Keystone (5 page)

I shift around on the creaky chair, trying to make every observation in my head sound polite.

Weird kitchen. Wait, scratch that. I didn’t mean that.

Wow…he keeps everything sooo clean.

It’s creepy clean. How can he stand living down here? Ugh! I didn’t mean that either-

You…he…he gets to use the library whenever he wants. Lucky.

There’s no TV or radio or anything. The furniture is falling apart…Oh my gosh, no.

This place is so…tiny? Ugh...tiny.

Cozy. This place is super awesomely cozy. Man, is this place nice and cozy.

I feel like my brain is climbing over itself as I try to censor everything. I repeat
cozy, cozy, cozy
to keep my thoughts under control until Sean jiggles the table and I look up and run right into Garrett’s eyes.

Then I forget all about
cozy
and go into hyper-mode, trying to zap all the inappropriate thoughts about Garrett that shoot up faster than dandelions.

Nok sets a plate in front of me and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Fine,” he says, but the word is a whole conversation in expression and tone and in the reassuring pressure of his fingertips. I steal a look at Nok’s smooth face, thinking of what I’d want to hear if I could listen to anything. Then I glance at Garrett and get lost in the whole daydream of wishes before I remember Nok again. Nok doesn’t even glance at me as he puts a dish in front of Sean and then I wonder if Nok actually listens to everything I’m thinking anyway.

“No,” Nok says and this time he glances at me with a grin. I hope he’s telling me the truth because Garrett winks at me and all the inappropriate thoughts pop up again.

Nok’s cooking is beyond amazing. I finish one plate and am working on my second when the Addo shuffles in from around the corner of the living room and groans himself down onto the chair across from me. I can see that just walking in has worn him out and when he sends me a thought, it is so weak, it teeters on the tip of my brain. I have to work to pull up his words the same way I used to struggle to pull up dates on history tests. I keep concentrating and the Addo’s words finally pop up.

How in the world did you do anything wearing this contraption,
he says, shifting his arm in his terry cloth sling.

All that work to hear him complain. I giggle and Addo smirks at me from across the table. Garrett sees it, but keeps eating, without comment. I doubt Sean even notices. His eyes are clamped shut as he mmm-mmm-mm’s his way through his own second helping of food. I try to send a thought, feather-soft, back to Addo.

Why don’t you ask Garrett to heal you?
He helped me
when I broke my arm.
I don’t send the last part of my thought, the correction, that I didn’t actually break my own arm, but that my father broke it for me.

The Memory ceremony will take care of it.
Addo sighs. When he does, his whole chest seems to sink even lower.
Garrett needs all his energy right now.

I nod.
I have a question, Addo. About Roger.

Your father? What about ‘em?
Addo asks.

Roger…he’s not going to be written, is he?

Cheez whiz and bananas…how do you itch the back of your arm when your ribs are busted?

I push my fork across the table to him a little more forcefully than I should, but I know the Addo and I know he’s avoiding my question.

Just stick a fork in it,
I tell him.

That makes him chuckle, but he grabs the fork and scrapes the back of his arm with the tines. All the bruises on his face melt with relief as he moves the utensil around. Sean finally looks up and catches the Addo blissfully prodding himself with the fork. Sean just goes back to eating.

Addo sets down the fork and thanks Nok for the plate he deposits in front of him. But Addo doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he poises a fresh fork over the steaming veggies.

Addo,
I send the thought like a lightening bolt and the Addo winces at his plate.
What about Roger? He doesn’t get to be written, does he?

Well…

When Addo looks up, instead of answering, his eyes sweep over my emergency-orange, fleece disaster. He grins a little and motions with the fork tines to his own sweatshirt.

“Comfy, isn’t it?” he says out loud. He’s really not going to answer. At least he’s going to try not to, but I’m not giving up. Not now that I’m worried about what the answer is.

I look like a traffic cone
.
I don’t care about the clothes, Addo. Roger killed my mother. Tell me he doesn’t get to be written.

Here’s the funny thing,
Addo’s eyes flick up with a grin, but I glare at him.

No,
I answer,
Nothing about this is funny if Roger gets to be remembered.

Addo lays his fork on the edge of his plate and looks me straight in the eyes. His voice swells up in my head.
The thing is, my dear, everyone has a purpose. Even if it seems to be to walk in circles and spit on you, everyone has a use to us in this world. And that’s just the aftertaste. The real, bitter pill is that every moron you encounter is actually here to make you less of one.

Not him.
I set my jaw even as I think it.
Not a murderer. Roger left us…he killed my mom!
The thoughts build in my head and steam out toward the Addo. I can’t even stop them when I see him cringe on impact.
He doesn’t deserve to go anywhere good! He deserves to rot…forever.

Where he goes,
Addo’s brows curve with sympathy.
It’s not up to us, kiddo. But the knowledge he has and what he’s taught each of us is still valuable and we need to preserve that.

We need to know how to murder innocent people?
I rise up out of my chair, plant my hands on the table and lean across, toward the Addo. I want to be bigger than him. I want to make him shrivel in his chair. I want to make him tell me that he’ll do whatever it takes to keep Roger away from my mother.

But Addo doesn’t sink. His expression of sympathy stays put and instead of smothering my anger, the fury boils up inside me. Garrett and Sean and the entire room disappear as I narrow my eyes on the Addo. I lift one hand and bring down my fist hard on the table as my pressure valve bursts open. My thoughts spew across the table in a direct, hard line, aimed straight at the Addo.

What could Roger possibly know that any of us would need? He killed my grandfather! He tried to kill me! He set up Garrett’s dad and HE MURDERED MY MOTHER!

Addo braces as my thoughts roar into his head. His face remains smooth for the most part, except that he closes his eyes and the muscles jump in his jaw, underneath his bruised skin.

“Hey!” Sean yelps and reaches for the Addo as the old man sways on his chair. Garrett jumps up and pulls me away from the table.

“Nalena.” Garrett’s voice is surprisingly soft and it snaps me out of it. Nok stands beside me, a hand on my shoulder. I’m not sure if he is there to calm me down or to keep me from diving at the Addo, but the realization of what I just did and how I attacked the Addo, comes barreling at me.

Addo rights himself on his chair and when he opens his eyes, brown and forgiving, my own fill up. I take a step back toward him and drop at his knees. The Addo’s distorted, sandaled feet swim against the tile, beneath my tears.

I’ve attacked the Addo. I am no better than my father.

“Wrong,” Nok murmurs. He squeezes my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Addo.” My voice breaks. My heart sinks into my feet.

“It’s okay, kiddo,” Addo says. “Some things you just can’t understand until the moment that you do.”

Addo finishes his food and excuses himself, with a forgiving pat on my back that makes me feel worse. He and Sean go off to talk in private and leave Garrett and I at the table, because there’s no place for us to escape to.

I poke at what’s still on my plate and Garrett asks, first with a finger tap on the table in my direction, then with a small cough meant to catch my gaze, and finally, with the gentle whisper of my name, to look at him. But I pretend that I don’t hear. I keep my eyes rooted to the table, too sad to talk, until Mrs. Reese walks into the dining room, with Iris trailing, bleary-eyed, behind her.

There’s something suddenly healing about seeing Garrett’s little sister again. I haven’t seen Iris since we came here and I realize how much I miss her. I can’t wait to see the plume of her ponytail waving around on the top of her head or to hear her telling jokes through a mouth full of veggies. Iris fell in love with my mom the very first time they met and my mom had loved her back. It seems like one of Iris’s giggles might be able to heal a part of me, just because she loved my mom too.

I lean out of my chair, as Iris emerges from behind Mrs. Reese, and I put on my biggest smile for her.

But the second Iris sees me, something goes wrong.

She stops dead and the tired droop dissolves. Instead, Iris’s mouth jerks open and her face scrunches up. She unleashes a terrified shriek. I startle in my chair as Mrs. Reese whips around to see what is wrong. The minute she kneels down, Iris slams right into her mom, burying her face against Mrs. Reese’s shoulder like she’s seen a monster.

“You’re okay. I’m here, you’re okay,” Mrs. Reese chants, but every time she tries to pry Iris’s head away, Iris looks up, locks eyes with me, and shrieks again. It’s like being hit by a jackhammer. And a truck. And another jackhammer. I dart glances all around the room as Sean and the Addo and Mark and Brandon come from every direction. I search their faces to figure out why this is happening, if they know why Iris isn’t screaming at anyone else, but me.

But they all look jackhammered too.

Sean catches Iris’s chin in his hand and turns her gaze to him instead of me.

“Munchkin,” he says. “It’s just Nalena. She was scared too.”

“I w-w-w-want d-d-d-daddy!” Iris tears away from Sean and screams into her mom’s hair. “I want him to c-c-come back! R-r-right now!”

“I know you do,” Mrs. Reese says. Her voice breaks and she lowers her lips on her daughter’s head. I feel my own eyes sting. The room fills up with Iris’s gut wrenching pleads and howls. Everyone tries to say something calming, but when Iris can’t catch her breath anymore, Mrs. Reese picks her up and carries her out of the dining room saying, “We’ll just go lie down, okay? We can eat later.”

Once they’re gone, there’s no sound at all.

“Time,” Nok says.

“You’re right, of course,” Addo agrees. “Everybody has to take their time to grieve. No cheating.”

“Did you see that?” I whisper to Garrett. “She screamed when she saw
me.
”

He glances away.

“She was there too,” Garrett says. He says it so quietly; I would’ve missed it if someone had rubbed a fork on a plate at the same time.

“Where?”

“She was in the house with you,” Addo says. “When your parents...passed.”

“What are you talking about? There was nobody there but me and…”

I stop talking because I can’t really remember what happened. I know I went into the house and Roger was there, holding my mom at gunpoint, and then...nothing. It’s like my mind walked into a blizzard and everything whites out. I know the facts, what ultimately happened—somehow I know it—but I don’t actually remember it.

“She was in a closet upstairs,” Sean clarifies. “Your mom was watching her when everyone left to protect the Addo and when your mom heard someone at the door, she told Iris to hide in the linen closet upstairs.”

I think of standing in Garrett’s old house, with it’s different levels. If you went upstairs, there was a bathroom at the very top and an open hallway with only a spindle railing, parallel to the dining room and kitchen below. The linen closet was right in the middle. In direct view of everything that had happened.