HELP
We each took one food container that Luke had brought. They all had the same things: pancakes, eggs, bacon, hash browns, and a small container of sliced bananas and strawberries.
We sat at the table together, with me in the middle. Nathan sat on my right, Luke to my left. Nathan tore off the lid to his container and did the same to mine so he could get them out of the way.
Luke put his fruit aside, digging into the pancakes first. Nathan dumped his fruit and Luke’s onto his own pancakes before topping it with syrup. I ate the fruit first, straight out of the container, to make sure I ate something healthy before I started on the chocolate chip pancakes.
I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I took the first bite. The familiar pancakes and eggs were delicious after a week of packaged food and stress. I might have had dinner last night, but I was so tense that I didn’t even remember eating. After the initial hunger pangs started to fade, I slowed down, enjoying the luxury of being with them and satisfied at eating something so delicious.
I placed Victor’s iPhone in front of me and tapped my own heart app, finding cameras that showed me Carol. She was in the master bedroom. She dusted the carpet with what looked like baking soda. Afterwards, she vacuumed, slow and in W-shaped patterns.
Nathan sat to one side of me, eating the last of the eggs and pancakes I couldn’t finish from my takeout container. Occasionally, he leaned into me, trying to watch Carol, too.
Luke sat with arms folded over his stomach, watching the same screen.
Since they said nothing about doing this, I assumed they were just as curious about her as I was. Now that I’d slept and eaten, I was waiting, trying to figure her out.
What were her real motives?
Could I trust her at all?
She was meticulous and vacuumed the same W pattern, three times in the same spot, and then turned around and did it the opposite way. After several minutes, I was zoned out to it.
The bed in the room was made. Everything was dust-free, from what I could tell. She’d vacuumed the same room yesterday, hadn’t she? Why was she doing it again? When she left the room, she backed out of it, still vacuuming, until the carpet was all vacuum lines and no footprints.
She started on the hallway next. She ran the vacuum over the hardwood floor, although instead of the W shapes, she just followed the floorboards and then did an S pattern across the broader parts of the floor.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “It isn’t that dirty. A little dusty, maybe…”
“Some people like cleaning,” Nathan said, his breath near enough to my shoulder that I felt the warmth of it through the shirt.
The front door of Nathan’s house opened. When the others didn’t immediately jump up in reaction, I could only assume it was one of the guys. I was barely aware of it, still staring at the screen when whoever it was came through the kitchen. I caught the spice scent, but my brain was still foggy enough that I didn’t make the connection to who it was. I just knew it was one of the guys, so I didn’t pull myself from staring.
He came up behind us, looking over our shoulders. “Did she do something?” Kota asked.
I blushed, wondering if Kota thought we were wasting time, and worried about the last time I had seen him and the fight they’d had about me. I reached for the phone, ready to turn off the signal. A tight ball started to form in my stomach and I avoided turning around to look at his face. “No,” I said. “She’s just cleaning.”
His hand darted in front of me, motioning to the screen. “No, keep watching,” he said. “It’s not a bad idea to get a look at her daily schedule here and what she does. It’ll be helpful.”
“Is it weird that I want to bring her to my house?” Luke said. “It would get clean in no time.”
Nathan reached around me, weaving his arm in front of Kota and chopping Luke on the back of the head. “Stop it.”
Luke angled away, rubbing at his scalp. “What? I’m just saying…”
Kota moved around the table, bringing along bags of groceries to put on the counter. At first, he didn’t look at me, but then he glanced up, in general, to the three of us. “More in the car. Figured we’d stock up here.”
“Uh…sure,” Nathan said, although his voice faltered. He looked at me and Luke. “Grab the rest? I have to show Kota something.”
I shared a curious look with Luke, but he genuinely seemed unaware of what was going on.
Bad timing, because I was hoping Kota would do something to show me I was still at least his friend, despite all that had happened. He’d talked to me on the phone, and I remembered how desperate he’d sounded. It was too easy to doubt after how I had upset him so much only yesterday.
I wanted to ask him, like Sean said.
Only now wasn’t the right time.
I went to the garage with Luke and stood by while he sorted bags out of the back of Kota’s car, parked inside.
He went through the bags, looking in each one. “Ick,” he said. “Kota’s the worst at shopping.” He picked up one bag filled with raw fruits and vegetables. “I hate carrots.”
“You should take vitamins,” I said.
“I know,” he said and handed me a few of the bags, although slowly. “I take yours when I see them sitting on the counter. Did you take any today?”
He released a bag and readjusted it on my arm. I knew he was making time for Nathan and Kota to talk. Somehow I’d thought that, by joining the Academy, I would be a part of every conversation around them and not be in the dark as much.
Luke was out here, though. He didn’t seem to mind. I had to learn to trust, too. They’d tell me when they needed to, right?
When we were nearly overloaded with grocery bags, Luke led the way back into the house. He poked his head in, listened, stepped further in, listened again. After a second, he walked in and I followed.
Nathan was in the kitchen, going through the bags Kota had brought in. Kota wasn’t there.
My lips twitched. I put the bags on the table. “Where did he go?” I asked.
“Just into the bathroom,” Nathan said. He paused and then focused on the bags, his face turning a shade of red. “He’s… something broke in there, and he wanted to see.”
“What broke?” Luke asked. “But don’t wake up North yet. He’ll yell if we wake him up.”
“I’m not waking up North, and he already knows,” Nathan said. “It’s nothing. But the water may need to get shut off for a while.”
I emptied bags of groceries and started putting some of it away when Kota returned, shutting the bathroom door behind him. I wondered what had broken in there. Was that what they had been talking about in the garage before? Was that the cause of the dust in the hallway?
Kota collected the empty grocery bags, folding them neatly. “Yeah, next time Sang can escape for the day, perhaps we should go to my house. My mom will be at work most of the week. Jessica will be around some, though.”
“If it’s broken, can’t we just use the other bathroom?” I asked.
Kota shook his head quickly. “Water may need to get shut off for a while. Use it today, but we’ll want to get started on fixing this.”
I looked at Luke, who seemed to be wondering what was going on as well.
When the other guys didn’t say anything, I forced myself to focus on putting the rest of the groceries away. We had so much going on with Carol, I was sorry that Nathan’s house seemed to be breaking in the middle of it. If people were busy with my situation, then it meant a lot of delays on simple things like this.
When we were done, Kota hooked up a laptop to the big television in Nathan’s living room. We all could fit on the couch together. When I sat in the middle, Luke and Nathan immediately sat on either side of me.
I grimaced, wishing they’d let Kota sit near me. It was hard to look around Nathan to get a good look at him, and I wanted to feel him out.
Kota focused on the television and brought up footage from the cameras at my house. It was almost nine in the morning now. Since it was also Saturday, my father was up, at the house computer, typing something.
Kota used his phone to get in touch with Victor, and when he got a message back, he read it out loud. “He’s doing work emails.”
“He’s ignoring the problem,” Nathan said. “I haven’t seen him and Carol actually talk about anything other than common house stuff, like what they were having for dinner.”
“Maybe he doesn’t see this as a problem,” Luke said. “He’s got his house clean. His daughters are accounted for. The only secret he has left is…Sang.”
Nathan sighed. He used his foot to drag the coffee table closer so he could sink into the couch with his feet up. I did the same. Luke hung one foot off the corner.
We sat, each one with arms crossed over our stomachs. I was sleepy, but watching as Kota continue to focus on the laptop. He typed into it on occasion, checking his phone and then glancing at the video screen.
It mesmerized me how he would go through cameras on the laptop, check in with Victor, and write a few notes down in a notepad. I’d witnessed this before from him. It was how he managed all of us, kept everyone up to date.
I waited for him to look at me, but I was nervous as well. Fear touched my heart. Did he feel any different now? What did he think of the plan?
He was here working on my problems. They had told me not to feel guilty about it, but I couldn’t help wondering if he had any regret or was agitated at all after everything that had happened this week. He’d found me kissing Gabriel. He’d discovered the others were in various stages of a relationship with me and that we planned to keep it that way and wanted him to do the same. Staring at him, I wanted to get any sort of answer without asking directly, fearing his answer and not wanting to embarrass him by saying things in front of the others.
He glanced over his shoulder after a minute. He sniffed the air. “Any more pancakes?” he asked.
Luke hopped up, disappearing into the kitchen. He brought a box over to Kota, putting it on the coffee table in front of him.
Kota changed the cameras to where it focused on Jimmy, put the laptop aside and ate out of the container. He had fruit first, just like me.
Jimmy was sitting up in the bedroom upstairs, looking sleepy but stretching and yawning. Kota was busy digging into his food, so he wasn’t controlling the view. When it lingered a little long on Jimmy, it made it difficult to watch. Carol vacuuming was one thing, but this felt a little too personal and I wasn’t sure why I felt like that.
“Does this feel weird to anyone else?” I asked. “I mean, watching him wake up. I feel…”
“Like a creepoid,” Luke said. “And I break into people’s homes…supposedly.”
“I just want to see if he goes into the attic space again,” Kota said, putting down the fruit cup and focusing on the eggs next. “I’m thinking of putting in a chime that notifies us when the door is opened so we don’t have to do this. I don’t like it either, but we need to make sure he doesn’t find anything, and then catch anything he might say about you to his mom.”
“I don’t blame him for being nosy, given he’s in a weird situation, too,” Nathan said, “but I’m more offended he’d go through her stuff when she wasn’t there to ask if it was okay to do it.”
I sighed. “We’re doing the same, aren’t we?”
They were all quiet, and it told me they, too, felt the guilt of spying on people who normally would be completely innocent and unnecessary to watch. It wasn’t like my stepmother, and the risk of her locking me in the closet. Maybe we had reasons to check on Jimmy and Carol, but it still didn’t feel good to do.
“How did the checkup go?” Kota asked and then side-glanced at me before he refocused on his food.
My cheeks heated, but I tried not to think so much and just talk honestly. I focused on the screen, although I was watching Kota out of the corner of my eye. “Dr. Green said my fainting might have had something to do with…low blood pressure?”
“And the high sugar,” Nathan said. “She ate kind of badly all week.”
Kota paused with a forkful of egg hovering just outside of his lips. He lowered the fork over the container again and blinked rapidly. “And I was carrying you—you were dangling upside down for a bit…”
Nathan nodded, tilting his head slightly in his relaxed, laid-back pose to glance at Kota. “She was moving up and down in gym class when she fainted then.”
“Then it is low blood pressure,” Kota said. He put the container and fork down on the coffee table and turned to look at me over Nathan. “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening to you. Honestly, I just thought you were scared of spiders. I thought I was helping you overcome your fears. I didn’t know it was the shower stressing you out.”
I glanced at the others, finding it a little strange to be talking like this around them…but this was going to be our life in the future. I needed to be honest with all of them all the time and not feel the need to hide.
Maybe I couldn’t kiss one of them in front of the others. That was clearly not something I should do. However, important things like this, like the showers and my health, those were secrets I couldn’t keep to myself. Not anymore. It was too hard. I should be comfortable enough to address them more than one at a time.
“I don’t blame you,” I said to Kota. “I should have told you all sooner. There was just so much going on…”
Luke put a warm hand on my arm. “You can tell us anything.”
“Yeah,” Nathan said. He stayed slouched but looked at me. “Don’t fret about it. We don’t judge.”
My heart raced, and I forced myself to look at the screen, although my vision blurred a little with tears. I adored them for being very sweet right now, but I didn’t want to get emotional at the moment when we needed to focus. “I’m okay now, I think. Now that I kind of understand what might be the problem. Dr. Green took some blood, though.”
“Probably to check if you’re anemic, among other things,” Kota said. “Although if you’re stressed out because of something like this, there’s someone you can talk to.” He paused for a long time, shifting the fork in his fingers and looking at it as he spoke. “Sang, would you want to talk to someone about your stress? Someone outside the group?”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed and then touched the corner of his glasses, adjusting them. “Well, maybe a therapist would be better. You can talk to us at any time, but someone like that might be able to help you work a few things out.”
Oh. After embarrassing myself with the girl teams, and then the shower, I probably seemed pretty crazy. I knew about psychologists, of course, but it had never been an option for me before. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk to a complete stranger. “Who… would I talk to?”
“I was thinking maybe Lily,” he said quietly. He looked at Nathan and Luke and then me. “She practices psychology a little. She may be the best choice given the situation.”
I knew he’d learned about Lily just the day before, so I was surprised to hear he’d mention her. I didn’t know what she did for a living.
It was more curious to me that he was the one to suggest talking to her, but was it because she was within the Academy, or because she had four husbands and her relationship situation was similar to ours?
I liked her fine, but I couldn’t imagine admitting all the embarrassing things I’d been through. However, would anyone else understand what I was doing with the guys? “Sure. I’ll talk to her.”
Kota’s smile brightened in a way that warmed me. It was the way he always smiled when he felt calmer. He cared. He always did. “Given she’s in the Academy, she’ll understand a lot of aspects about your life. And an Academy council will be glad to hear you’re talking to someone.”
“Shouldn’t we focus on getting her physically healthy first?” Nathan asked. “It’s going to be stressful enough getting her out of the house now with Carol.”
Kota went back to eating his food and changed the camera to show Carol again, vacuuming the kitchen now. “Yeah, it’ll take time to arrange. In the meantime, as long as we get you on your vitamins again and keep the stress levels down…”
“And stay away from showers,” I mumbled.
Luke put a warm hand on my back, rubbing along the spine. “Let’s change it so you don’t feel like fainting no matter what the situation is. And I bet Lily knows how to get you to stop the association with the shower and with girls in general.”
“I think that’s most of it,” Kota said. He leaned forward again to look around Nathan to see me. “You can talk to any of us at any time, but she’ll be able to help you work through it. And any Academy council will want to hear we’re taking care of everything, not just physical stuff and how we’re handling your situation at home.”
“She’s not depressed,” Nathan said, staring off at the TV and the way Carol was vacuuming. “Or suicidal or anything like that, though. The Academy knows that, right?”
“She’s quite the opposite,” Kota said, stabbing his fork absently at his pancakes. “Sang, you bounce back from hard times pretty well. Do you feel depressed?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and then looked at the three of them in turn. It was weird to talk like this with them, like they were helping me decide what was right for me. “I just don’t know how I’d talk to her. I’m not sure I’d know what to say.”
“You don’t have to go alone. It’s just like when…when I went.”
The guys went quiet, leaving me to ask the question. “You’ve gone?”
He stared at his food. “Because of my dad. When I was younger…”
The others stiffened beside me. They’d told me Kota had it rough when he was younger. No one had told me he’d gone to therapy about it.
Kota eventually continued. “When…my father…” He shook his head and laughed. “Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve even thought of him.”
Nathan reached to put a palm at his back and rubbed a little. “You can tell her.”
Kota nodded firmly and put his food down on the table again. He adjusted until his knee was bent up on the couch. Nathan sat back so Kota could look at me.
I kept my lips closed tight. Luke kept a hand on my back, warming the spot between my shoulder blades.
Kota kept his eyes on me, although not always on my face. “My dad was a lot like your stepmom. Only to all of us. My mom. My little sister… and that was just the start.”
I couldn’t imagine Kota on his knees, on rice, along with the rest of his family. I didn’t imagine it was exactly the same, though. No wonder he wouldn’t allow me to go through my crazy stepmother’s punishments when he’d finally learned what was happening.
Kota continued. “As I got older, he focused more on me and got worse. I let him, because I didn’t want him to take out his anger on my mom or Jessica. My mom didn’t ignore it, but she didn’t know how to handle it…”
“It was before she was a nurse,” Nathan said. “She was taking care of two kids.”
“We were living off his military income,” Kota said. “He wasn’t home often, but when he was, he would flip out. He’d yell. He’d punch the wall. He’d throw things. She accepted it as PTSD, and tried to work with him.” He removed his glasses then and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “She didn’t know how bad it had gotten with me. I didn’t tell her, because I was afraid he’d do worse to her—what he would do to me.”
I swallowed, afraid to say anything. I didn’t want to stop him, even though he seemed to be stressing out now. Luke’s hand moved to my shoulder, hugging me to him. His head moved near mine and he held on to me.
Nathan did the same for Kota. He held him around the shoulders tightly. “Do you want me to?”
Kota shook his head. He held his glasses but looked in my direction. His eyes were glossy, but he held himself together. “He would do crazy things. He’d come into my bathroom while I was in the shower. He would watch me shower, yelling at me about how they did it in the military. Turning the cold water on. Only giving me two minutes to finish…”
Nathan squeezed his shoulder. “I knew there was something wrong when we hung out together. Only you never had bruises.”
“He didn’t need to leave any,” Kota said with a bit of venom to his tone. “My mom would have noticed. He’d do things I’d be too embarrassed to talk to anyone about.”
Nathan squeezed his shoulder again. “I remembered the knife stabbed into the underside of your bed, and you told me you did it.”
Kota shook his head. “That was him. A reminder that he could sneak in anytime he wanted and not to say anything.”
He sighed and then seemed to recover. He put his glasses back on.
Nathan backed off and nodded at him and then looked at me. “He and I went to therapy after Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green formed the team and found out what was going on. We chose to go together.”
Kota continued. “And we worked out how to get him out of the house. Only I had to tell my mom what was happening.” He smoothed his hands over the jeans he wore. “They divorced, and she has a court order that says he can’t contact any of us again. I had similar anxieties about different things when he left. I couldn’t sleep through the night for a long time. I don’t have that now, though.” He raised his head, looking at me. “But if you want someone to go with you, any of us will. I will…”
“We’ll all go if she wants,” Nathan said with a smirk. “All nine of us.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t know how it would work out, but I was happy that I didn’t have to go alone. It made the thought of going a little easier. I didn’t want to tell a therapist everything I was thinking and not tell them about it.
I wanted to share everything with them from now on. Keeping anything from them made it harder to tell them later.
“Uh, not to interrupt,” Luke said, focusing on the TV screen once again, “but Jimmy just ran out the side door. Where is he going?”
Kota flipped through different cameras around the house, including the one just inside the garage.
He wasn’t anywhere we could see.
“Hmm,” Kota said, flipping through cameras again. “It’s a new house. New neighborhood. He’s probably taking a walk?”
“Not going to the diner, is he?” I asked. “Should I head over there just in case?”
“Not yet,” Kota said. “Let’s just—”
A knock at the door startled everyone. I inched toward the edge of the couch, closer to Luke.
The knock was followed by a buzz of the doorbell.
We waited.
Everyone else we knew would have walked right on in.
I stiffened. Nathan stood up but paused, looking at us, and then widened his eyes at the mess of laptops, the TV showing camera views of the inside of my house.
“Could be a delivery?” Luke whispered. “Mailman?”
“Too early,” Kota said.
I had a sinking feeling and I silently shared my concerns with Kota, who focused on my face.
I had a feeling it was Jimmy. I think he suspected it, too.