Scar (5 page)

***

After they’d spent about as long as humanly possible finishing that one chocolate milk, Caelyn and Elijah got up to leave.

The cashier walked over to
them
as they were just about to exit the shop. She was holding a small box of donuts. “Hey,” she said.

“Yeah?” Elijah asked, suspicious now, his shoulders tensing.

The girl smiled with some embarrassment. “I just…I thought you might want some donuts. We were going to throw these out anyway.” She shrugged.

Elijah stared at the box and swallowed. He cleared his throat and Caelyn could tell the gesture had really touched him deeply. “Thanks,” he rasped. He took the box from her hands. “This means more than you know.”

“It’s no big deal,” the girl said.

“No,” Caelyn replied. “It is a big deal. It really is.”

The girl watched them go with a slightly puzzled expression, and they walked out into the bright sunlight as the rain had stopped and the clouds had moved on.

They began walking with no apparent destination. There were no more cop cars and Elijah’s scanner was back on, but there were no longer constant transmissions about the search.

Eventually, they’d wandered far from the main roads and into suburbia. Without discussing it, they’d continued meandering into a neighborhood, one not much different from the one she’d lived in with her parents.

The houses were far enough apart that each had its own nicely manicured lawn, and there were little fences and the sounds of children playing rang out.

Caelyn wondered whether the police had given up on finding her and Elijah, or if she was suddenly going to be surprised by a swarm of cruisers pulling up and cops jumping out with drawn pistols demanding them to put their hands up.

Elijah opened the Dunkin Donuts box and showed Caelyn the selection the girl had put in there for them. There were two chocolate frosted donuts, a jelly-filled, a couple of plain and two glazed. Caelyn thought about it and then finally chose a chocolate covered donut.

Saliva filled her mouth before she’d even taken the first bite, and she realized she was hungrier than she’d been in a long, long time.
Maybe ever.

As she bit in, the sugar and sweetness hit her taste buds and Caelyn moaned.

Elijah glanced over at her with a raised eyebrow. “If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder what that girl put in those donuts,” Elijah chuckled.

“This is amazing,” Caelyn said, still savoring her first bite. “Aren’t you going to have one too?”

“Maybe later,” Elijah said, closing the box and continuing to walk, now looking into the distance.

She went cold as she watched him. “You’re not still thinking that we need to split up, are you?” Caelyn asked him. “Please tell me that was just a passing thought.”

Elijah didn’t answer for a while. Then he sighed deeply. “You need to go home sometime, Caelyn.”

Her eyes filled with tears instantly. She threw her donut on the ground, not even wanting to eat it anymore. “Fuck this,” she half-sobbed.

Elijah turned and looked at her. “You know it’s for the best,” he said. “If we stay together, you’re going to end up in jail right along with me.”

“I will anyway. They have my name, they’re looking for me too.”

“You can deny it and there won’t be enough proof for them to actually convict you of anything. I’ll lie and say I was with another girl. Nobody will be able to prove anything as long as you’re not caught with me.”

“You said you wouldn’t get caught. You said—“

“I know what I said,” Elijah interrupted. His face was grim now. “And there’s nothing I want more than to have you by my side every second.”

“Then let me stay with you.”

“I’m not going to put what I want ahead of what’s best for you.”

She smirked. “And you know what’s best for me better than I know it myself?”

“Maybe I do,” he replied.

She was filled with an intense rage. She spun around, looking for somewhere to run, wanting to make him chase her. But there wasn’t really anywhere left to run, she realized.

Nearby, there was a house with a For Sale sign in the front yard, and Caelyn walked over and sat down on the curb, allowing herself to cry.

“Hey,” Elijah said.

“Just go away,” she told him. “Leave me. If that’s really what you want to do, then leave. I’ll figure out a way to go wherever I want to go next.”

“I’m not leaving you like this,” he said.

“Why not?” She could hardly see through her tears. “Better to just do it now. Just do it and get it over with.”

“Caelyn,” he sighed.

“Don’t say my name like that.”

“We should keep moving before someone notices us.”

“I don’t care anymore. And besides, this house is for sale so nobody’s going to notice anything.”

He fell silent and Caelyn just kept crying. She was so sick of having to leave him, having to be separated. They weren’t supposed to separate again—she’d have done almost anything to stay with him, even if it meant going to jail herself.

But Elijah had lost hope.

Finally, she looked up and found him staring at the For Sale sign with an odd look on his face.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“It just clicked in my mind when you said that nobody was going to notice anything because the house is for sale.” He smiled a little. “Caelyn, this house is totally empty. I can see in the front window and there’s no furniture or anything.”

“So?” Caelyn sniffled, wiping tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“So,” Elijah’s smile broke into a confident grin, “I think I might have just found a temporary solution to our troubles.” He started up the lawn and then circled around the back of the house.

Caelyn got up and followed him.

Around back, they were protected on one side of the yard by some large hedges. On the other side, there was a house with a clear view, but it was quiet and the shades were drawn.

Elijah passed Caelyn the box of donuts as he started casing the place.

Caelyn waited anxiously for someone to begin hollering at them, alerting the whole neighborhood to the presence of two thieves.

Meanwhile, Elijah was looking in each window of the empty house, and trying to find one that wasn’t locked. With each failure, he sighed impatiently and moved to the next.

“What if there’s an alarm?” Caelyn said, her pulse starting to increase the longer he kept at it.

“I saw the alarm panel through the sliding glass door,” he said. “It’s not armed.”

“But what if people come to view the house?” she asked, following him as Elijah kept checking windows.

He knelt down to a smaller window at ground level. It was dusty and neglected, and grass had grown up in front, almost blocking it entirely. Elijah fiddled with the window. It slid open. “Jackpot,” he said, grinning.

“Elijah, this house is for sale. That means people could show up at any time—a realtor, anybody.”

“That’s true,” he said, “but it’s already getting later in the day, and it’s doubtful anybody will come after like five or six o’clock.”

“But they could,” she insisted.

“So we’ll keep an eye on the road, and if someone comes, we’ll run out the back door.” He glanced up and winked at her.

She decided to shut her mouth, because even though she knew this was a horrible idea, it still meant that they could be together. And right then, she wanted to be together with him more than anything else.

And also—there really was nowhere else to go. This was probably the least illegal thing that Elijah would come up with, so Caelyn figured she might as well accept it.

“I don’t think I can fit through this,” Elijah said, peering into the basement through the narrow window. “But you might be able to,” he said.

Caelyn knelt down, putting the box from Dunkin Donuts down on the ground next to her, as she looked at the window more closely. “I might be able to just get through,” she agreed, but she already felt claustrophobic at the idea of squeezing through the opening. “What if I get stuck?”

Elijah laughed. “You won’t get stuck.”

“Fine.” She glanced around again, just to reassure herself that nobody had noticed them yet. But everything was still quiet.

She started crawling forward, then realized her mistake and turned around, sliding her legs through the window first. Her butt almost seemed to get caught, only it was a momentary problem, because after she grit her teeth and pushed, she popped through the window like a cork exploding from a champagne bottle, dropping to the basement floor below in a heap.

Elijah stuck his head inside, and his eyes were wide. “Shit, are you all right?”

Caelyn looked up at him, and she was laughing hysterically. “That was fun,” she admitted.

He shook his head. “You had me scared for a second there, kid.”

She looked down and saw blood, realized that she’d fallen onto something. “Shit,” Caelyn said, getting up and trying to see where the blood had come from. It was her elbow, which had been sliced open. She looked around and couldn’t find what it had been cut on, but then she noticed that the ledge inside the window was sharp and made of concrete.

Probably the speed with which she’d fallen down had caused her elbow to catch and slice on the hard ledge as she went over.

“You’re bleeding,” Elijah said.

“It’s not that bad,” she said, but it was kind of deep and gross. The flap of skin nauseated her and she felt dizzy.

“Come upstairs and let me in the back door, okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” she told him. Her voice echoed slightly in the empty basement.

Caelyn grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up to press against her wound, applying pressure as she walked upstairs. The house was pretty big, and it felt very strange—almost haunted in some way.

We’re not supposed to be here
, she thought.
Maybe that’s why I got cut. The house is trying to warn us to stay out.

But there was nowhere else to go. How many places could they run from?

Caelyn opened the back door and Elijah walked inside. “Let me see that cut,” he told her, his eyes displaying real concern. She hissed as he held her arm and examined the bleeding cut.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I just wish we had a First Aid kit.”

“You probably should get stitches,” Elijah said, frowning. His frown deepened and his brow creased. “I shouldn’t have made you go in that window.”

“You couldn’t have fit in,” she told him. “I just barely made it myself.”

He sighed. “Come on, let’s see if they left any soap in the bathrooms.” They walked to the first floor bathroom and found that there was a nearly empty container of liquid soap.

Elijah pumped some of the soap directly onto the wound, which burned when it seeped into the cut. “Ouch,” she cried out. “That really stings.”

“We need to clean it,” he said. “We don’t want it to get infected.”

Elijah turned the water on and then helped Caelyn maneuver her arm under the faucet so the water could cleanse the area.

Blood and water mixed in the sink and ran down the drain.

“That’s a little better,” he said.

Caelyn pulled her arm out of the water and returned to pressing her blood stained shirt against her elbow. “Now what?” she asked.

“Now…now we wait,” he said.

“Wait for what?”

He looked at her. “Tomorrow.”

“And what happens tomorrow?” she asked, wishing she’d just kept her mouth shut.

“Tomorrow you go home,” he said softly.

***

Caelyn was staring out the second-floor window from an empty room that had likely been the master bedroom. Now, it was just a large, vacant and chilly space with an uncomfortable hardwood floor that she’d been sitting on for the last few hours.

Elijah had tried to talk to her a few times earlier but she hadn’t wanted to engage with him. She was angry and hurt and sad in a way that she couldn’t even begin to explain. Instead, she sat and stared out the window at the road.

Nobody was coming to see the house, she realized. Eventually, the sun began setting and then went down. Elijah told her they probably shouldn’t put any lights on that could be easily seen from the street, but he’d turned on the lights in one or two rooms that were less risky.

Still, it was like being in a house with the power out. Only they didn’t have any candles. Or furniture.

“Hey,” Elijah said, startling her.

Caelyn turnedand saw his dark shadow in the doorway. “You scared me.”

“We should talk,” he said, and the floorboards creaked as he stepped inside. She could tell from his tone of voice that this time he meant it and wouldn’t let her brush him off any longer.

“I don’t have anything to say.” She pursed her lips tightly, feeling like a petulant child, but still unable to change her attitude.

“Let’s not waste our last few hours together being angry,” he said, his voice infuriatingly calm.