The Academy - First Days (4 page)

Sang
: “
I’m fine. I just need to hang out here for the day. I’m
sorry if I worried you.”

I was just replying to North to say I couldn’t call right now but
would try to do it soon when the phone exploded with messages. I fumbled with
it, unable to complete a message because it would vibrate and the screen would
change for every incoming message.

Gabriel
: “
Did she yell? Was it bad?”

North
: “
When are you coming back?”

Silas
: “
Do you need anything?”

Kota
: “
What happened?”

Luke
: “
Did you die? Are you grounded?”

Silas
: “
How long do you have to stay there for?”

Victor
: “
Can you sneak back out tonight?”

Nathan
: “
Why are you apologizing? Just tell us what happened.”

North
: “
Goddamn it, call me.”

I dropped the phone onto the carpet, pulling my knees up and
resting my face in my hands. My heart was beating too hard on too many levels.
It was too much to still be angry at my mother and be so excited by the guys. I
needed to calm down and find a place to call them from where I wouldn’t be
overheard and I couldn’t leave the house.

I crawled to the other side of the room to turn down the volume of
the music, listening for the sounds of my family. A radio advertisement floated
from my sister’s room. My mom’s television was turned up again. That was a good
thing.

I turned the music up on my radio again, this time raising the
volume a couple of notches higher. I waited to hear again to see if my mother
or my sister would yell at me that it was too loud.

Silence. I scrambled with the phone to the attic door and peered
inside. The space was the area between the wall and the slant of the roof.
There was a nook in the back that had a flat piece of plywood board, almost
like a platform. Once I was inside there, I would be mostly surrounded by
insulation in the most remote spot in the house.

I got down and crouched inside the attic door. The air was thick,
dry, and hot and smelled like raw wood and insulation. I closed the door behind
me. Technically I wasn’t leaving the house but I didn’t want them to know I was
using this space. It was the last place I had left that they wouldn’t think to
look for me.

Sinking into darkness, I turned on the phone, using the glow to
guide me as I crawled on my hands and feet deeper into the tunnel, ducking my
head under beams to get to the platform nook. When I was there, I angled myself
around a four-by-four beam that partially blocked the opening and climbed in.
The nook was wide enough that I could sit cross-legged comfortably and the
space above my head was tall enough I wouldn’t hit my head if I tried to stand.

I was still nervous about being heard but I pushed the buttons on
the phone, dialing Kota’s number.

He answered before the first ring could complete itself. “Sang?”

“It’s me,” I said in a quiet voice. “There were too many texts to
answer at once.”

Questions from six other male voices floated through from the
background. I smiled. It was soothing to hear them all.

“Hang on a second, Sang,” he said. There was a beeping noise and
the clack of the phone being put on a wood surface. “Okay,” he said. “I put you
on speaker. Tell us what’s going on.”

I wasn’t ready for that. I sucked in a breath, trying not to sound
so small and lonely. “I’m fine. It’s over with. She told me I had to stay in
the house.”

A mesh of voices started at once but it was Kota’s that stood out.
“How much trouble are we talking about? Does she know about us?”

“She doesn’t know specifics,” I said. “It was just in general for
being in someone’s house. It’s the usual stuff.”

“Sang,” Nathan said, sounding distant from the phone. “Do you want
us to try to come over and talk to her?”

“No,” I said, probably a little too loudly and I calmed myself,
putting a hand on my heart. “Just let her cool off. School starts tomorrow.
We’ll be busy anyway. I’ll be able to get back but not today. I just have to be
more careful with how.”

Kota spoke, “We won’t be able to hide this forever.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said, trying to sound hopeful. There
wasn’t an option for me other than getting better at sneaking out. “One thing
at a time. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my head down.”

I wasn’t sure how long I could risk being gone from my room so I
told the guys I would text. I just wanted to let them know all at once what was
happening.

I got off the phone and leaned against one of the wood beams. A
trickle of sweat started at my brow and slid down my face. Maybe I wasn’t so
important to them. It didn’t matter. I needed them and much more than I could
ever tell them out loud. None of them knew how much I’ve needed to feel like I
belonged.

And they were all just out of reach.

I curled up on my side, my face pressed to the wood of the
platform. Tears dripped from my cheeks. I was lonely from years without being
close to anyone. I’d tasted their kindness and I was starving for more. I would
do whatever it took to keep this a secret.

Friendship was hard work.

P
olaris

T
hat night, I tucked the phone away into the attic space. I’d
gotten more text messages but everyone soon had to go home and deal with their
own stuff. Tomorrow was the first day.

When my dad got home, my mom talked to him but they didn’t call me
down. I had been forgotten again.

It was after eleven. I slipped into a pair of soft cotton shorts
and a black tank top that was almost too small for me. The house was asleep. I
was trying to sleep but my mind kept wandering to what would happen tomorrow.
Instead, I wrote in a small, brown cloth bound diary my father gave me last Christmas.

Diaries were hard to keep in my family. For one thing, Marie was
prone to snooping, as was my mother. I tried to keep a regular notebook diary
when I was younger but I often got into trouble when I bothered, because I
wrote about how angry I was many times. Marie would use it as evidence if she
got into trouble, putting me in the middle of the latest argument with my
mother.

To combat this, I found another language to borrow. I used Korean
lettering in a slightly different format. I made lines and circles that made up
the Korean alphabet, writing my thoughts in a language they couldn’t read. I
didn’t know any Korean, the words were in English. The Korean alphabet was
simply a code. If Marie tried to use a translation tool from the Internet, it wouldn’t
work. If she bothered to decode, it would take some work. I knew Marie tried to
read it once, because she wrote in the front of my diary in black Sharpie how I
was stupid. I might have been stupid, but it stopped her from using my diary
and my mother stopped looking at it, too.

It was exciting to know I would be around the guys all day and my
parents couldn’t do anything about it. For once when I was around them, I could
almost relax and not worry about getting caught. I wrote the guy’s names into
my diary, admiring how they looked in my secret language.

A soft tapping started at the window.

I sat up from the bed. A human figure shadowed the glass. Shivers
ran through me and my breath was caught in my throat, but I dismissed it. I
dropped the diary on the bed, and crossed the room, expecting Nathan to be
there. He’d climbed my roof before.

Instead, North was crouched and looking in. In his black t-shirt,
black jeans and boots, if I hadn’t known him, I would have been screaming.

I waved and unlocked the window.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I pushed the window up.

He held his hand out, his palm up and fingers spread out. “Come
see.”

My mouth popped open. “North...”

“We won’t go far.”

My heart thudded hard in my chest. My hand disappeared into his as
he closed his fingers around my palm. He tugged to encourage me out onto the
roof.

I angled my body and stepped out. The air was sticky warm. The
half-moon shed a gentle glow against North’s tall frame.

North kept my hand, his grip strong, and started to step up the
incline to the apex.

“Where?” I asked.

“Up.” He motioned and continued to climb.

My legs wobbled as they still ached from kneeling for so long. I
hoped they wouldn’t cause me to misstep.

Once we made it to the top, he pointed to a flat section of the
roof that covered the back porch. He let go of me to slide down and when he got
to the flat part, he held out his hand to me again as a support.

“Right here,” he whispered, his deep voice carrying to me.

I slid down and he caught me by the legs. He half picked me up and
positioned me until I was standing beside to him. We were protected on one side
by the edge of the fireplace. He pointed to the corner, and I sat with the
fireplace bricks to my right and he sat next to me.

In front of us was the view of the yard and the woods behind it
and the stars above our heads.

“Sit back,” he said.

My heart flipped in my chest. Why was he doing this with me? I
pushed my hand to feel where the roof made a gentle incline. When I sat back,
it was like resting on a hill.

He nestled himself next to me and so close that I could feel the
warmth of his arm near mine. There in the dark, we looked up at the stars above
our heads. While my heart was still pumping and my body shivered at how
unexpected it was, North remained quiet. His silence kept me nervous but I
didn’t know what to say to break this tension. I clamped my lips shut, gazing
at the stars.

At some point I relaxed and the skin of my arm touched his. He didn’t
move. I left my arm as still as possible. The touch was casual enough. I wasn’t
directly reaching for him. It was just nice to feel him there in the dark and
without feeling embarrassed or awkward.

My mind was totally not focused on the stars.

We about a half hour passed before North spoke. “What happened
today, Sang?”

My eyebrows arched in surprise at his question. “What do you
mean?”

He turned until he was on his right side, his head propped up with
his hand. His dark eyes were in shadow. I caught the gentle outline of his
thick eyebrows and his dark hair brushed back away from his face, all but one
strand which hung over his forehead. “I want to know what happened the moment
you got back to this house after you left today. You weren’t fully honest with
us.”

How could he know? “I was--.”

“You were protecting us.” He used his free hand to grasp my arm,
his fingers wrapping around my elbow. “I know what softening the truth sounds
like. The others might be willing to buy it but I want to know.”

I twisted my lips. “It’s not really that bad.”

“I don’t want your opinion,” he said. “Tell me what happened. I’ll
make the decision. Tell me exactly what your mother said.”

I pressed my fingers to my cheek, unsure of where to start.
Eventually I did tell him. He listened quietly as I described what she said, my
eventual defiant replies, and, with my lips trembling, I told him about
kneeling in rice.

When I finished, I heard him swallowing. “Let me see,” he
whispered.

“See what?”

He sat up, stuffing his hand into his pocket. Keys rattled. A
light broke through the dark. He swung the flashlight toward me and the glow
washed over my knees. His hand moved to my thigh as he pulled one of my legs
closer. He bent over me, his eyes lit up from the LED bulb. His thumb traced
over the crest of my knee. When he did it, I winced, feeling sensitive to both
his touch and the pain.

“Baby,” he whispered. “How long were you there for?”

I pushed my finger to my lower lip, “I don’t remember. I wasn’t
watching the clock.”

“Did it start right after you left Kota’s?”

“About, yes.”

He looked up from my knee, flicking the light off again and
casting us into shadow. My eyes blacked out as they adjusted. His hand found
mine against my mouth and he pulled it away to hold it. “And you called us
right after?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That had to be over three hours,” he said. “At least.” He let go
of me and rolled to lean back against the roof, putting his arms under his head
to prop it up. “Trouble, trouble, trouble...” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly.

“Stop apologizing for shit that isn’t your fault.”