neeta flashed through my mind, him gripping her arm tightly. Was she fading into him even now?

I watched Neeta approach from the far end of the parking lot and remembered what Asher used to say about her:
annoying, know-it-all desi
. Of anybody, she wouldn't be the type to get involved with someone like him. I could warn her at least, even if we didn't have much of a friendship anymore.

A new haircut framed her face. Asher-approved? He would never let me cut mine, said the long darkness of it made me look taller, slimmer. What would he think of the jagged white bob I wore now?

Neeta spotted me in the corner and navigated the tables and other students. I sat on the window seat, with a pillow and a latte for protection. I pushed the other latte I'd bought toward her—nonfat split shot with a splash of cinnamon, plus whip. Her favorite.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” She gave me the once-over, though most of me was hidden by pillows. She moved to hug me, then must have changed her mind.

“You have new hair,” I said.

She laughed, the same laugh I'd known since we met.
Light as a feather, free as a bird
. We didn't find out until later that we'd been saying it wrong all along. It was supposed to be “light as a feather, stiff as a board.” But we had never said it that way.

I wondered if she remembered trying to catch me when I fell. If I could reach out for her now.

“I think you kinda take the prize for new hair,” she sniffed.

We could talk about stupid stuff—school, Ari and Ellerie, how the heck had she been since I ran away from home? But there was only one real question between us now, if I had the courage to ask. “When did you start seeing Asher?”

“Huh?”

“I saw you at Chop Suey with him, a couple of months ago.”

She looked at me, dumbfounded. “But . . . wait. You were there?”

I nodded slowly. This wasn't going well. I sounded jealous and mean. What I really wanted was to warn her.

She reverted to her childhood accent, an unconscious thing she hadn't done for years. “The police and everybody thought you'd been kidnapped—there was the mud and the open window, and no warning. Nobody could figure out why you might run away, except Asher. He's the one who thought you would be there. So he asked me if I would come with him. He thought if I was there, you'd come forward. But you didn't. Why?”

“Oh,” I said softly. “He was just using you, then.” Of course he was. He would do anything to gain control of the situation. Even use my best friend against me. “So you aren't seeing him?”

“Oh my gosh, no, Joy. Even if he hadn't been your boyfriend, I would
never
go out with him.” She made a face. “Besides, I thought . . . he said, after the police started investigating him, he said he'd broken it off . . . and I was glad, because I never thought he was good for you. . . .”

I don't know why I was surprised he would lie to her, too. Everything he ever said or did to me was done in secret.

I hugged the pillows closer around my body, an armor of cotton and silk. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“When we went to see Jesse . . . when we were driving home . . . you said I was different. What did you mean?”

She swallowed hard, and when she spoke again, the accent had completely vanished. “You changed, when you met Asher.”

The words hit me in the gut.

“I mean, it was terrible when you were with him. We were all worried about you—especially when I thought he was doing something to you. I was hoping if I took you to see Jesse, you might find some help. I was just as shocked as you were when he turned you away.”

Neeta knew?

“But if it helped you get away from Asher,” she continued, “then maybe it's good you left. I thought you ran away, but then everyone said you'd been kidnapped. And then Asher wanted to find you . . .”

“But wait,” I said breathlessly. “Wait. How did I change? What did you see?”

Her face concentrated. “I don't know . . . it's hard to explain. I don't know what happened but you weren't . . . you. You shrank, like you were in his shadow or something. But then you seemed so into him. I thought maybe I was wrong.”

It gave me chills, hearing the truth from her lips. I knew she'd want to hear the truth from mine.

She took a gulp of her latte. “Hey, I know we need to talk, but I thought you might like to do something fun. Ellerie's invited us over for a little—”

“Rock Band?”

She grinned. “Wanna come?”

Five minutes later, we were maneuvering through the parking lot to find her car. “I had to park practically in
Sammamish
, there's so many cars out tonight,” Neeta complained, digging through her purse.

She stopped. “Crap, I think I dropped my keys inside, but the car's right over there. Wait for me?”

I wandered toward her car, looking up at the cloud cover overhead. Not long ago, this would have meant spending the night in a Laundromat or under a bridge with Creed. I'd left him there, and he still didn't know what had happened to

A slow, grinding sound of footsteps in the gravel alerted my senses.

“Hello, Joy.”

A sick feeling crept into my stomach.
How did he know I would be here?

“I've missed you.”

He came into view and I couldn't help it when my body responded. He was a shadow, a dark vortex ripping my lungs out with fear and some other emotion I had once mistaken for love.

“Asher,” I whispered.

And suddenly the parking lot was empty, and Neeta was a million miles away, and he held a leash invisible to everyone but me.

He was coming toward me. His eyes burned me with their intensity. With hate, with desire, with something like sadness.

“I've been trying to call you,” he said. I was rooted to the spot, couldn't speak.

He reached up to touch my hair first, then my neck, then ran his finger down the side of my coat until he encircled my wrist.
Little bird.

“I heard you sold the bracelet. Were you trying to hurt me?”

I closed my eyes, willing him to go away. I remembered the first time he had kissed me, exactly like this. Standing so close, not touching, and then capturing me with one brush of his lips. Oh, how stupid I had been. How stupid I was now, to think he wouldn't come after me.

I'd known he would.

Asher brushed his face up next to mine so that I could feel the hint of stubble, smell his custom scent and his cigarettes. Part of me missed it, being under his spell.

“I wanted you to know,” he said softly, “I'm willing to give you another chance—but there's going to be a price. I saw that group you were hanging out with on the streets. I watched you with them, Joy.” His breath was hot on my neck. “Maybe they'll have to pay, for taking you away from me.”

Creed. Santos. May
. I was drowning in the possibilities, so deep that I almost didn't see the light.

But then I did. “The girls I was staying with. Just promise me you'll stay away from them. . . .”

Asher chuckled. “Oh, you know I'm not going to stay away from those girls. You can be sure of that.”

“Girl,” I said.

“What?”

“There was only one girl,” I said, with more confidence. The light grew brighter, my breathing stronger. “You're a liar.”

Asher's face fell out of the shadows as he stepped away from me, squinting. “What are you talking about, Joy?”

He didn't have anything over my family, over my dad. He only had something over me.

Neeta waved as she came out of the Starbucks, and it gave me courage. “You're a liar,” I said again. “I don't know why I ever listened to you.” I yanked my wrist from his grip, and he looked stunned. “Go ahead—ruin my dad's career, if you can. But you have no power over me.”

The only power he'd ever had over me was what I gave him. And I was done with being his victim.

Neeta came up with her keys aloft, then stopped when she saw him. “What's going on?” she demanded, in a voice I'd never heard from her before. “Joy?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just some unfinished business, but it's done. Let's go?” She nodded, and I joined her under the streetlamp, the light pooling over us like a baptism.

I didn't have to try to be invisible—not anymore.