Modern Monsters (Entangled Teen) (9 page)

There it is.

The one thing that brings every other question into sharp focus. For a long while, Mom and I stare at each other, into the raw, open wounds we’ve inflicted on each other. Her with the secrets she’s kept, and me for wrenching them away from her and making her unwrap an injury that has clearly never fully healed.

I must be utterly useless because I can’t think of anything to say. No comfort to offer. Nothing at all. The only thing I can think to do to ease her pain is to turn around and walk away so she doesn’t have to see my face.

Chapter Eleven

My default reaction in any kind of stressful situation is to call Brett, and yet as I stare at his name on my phone, I can’t bring myself to do it this time. Perhaps because there’s too much history there. Perhaps because I know he’ll squeeze my shoulder and promise me everything will be okay.

Sympathy
: feeling pity and sorrow for another’s misfortunate.

Empathy:
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Brett can sympathize with me, but he cannot empathize. This is the nature of our friendship. He cares and he’s fiercely protective and his life has not been without problems, but the nature of his problems has been different from mine. While Brett worried about what kind of car to get, scoring in the highest percentile in all the standardized testing, who he was going to take to prom, and high-profile cases his dad worked on, I was silently dealing with Mom’s alienation of me, of the entire school barely noticing I existed, of wondering if we’d have the money to swing Christmas, and living in Brett’s shadow while he shone.

I lean back against the park bench with a sigh. Staying at home seemed like a bad idea and so I came here. Mom used to bring me to this playground when I was little. Then, when we got older, Brett and I came on our own, riding our bikes. It’s dark out and the last kid went home thirty minutes ago. Anyone who shows up now will likely be someone I don’t want to associate with, but I don’t know where to go if I don’t want to see my only friend right now.

Well…maybe that isn’t entirely true. I look at the number written on my hand. One of the digits is smeared beyond recognition, but I stared at it so much today that I remember what it is by heart. I start a new contact entry to save her digits before I lose them entirely and have to look like a moron asking her for them again.

Autumn said I could call her. Did she mean it? Did she mean I could call her about Callie or the case? My stomach rolls anxiously as I push the green phone symbol on the screen and it dials.

One, two, three rings, and Autumn answers, “Hello?”

I’m so excited I almost forget to answer. “Uh, hi.”

She pauses. “Vic? That you?”

“Y-yeah. It’s me.” Funny how the sound of her voice instantly puts me both at ease and on edge. It calms me and yet I suddenly can’t sit still.

“Oh, hey. What’s up?”

“N-not much. Just…you know. Hanging out.” God, how lame am I? I should’ve thought out what I would say before I called. I could’ve made something up. “You?”

“Ehh, homework. My parents are gone, though, so I might crash on the couch and watch a movie and stay up way too late.”

A smile tugs at my mouth. “You rebel, you.”

“Oh yeah, that’s me.” She chuckles. “If you’re not busy, you should come by.”

Busy, me? I look around at the empty park. The darker it gets, the more unsettling this place is. I’ve never been here when the sun goes down. “It m-might take me a while to get there.” I didn’t bring my bike. The park was only a few blocks away and so I walked. Going to Autumn’s would require me to head back and get it.

“Shit, that’s right. Are you at home? I’ll come get you.” Already I can tell she’s getting up and rustling around. For her shoes or her keys, maybe.

“You d-don’t have to do that,” I say, but the idea that Autumn wants to spend time with me and is even willing to pick me up? At least for a few seconds, it blocks out the memory of what just happened at home.

“Where are you?” she asks patiently.

I pull my legs up, wondering if I should go home so she doesn’t ask questions, but… “At Manzanita Park. Up the street from my house.”

“Give me ten and I’ll be there.”

She hangs up before I have a chance to respond. While I wait, Brett texts to ask me if I’m staying at home tonight or what and I just respond,
Yeah I’m good for now
.

It’s Friday. He hates being home Friday nights; it’s the one night of the week he escapes the weight of homework, studying, and college applications, and I don’t feel like going out to a movie or a party with him and his friends. Especially not now. I don’t want my “rapist” label to affect his social life.

As promised, Autumn pulls into the parking lot about ten minutes later. The headlights almost blind me as I trot over to her car with my hands pocketed and slide into the passenger’s seat. In the dim lighting of the dashboard buttons, I see Autumn is already in her pajamas. Black sweats and flip-flops and a tank top with her long hair up in a messy, weird sort of twist only girls know how to make sense of. Some kind of female hair magic or something. And she looks so beautiful.

She grins. “Where ya headed, babe?”

“Vegas,” I say playfully.

“Mm, Vegas. I’m a’headed that way. S’pose I could take you, for a price.” She makes it a point to look me over and give an exaggerated eyebrow wiggle.

I laugh quietly and Autumn pulls out of the parking lot to head for her place. At least this time when we come inside, I don’t think there are any surprises—like Callie—ready to ambush me. Autumn ditches her shoes by the front door, and I’m suddenly feeling the weight of how awkward this is. Here with Autumn. At night. Alone. This is not the best situation to put myself in given the charges against me, and then I have to think about how sad it is that I have to even stop and consider such a thing.

“Make yourself at home,” Autumn says, disappearing into what I assume is the kitchen. I glance around and toe off my shoes, self-conscious of the hole in my sock. I shuffle to the couch and slowly sit down. It’s obvious this is where she was when I called her. There’s a blanket on the opposite end, a water bottle, a half-eaten bowl of popcorn. It’s that exact spot Autumn takes back up residence in when she returns with a soda for each of us.

I take the offered can, grateful for the excuse to stare at my hands for a while. There’s an open notebook lying faceup on the coffee table with names I recognize. When I lean over to look, I realize just what those names are. “These are…”

“People who were at the party,” Autumn confirms, cracking open her can and taking a long drink. “I told you, I’m going to find out who did this. You said you were gonna help me, right?”

She draws the notebook over so it’s open on both our legs, and offers me a pen. I can think of a few names—Patrick, Devon—she doesn’t have on here yet, so I add them at the end of the list.

“Anything you remember about any of these guys?” she asks.

I skim the list, thinking hard. It’s easier for me to scribble the thoughts that come to me on the page: Aaron, hanging with Brett and a group of guys, last I saw. Chris Christopher, Robbie, sharing a joint when I came back down from leaving Callie. They probably saw me. For that matter… “Patrick was heading upstairs as I was coming down,” I recall quietly.

Autumn squints. “Patrick. Which one is he?”

“Patrick Maloney. Aaron Biggs’s best friend. Tall, big. Shaved head.”

“Oh, kind of scary-looking? Okay.” She takes the pen from my hand and puts a question mark next to Patrick’s name. “I wonder if the cops already talked to him. If he went upstairs after you left, maybe he saw something.”

Or did something,
I think. Though it’s hard to picture anyone I know—even if they’re assholes—raping someone. It’s such an inhuman thing to do.

I think of another name and add it to the book. “So, um, where are your p-parents?”

“Tahoe.” She drags a blanket across herself. It’s hot outside but the air-conditioning must be on high because it’s actually a little chilly in here. “Once a month or so, they take ‘date weekends.’”

“Date weekends?”

“Yup. Weekends where they go out of town, just the two of them. Keeping their romance fresh and exciting or something equally nauseating.” She shrugs. “It means I get the place to myself a few days a month, so I’m not going to complain.”

I can’t help but marvel at that. “My m-mom would never leave me home alone for the w-weekend.”

A smirk graces her pretty face, but she doesn’t look at me as she flips channels. “Why not? Aren’t you almost eighteen?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “B-but she’s kind of…”

“Overprotective?”

Hardly. “More like she doesn’t trust me. I guess.”

I don’t mean for the words to leave my tongue sounding so melancholy. Maybe the scalding news she dropped on me earlier has sapped me of any energy I might normally put into making it sound like not a big deal.

Autumn looks over. I can’t read her expression and so I ask, “W-what?”

She says, “You strike me as a very lonely person, Vic.”

I relocate my gaze to the television where a muted sitcom plays. You can always tell by the pause of the actors where the canned laughter comes into play. “I d-don’t know what makes you say that.”

“Because I know what lonely people sound like.” Her eyes don’t waver from me. “You’ve got one friend at school, you walk around with your head down…I was a lot like that before I met Callie. People thought because I didn’t talk to anyone it meant I was some goth bitch or something.” Before I can comment on that, she continues. “And your mom. I mean, no offense, but what kind of mom believes her son—who’s never really gotten into trouble before—raped a girl?”

“You believed it,” I murmur.

“I’m not your mother. I didn’t push you out of my vagina—”

“Gross.”

“—or change your diapers, or bathe you, or teach you right from wrong well enough that I would know without a doubt you wouldn’t do something like that.” She sets her soda on the coffee table and twists around to face me better. “I mean, jeez, I’ve known you only a few weeks and I’d say I’m convinced you aren’t capable of that.”

“Oh, so now you think I’m innocent?”

She looks away, shrugging. “Callie and I have been talking about it.”

That could be a really good thing or a really bad thing. “Oh.”

“It’s just hard for her, you know? Like, she remembers things, but she doesn’t know if what she’s remembering is accurate or just her brain trying to fill in the blanks. But what she’s remembering makes her know that it wasn’t you.”

Her words make my chest ache as they shine light on all the things I’ve thought about. Lonely? Yeah, I guess I am. It’s why I’ve resigned myself to being Brett’s shadow all these years…because if I didn’t, who would I be? Who is Vic without Brett? I’m barely anything with him; I would be nothing without him.

Mom…of course I’ve asked myself again and again why she didn’t believe me. Now I know the answer.

“My dad’s a rapist,” I blurt out.

Autumn’s spine stiffens visibly with surprise. “Say what?”

“Mom told me earlier tonight. She got pregnant with me after my dad raped her.” Funny how that one piece of information set so many things into place. It was a traumatic event she never got past. She’s never trusted men, never dated, never seemed to think much of them. Even her friends’ husbands were cheats and slobs and liars as far as she was concerned. I guess it was a matter of time before she began to think the same of me. She named me after her—Victor and Victoria—so I would be hers, right? To associate me as her child and not his. I was her whole world, until I started to get older and looked less and less like her sweet little boy, and more and more like the man who hurt her.

Autumn’s posture softens a little and she scoots closer. “That’s what Marco was talking about, huh? Oh, Vic… You’re not your dad.”

I can’t say to her that it doesn’t matter what sort of person I really am, because as far as my mother is concerned, I’m already guilty of everything. Maybe I’m not a good person. Maybe I’m destined to be like him when I get older. Maybe Mom sees something in me that I don’t.

The words catch in my teeth and force tears to my eyes and—fuck. No. I’m not crying in front of Autumn. I won’t. I can’t. If this new friendship is going to head anywhere, I don’t want to screw it up. I’m clinging to fibers of sanity enough as it is and she already has so much to deal with trying to be there for Callie and…

“You’re a good person, Vic,” Autumn whispers against my ear. I don’t remember her putting her arms around me but there they are, loosely hung on my shoulders with her palm cradling my head against her shoulder and the notebook discarded on the floor. Her fingers slide through my hair. And it’s not like I’m openly sobbing or anything, but I feel the tears stinging my eyes and threatening to fall free. I squeeze my eyes shut and turn my face into her neck, breathing in deep.

She smells like mint and soap, and her skin is warm and soft, her touch gentle, and I think that maybe this is all I’ve really wanted. Not Brett’s sympathetic hand on my shoulder, not Mom’s accusing stares or Mr. Mason’s lectures. All I wanted was someone to tell me that they believe me,
in
me, a pair of arms around me that promise a better tomorrow. A little faith in who I am as a person…that’s all I had secretly hoped for. Even as guilty as I feel for taking comfort in anything right now, I find myself leaning into Autumn, slipping my arms around her middle.

Neither of us says anything else. Eventually I find myself sliding down until my head is in her lap, my gaze focused blurrily on the TV. Autumn has managed to twist the blanket around weirdly to cover us both. Now and again her hand strokes my hair, the side of my face. We watch Friday night sitcoms and let the live audience do the laughing for us. When I fall asleep, it’s to the sound of her breathing in and out. Maybe I don’t feel entirely better, but this? This is definitely a start.

Chapter Twelve

An unfamiliar ringtone jars me awake in the morning. It takes me a minute to place it—Oasis’s “Wonderwall”—and that it’s coming from Autumn’s phone on the table. She grunts awake, and I turn my head enough to look up at her. She fell asleep sitting up, and her hair is mostly fallen down from its hair tie and she just might be the best thing in the world to wake up to even as she’s scowling in her attempt to become coherent. I reach for her phone and offer it up to her. Callie’s name flashes across the screen. She answers it groggily. “Oh my God, it’s too early.”

The voice on the line says, “It’s like nine o’clock. That’s not early.”

“It’s early for a Saturday.” She stretches her legs out, arches her spine, tilts her head from side to side to work the kinks out of her neck. All while holding the phone with one hand and sliding her fingers over my hair with the other. The affectionate gesture makes a pleasant little tingle work its way down my spine, and I close my eyes to enjoy it as long as I can.

“Well, get up anyway. I’m coming over,” Callie says.

At this, I sense Autumn pausing. But only for a half second. “Sure. Vic’s here.” Like fair warning.

“Oh.” It’s Callie’s turn to pause. “Oh, he’s…oh. Um, okay. Should I come by later or something?”

Autumn’s reply is a dry one. “No. I’m sure we can have one last quickie before you get here.”

Heat floods to my cheeks and I abruptly sit up, running my hands over my face before Autumn can see how badly I’m blushing. She says to Callie, “Bring breakfast,” before hanging up. “Are you going to stick around? She’ll probably get bagels.”

I notice her smiling a little as her gaze flickers up to my hair and I immediately smooth my fingers through it to try to flatten it down. I know what my hair looks like in the morning. I’m just grateful I didn’t drool on her in the night. “Um… I d-don’t know if I should.”

Autumn pushes the blanket aside and flops down across my lap, stretching like some big, lazy cat. “The restraining order was dropped or whatever, right? I don’t see why you couldn’t stay.”

On one hand, I think this could go poorly. On the other hand, I’d really like to be around Autumn a little longer and avoid going home, or back to Brett’s. Because the moment I see him, he’s going to have questions about my dad; he’ll pry because he cares, but I’m not feeling up for it. Just the thought of it makes me want to crawl back under the blankets and return to last night.

So I reluctantly say okay to her offer, watching her fully remove her hair tie and resisting the urge to reach out and catch one of the soft-looking strands between my fingers.

“Good boy. Let me go get cleaned up a little.” She hops off the couch then, trotting upstairs and out of sight. I’m almost grateful for the break, just because so much of Autumn leaves me feeling stupidly flustered and unsure of myself. Her signals are almost like…maybe…? But no. That wouldn’t be possible, and I’m not dumb enough to get my hopes up. I’ve gotten the wrong impression from girls before. Wishful thinking or something, maybe. Last night was just her being a good person, trying to make someone—a friend?—feel better. That’s all.

While Autumn is upstairs, I occupy myself by picking up the living room. Throwing the cans in the recycling, folding her blanket, putting dishes in the sink. Nervous habit, I guess. Brett’s family is big on cleanliness and Mom is always quick to nag if something is out of place.

There’s a knock on the door and Autumn hasn’t come down yet. I’m pretty sure I heard the shower turning on, and I’ve tried not to think too much about it. I hesitate in the middle of the living room, not sure whether I should answer it or not just in case it isn’t Callie, but—Callie opens the door to let herself in a moment later, trying to balance two big bags of food and a cardboard drink carrier.

My eyes widen. I hurry to her side to help her balance the drinks while opening the door more. “S-sorry, I didn’t know if it was you.”

“No worries.” She hands over the drinks to me, nudging the door shut with her hip and taking the food into the kitchen. I follow. Noting, too, that she looks…better. Her hair is done; she’s wearing a bit of makeup. Not that she needs it, but it’s a sign to me that she might be feeling a little more like herself.

“You l-look nice,” I offer lamely.

Callie actually gives me a smile, depositing the bags from Noah’s Bagels onto the dining table. “Yeah? Thanks. You look…ruffled.”

I take a seat while desperately fighting back my body’s instant reaction of blushing. “Uh, y-yeah. Just woke up.”

“Clearly. Long night?” Her eyebrows lift.

“It’s not like that,” I mutter.

“Are you giving my guest a hard time?” Autumn asks, wandering into the kitchen in denim shorts and a tank top. Her wet hair hangs loose around her shoulders, already crimping as it air-dries.

Callie rolls her eyes and sits. “Bagels.”

“I figured.” Autumn grabs one of the bagels from a bag before sitting in the chair between Callie’s and mine. I’m sneaking glances at her that, if Callie catches them, aren’t going to help my case any about how nothing happened last night. “What’s up? I thought you had things to do today.”

“In a few hours.” Callie takes her coffee from the cup holder and leans back in her seat, studying the steam rising from the plastic lid’s opening. “I sort of wanted to tell you in person…”

That gets both of our attention. We glance at each other and then to Callie.

She says, “I’m going back to school on Monday.”

“S-seriously?”

“What? Why?”

“Well, I
am
a senior and I’ve kept my grades pretty good. I don’t want to screw it up because I was too afraid.”

“I’m sure your teachers will cut you a break,” Autumn insists. “I mean, they haven’t caught the guy yet…”

Callie doesn’t look up and her voice doesn’t quite match her expression. “I know that, and they might never catch him. You know? Besides, most of the people at the party were from the college Aaron’s brother goes to.”

“S-so?”

“So…it’s like a twenty percent chance I’m going to run into him in the hall. Those odds aren’t that bad.”

“You’re bullshitting yourself with that.” Autumn tears a bite out of her bagel with more force than is necessary. She’s not angry, not annoyed…anxious, I think. Her leg is bouncing. She chews and swallows before adding, “Some people at school will be assholes about the whole thing.”

“Maybe. But I can’t hide forever.” Callie looks up finally with a meager smile. “Look, I’m not saying that I won’t have crappy days or that someone won’t say something that’ll upset me, but I have to try. Honestly, Vic has kind of been an inspiration.”

I straighten up slightly. “I h-haven’t done anything.”

Callie drags one of the bags over to retrieve a sesame seed bagel from within its depths. “Autumn was telling me the kind of crap you’ve been dealing with because of my accusations.”

“I-It isn’t your fault,” I quickly say. She gives me a pointed look.

“Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. The point being, you’ve had to deal with a lot, too. If you can do it, I should be able to.”

“I wasn’t raped,” I point out. The words are harsh and make the girls fall silent for a moment, and I cringe inwardly. “I’m s-s—”

“Don’t be.” Callie opens her bagel and reaches for the cream cheese. She takes a deep breath like it somehow gives her strength. “If I can’t even hear someone say the word, then I’m in for a lot of trouble.”

This Callie is so different from the Callie I saw at the party, and especially the one I met here at Autumn’s a few weeks ago. It’s easier to see now how these two are good friends. Autumn is smiling a little despite her anxiousness, and I think I know how she must be feeling: proud of Callie’s strength but worried for her. I am, too.

“I’ll d-do whatever I can to help,” I offer.

“You’re sweet, Vic, but you’ve been dragged through the mud enough.” Callie shakes her head.

“It has to do with me now.” I glance at Autumn, who is cramming another piece of bagel into her mouth. “People aren’t going to let me off the hook completely until the r-real guy is caught.”

Autumn adds, “He has a point. But are you positive about this whole coming back to school thing? I mean, you’ve been keeping up with classwork at home.”

“I’m positive.” Callie takes a deep breath and sips her coffee. “And I already had to talk my parents into it, so please don’t make me do the same with you.”

“Hey, I support whatever you want to do.” Autumn lifts her coffee cup as though in a toast. “So long as you’re doing it for all the right reasons.”

Her friend smiles. It’s a nervous sort of smile, but sincere. “Oh, God, I hope I am.”

Callie stays long enough for all of us to fill up on coffee and bagels. While Autumn walks her outside, I clean up our mess in the kitchen, idly hoping her parents don’t come back and question the presence of multiple peoples’ cups in the trash. Maybe they won’t care. Other than what little she told me last night, I don’t know much about her family, which makes me feel a little guilty, seeing as I spewed so many of my own problems at her. Maybe I need to try to remedy that.

Autumn returns just as I’ve wiped off the kitchen table, and she rolls her eyes. “You’re a guest. You aren’t supposed to clean.”

“Habit.” I toss the sponge back into the sink where I found it and give her a tiny smile. “Plans t-today?”

She presses her fists against her hips, head cocked. “Yeah, hanging out with you. Detective work, maybe. Unless you have somewhere to be?”

Well, that takes the pressure off of having to ask if she wants to do something. “No. I’d like that.”

“Cool.” Autumn grabs her shoes, keys, and phone, and we pile into her car. She remembers the way back to my house. Given that it’s Saturday and Mom doesn’t work, it’s a relief to see her car not in the driveway. It’s one thing if she thinks I’m hanging out with Brett. It’d be another if she found out I spent the night at a girl’s house.

We park on the street. I get out, not saying a word when Autumn follows. I let us in, gesturing absently. “M-make yourself at home. Do we have time for me to get a shower?”

“Yeah, sure.” She waves me off, distracted by photos of little-me hanging in the hall that she hadn’t paid any attention to the last time we were here. They go up to seventh grade or so, every one of my school photos, and then stop abruptly. I try not to think about it and hope if she notices, she won’t point it out.

I tell Autumn there are drinks in the fridge if she wants one and then make my way to the bathroom. As awkward as it was sitting in her living room knowing she was upstairs in the shower, it’s twice as awkward knowing she’s wandering around my house while I’m standing naked in a shower stall with little more than a bathroom door between us. After our closeness last night, I’m self-conscious about wanting to scrub down really well and wash my hair. Extra clean. Girls like that, right?

I keep it quick, heading into my room afterward and dropping the towel as I slide open the closet door.

Autumn clears her throat.

At the same time I’m yanking the towel back up around my waist, I’m pivoting around to see her lying on my bed with my dictionary, peering at me.

My cheeks are on fire. “I’m s-sorry, I d-didn’t know you were…”

She raises her eyebrows. “It’s cool. You have a cute butt.”

I open my mouth, unable to find the words. If there were ever a girl in all the world who could humiliate you and charm you in a single sentence, it would be Autumn Dixon. Never have I thought about whether or not my butt was
cute
. “Uh…”

“I won’t peek.” She rolls onto her side, putting her back to me.

Good enough, I guess. Not that I really care if she does look, just that…well, I’m skinny and tall and not really anything special to look at, so she’d probably be reminded of one of the many reasons why I’m so not a dateable kind of guy…

On second thought, maybe I don’t want her to look.

I make quick work of getting on clean boxers and jeans, and then take a seat beside her on the bed while I towel my messy brown hair dry before I bother to find a shirt so the collar of it doesn’t end up soaked. “What are you doing?”

She rolls onto her back again, holding up my pocket dictionary. “What’s all this highlighted stuff?”

The attempt I make at trying to reach for the book to take it from her is a halfhearted one. She pulls it out of my reach. I sigh. “Um…j-just, you know. Words that I’ve memorized.”

“So all the highlighted words are ones you know by heart?”

“Yeah.”

She flips a few pages to find one, lips pursed. “
Holocaust.
”

Easy. I just did that one last month. “Any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life, especially by fire.”

“Cool.” Another page. “
Perigee.”

That one is trickier. I close my eyes, trying to recall the page to the forefront of my brain. “The point of s-something closest to the Earth when it’s in orbit. Like a satellite. Or the moon. I think.”

“You are correct, sir. Man, they have words for everything.” She doesn’t look up. “
Salacious
.”

I pause, feeling mildly like she had to have picked that on purpose. Just to see me squirm. “Lustful. Lecherous. Indecent.”

She grins. “Very good. Can you use it in a sentence?”

The expression I give her in return is flat. “Waiting in my room knowing I would be coming in naked was very salacious of you.”

Autumn laughs, closing the book. “Subpar, but I’ll let you slide.”

“Gosh, thanks.”

She crawls past me to get off the bed and goes to the closet, picking out one of my T-shirts and holding it at arm’s length. It’s a band shirt from some local show Brett sneaked us into last year and their logo is of a Viking riding a unicorn. She nods appraisingly and tosses it in my direction. “What makes you do that? The whole word thing.”

I catch the shirt and pull it over my head. “Just something I do.”

“Yeah, but
why
?”

All the reasons sound so silly when I think about how to word them. I try to compress them into their simplest form, which is basically, “So I’m smart at one thing in my life.”