The Bullet List (The Saving Bailey Trilogy, #1) (10 page)

“Stop! I’m trying to help you!” he growls at me.

“Nooo. You will hurt me
worse
. My mom loves me, and if she loses me she won’t be able to stand it!” I weep.

With a quick upwards punch, I push the phone from his grip, and send it flying across the room.

“You don’t know love. You’ve never had someone who really loved you. Your mom doesn’t,
she tried to kill you
.”

While he is talking I crawl to where the phone has landed, and hold onto it with an iron grip. I am bawling from the thought of never seeing my mom again. She tried to kill me, yes, but she has been here from the start, and when things seemed unbearable, she was there to make them tolerable.

“Don’t call them,” Sarah says.

Spencer pays her no mind though
; he wants the phone
. At first he tries to gently loosen my fingers one by one, but I am holding onto it like a lifeline. When being gentle won’t work, he resorts to digging his sharp nails into my knuckles, confident that this small amount of pain will loosen my grip.
Not a chance
.

He is stubborn, like Clad, like Trenton, like every boy I have ever met, as unrelenting as the sun that rises every morning. He is digging so far into my skin that blood is pooling up where his nails are embedded. Sarah is stunned by Spencer’s brute force, but does nothing to stop it.

“Come on, give me the damn phone, I don’t want to hurt you. Give it to me!” he says, struggling with me. I can’t take the pain any longer, and I relax the muscles in my hand. Spencer has been pulling on the phone with such vigor that it pops out of his grasp, and falls somewhere behind him.

I rub my hand for a minute, only long enough to recover from the stinging sensation of the tiny gashes. I can’t spend long though because Spencer is halfway to the phone. We both dive for it, and as I am bending down to pick it up, Spencer’s head bonks me in the face. I jerk back my head, hand covering my mouth. Suddenly the room goes black, and I am face down on the floor.

“Spencer, stop!
Just stop
. You hit her in the face!” I hear Sarah crying. My resolve is broken,
forget the phone, forget Mom, let Spence do what he wants, I am too weak to continue on fighting him.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” Sarah asks, crouching down next to me, her face in front of mine. My body shudders from my sobbing.

“I – I – just don’t want to lose her,” I stammer.

“Shhh,” Sarah says, and pulls my hair away from my face. She is crying too, and it makes me weep even harder to know that it is because of me. Spencer lays a hand on my head, in an effort to comfort me, but it is futile. My face is busted and my hearts is like a broken vase held together with tape; one that won’t hold together for much longer.

I eventually cry myself to sleep on their “welcome” rug.

I wake in a strange room, weighed down by a mass of blankets. I struggle to free myself. Light leaks in through the door as it opens, and Spencer lets himself in. The darkness returns as he shuts the door, blocking out the light. He sits next to me, and I can hear him taking in uneasy breaths.

“Sarah hates me for making you upset,” he says.

“I couldn’t help myself,” I say, tracing swirls in the bedding.

He catches my hand and rubs his thumb over the cuts from his finger-nails.

“I thought it would be the right thing to do. You know, trying to let Children and Families in on what your mom did. But you have proven me wrong.” He kisses my hand. “Forgive me, sweetheart?”

“I forgive you,” I say, and nestle my head against his chest.

“Your lip was bleeding and your nose. I saw when I picked you up to put you to bed. Sarah wiped away the blood. She is like a little nurse.”

“You knocked me pretty hard,” I say.

“It was completely an accident. I feel awful for it. I just wanted to get the phone so badly. Like I said, I thought it would help you, and I was wrong.”

“It’s alright,” I say, twisting his shirt in my hands. “I need something to hold onto, I need to get a grip on reality. Please tell me everything that happened was a dream.”

“No, it wasn’t a dream. I wish I could lie to you and say that it was though.”

“I want to stay here, against your chest. Can you make time stop?”

He chuckles and traces my face with his finger. “For you I would find every clock in the world and break them. I would find every calendar and shred them; anything to make people believe that time is gone. I wouldn’t just stop it; I would make it vanish altogether, like it never existed.”

“Then it wouldn’t turn into daytime, and my mom would have no sense of hours, and wouldn’t be counting them off on her fingers, waiting for my return.”

He encloses me in his arms. “I will stay here and hold onto you until you believe you are safe, until you believe that I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you.”

“We will have to stay like this for an eternity than,” I say seriously.

“So be it.”

Eternity is cut short, though, because Sarah peeks in the door, and seeing me awake, rushes in.

“How is your face? Your mouth, does it hurt really badly?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Sarah can put some Band-Aids on your cuts. I need to go tell my mom we have company,” Spence says, and leaves the room.

“Can you walk? Do you need help getting to the bathroom?” Sarah asks, placing a hand under my arm to help me up.

“I can walk, I can get there,” I say and push away her arm.

The bathroom adjoins the guest bedroom. A thick layer of pink carpet runs across the entire floor. This part of the house looks as if it is stuck in the 80s.

I sit on the pink toilet and pull my hair back so Sarah can clean the cut on my throat.

“This might sting…oh who am I kidding, this is going to hurt like hell!” Sarah says, dabbing rubbing alcohol on the thin cut.

“Oww,” I exclaim. It feels like my flesh is sizzling from the burn of the alcohol.

“Okay, give me your hand. Now this I really worry about,” she says, pouring the alcohol over my knuckles. “Spencer never washes his nails; I hope you don’t get an infection.” She rips open more Band-Aids with her teeth.

I think what I should really be worried about is an infection from her saliva.

She frowns, as she places the Band-Aids as best she can over the cuts. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have stopped him, I was scared.” A tear slides off her cheek and lands on the box of Band-Aids.

I force a laugh to show her I am fine, but the effort is weak, sounding more like a gasp. “Cuts heal Sarah,” I say.

“I could never be as brave as you,” she says, looking into my eyes. “How do you put up with it all?” she asks in wonder.

“I don’t, I crumble – you saw me. I was a mess,” I remind her.

“I’ve never seen a person cry that hard,” she acknowledges.

My face flushes. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be, it just made me sad, is all.”

Spencer knocks on the door, a hand over his eyes. “Is it safe to come in?” he asks.

“No I’m changing,” I joke, and his hand falls from his eyes in a flash.

The three of us laugh heartily.

“What if she had been?” Sarah squeals.

Spencer smirks. “Well then my eyes would have been in for a treat.”

The blood beneath my cheeks is as hot as a house fire.

Spencer is shirtless, in his boxers, ready for bed, I assume. Locks of his hair are sticking straight up, and he is leaning against the door, modeling like he is in the middle of a fashion shoot.

“Mmm, I think Spence likes you,” Sarah says.

A smile shows up on my face, as rare as a diamond.

“You have a beautiful smile,” Spencer says and lifts my head up. I had been trying to hide my face from him.

“Even though your lip is swollen,” he jests. “Beautiful.”

“Mom is making dinner, and wants me to help, so I’ll leave you two alone,” he says, and escapes the mounting tension.

“He definitely likes you,” Sarah says, and rolls her eyes.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I say, grinning.

“Your clothes are damp, would you like to borrow some of mine?” she offers, changing the subject.

“Yes please, anything will do.”

“Yeah, you could wear a paper bag and still look attractive,” she mumbles under her breath as she exits the bathroom.

I peel off my wet clothes and put them in the sink. In the mirror I can see how much of a mess I really am; countless bruises from my tumble down the stairs, and the Band-Aids crookedly placed on my hand. I look pitiful.

The door is shut but not locked. Sarah comes in not realizing that I am undressed, and before I can say anything she notices the bruises on my back.

“From the stairs?” she asks.

I reach in the sink, for my nightgown to cover up with.

“We are both girls,” Sarah says.

Girls who hardly know each other
. Besides, underneath her clothes her skin isn’t riddled with bruises and cuts.

“I’m going to take a shower, if that’s alright?” I ask, slipping behind the shower curtain, not waiting for permission.

“Okay, here are the clothes; I’ll lay them on the counter. And there are towels under the sink. Let me know if you need anything,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say as she is retreating to the door. “And wait, Sarah, promise not to tell your brother about the bruises?” I request.

“I won’t,” she says, and shuts the door.

I sit in the shower, too tired to stand, and let the hot water spray over me. I am trying to think, because I am sure this is the only time I will have to myself for the rest of the night.

My head is sore from hitting the step; there is a large knot under the skin. I have a headache that could make even the strongest of men pass out. There is no way I will be able to organize my thoughts tonight.

I am able to look back on my meltdown though, and pick away at it like a scab: Spencer holding me against his chest like I was a bird with a broken wing, and me accepting the gesture, needing it as much as I need a shot of morphine for the pain in my bones.

I used to recoil from touch, like a feral child. Now I find myself falling into any arms that will accept me, being touched by any hands that promise not to cause me pain. This is probably why I have taken to Spencer so quickly, but it can’t explain why he has done the same.

I let Spencer and Sarah knock many times on the door before I rise from the shower and dry off. With Sarah’s sweatshirt and pajama pants on, and my hair wrapped in a towel, I lean against the sink. My hands squeeze the granite, my teeth clench, and my mind lurches. I need to think, have to think, but it won’t happen. It is like trying to force a grapefruit through a straw, my head is just not in the right place.

“Are you okay?” Spence asks, jiggling the door-knob.

“Yes I’m fine,” I sigh deeply.

“Just checking,” his voice rings.

I compose myself and step out of the bathroom. My hands are shaking, but I can’t explain why.

“You look…clean,” Spence says, his voice sounding awkward. “We’re going to act like you are a friend of Sarah’s, and that you two are having a sleepover. You don’t want to go back home do you?”

“That will work,” I say, and stuff my hands in the sweatshirt so they can’t see them trembling.

“Come into the kitchen and meet my mom,” Sarah says, and slips her arm through mine.

Their mother is cheery, but not the fake plastic kind of cheery that my mom used to be. She looks sincerely thrilled to be in the kitchen cooking a homemade supper for her family.
Someone call Betty Crocker and let her know she has competition.

“Oh, hi!” she says, and waves.

“You must be Sarah’s little friend. Oh aren’t you guys cute!” she says, sounding delighted to meet me. “Spencer was talking all about you, how you are just the prettiest girl he has ever seen, and that you actually enjoy reading, just like he does. A-dorable.”

Fantastic
, I think,
now Spencer think’s I’m a bookworm
. I haven’t touched a book since the sixth grade, when I was forced to do a book report on
Where the Red Fern Grows
.

“Mommm, okay. I think you’ve embarrassed me enough now. Can we eat?” Spencer says agitated.

I scoff down bowl after bowl of soup. Spencer’s mom can really cook, not like my mom who just puts dry pasta in hot water and heats up a jar of Ragu for dinner.

After we have finished eating, and Sarah has washed the dishes (I offered to help, but upon seeing my hands, her mom objected) she shows me to her bedroom at the end of the hall.

There are about a hundred soccer trophies and medals lining the walls on oak shelving. Sarah’s bed has a pink flowery bed spread, and the room is a little untidy. An average teenaged girl’s room, aside from the quantity of trophies.

“Soccer, huh?” I ask.

“My passion, I live and breathe it,” she says, dusting one of the many trophies. “You can share my bed tonight.”

I waste no time slithering under the covers. I need this day to end as soon as possible.

“It’s been rough, I know,” Sarah says, sliding in next to me. She stretches her arm out to flick her lamp off, and I let out a throaty shriek.

“Leave it on, please,” I say.

“How the heck am I supposed to sleep-” Spencer walks in, and gives her a look.

“She can leave it on for you, if it will make you feel better,” Spencer says.

Sarah rolls over in bed, her back to me.

Spencer sits with his back supported by the nightstand, and holds my hand in his. I thought I would pass out in no time, but this is not the case. Sarah, however, is snoring as soon as her head hits the pillow.

“I’ve been thinking,” Spence says, massaging my hand.

“ ‘Bout what?” I ask.

“About how to stop time for you and make everything go away, like a dream.”

“Did you find a way?” I ask optimistically.

“Yes, in sleep you will forget all that has happened, and maybe you can dream of something sweet. It is in sleep that you can escape reality, so close your eyes, and doze off,” he says, and gently closes my eyes with his thumbs.

“I can’t,” I whine.