“What do you think?”
“You’re thinking I’m more qualified to judge that kid’s state of mind than a licensed psychiatrist?”
“I’m thinking you live with her every day, sugar. Girl gets better or worse, you’re on the front lines. And you’re the one that gets the final call.”
Brody didn’t answer at first. Impatience choked Ashley. Her fingers, her feet itched to push off the floor, to run down the stairs and demand Brody make a goddamn decision.
“Why’re you asking me this, Megs?” And, at Meg’s silence, “Seen Cam around a couple times. He seems to be doing okay.”
“There is no way that boy is okay after eighteen years of those folks. He’s got to deal with it, or it’ll fester.”
“So you’re going to make him deal with it. Think that’ll work?”
“Is it working for her?”
Brody was quiet.
Finally he said, “I think we should take a walk.”
There was a pause, and then a chuckle. “You know, it’s not nice to listen on other people’s conversations, Ashley,” Meg called up, not even raising her voice. Not that she had to.
Ashley sprung onto her feet and stomped back to the bed, made it good and loud so they could hear. Underneath, she could still hear Meg and Brody. The sound vibrated through her feet, thrummed up her legs and along her spine. If she wanted, she could pick out every damn word. The murmur of their voices passed outside and the screen door crashed shut.
Fuck them
, she thought savagely. She didn’t care. Ashley snatched up her book, and the soft binding split under her fingers. She felt a brief sting even as she gave in to the need to destroy something, ripped the cover in half, shredded the pages. Flakes of
Hush
drifted to the floor like snow. Sitting up here and pretending to be normal—yeah,
right
—while they were out there talking about her mental health. What was the point? She was either going to get better and prove Proom right and they would send her
back
—or she wasn’t. Or she was going to break, and when she broke they were going kill her.
And—for the life of her—Ashley did not know which one frightened her more.
Meg tried to bribe him into therapy with pancakes.
Cam had woken to a warm, sweet, baking scent and followed it down to the kitchen, a whitewashed rectangular room at the back of the house where wide, bare windows pulled in beach. His aunt was at the stove, in bare feet and mismatched pajamas, flipping pancakes. “‘Morning, sugar. How you feeling?”
“Fine.” Actually he was so stiff he could’ve sworn he heard his joints creaking—the Lopezes were taking out a wall, and he and Meg had spent a good part of yesterday swinging a sledgehammer—but any amount of stiffness and sore muscles were preferable to Savannah and starting every morning with his stomach knotted up hard as a peach pit. It’d take the whole day to knead it out, only to wake the next morning and start all over.
Meg smirked. “Anytime you want to change your mind, let me know.”
“I like the work,” Cam said calmly, and that had Meg shaking her head. He hadn’t decided what to do about the money. There was a great deal of it sitting in the bank—enough that, as trustees, his parents had decided to divide it into three parts. He could access some of it now that he was eighteen, and the next part when he was twenty-one, and the rest when he reached thirty-five. He hadn’t touched any of it. He didn’t want anything from his parents—which Meg told him was flat-out stupid. The money, she’d argued, was as much from his grandparents, and great-grandparents before them, and family rumor had it none of them were sterling examples of human kindness either. The least they could do was make sure he was comfortable, after he had to put up with being part of their family.
If only he could
see
, he wouldn’t have to decide—but that would probably create paradoxes, which was no doubt why he had this blind spot in the first place. So until he decided either way, Meg dragged him along to her jobs and snuck cash into his wallet when he wasn’t looking.
This morning, though, Meg plunked down across from him, knocking back a swig of coffee before bracing her shoulders. “I want to ask a favor of you.”
Cam cut into the pancakes with his fork. They were light and fluffy and tender. Good cook, that was another thing he’d forgotten. “Anything.”
“Not so fast, Slim. I want you to consider booking an appointment with Diana.”
“Diana?” Cam asked, even as his nerves hummed at the word
appointment.
“Dr. Diana McNamara. Nice lady. She’s a psychologist.” Cam put his fork down and straightened in his seat as Meg bulled ahead. “Not
that
kind—don’t you give me that look, Camron Scott, you know I would never do that to you. Your parents—” She took hold of Cam’s wrist and looked right at him; her brown eyes were serious and just a little angry. “—they
kicked
you out of the house—”
“They didn’t kick me out.”
“Don’t try to paint it up pretty, I know what they did. And it was mean and ugly of them to do it, and they would’ve done it even if I wasn’t here to take you in. Your daddy’s always been a dick, but Mary was better than that once, and I’m ashamed of her.”
“I chose to leave,” Cam said. It was surprisingly easy to say it. Maybe because that’s how he needed it to be. “I wasn’t going to go back after college anyway.”
“Sure, sugar, I know that. But I also know what it’s like to pack up everything and start all over someplace new. I know how hard that is, and I’m worried that you’re not going to be able to deal with that on your own. And, fact of the matter is, whatever you chose,
they
made the first move. You can’t just leave something like that be. It’ll rot. You need someone to talk to.”
“I have you.”
“Yes, but I’m not a trained professional. I don’t know how to help you,” Meg said, and for a moment he saw a flicker of the fear, the worry behind the confidence. “Diana knows what she’s doing, she comes highly recommended—”
“You know…” Cam had to stop for a moment. He tried again. “Seeing a psychologist isn’t going to fix this. It isn’t going to change things.” It wouldn’t make it stop hurting.
“Oh, baby,” she murmured, scooting closer and running a hand through his hair. Cam gave into the impulse to rest his head on her shoulder, and she wrapped him in close. “You can’t look at it like that.”
“That’s how it is.”
“Stubborn.”
“Yes,” he bit off, sitting up, ‘cause, Christ
,
his mother loved that word. But, because it was Meg asking, he added, “I’ll consider it.”
That had been over a week ago. Now Meg parked across the street, a safe distance from where the crowd streamed up over the boardwalk on their way to the beach. “Give me a call when y’all are done, I’ll come pick you up.”
But it was a beautiful day out, and her phone had been ringing nonstop. “I can walk back, or get a ride with Daniel—”
“Danny.”
“—who knows, we might hit it off.” His voice sounded bitter, even to him.
Meg grinned. “Yeah, that was convincing. Now, go, meet your friends, and no jack-rabbiting on them.” Cam had to swallow back that they weren’t his friends, and instead went to leave; she snagged his arm. “Give us a kiss first, heartless boy.”
Cam kissed his aunt’s freckled cheeks, then climbed out of the Jeep and took a good long look at the boardwalk.
People. A lot of people. A crowd like that meant confusion—a hundred different futures colliding together in his mind, tangling up the would-be’s with the might-be’s. Already the calm and quiet from it being just him and Meg was sweeping away. He’d have to focus to keep from getting a three-week headache, and it didn’t help that he was nervous.
In addition to trying to talk him into therapy, Meg had decided that what Cam needed was to spend time with other people. His age. Friends. He appreciated all the trouble Meg was going to, but he didn’t have the best luck with…that.
But she’d decided he needed some, and since he knew he was digging his heels in about the therapy, Cam agreed to the group date. He wished he hadn’t, now. He wished he had a chance to run back, shower, change. He was sweaty and there was plaster on his shirt, and this was stupid, he wasn’t good around strangers—
“Hey, hey, hey!” It took Cam a second to realize that was real, now, and for him. A tall, lanky black boy in a red and white lifeguard T-shirt jogged up to him. His wide, white grin that could’ve gotten him work in toothpaste ads. “Camron, right?” Cam nodded and the boy held out a hand. “Danny Evans.”
Cam shook his hand, feeling the formality snap into place even as he tried to fight it. “I appreciate you agreeing to show me around.”
“Yeah, well, I should probably tell you up front, Meg paid me twenty bucks to show you around. She knows my mom. Meg knows everyone’s mom. Here, this way.” Danny grabbed Cam’s arm, hauled him up a ramp towards the boardwalk when Cam’s feet dug in for a second. He glanced back, but Meg’s Jeep was already driving away. He watched as it curved past a corner.
Danny dragged him into a small restaurant at the end of the boardwalk, past all of the other shops and rides and flash. All the while keeping up a nonstop commentary, which, to Cam’s relief, did not include a word about when Cam stopped—
bicycle wheels spinning, squealing, how did she stop this thing, she was going too fast—
for a herd of bicyclists that would be here…tomorrow? Two days from now? Or darted over to catch a little boy
who was climbing on the boardwalk railing before—
spinning over the rail, world flipping upside down head over feet, leg twisted at an odd angle
. The kid elbowed him in the stomach and ran off.
The restaurant was a tiny, squat, one-story building, painted in bold green and eyesore orange. A hand-painted sign read, simply: Paco’s Best Tacos. Inside, the tables were plastic, the plates were paper, and there was salsa music on the radio. It was crammed with people. Cam had to pause for a moment and close his eyes, letting the rush of images wash over him. The dizzying tangle of
heat blazing up from the cooktop
,
flames flaring, spitting up, scorching the ceiling
—
“Jesus, I told you, not now”
—
laughter
,
bright and wheezing
—
“what’s your
problem
”
—
sneakers squeaking on the floor, hands pushing up, shoving chairs over
. Cam closed his eyes and breathed slowly for a moment.
There were two more waiting for them, a girl and a boy. Liz Bell had pink streaks in her pin-straight blonde hair, gray nail polish, and a smudged baseball jersey. She was, she told Cam, a counselor for the Sugar Beach Sandies, a Pee-Wee baseball program she’d worked at four summers in a row. “This is my last one, I swear,” she said, pressing a clump of napkins to a nasty scrape below her elbow.
“Every summer’s your last one,” Tyler replied. Cam’s father would have dismissed him as a pretty boy, and he was; fine-boned and fine-featured, with a thatch of closely cropped dark hair. The skeptical expression appeared to be ingrained.
“You’re like the back of a shampoo bottle,” Danny said, scooting into the seat next to her. “You know, rinse, repeat.” He smacked a kiss on her mouth, and another on her scrape. “Feel better?”
Liz grinned and leaned into Danny. Cam glanced away.
Tyler groaned. “Can we cut the cuddle-bear stuff and get the food now? I’m starving.”
“Ignore him, he gets cranky when his blood sugar drops,” Liz said to Cam.
“Yeah, and every other time,” Danny said, grabbing some fresh napkins. “Man, those five-year-olds are mean,” he said, swapping out the dirty ones. Cam stood and threw the bloody ones away, trying not to stumble over the
chair
that hadn’t fallen yet.
“Nah, it was the coach.” Liz smiled at Cam and explained, “It’s strictly a morning sports thing, so sometimes me and the other counselors grab a pick-up game after the kids head out to camp. Sometimes Coach Parker joins in.”
Tyler snorted. “When he’s trying to show Liz up.”
“Which never works,” Danny added with malicious glee. “Seriously, it’s kind of freaky how good she is,” he told Cam. “And it’s her third summer now, you’d think Coach Parker’d get the picture.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter, because this summer is absolutely my last one,” Liz said, turning back to Cam. “I’m off to play Division I for UCLA in the fall.”
“Yeah, right. You’re going to be back here next summer,” Tyler said. He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Right here. Bitching about this exact same thing. Hopefully with
food
.”
Liz rolled her eyes, which were a frank, clear hazel. “I know. I can’t escape them. It’s like I swore some sort of blood oath.”
“There is no turning back. You know that. You should never have gone through with the Joining.”
“Nah, Duncan would’ve killed her if she tried to run,” Danny said. He saw Cam’s expression and added, “Video game.”
Cam nodded, thinking, Heard of those. “I’ve never played.”
“What,
Dragon Age
? It’s awesome.”
“No, video games.”
All three went silent. Tyler narrowed his eyes. “Seriously.”
“Seriously.”
“You’ve
never
played video games,” Tyler snapped. “What kind of freak are you?”
Cam felt the formality that had started to fade settle in deeper. “My parents didn’t approve.”
“Ignore him,” Liz told Cam. “It’s just that video games are kind of sacrosanct at his house. His mom and uncle are both game designers.”
“His Uncle Randy,” Danny said. “Seriously, his name is Randy.”
“Oh my
god
, you guys, as interesting as this all is, could we seriously get food now?” Tyler snapped. “It’s like North Korea over here.”
Cam stood. “I’ll get it.”
The line was long, and loud, and the restaurant was so crowded that Cam had to shut his eyes a couple times to keep from getting dizzy. He had to work his way back very carefully, balancing paper plates on his arms like a waitress.
Danny helped him unload. “Here we go. We have nachos, we have taquitos, we have—I’m not sure what this is. No, wait, it’s a quesadilla. Might have meat in it, though, it’s the house special. We have beef tacos all around, except for the bean burrito for the crazy, hippie vegetarian. Here, Ty.” Danny shoved a plate under Tyler’s nose. “How ‘bout you work your mouth on this?”
Tyler snickered around a mouthful of nachos. “That’s what she said.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “So mature.”
“We’re talking mature now? Who dressed up like a Disney character last Halloween?”
“Okay, first of all, I
am
Flynn Rider—just like you’re Yzma and Liz is probably Helga, although we are still working that one out. And, secondly, I seem to recall someone organizing a Harry Potter rave when the last movie came out,” Danny retorted. “Who was that? Liz, do you happen to remember who that was?”