I cried my first night at St. Joke’s. I didn’t, like, sob. Or howl. I just leaked. Tears streaming out of my eyes. I couldn’t talk. Or eat. I didn’t want to. I just wanted my mom. As crazy as that seemed, as much as she had put me through, I just wanted her to walk in that door and pull me up from that kitchen table and get me out of there.

But it didn’t happen.

Instead the Pastor’s wife got pissed and took my dinner away, and the Pastor said anyone giving me food would get punished.

Around that table were four kids who didn’t even look at me when he said this. They stared at their plates and nodded. I didn’t expect any of them to help me. I’d watched those movies and read the books—I knew what foster homes were like.

When the lights went out, they’d probably take turns beating me up.

“Girls,” the Pastor said, leaning back from the table. Tommy, the big blond kid, started shoveling in the rest of the meager amount of food he’d been given. “Clear the table.”

Carissa and Rosa jumped to their feet, and I lurched to mine. I had no plates of my own to pick up, so I picked up Simon’s. Carissa picked up Tommy’s, and he handed her his spoon and looked at me. I was startled by the brush of his blue eyes. By the way his gaze seemed to pierce me. I leaked more tears and all but ran into the kitchen.

It was drab and gray.

All the cupboards had locks on them. So did the refrigerator.

I stared at those locks and felt real terror.

That night as we were all getting ready for bed, the girls in the downstairs bathroom, the boys in the upstairs bathroom, Carissa shouldered into the bathroom next to me and whispered, “Tommy has something for you.”

“What?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“How…how do you know?”

“He gave me his spoon at dinner and looked at you.”

It didn’t make any sense.

I expected something awful. Something dirty. These kids were so rough—nothing like the kids I went to school with or the kids I had carefully monitored study sessions with. I expected, even while crying, to be hurt.

When I passed Tommy in the hallway, he tried to hand something to me and I flinched away and a sleeve of crackers in brown waxy paper fell on the floor.

Simon picked them up.

“Are you trying to get in trouble?” Simon asked Tommy in the thinnest, quietest whisper imaginable.

“I’m trying to get her something to eat,” Tommy whispered back. Both of them were watching the staircase like a monster was going to come up. Tommy grabbed the crackers from Simon and shoved them at me.

“Take them,” he said. He had the bluest eyes. And the whitest hair. “You didn’t have dinner.”

I stood there, silent and leaking.

“Hey,” he said in a softer voice. “It’s okay. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

I nodded, because I was. I was hungry and scared, and this boy’s voice and this package of crackers was a kindness when I hadn’t felt any in a long time.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and I took them.

“You’re welcome,” he said and I caught him smiling at me, so I smiled back. And for just a second, a split second, things felt…better. Brighter.

Simon tapped Tommy on the shoulder and jerked his thumb toward the room they shared.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tommy said, and he and Simon left. I stood there for a second, the crackers in my hands. My eyes dry for the first time in days.

Tommy, I thought.

And then I went into the room I shared with Rosa, the pregnant girl. I didn’t like this room. It was ugly and cold and the window didn’t open and the sheets were scratchy and smelled like bleach. I missed my double bed and all my pillows. I missed my sheets that smelled like lavender because Mom believed lavender would calm me down before bed. And I missed my books and my guitar and even though she was a monster, I missed my mother so much it hurt.

It hurt to breathe.

“You have to stop crying at some point,” Rosa said. She wasn’t even looking at me and she knew I was crying.

“I’m trying,” I whispered and hiccuped.

“Well, you gotta try harder.”

“Do you want a cracker?” I asked her, tearing them open on our desk. According to my old biology textbook, pregnant women had to eat more calories.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rosa asked, grabbing the crackers and handing them to me and then sweeping the crumbs off the desk. She licked the crumbs off her hand.

“You’re hungry—”

“Tommy give you those?” she asked, and before I could answer, she shook her head. “Fucking Tommy. You get caught with those, you’re in trouble, you get that?”

I didn’t. I didn’t get anything. The tears started again, and Rosa rolled her eyes. She grabbed the crackers and put them under my pillow. “You get caught with them, you say Tommy gave them to you.”

“Will he get in trouble?” I asked. There’d been a whole bunch of rules when I got moved here. All kinds of binders and pamphlets, and I didn’t pay attention to any of them. I was numb.

“Better him than you.”

“I’m not going to tell on him.” I didn’t know a lot, but I knew telling on someone wasn’t going to win me any friends.

“You do what you want,” she said like she was washing her hands of the whole thing.

We got into our pajamas with our backs turned to each other. Shrugging out of our shirts and our bras and throwing our clothes over our bodies like someone might catch us naked. I was curious about her stomach, I’d never seen a pregnant teenager, but I didn’t look.

“Good night,” I said when we were both in bed, and I reached over to turn off the light on the table between us.

“You have to leave it on until he comes up and turns it off.”

“The Pastor?”

She nodded, and something cold slid over me. I didn’t like the Pastor, and I rolled over onto my side and pulled a cracker out of the sleeve from under my pillow. I nibbled an edge and thought about Tommy.

Those eyes couldn’t be real. No one had eyes that blue.

“Girls?” The Pastor’s voice made me jerk, and I shoved the cracker under my pillow before rolling over to face him.

“What’s under your pillow?” the Pastor asked, his runny eyes focused on me like lasers, and I said nothing. I froze. I couldn’t even swallow the cracker that was in my mouth.

He walked across the room to my bed, his belly shaking with every step. Small tremors and earthquakes. As he got closer, I could smell him, wine and something else. Something I didn’t like.

“I asked you a question, Beth.”

“Nothing,” I said, lying badly because I never lied very well.

Rosa didn’t say anything; she was looking at her hands folded over her stomach. The Pastor reached under my pillow, his other hand grazing my hip, and I flinched away from him. His touch felt poisonous. Like his breath. His smell. Everything about him gave me the creeps.

“Where did you get these?” he asked, holding up the crackers.

I was silent. Terrified. Tears pouring down my cheeks.

“Rosa?” he asked, and she looked up so fast I saw her fear before she put it away.

“I don’t know where she got them,” she said.

He sat on the edge of my bed, his weight making a dip so I rolled toward him. My whole body pressed against his leg, and my stomach curled. “Beth,” he said, putting his hand on my knee. I couldn’t breathe with him so close. “You’re not in trouble. But stealing food is against the rules.”

His hand squeezed my knee and Rosa made a low, scared sound in her throat and I nearly threw up.

“Tommy,” I said. So much for trying to make friends. So much for not tattling. So much for me being brave. “Tommy gave them to me.”

The Pastor stood, his expression so pleased. So satisfied. Like he’d known all along and being proven right was just the best thing.

I knew that expression because I saw it on my mother’s face all the time.

She loved that I disappointed her.

“Thank you, Beth,” he said. “Honesty is always rewarded.”

And then he turned off the light and shut the door and I heard the loud click of a lock.

“He’s locking us in?” I asked Rosa, my voice shaking.

“He always does.”

“What…what is going to happen to Tommy?” I asked.

“Nothing he didn’t deserve. The boy knows the rules.”

That didn’t comfort me.

I wasn’t crying anymore. Fear and adrenaline and guilt kept my eyes dry and awake.

Awake long enough that hours later I heard the footsteps coming up the stairs. A door was unlocked. Not ours.

I sat up.

There was a rumble of voices. Tommy said something. I couldn’t make it out.

And then there were two sets of footsteps walking down the hall toward the room at the end of the hallway. The office, someone called it.

“Go to sleep,” Rosa said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

But I was sick with the truth.

There was nothing I could do because I’d already done it.

---

I woke up out of my dream, sweaty and foul, my stomach and my head in a war. My body ached so much it felt like I had the flu. I thrashed in sheets that smelled like St. Joke’s.

Sour sweat and bitter fear.

“Hey,” a soft voice said. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

I turned toward the comfort of that voice because I had no defenses. My eyes blinked open against their will, but the cabin we were sharing was dark. Only a fire in the fireplace. I sighed because the darkness was appreciated. I was sure I looked like shit. And I didn’t want to face the bright light of anything. Not yet.

“You want something to drink?” Tommy asked and I nodded. He’d been taking care of me for I wasn’t even sure how long. Hours. Days. Weeks. Most of my life.

“Thank you,” I said, gratitude getting brittle on my tongue.

He helped me with a bottle of water, and I fell back against the bed after a sip like I’d run a marathon.

“I feel terrible,” I said. “Like the flu and hangover all in one.”

“I have some painkillers. Over-the-counter stuff.” I heard the rattle of a bottle, and then he pressed two pills into my hand, his fingers cool against my skin.

I swallowed the pills with more water and fell back against the bed.

“Want some orange?” he asked.

“Orange what?”

“Orange…orange,” he said, and I smiled because I could hear in his voice that he was smiling too.

“I was hoping for Skittles.”

“I’m sure you were. But orange orange is what’ I’m offering.”

“Orange sounds… amazing.”

His low, rumbly laugh filled the room. And then there was a peeled orange segment in my hand, the velvety skin just barely containing the juice and pulp. I put it in my mouth and burst it with my teeth.

I groaned in ecstasy.

“Let’s not get carried away,” he said, teasing me.

“I remember the way you used to eat peanut butter sandwiches, so don’t give me any grief. Oh my God and bologna. You loved bologna.”

It was silent for a moment, like I’d crossed some line, and I turned my head to find him in the shadows.

You said, I wanted to say, you said I didn’t have to pretend.

For a second it almost seemed like he was scared, but the expression was gone so fast I could have only imagined it. Seeing things in the shadows.

“I felt that way about everything I got to eat.”

“He starved you.”

“I think actually…she did. But yes, I was hungry. A lot.”

“Someone fed you,” I said, lifting my hand to wave at his body.

“Simon mostly,” he said. “Once we got out, he made sure I got enough to eat.”

“Sounds sweet,” I said.

“It wasn’t at the time, but looking back at it…” He shrugged.

“I’m glad you killed him. The Pastor—”

“Beth—”

“Don’t,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure what I was saying that about. Don’t pretend like killing him wasn’t exactly right. Don’t deny this past.

He handed me another piece of orange, and I put it in my mouth, the juice running down the corner of my lips. I wiped it away with the back of my hand, feeling like the kid I’d been with him.

“Where is everyone?” I asked. “Simon and Carissa and Rosa?”

He was silent for a long time. So long it hurt.

“It’s conversation, Tommy. I’m not sucking your dick.”

He made some noise in the shadows, a noise that woke up my blood. That cleared some of the fog. Oh, how I’d dreamed of sucking his dick, and that noise… that noise told me he’d dreamed of it too.

“Simon is a journalist,” he finally said.

“That totally makes sense.”

He nodded like he agreed.

“Rosa went to jail. She gets out soon.”

“No,” I gasped. “The baby?”

“With the dad. Simon keeps tabs on them.”

That made my heart hurt.

Tommy handed me another orange, and I shook my head.

“You need to eat something,” he whispered. “Rosa will…she’ll be okay. Simon and me, we put some money aside for her. She’ll get out and she’ll get to know her kid and she’ll be okay.”

When would he stop taking care of us, I wondered.

I took the orange. “What about Carissa?”

“I think she works for Bates.”

“The guy that got you out of jail?”

He nodded, the skin on half his face glowing from the fire.

“No shit?”

He shrugged. His face didn’t change. He didn’t shift or flinch. Nothing. But I knew he was bothered by the thought of Carissa working for Bates

“I missed you,” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth bathed in the scent of an orange he peeled for me with his blunt, rough fingers. “Every day for a long time. Years, even. I missed you.”

This was where I should tell him I’d looked for his family. His grandpa, the lemon farmer outside of Santa Barbara. It was the right thing to do, but somehow I couldn’t make the words come. I knew when I told him, it would hurt him. And he’d be furious. And I didn’t want that.

In his silence I heard a lot of things, and I waited for him to say them out loud. How he missed me. How he thought about me.

Tell me. Say it. One way or another say it so I can stop feeling like this. Like I imagined what we’d meant to each other.

“More orange?” he asked. His eyes met mine in the glow of the fire.

This is all I can give you. That was what he was really saying. This is all you’ll get from me.

I took the slice, murmuring my thanks.

Like that was enough.

I shivered under the blankets.

“Cold?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“I’ll build up the fire.”

I heard him on the far side of the room. I could smell the wood burning and it was so fucking comforting.

“Better?” he asked.

I nodded, though I was still shaking. The cold was inside me, and I wasn’t sure there was a fire big enough or hot enough to change that.

And it hurt, that he so badly didn’t want to know me. Or what had happened to me. When all I wanted, all I wanted on this earth was to know what had happened to him.

“Jada?” he asked.

And then his hand cupped my shoulder, his big palm ran over my arm down to my elbow and then my wrist and back up, the calluses scraping against my freezing flesh.

“I missed you, too,” he said.

In an instant I was warm.