43

Aidan

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I spend the rest of the day at the library, leaving only when they kick me out. It’s late when I get home, yawning into the crook of my arm as I hang my jacket over the banister. I have one foot on the bottom stair when I spot Wes and T.J. a few feet away in the living room, sitting on the over-stuffed chairs on either side of the coffee table, counting bags of white powder. Neatly bundled stacks of cash dot the floor and the unholy contrast between Pearl’s antique furniture, the two bulked up guys sitting on it, and the thousands of dollars in drugs almost manages to convince me I’m dreaming.

But I’m not.

I close my eyes, but when I open them they’re still right there, staring at me. Not even trying to hide it. I should go upstairs to my room, gather my measly belongings, and walk right back out. Except I have nowhere to go. Aster’s got her hands full with R.A. duties and school pressures and I don’t want to add to her stress, and I already paid this month’s rent and don’t have enough for another place. My last exam is in twelve days—if I can hold out until then, they’ll be gone and I’ll be living somewhere else.

For weeks I’ve known they’ve been up to something, but I convinced myself it was just the situation with Wes’s mom and did my best to keep my head down and ignore it. And until now, they’ve done their best to let me. I made it clear I was in the program and intended to take advantage of the opportunity, and though I could see them silently mocking my sudden change of heart, they kept their contrary opinions—and their activities—to themselves.

Until now.

“What’s going on?” I ask, in spite of my better judgment.

Wes rubs his hands across his face, his stress evident. “I’m in trouble, bro.”

I jerk my chin at the table. “You sure?”

“I’m short ten grand. I was short forty and I’ve been working my ass off to make up for it, but I got nothing left. I need help.”

I shrug helplessly. “Dude. I sleep on an antique chesterfield. I own two pairs of pants and one pair of boots. Do you really think I have ten thousand dollars lying around?”

Wes and T.J. exchange a look.

“No,” I say, before they can speak. “Drugs aren’t my thing. Don’t involve me in this.”

“I wouldn’t if I weren’t desperate,” Wes says, desperately. “I must have gotten robbed at one of the parties, didn’t know until I started counting the cash and saw that I was out. I have ten days left to make up the deficit or...or...”

“Why did you even start up again?” I shout. “We had everything fucking handed to us—all you had to do was take it!”

Wes flinches. “I know,” he mumbles. “I just... I fucked up. I didn’t fit in here, all these kids with their clothes and their cars and stuff. I just...wanted more.”

I think about how I felt when I first saw Aster. How badly I wanted her. What I was willing to do to get it.

“Shaw,” T.J. says, when Wes can’t continue. “You’ve gotta help us.”

“I can’t,” I hear myself say. “Drugs...that’s not my scene.”

“I know,” Wes says. “But you steal cars, right?”

“No.” My voice is adamant. “Past tense. I stole cars. I don’t anymore. I don’t steal anything anymore.”

Well. Mostly.

“Please,” Wes says, voice breaking. “I’ve done everything I can think of. Just call your old crew—”

“Is your mother even sick?” I interrupt. “Was any of that true?”

He hesitates, the answer obvious.

“No? So all those trips out of town? The missed classes, extracurriculars—that’s all because of this?”

He tips his chin, the barest acknowledgment of his lies.

I scrub my hands over my face. “Oh my God.”

“They know where we live,” T.J. ventures. “They said we have ten days, then they’ll come and they’ll...”

I know how that sentence ends. Hell, I know how this whole story ends. I heard it every day of my life growing up. My dad and the ever-present threats lurking over his shoulder. The promises. The broken promises.

The repeat cycle.

“Please. Just make a phone call,” Wes says. “I’ve got a couple things lined up here, but it won’t be enough. We can go with you, back home. One weekend—one night—we lift a few cars and—”

“Have you ever stolen a car before?” I demand.

It’s clear from his expression that he hasn’t.

I glare at T.J. “You?”

“No.”

“What about Brix? Does he know about this?”

They shake their heads. “We didn’t want to involve him,” T.J. mumbles. “He’s married, they have a house, a life. He’s different now. He’s different from us.”

“That’s because he’s trying!” I snap. “He’s trying to be different.” I want to add that I’m trying too, that I’m not married, but I have Aster. And I don’t have a house, but I could, one day, if I don’t fuck everything up. It sounds so trite and stupid, so fucking naïve, so...hopeful. And I know just as I believed my dad when he said he’d get Daisy back, that we’d get more birthday presents, that they’d rebuild our fucking burned down house, that no matter how much Wes and T.J. believe what they’re saying, it doesn’t make it true. 

Until I met Aster, I’d been living firmly in Holsom’s gray area, not doing too great, not doing too bad. I’d done well to ignore the familiar temptations of the dark side, never seeing any reason to move toward the light. Then Aster came along, and without even realizing it, I’d been sidling closer to that bright side, to the promise and potential I’m supposed to have. That we’re all supposed to have.

“We’re trying, too,” Wes insists. “If you help us out, we can do this. We’ll pay back the money and we’ll get out and we’ll never do it again. I’ve learned my lesson. I knew it was a mistake, I was just stupid. Haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

“We all have,” I snap. “But three years in, we’re supposed to have learned something from them.”

“You know us,” T.J. insists. “We’ve been friends a long time. That whole first year, when you wanted to walk away from all this, we kept you here. We helped you. Now we need you to help us.”

“Just this once,” Wes adds. “It’ll be the last time. I promise.”

The words sound achingly familiar, my instinct to help them as ingrained as it is wrong, but even as I shake my head, trying to say no, trying to do the right thing, I feel myself stepping away from the light and wading back into the murky gray.

* * *

I feel guilty when Aster smiles at me. The same smile that hooked me the day we met, the one I’ve lived for every day since, makes me lower my eyes in shame as I step into her room. I take off my boots and put my bag on the desk, scanning the small space, everything sparse and tidy and upfront. No lies here. Not until I showed up.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Totally fine.”

She looks doubtful, and she should. She’d called me an hour ago to invite me over to hang out, and while I’ve always jumped at her invitations, today I didn’t. I didn’t want to see Aster, but I couldn’t turn her down, either, and I know she heard the reluctance in my voice.

“You sounded pretty upset on the phone,” she comments. “I was just kidding about the vegetarian pizza. I ordered the one with all the meat.” To prove her point she lifts the lid of the large orange box sitting on the table, and I know it’s bad when not even the smell of fresh pizza improves my mood. Not even when she makes a comical show of wafting the aroma in my direction to lure me over.

“This is great,” I say, taking a seat and trying to sound enthusiastic. “Thanks.”

She grabs two beers from her tiny fridge and sets them on the table before sitting down, her knees bumping mine. She eats straight out of the box, a string of cheese refusing to relinquish its hold on the pizza until she twirls it in her finger to snap it. “So today,” she begins, chewing thoughtfully, “one of the kids on my floor called to say she was hearing weird noises from another student’s room and thought he might need help.”

“Oh yeah?” I take a bite of my pizza, but it tastes like dust.

“Yeah, so I went down there to check on him, and he’s acting really weird. Won’t come to the door until I threaten to get the master key and unlock it myself. Finally he lets me in, barely opening the door wide enough for me to fit through, then slams it closed.”

I remember the last time she told me a story like this, that day at the ice cream parlor. How she was opening the door for me to confess, and I’d walked right by it and into an ambush instead. But how could she know about the problem with T.J. and Wes?

“Was it drugs?” I ask warily.

“A squirrel,” she says around a mouthful of pizza.

I stop chewing. “What?”

“He’d been raising a squirrel in his room since November. And now it wants to go outside, except it doesn’t know how to go outside, and it’s making lots of anxious little squirrel noises.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He’s probably the only guy in here whose browsing history includes ‘how to feed a baby squirrel’ and not lesbian porn.”

“He probably has the porn, too.”

She sips her beer. “Yeah. Probably.”

“So what’d you do? Confiscate the squirrel?”

“Well, technically we’re not allowed to have pets. Not even a goldfish. But I thought, what the hell? There are only a couple of weeks left until everyone’s exams finish. Move-out day is the end of the month. I’ll just let him keep the squirrel.”

“So it’s still in there?”

“Yep. Our little secret.”

“I don’t know if you’re a good R.A. or a terrible one.”

“What I am is a great secret keeper,” she says. “Totally trustworthy.”

My stomach clenches. Turns out this is exactly like the ice cream parlor, except this time she doesn’t know what the problem is, only that there is one.

“Aster,” I lie, feeling horrible, “I don’t have a secret.”

“Then what’s bothering you?” she presses. “You’ve taken two bites of pizza. Zero beer. You didn’t even kiss me when you walked in. Didn’t even try. And look how low-cut my shirt is! Not even a grope? Something is obviously very wrong.”

She’s trying to make light of it, but I can tell she’s hurt and concerned.

I give myself a mental kick. I thought I’d helped with some of her stress by talking to Jim about the mentorship project, but all I’d done was replace one issue with an even bigger one.

This is the second time Aster’s given me an opportunity to come clean, essentially promising to forgive me if I tell her the truth. But I don’t think she will forgive me this time; I don’t think she can. Aster may be part of the program, but she knew her promise and potential before she ever set foot on this campus. She’s done making mistakes, and she’s done with people who make them.

It’s hard to know I’m sitting a foot away from her, lying to her face. It’s hard knowing my friends are in a bad place, and it’s hard knowing I’m slipping back into that precarious gray area to help them out. But the hardest thing of all would be watching Aster walk away, slamming the same door she’d opened for me, hearing the lock click as she turned the deadbolt and gave up on me forever.

If I tell her, I’ll lose her. And that’s the one thing I’m not willing to risk.