It Ends With Us (13 page)

I grabbed both of his hands in mine and said, “Atlas. You’re freezing.”

He didn’t say anything. I just started rubbing his hands in mine to warm them up. I laid my head on his shoulder and then I did the most embarrassing thing. I just started to cry. I
don’t cry very much, but I was still so upset by what happened yesterday and then I was feeling so guilty that I forgot to take him blankets and it all hit me right there on the ride to
school. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled his hands from mine so I’d stop rubbing them and then he laid his hands on top of mine. We just sat there like that the whole ride to
school with our heads leaned together and his hands on top of mine.

I might have thought it was sweet if it wasn’t so sad. On the ride home from school is when he finally noticed my head.

Honestly, I had forgotten about it. No one at school even asked me about it and when he sat down next to me on the bus, I wasn’t even trying to hide it with my hair. He looked right at
me and said, “What happened to your head?”

I didn’t know what to say to him. I just touched it with my fingers and then looked out the window. I’ve been trying to get him to trust me more in hopes he would tell me why he
doesn’t have a place to live, so I didn’t want to lie to him. I just didn’t want to tell him the truth, either.

When the bus started moving, he said, “Yesterday after I left your house, I heard something going on over there. I heard yelling. I heard you scream, and then I saw your father leave. I
was going to come check on you to make sure everything was okay, but as I was walking over I saw you leaving in the car with your mother.”

He must have heard the fight in the garage and saw her leaving to take me to get the stitches. I couldn’t believe he came over to our house. Do you know what my dad would do to him if
he saw him wearing his clothes? I got so worried for him because I don’t think he knows what my father is capable of.

I looked at him and said, “Atlas, you can’t do that! You can’t come to my house when my parents are home!”

Atlas got real quiet and then said, “I heard you scream, Lily.” He said it like me being in danger trumped anything else.

I felt bad because I know he was just trying to help, but that would have made things so much worse.

“I fell,” I said to him. As soon as I said it, I felt bad for lying. And to be honest, he looked a little disappointed in me, because I think we both knew in that moment that it
wasn’t as simple as a fall.

Then he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and held out his arm.

Ellen, my stomach dropped. It was so bad. All over his arm he had these small scars. Some of the scars looked just like someone had stuck a cigarette to his arm and held it there.

He twisted his arm around so I could see that it was on the other side, too. “I used to fall a lot, too, Lily.” Then he pulled his shirtsleeve down and didn’t say anything
else.

For a second I wanted to tell him it wasn’t like that—that my dad never hurts me and that he was just trying to get me off of him. But then I realized I’d be using the same
excuses my mom uses.

I felt a little embarrassed that he knows what goes on at my house. I spent the whole rest of the bus ride looking out the window because I didn’t know what to say to him.

When we got home, my mom’s car was there. In the driveway, of course. Not the garage.

That meant Atlas couldn’t come over and watch your show with me. I was gonna tell him I would bring him blankets later, but when he got off the bus he didn’t even tell me bye. He
just started walking down the street like he was mad.

It’s dark now and I’m waiting on my parents to go to sleep. But in a little while I’m gonna take him some blankets.

—Lily

Dear Ellen,

I’m in way over my head.

Do you ever do things you know are wrong, but are somehow also right? I don’t know how to put it in simpler terms than that.

I mean, I’m only fifteen and I certainly shouldn’t have boys spending the night in my bedroom. But if a person knows someone needs a place to stay, isn’t it that
person’s responsibility as a human to help them?

Last night after my parents went to sleep, I snuck out the back door to take Atlas those blankets. I took a flashlight with me because it was dark. It was still snowing really hard, so by the
time I made it to that house, I was freezing. I beat on the back door and as soon as he opened it, I pushed past him to get out of the cold.

Only . . . I didn’t get out of the cold. Somehow, it felt even colder inside that old house. I still had my flashlight on and I shined it around the living room and
kitchen. There wasn’t anything in there, Ellen!

No couch, no chair, no mattress. I handed the blankets off to him and kept looking around me. There was a big hole in the roof over the kitchen and wind and snow were just pouring in. When I
shined my light around the living room, I saw his stuff in one of the corners. His backpack, plus the backpack I’d given him. There was a little pile of other stuff I’d given him, like
some of my dad’s clothes. And then there were two towels on the floor. One I guess he laid on and one he covered up with.

I put my hand over my mouth because I was so horrified. He’d been there living like that for weeks!

Atlas put his hand on my back and tried to walk me back out the door. “You shouldn’t be over here, Lily,” he said. “You could get in trouble.”

That’s when I grabbed his hand and said, “You shouldn’t be here, either.” I started to pull him out the front door with me, but he yanked his hand back. That’s
when I said, “You can sleep on my floor tonight. I’ll keep my bedroom door locked. You can’t sleep here, Atlas. It’s too cold and you’ll get pneumonia and
die.”

He looked like he didn’t know what to do. I’m sure the thought of being caught in my bedroom was just as scary as getting pneumonia and dying. He looked back at his spot in the
living room and then he just nodded his head once and said, “Okay.”

So you tell me, Ellen. Was I wrong letting him sleep in my room

last night? It doesn’t feel wrong. It felt like the right thing to do. But I sure would get in a lot of trouble if we had been caught. He slept on the floor, so it’s not like it
was anything more than me just giving him somewhere warm to sleep.

I did learn a little more about him last night. After I snuck him in the back door and to my room, I locked my door and made a pallet for him on the floor next to my bed. I set the alarm for
6 a.m. and told him he’d have to get up and leave before my parents woke up, since sometimes my mom wakes me up in the mornings.

I crawled in my bed and scooted over to the edge of it so I could look down at him while we talked for a little while. I asked him how long he thought he might stay there and he said he
didn’t know. That’s when I asked him how he ended up there. My lamp was still on, and we were whispering, but he got real quiet when I said that. He just stared up at me with his hands
behind his head for a moment. Then he said, “I don’t know my real dad. He never had anything to do with me. It’s always just been me and my mom, but she got remarried about five
years ago to a guy who never really liked me much. We fought a lot. When I turned eighteen a few months ago, we got in a big fight and he kicked me out of the house.”

He took a deep breath like he didn’t want to tell me any more. But then he started talking again. “I’ve been staying with a friend of mine and his family since then, but his
dad got a transfer to Colorado and they moved. They couldn’t take me with them, of course. His parents were just being nice by letting me stay with them and I knew that, so I told them I
talked to my mom and that I was moving back home. The day they left, I didn’t have anywhere to go. So I went back home and told my mom I’d like to move back in until I graduated. She
wouldn’t let me. Said it would upset my stepfather.”

He turned his head and looked at the wall. “So I just wandered around for a few days until I saw that house. Figured I would just stay there until something better came along or until I
graduated. I’m signed up to go to the Marines come May, so I’m just trying to hang on until then.”

May is six months away, Ellen. Six.

I had tears in my eyes when he finished telling me all that. I asked him why he didn’t just ask someone if they could help him. He said he tried, but it’s harder for an adult than
a kid, and he’s already eighteen. He said someone gave him a number for some shelters who might help him. There were three shelters in a twenty-mile radius of our town, but two of them were
for battered women. The other one was a homeless shelter, but they only had a few beds and it was too far away for him to walk there if he wanted to go to school every day. Plus, you have to wait
in a long line to try and get a bed. He said he tried it once, but he feels safer in that old house than he did at the shelter.

Like the naïve girl I am when it comes to situations like his, I said, “But aren’t there other options? Can’t you just tell the school counselor what your mom
did?”

He shook his head and said he’s too old for foster care. He’s eighteen, so his mother can’t get in trouble for not allowing him to go back home. He said he called about
getting food stamps last week, but he didn’t have a ride or money to get to his appointment. Not to mention he doesn’t have a car, so he can’t very well find a job. He said
he’s been looking, though. After he leaves my house in the afternoons he goes and applies at places, but he doesn’t have an address or a phone number to put down on the applications so
that makes it harder for him.

I swear, Ellen, every question I threw at him, he had an answer for. It’s like he’s tried everything not to be stuck in the situation he’s in, but there isn’t enough
help out there for people like him. I got so mad at his whole situation, I told him he was crazy for wanting to go into the military. I wasn’t so much whispering when I said, “Why in
the heck would you want to serve a country that has allowed you to end up in this kind of situation?”

You know what he said next, Ellen? His eyes grew sad and he said, “It’s not this country’s fault my mother doesn’t give a shit about me.” Then he reached up and
turned off my lamp. “Goodnight, Lily,” he said.

I didn’t sleep much after that. I was too mad. I’m not even sure who I’m mad at. I just kept thinking about our country and the whole world and how screwed up it is that
people don’t do more for each other. I don’t know when humans started only looking out for themselves. Maybe it’s always been this way. It made me wonder how many people out there
were just like Atlas. It made me wonder if there were other kids at our school who might be homeless.

I go to school every day and internally complain about it most of the time, but I’ve never once thought that school might be the only home some kids have. It’s the only place
Atlas can go and know he’ll have food.

I’ll never be able to respect rich people now, knowing they willingly choose to spend their money on materialistic things rather than using it to help other people.

No offense, Ellen. I know you’re rich, but I guess I’m not referring to people like you. I’ve seen all the stuff you’ve done for others on your show and all the
charities you support. But I know there are a lot of rich people out there who are selfish. Hell, there are even selfish poor people. And selfish middle-class people. Look at my parents. We
aren’t rich, but we certainly aren’t too poor to help other people. Yet, I don’t think my dad has ever done anything for a charity.

I remember one time we were walking into a grocery store and an old man was ringing a bell for the Salvation Army. I asked my dad if we could give him some money and he told me no, that he
works hard for his money and he wasn’t about to let me give it away. He said it isn’t his fault that other people don’t want to work. He spent the whole time we were in the
grocery store telling me about how people take advantage of the government and until the government stops helping those people by giving them handouts, the problem won’t ever go away.

Ellen, I believed him. That was three years ago and all this time I thought homeless people were homeless because they were lazy or drug addicts or just didn’t want to work like other
people. But now I know that’s not true. Sure, some of what he said was true to an extent, but he was using the worst-case scenarios. Not everyone is homeless because they choose to be.
They’re homeless because there isn’t enough help to go around.

And people like my father are the problem. Instead of helping others, people use the worst-case scenarios to excuse their own selfishness and greed.

I’ll never be like that. I swear to you, when I grow up, I’m going to do everything I can to help other people. I’ll be like you, Ellen. Just probably not as rich.

—Lily

I drop the journal on my chest. I’m surprised to feel tears running down my cheeks. Every time I pick up this journal I think I’ll be fine—that it all
happened so long ago and I won’t still feel what I felt back then.

I’m such a sap. It gives me this longing to hug so many people from my past. Especially my mother because for the past year, I haven’t really thought about everything she had to go
through before my father died. I know it probably still hurts her.

I grab my phone to call her and look at the screen. There are four missed texts from Ryle. My heart immediately skips.
I can’t believe I had it on silent!
Then I roll my eyes,
annoyed with myself, because I should
not
be this excited.