The End of the World (13 page)

So I remain in that same spot until the sun comes up, blood sliding into my mouth as I slowly drift to sleep. I wake two hours later with my left cheek super glued to the wall so forcefully that I have to slowly peel it away, and even then it hurts so much I swear a little skin stays behind. Indentions dot my skin like pock marks, a few so deep it will probably take days for them to completely disappear. But Carl never comes for me.

I guess he decided I didn’t need saving tonight.

Cameron

O
n the first
day of my sophomore year and Shaye’s senior year—the start of what should be the happiest year of her secondary education—she came to school with a busted lip and a tiny bruise under her right eye, and it’s all anyone talked about. Nothing was said out of concern or empathy or even a desire to be polite. People just laughed. Pointed. Made loud speculations about what boy she pissed off now, and when they wanted to be really mean—they said vile things about having always known she liked it rough.

She spent most the afternoon in the nurse’s office.

Then at least an hour with the counselor.

In spite of everything, she wound up with a week of detention. On the very first day. Even the adults keep jumping on the judgment train.

Sometimes I don’t know how Shaye survives.

The rest of the time I spend worrying that she’ll stop deciding to.

*

Shaye

Cameron is going
to talk.

I know he’s going to talk.

I can see the anger in his eyes…the temper boiling just below the surface of his perpetually reddened skin.

He’s going to talk.

What he doesn’t know is…if he says a word…it’s the children who will suffer the most.

And as for me…

Nothing he says can save me now.

Cameron

“W
here is my
money?”

I say the words to the empty bedroom, both livid and relieved that no one can hear me. I’ve looked all over the bedroom—in every drawer, under the beds, on the closet shelves and inside the shoebox in the back corner where I’ve kept it secretly tucked away since the day I moved in. It’s gone. Thousands of dollars reduced to nothing but a single twenty dollar bill left behind like a middle finger to my unfortunate situation.

My inheritance, gone.

My future, gone.

My hopes of getting myself out of here long before my eighteenth birthday, gone.

If I can’t save Shaye, I wanted to at least have the option of saving myself.

I spin to scan the room, a hand over my mouth to keep myself from screaming.

WHERE THE HELL IS MY MONEY?

Unable to see anything but the blackness of anger and the purplish hue of panic, I check a few more places. Coming up empty, I stomp across the hall into Shaye’s room and bang the door open. It crashes into the wall, and I do nothing to stop it. Maria is asleep and I’ll have a steep price to pay, but I don’t care. I’ve already lost a fortune; I’ll pay whatever I have to and it can’t leave me any more in the negative.

“Do you have it?” I want to hit something. Smash something. Leave here and never come back, but the option is no longer in the box where I left it.

Shaye leaps off the bed, a pink pillow in her hand, fire in her eyes, readying herself for battle.

“Don’t come in here like that. I’ve already told you that if you wake her up—”

“Where is it?” I don’t bother to keep my voice low, and Maria begins to wail. She can cry all night and into next week for all I care.

“Where is what?” Shaye’s whisper could cut into bare skin with its sharpness, but I let it slice me and just look at her. Looking for guilt. Looking for innocence. Looking for…something. I see nothing but a blank stare.

“My money. It’s not in the box where I keep it. Someone took it, and it wasn’t me. Was it you?”

I expect her to get defensive. I expect her to gasp in shock or tell me to look again or say that I must be wrong because who would take it? I don’t expect the concern in her eyes or the way her mouth drops or the way her hands begin to wring or the way her gaze flits around the room as though she’s trying desperately to make sense of something she remembers seeing.

“He brought in all these bags of food earlier…” Her voice is a flat line of non-emotion while at the same time drifting out on deep waves of unbelief.

“Who did?” I know what she’s going to say before she utters the next words, but I want to hear it anyway.

“Carl. He was in your room…said he and Tami were going out. They were gone a couple of hours, then came back in with all these bags. They were laughing, talking about hitting the jackpot. I assumed a check came early or something…”

Again, her words drift and I go under with them. I’m drowning and can’t pull up to catch a breath. I’m choking and can’t loosen the noose around my neck.

“Why was he in my room?”

“He said he was going to teach you a lesson. That no one hides things in his house and gets away with it.” Shaye is shaking, visible shivers racking her body in uncontrollable tremors.

I just stare at her.

The king of hidden secrets tried to teach me a lesson.

Right then, everything in my mind snaps into focus. My mother gave me that money. My mother left it to me with very strict instructions on how to spend it. My mother. My mother. My mother. It was my last link to her, and they just took it away like the final touchstone meant nothing. He wants to teach me a lesson? I’ll teach him one, too.

I stare at Shaye a long time. Twenty seconds. Thirty. Fifty. She asks me a question. Another and another. I answer none of them, and that’s all it takes for her to read my mind.

The demands start, every single one of them pointless to utter.

“Don’t be stupid, Cameron. Don’t even think about it.” Her hand tugs on my wrist when I move to step away. “I know what you’re thinking, but you’ll only hurt everyone in this house. And by everyone, I mean the kids. Nothing—and I mean nothing—will happen to Carl and Tami.”

But that’s the thing about me. That’s the thing about being smaller than my age but wiser than my years; no one expects me to stand up for myself. Everyone always thinks I’ll calmly rationalize myself out of being reckless.

Not anymore.

Carl and Tami took everything away from me and spent it on junk for themselves.

And I’ve had enough.

There’s a phone in the hallway.

With Shaye whispering, begging, crying after me in ways that will make her hoarse in the morning and even a few days after, I walk over to that phone, pick up the receiver, and punch in a number I know by heart.

*

Shaye

“And that’s your
statement, Shaye? The truth?”

I nod, feeling eyes on me everywhere.

Carl’s. Tami’s. My social worker’s.

Cameron’s.

Tell me the truth, Shaye. Did you take that candy from the store?

Tell me the truth Shaye. Did you hit your sister?

Tell me the truth Shaye. Do you love me as much as I love you?

I can still hear my father’s voice. I can still feel my childlike lip quivering under the weight of his stare…my childlike heart soaring from being the cause of his smile. I could never lie to my father. I always told him the truth. I’ve always hated liars.

How quickly we often become the very thing we most despise.

Maybe that’s just what happens when everyone you love leaves you behind in a world where love doesn’t exist. But for the little girls in my care…that won’t happen to them. Not while they still have a chance. Not if I can help it.

“In the entire time I’ve lived here, I’ve never been treated badly, not once.” Things are crawling on me. Bugs. Termites. Hot wax. It takes me a second to realize the sensation belongs to my own skin. It’s shifting and wiggling under the weight of my growing untruths.

My social worker snaps his notebook shut and gives me a hard look.

“Then why would Cameron make up that story? Does anyone have an explanation?” He looks at me, at Cameron, at Carl and Tami. The only person who looks up is Carl…straight into Cameron’s downturned face, his stare steely and full of challenge.
Answer the question right or face the consequences
. I’ve seen that stare before. I’ve seen worse.

I’m the first to speak. “I think Cameron lost something and thought maybe Carl took it. He was angry…” I can’t finish the sentence. Those words alone feel like I’ve sold out my only friend. He may never forgive me.

Then again, after this week is up, he may never forgive himself.

“Is that true Cameron? Did Mr. Bowden take something that belongs to you?”

Cameron finally makes eye contact with the man. His jaw is firm, rigid. He’s trying to keep himself from letting the lie out, and a fresh pain twists in my gut from watching his struggle. I remember it well, I know where it leads, but this is Cameron’s first time.

Still, he has no idea what he’s in for.

He slowly nods. “I thought he took something that belonged to me, but I found it later.” He’s back to studying the carpet like the secret to a long life might be hidden beneath the padding. It isn’t. I’ve looked for it there too.

“And so you made up a series of elaborate accusations to get even? Cameron, you accused Mr. Bowden of sexually molesting the girls in this house. Do you realize how serious an offense this is?” He stands, scans the room, and scratches above his left ear. “There is a good chance the state will want you removed from the home, not to mention the Bowden’s themselves…”

Cameron’s panicked gaze snaps to me. I scan every part of his features in one second.

“No,” I rush to say. “He didn’t mean it, and it won’t happen again.”

My social worker pauses at the door. “Do you want me to proceed with Cameron’s removal, Mr. Bowden?”

Carl studies the man, then looks between Cameron and me. At first I don’t know what he’s going to say, and then I see it. The beginnings of a smile. That smile scares me, because I know what it means. I know what it means and it scares me more than anything.

In the next two minutes, every fear I have comes true.

The Bowden’s want Cameron to stay.

I should be happy, but I know better.

Cameron…me…all of us…everyone would have been better off if I’d just let him go.

*

It’s been three
days.

Three days of silence, unless you count the threats.

Three days of sleeplessness, unless you count the moments I doze off between the nightmares.

Three days of staring at Cameron’s perfectly remorseful expression, unless you count the spot just under his eye that hasn’t quite stopped bleeding.

Three days of crying babies and one whimpering five-year-old, unless you count today. Because today they finally stopped.

Three days of a locked pantry.

Of no food.

Of painfully empty stomachs.

I’ve been down this road before, every other time I tried to tell someone. But I’m a troublemaker, was labeled as such from day one. No one believes me. No one.

In nearly four years, Cameron is the first person to defend me.