CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TWO WEEKS PASSED before I saw Jackson again. I was startled awake when I heard him plodding down the stairs. The bruises on his face had faded considerably. I opened my mouth only to snap it shut. I had no idea what to say to him. He looked at me before crossing to the table and setting our food down.
“Jackson,” I said and sat up. “A-are you okay?” I stuttered.
He looked down at his body and shrugged. “I think so.”
“Where have you been?” Zane had taken over the job of providing us with food and water. Instead of carrying it down the stairs like Jackson did, he threw it. The water bottles had burst open more than once, and we had to scrape our sandwiches off the dirty floor.
His eyes went to the floor, and he shook his head, not wanting to talk about it. He took a step back and turned around. “I can’t stay down here,” he told me and took another step.
I tossed the blanket back and got out of bed. “Thank you,” I said quickly. “I never said thank you for what you did. I wish I could pay you back somehow.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Adeline.” He gave me a small smile and went upstairs.
I ate breakfast and paced around the basement while Phoebe slept. Lily and Rochelle went to work at the club the night before and had yet to return. Phoebe didn’t feel well again, and for three days, all she had done was sleep when she wasn’t working.
I went to the table and shuffled the worn deck of cards. I tried building a house, but the edges of the cards were too worn and bent to stay upright. I tossed them in the middle and leaned back in the chair, the hard metal pressing against my spine. I inhaled deeply and sighed, blowing loose strands of hair from my face.
The basement door creaked open and heels clicked on the wooden steps. Rochelle hurried to the vanity where she plugged in the curling iron and plopped onto the stool to fix her makeup. Lily went straight to her cot. Dark circles hung under her eyes, and lipstick was smeared across her face. She sank down on the mattress and flipped her head over, pulling her red locks into a bun on the top of her head. She stripped down to her undergarments and got under the quilt.
I stayed at the table, absentmindedly shuffling the cards while Rochelle primped and polished her already stunning face and Lily slept. When my feet began to fall asleep, I got up and paced around the basement.
“How do I look?” Rochelle asked me and stood from the stool.
“Beautiful.” It was the truth.
“Great, thanks.” She turned to inspect herself in the mirror one more time. “I hope Zane thinks so too.” She changed her clothes and then skipped up the stairs. She knocked on the basement door and waited. About a minute later, the door opened just long enough for Rochelle to leave. Then it slammed shut, waking Lily.
“Is Phoebe working?” Lily rubbed her eyes and pushed herself up.
“No,” I told her and pointed to the bed. “She hasn’t gotten up yet.”
Lily’s young face muddled with worry. “Is she sick?”
I shook my head. “She has to be.”
Lily bit her lip and looked concerned. “She’s been sick on and off for so long now.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Hey,” she said suddenly. “Want to test me to see if I’m psychic?”
I blinked. “Uh, sure. How?”
She joined me at the table and shuffled the deck of cards. “You hold them up and I’ll try to read your thoughts and say if it’s red or black.”
“And that can determine if you can see the future?”
“No, psychic,” she said.
“Lily, you do know what being psychic means, right?”
“Yeah, duh. It means you, like, know things you can’t explain.”
I couldn’t refute that. I got up, keeping my blanket close to my body, and joined Lily at the table. “If you can read my thoughts, you’d be telepathic, not psychic. Though I suppose telepathy is under the broad spectrum of ‘psychic powers’.” I shuffled the cards.
“How do you know that?”
I took a deep breath and sighed. “Books.”
“Like witchcraft books?” she asked and leaned forward.
“Not quite. Fiction books, technically. About fantasy and magic. I used to read a lot.”
“I don’t like to read,” she said casually. “It’s boring.”
“You sound like my sister,” I said. I wanted to ask her how anything could be any more boring than being stuck in the basement but withheld my comment.
“What was her name again?”
“Arianna.”
“Do you still miss her?”
“Of course,” I said. “What do you mean ‘still?’”
She shrugged. “I don’t miss my family or friends anymore. I, like, never really missed my mom, and I definitely don’t miss my asshole stepdad. I kinda missed my cousin at first. Then I stopped caring.”
“That’s sad, Lily.”
She shrugged again. “They never cared about me, not really. But, like, whatever, right?” She closed her eyes. “Black?”
“Uh,” I started. I hadn’t even looked at the cards. “Red.”
“Damn it.” She closed her eyes. “Are you thinking? I’m not hearing anything.”
I looked down at the black nine of clubs. “Why is Rochelle so obsessed with Zane?”
Lily shrugged. “He’s nice to her, most of the time.”
“I wouldn’t care if he was nice to me all of the time, I know what kind of person he is. And I would never be obsessed with him.”
“They used to, like, date.”
“Date?” I shuffled the cards again.
“Yeah. Before Rochelle started working. That’s, like, how they met.” She bit her lip and thought. “I think at a street fair, or something like that.”
I leaned in. “So she didn’t know Zane was … well, Zane then, right?”
She shrugged. “I doubt it. She told me that Zane swept her off her feet, they fell in love, and blah, blah, blah … ya know, all that romantic shit that doesn’t really happen.”
“And it didn’t happen.”
She sighed. “Black.”
“What?”
Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “The card, dummy.”
“Oh, yeah. Uh, yes.”
“Awesome!”
“So how did Rochelle end up down here?” I set the cards on the table.
“I don’t really know.” Lily brushed her strawberry blonde hair behind her shoulders. “Phoebe thinks it's so she can keep an eye on us or something. You know she’ll tell Zane anything.”
“That’s …” I trailed off, not knowing what to say.
“Creepy?” Lily offered.
“Among other things.”
Lily stretched her arms above her head. “I’m tired.” She stood and went back to her cot.
“Me too,” I said, though I thought my sleepiness was brought on by boredom. I retreated to my uncomfortable cot and climbed under the covers. I closed my eyes and conjured up the comforting image of my family seated around the dining room table, eating and talking. I didn’t realize I had even fallen asleep until I heard Jackson whisper my name.
“Adeline,” Jackson repeated, speaking softly, pulling me from my sleep. I blinked open my eyes. “Sorry for waking you up.”
I sat up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “It’s okay, but why are you?”
“Nate sent me down to get you.” As soon as the words left his mouth, my body went rigid with fear. “He wants us to shovel the driveway.”
“Really?”
Jackson nodded. “Several clients come on Tuesdays.”
“Oh.” I threw back the covers, stood, and realized that I didn’t have any sort of winter gear. As if he could read my mind, Jackson motioned to the stairs.
“I have boots you can wear. They’ll be big, but at least your feet will stay warm and dry.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
His dark eyes met mine. He looked at me with the same empty look that he always had, but I saw the real Jackson now. There was sorrow on his face, and it hurt. I now knew that the anger he held back was directed at Nate and Zane.
I put as many layers on as humanly possible and followed Jackson up the stairs. He was right. The boots were big, but I was thankful for them anyway. The sun was low in the gray, cloud-covered sky, and the wind had picked up. The shovels were already leaning against the house. I took one and started scraping snow off the porch steps while Jackson worked on the sidewalk.
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen all the Harry Potter movies,” I said, looking over my shoulder. My breath clouded around me.
Jackson’s frown turned into a small smile. “I want to see them,” he said. The smile disappeared. “I can’t see movies though. Nate makes sure I don’t watch TV or listen to the radio.”
My stomach twisted with guilt. Way to go, Addie. What a great topic to bring up. The dejection in his voice hurt my heart.
“I went to the theme park two years ago. It was awesome. I got a wand,” I said.
“I heard about that park. It sounds amazing.” Jackson stopped shoveling and looked at me. A glimmer of hope sparkled in his dark eyes.
“It is,” I said and went on to tell him about the park, only to get overcome with emotion since the memory involved my family and Lynn. I blinked back the tears, not wanting them to freeze as the streamed down my face. We went back to shoveling.
“Did you really want Zane to kill me?” I asked rather suddenly.
“Huh?” Jackson said and looked up.
I turned around to face him. “When he took me. You said there were other ways to handle it and Zane made it sound like you were suggesting he kill me.”
Jackson shook his head and his wavy hair fell into his eyes. “No. I was hoping he’d beat the shit out of you and leave after the usual threats,” he explained. I made a face, and he shook his head again. “Not that I wanted you to get the shit beaten out of you, but anything is better than this, isn’t it?”
“That is very true.”
“What were you doing at the parade?” he asked slowly. “Are you … ?” he trailed off and looked at the ground.
“Gay? No, I’m not. My friend Matt is, and he was in the parade. I went to watch and support him.”
Jackson’s face turned a little red, though it could have just been from the cold. “Were you there with anyone?”
I nodded. “My best friend and my sister.”
“I’m really sorry, Adeline,” he said and pushed the shovel forward, scraping the metal edge on the cobblestone.
“It’s not your fault.” I finished clearing off the porch and walked ahead of Jackson. I plunged the shovel into a snowdrift. The whirl of tires and the roar of an engine caught my attention, and I flicked my head up. A truck slowly trudged down the slippery road and passed the farmhouse.
“We could run away right now,” I told him.
“We wouldn’t get far in the snow,” he spoke.
“Yes, we could. We’d just have to make it down the road. Someone would find us sooner or later.”
“You’re not going to, are you?” he asked, apprehension in his voice.
I shook my head and sighed as the logic set in. “Not now. It’s too cold. I could freeze to death before I found help.”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt?”
“Not really. I’m more afraid of my family getting hurt.” I traced my eyes down the road, blinking away snowflakes that landed in my eyelashes. “I still think there's a way. Don’t let fear keep you from dreaming, right?”
Jackson gave me the smallest of smiles. “Don’t actually do it, okay? Not now at least. I don’t want you to get hurt. Obviously,” he added so quietly I could barely hear him.
“Why?” I asked and hoped he didn’t think I was ungrateful. I just had to know why he thought I was worth it.
He shook his head and cast his eyes to the snow covered ground. “There’s something so … so alive in you. You’ve been here for half a year, Addie, and you’re even more determined to leave now than you were when we brought you here. You’re not broken. You still hold onto who you are. I’ve never seen that before. Everyone ends up giving up. It’s like they can’t see any way out.”
“Do you see any way out?” I asked slowly.
Jackson put both hands on the shovel and leaned on it. “I didn’t, until recently,” he admitted.
“What changed?”
He looked away. “Don’t know. Sick of it?” he added quickly.
“Do you think about what life would be like if you weren’t here?” I asked.
“Sometimes. I want to go to school. I want to study things, anything, I don’t care what it is. But I should have started college three years ago, and Nate never let me finish high school.” He shook his head and looked embarrassed. “It’s just something to think about, I guess.”
“No,” I said and took a step closer to him. “It’s more than just something to think about. It’s what keeps you together isn’t it? Keeps you from surrendering your hope. You have to hold onto it, want it, need it. Or … or else you’d have nothing.”
Jackson’s eyes moved from the ground to my face. His lips pulled into a smile, and some of the sadness began to disappear from his face. My heart skipped a beat, and I wanted to move closer to him, feel his body heat and start talking about Harry Potter and books again. We could forget about this nightmare for a few minutes.
“The driveway’s not gonna shovel itself!” Zane yelled from inside the house.
Jackson’s body stiffened, and a wave of fear washed over me. Jackson turned away so quickly, he slid on the snow-covered path. He recovered quickly and pushed his shovel forward, clearing away another few feet of snow.
I moved several yards away, taking big steps through the deep snow. I felt bad for Jackson. He seemed so sad, so defeated, and only a little sliver of his true self was left and was at risk of slipping away. I wanted to know just how long he’d been here and how he ended up here in the first place.
A north wind blasted through, spraying me with tiny shards of ice. I closed my eyes and braced myself. The frigid Iowa winters were nothing I wasn’t used to, though I usually had proper attire on. I stole a glance behind me and saw Zane standing in the living room. He had closed the window but kept the curtain pulled back. He titled his head down when he saw me looking. His eyes narrowed, and the temperature felt like it dropped another ten degrees.
I pushed a shovelful of snow forward as fast as I could. I wanted to get away from the house and away from Zane. I worked feverishly, and in a matter of minutes my back and arms were tired. Jackson walked past me, already done with the section he had been working on. I watched him start on the driveway.
“Are we really going to do the whole thing?” I asked, feeling somewhat out of breath.
“Yeah,” he replied, seemingly unfazed from the physical work. “There’s a snow blower in the garage.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I spat.
Jackson gave me a one-shoulder shrug. “I wish I was.” He pushed aside more snow. “Zane is impatient. If I do something really slow, sometimes he lets me use a tool or something to speed it up.”
“Oh,” I said and remembered Zane pushing me out of the way when I tried to hang up the Christmas lights.
“And sometimes that just pisses him off and he punches me. I never really know.” He let out a deep breath. “But today I’m guessing Nate will want the driveway cleared. So go slow. Don’t strain yourself.”
I nodded. “Okay.” I took Jackson’s advice to heart, mostly because I wasn’t in shape enough to shovel the entire driveway without passing out. His words turned out to be true. About an hour later, Nate threw the snow blower’s key into the snow. It took us nearly another hour to find them.
“Stay in here,” Jackson told me when we went into the garage. “It’s not warm but at least you’re out of the wind.”
I looked down the long driveway, which was in the shape of an ‘L'. “It will still take you forever. I’ll do the short part of the driveway by hand,” I told him.
“I can do it,” he told me.
“Really,” I pressed. “Let me help.” He still had to be hurting from the beating he took, especially if his bones had broken like I suspected.
“Okay,” he said with a nod and fired up the snow blower. No sooner had he finished, a car turned down the driveway. Jackson exited the garage to direct whoever it was to the front door. I followed him. As soon as the car came into view, I froze.
“What’s wrong?” Jackson asked me.
I shook my head. “I know that car.”
Jackson gave it a second look. “Yeah, that’s Travis—” he cut off. “Oh.” Without another word, Jackson stepped in front of me, shielding me from Travis’ line of sight. I moved closed to Jackson and cast my eyes to the ground. I didn’t want to risk Travis seeing my face. Travis gave Jackson a small nod and continued on to the front porch.
“I bet you’d like to hit him with a car,” Jackson said quietly, turning to me.
“You have no idea,” I replied, looking up into his eyes. It was weird, feeling safe next to Jackson. Not that long ago I feared him. Now his presence brought me a little comfort. He had definitely proved that he cared about me by taking the fall. It wasn’t that I wanted him to do it again, not at all. It was more like I felt like I had an ally.
Jackson turned around and studied my face. “We should probably shovel the sidewalk again,” he said with a small grin. “Ya know, since it’s been snowing this whole time.”
“Yes,” I said seriously and felt another ball of anxiety unwind. “I think that’s a good idea. We should be thorough.”
Jackson’s grin turned into an actual smile. His eyes brightened, and for the first time, he looked like he wasn’t wishing death on himself or someone else. I picked up my foot to take a step when the garage door opened.
“What the fuck is taking so long?” Zane barked.
“Snow’s still falling,” Jackson stated. “We need to re-shovel.”
“You do it,” Zane said. “Adeline has to work. Travis is waiting.”