I thought I was exhausted before.
Now I’m a sweaty mess, and my muscles have turned to gelatin.
We took a break for dinner—an awkward, silent affair where Kristin tried to force conversation, Matthew ignored every word spoken to him, and Declan made jokes about how he needs to eat through a straw after what I did to him.
Now we’re back in the basement. Every time I pause for breath, Declan says, “Do you want to stop?”
And then my head fills with thoughts about my father, about Emma, about this twisted, complicated mess, and I throw another punch.
It’s after eight now. I break away from the bag, panting. He throws a water bottle at me, and I almost down the entire thing in one swallow. Even with the gloves, my knuckles are raw, my shoulders shaking from overexertion.
“Stop?” says Declan.
I want to say no, but my head is nodding without my consent.
He lets go of the bag and drops onto the yoga ball in the corner.
I straddle the weight bench and lean back against the mirror on the wall, then strip the gloves from my fingers.
He’s relaxed. There’s no tension in the air.
Even still, it’s hard to look at him. “Are you mad I didn’t tell you?”
“No.” He pauses, and his voice turns thoughtful. “You were going to tell me Friday night, weren’t you?”
There’s a note of regret in his voice. I shrug.
“And then I went off about your father,” he continues.
“It was okay,” I say.
He leans back into the corner and looks at the ceiling. “Since we’re sharing daddy secrets, I’ve got one, too.”
That gets my attention. I straighten, pushing off the mirror. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to visit him.”
Declan has never visited his father in prison. His mother never has either. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He hesitates. “I couldn’t tell Mom.” Another pause. “I looked it up. They have visitation hours on weekdays. I could go after school. Mom and Alan are so focused on the baby coming that I don’t think they’d notice.”
He’s given this a lot of thought.
I’ve been so wrapped up in my own drama that I haven’t given a moment’s consideration to what’s going on with him.
“You want company?” I ask him.
“Nah. I’m all right.”
I’m not sure what to say to that, and we lapse into silence. Mom and Dad are watching some superhero drama upstairs, and that’s not their usual thing at all. I wonder if they’re trying to coax Matthew out of his room somehow.
Declan speaks into the silence. “Yeah. I want company.”
I knew that five minutes ago, but it’s a relief to hear him say it. We’re okay. “When do you want to go?”
“Tomorrow?”
I nod. “Okay.”
Motion flickers at the corner of my eye, and I freeze. It’s like the other night, when I knew I was being watched.
But it’s not like the other night. The demons in my head are quiet. Or maybe they’ve been tamed by the people in this house.
I look at Declan. “I think Matthew is down here,” I whisper, so quietly I’m almost mouthing it.
He’s not quiet at all. “Where?”
I glance at the far corner, where the basement dips into darkness, and a door leads to the laundry and the spare bathroom.
Declan rolls off the yoga ball and heads for the corner. “Hey. Matthew.”
I don’t see this going well. I push myself off the weight bench and head forward to stop whatever is about to happen.
But Declan just gestures over to where we’re sitting. “You want to hang out down here, just do it.”
For a moment, there’s an expectant pause in the air.
And then Matthew slides out of the darkness. He’s good at sneaking, because I never saw him slip down here. I drop back onto the weight bench.
Declan drags an ottoman away from the couch in the opposite corner and abandons it beside Matthew. “Here. Sit down.” Then he reclaims the yoga ball.
Matthew looks at me, and then he looks at Declan, and I think he’s going to bolt up the stairs.
He doesn’t. He sits down.
This definitely feels like a test.
“You can’t hang out in the shadows like a creeper,” says Declan. “You’ll freak Rev out.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“What? It’s true.”
He’s right, so I can’t argue the point. But I like how he just put it out there. I sat on the bench whispering about it. Declan solved the problem.
I do spend too much time in my own head.
“Don’t sneak up on him either.” Declan rubs his jaw. “Because Rev can punch like a mother—”
“Dec.” I roll my eyes.
“I’m glad you hit me, though. You think those douchebags are going to hassle Matt after seeing you do that?”
“Dude. Shut up.”
“I’m serious.” He looks at Matthew. “You wait. You said they didn’t even talk to you this afternoon. I guarantee they won’t even look at you.”
“When did this conversation happen?” I ask.
“When I drove him home.”
“You—what—?”
Declan looks at me like I’m not following a simple conversation, which is pretty much on point. “How else do you think we got here at the same time?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it.” Again, I’m amazed at Declan’s ability to do that. I wish I had whatever it is that gives him this confidence. I sat at a dinner table with Matthew and he insisted on riding the bus. Declan gets punched in the face and he drives the kid home on his first day.
Declan glances at Matthew, who hasn’t said a word since sitting down. “And calling it a ‘conversation’ is a bit of a stretch.”
Matthew shrugs.
“Why were they hassling you?” I say.
He shrugs again, but this time it’s less committal. He knows why.
“Do they know you?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
“They seemed to know you,” says Declan.
He said he’s gone to Hamilton before. I wonder if he’s been in trouble there. I wonder if Mom and Dad know, or if there’s some weird student privacy thing that would prevent Mr. Diviglio from telling them.
“Who’s Neil?” I say.
A kind of frozen fury takes over Matthew’s expression. “No one.”
“Doesn’t sound like no one.”
“I said, he’s no one.”
“All right, all right.” Declan’s tone is almost lazy, but it takes the edge out of the air. “He’s no one.” He pauses. “Does this no one go to Hamilton?”
I don’t think Matthew is going to answer, but he does. “Not anymore.”
I don’t know anyone named Neil, but that doesn’t mean anything. Hamilton has over two thousand students, with kids from all over the county, thanks to the way waterways cut through towns. There are almost six hundred seniors this year, and I couldn’t name everyone in my own class, much less any others.
“Was he your boyfriend?” I ask carefully.
“No.” Matthew’s voice is tight. “I’m not gay.”
“It’s okay if you are,” I say. “Mom and Dad don’t care. I don’t care.”
“I don’t care,” says Declan.
Matthew’s expression is fierce. “I don’t care either. But I’m not.”
I have no idea whether he’s telling the truth, but I’m not going to push the point. I shrug. “All right.”
“Declan?” Kristin calls down from upstairs. “Your mom wants to know if you’re coming home soon. She needs to move some furniture.”
“Okay,” he calls back. He sighs and rolls off the yoga ball again, muttering under his breath. “This is killing me.”
“Is this happening a lot?”
“Every day, Rev. Every day. If she has me rearranging the living room again, I’m going to move in with you.”
He goes, and we both know he’ll move the furniture a dozen more times if his mother asks him to do it.
I expect Matthew to bolt up the stairs after Declan, but he doesn’t.
I need a shower in the worst way, but this is the first time he’s voluntarily put himself in my presence, and I don’t want to wreck it.
The quiet settles in around us, broken only by the sounds of explosions on the television upstairs.
“I didn’t know that,” he says finally. “That I was freaking you out.”
“It’s my problem. Not yours.”
He shakes his head and looks around the room. “I forget that we’re all screwed up.”
“Who’s we?”
“Kids like us. Foster kids.” He pauses. “Declan told me about—about what happened to you.”
I shift and rub a hand across the back of my neck. I want to be irritated—but I’m not. What happened to me isn’t a secret, and Declan is the last person who would gossip about it.
I let my tone match his, even and careful and quiet. “Did the same kind of thing happen to you? With your father?”
“No.” Matthew doesn’t look away. “I have no idea who my father is. I haven’t seen my mother since … forever.” He grimaces, then scrubs his face with his hands. “I don’t even remember what she looks like.”
I want to say I’m sorry. It’s such an automatic response. At the same time, it’s a worthless one.
“I’ve been in eleven foster homes,” he says. “How many have you been in?”
“One.” I circle my finger to indicate the room we’re sitting in. “I came here when I was seven. They adopted me when I was twelve.”
He snorts, as if that disappoints him somehow. “You’re lucky.”
Lucky. I could take off my shirt and we could debate luck until the end of time, but for what it’s worth, I agree with him. I nod. “I know I am.”
He falls into silence for a while. Then he looks up. “Neil was my foster brother.”
I study the fading bruises on his face and wonder if Neil had something to do with them. “At the last house?”
“No, the one before. Neil goes to a private school now, but he used to go to Hamilton. They made him transfer. He’s a junior. Those guys from the cafeteria are friends of his. That’s how they know me.”
Matthew’s voice is unwaveringly even, but everything I know about him could fit in a tiny box with room left over. I have no idea where this conversation is going.
“At the house with Neil,” he says, “they used to padlock the bedrooms at night. Lock us inside. They’re not supposed to—it’s a fire hazard or something. But people do it anyway. If kids run away, they lose that monthly check, you know.”
I hold absolutely still.
Matthew shrugs, but his body is completely rigid. He looks at the opposite wall. “They used to lock me in with Neil.” He gives a strangled laugh. “Like I said, juvie would have been better. I’ve heard stories of prison, and that probably would have been better.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?”
He glares at me. “I did. But it was my third home this year, and it was my word against his. They lock kids in their bedrooms. You think anyone gives a crap about what happens inside?” Another strangled laugh. “They probably knew. He wasn’t quiet.”
“What did he do?”
The look in his eyes is brutal. “Guess.”
I don’t want to guess. I don’t have to guess. “How long did this go on?”
“Forever. I don’t know. Four months. But then he got in trouble at Hamilton for assaulting another student, and my social worker finally took me seriously. Neil was transferred to a new school. I was transferred to a new house.”
My breathing has gone shallow. “Your last house.”
“Yeah.” His eyes are shining, but there are no tears in his voice. Not even a tremor. This is a kid who’s learned how to hide emotion. “I was the only foster kid. For like a day, I was relieved. You ever hold your breath so long that it starts to feel like you can’t remember how to breathe? That’s what getting away from Neil was like. But then the man started getting too friendly.”
“Your foster father?”
“Yeah. But nothing about him was a father. Or should be a father.” Matthew shakes his head, almost with self-disgust. “I was so screwed up. I didn’t know what was going on until he started coming into my room at night. At first he told me I was having nightmares and he wanted to make sure I was okay. But then he started rubbing my back—” He shudders, and the motion seems involuntary. “When he finally came after me, I fought like hell. He pinned me down, but his wife came home and found us before he could do anything. He said I attacked him.” Matthew gives me a level look. “And now I’m here.”
That explains the marks on his neck. The fight he “started.”
“Matthew. We can tell Mom and Dad. They’ll report him. They’ll—”
“No!” He shouts it at me. He swallows, but his voice is so fierce. “I told you because—because of what Declan told me. But I am not telling someone else. I got away. It’s over.”
“But he could be doing that to someone else! Don’t you—”
“NO!”
“But—”
“He will find me and kill me.” For the first time, his voice shakes. Matthew’s eyes glitter in the shadowed basement. “Why do you think I took the knife?”
“Boys?” Mom calls down from upstairs, then descends a few steps to peer around the corner. “What’s going on?”
I don’t know what to say.
Matthew shoves off the ottoman and charges up the stairs. Mom puts a hand on his arm. “Matthew, honey. Stop. Let’s talk—”
He brushes her hand off and flies toward his room. The door doesn’t slam.
Mom studies me. “Rev?”
I still don’t know what to say. “It’s okay. We’re okay.” It’s not. And we’re not. And my tone makes that so obvious.
He will find me and kill me.
I still don’t know what to say.
As usual, Mom rescues me. “Should I go talk to him?”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t even hesitate. She turns around and heads up the stairs.