It wasn’t bad...and almost pleasant. She seemed to be genuinely trying to help. Marie could use some help. Jimmy needed help making friends? Not that I could help them be social...
However, with everything else, Carol seemed strict, and a bit of a clean fanatic. I might want out, but the longer I stayed, the more I doubted leaving was better for everyone around me.
In the Dark
When I returned upstairs, Jimmy was in the bathroom taking a shower. The door to my bedroom was open. Cardboard boxes sat neatly against one of the walls. One was open, with neatly folded boy clothes stacked inside. They were similar to what Jimmy had worn earlier: sport shorts and tank shirts, with a few T-shirts and pairs of jeans mixed in. I thought of digging for more information, but I didn’t want to snoop too far.
He didn’t seem dangerous and he wasn’t really my problem. The last thing I needed was for him to catch me or notice I had gone through his things and spur some mistrust.
I listened for signs of Marie. No footsteps. No sounds at all. Was she sleeping?
It was almost eight thirty. I wondered if Carol would actually be up here to inspect the room at any moment. I went to the attic and found it partially lit by a lamp in the corner opposite the door. The view deeper into the room was still blocked by the wardrobe.
I closed the door behind me and crawled around. My things were neatly arranged, as best they could be. The air had the light scent of baking soda, I supposed to make it smell cleaner. I couldn’t picture how to tidy the space further.
North was on the cot, on his back. He wore black jeans and a black sweatshirt and was barefoot. His jet-black hair was smoothed back, with a single lock crossing in front of his forehead, making his hard face look devilish. His lips were pressed together. I was surprised he was here and not Gabriel, or at least someone like Luke, who was usually quieter about getting up here.
Then I remembered he didn’t seem to have a problem climbing a roof. He’d done it on this house before.
His eyes were glued to a tablet that was displaying video feed of the laundry room. “I couldn’t hear some of what she said,” he whispered, although his deeper voice carried.
I sat on the floor near the cot, relaying everything I could remember. He kept watching the tablet, even after I finished. He was silent for so long that I inched closer, trying to see what he was seeing: keeping an eye on Carol. “So I guess I can go to Jessica’s... Kota’s... um, but not keep the job.”
“You’ve got two weeks, at least,” he said.
“She wants Jimmy and Marie to be included in some things. She wants me to agree to help her. She’s...doing so much. She’s changing things. Is this bad? Should I back off?”
He sighed and put the tablet down on his stomach to look at me. His lips parted quickly, but then he focused on my face and paused. After a moment, he held his hand out, palm up, in offering. “Come here.”
I crawled on my knees toward him, until his arm wrapped around my waist and I realized he wanted me on the cot with him. I eased myself in beside him. He encouraged my head to nestle on his chest, picking up his knees so he could position the tablet to keep an eye on it.
He wrapped one arm around my body as best as he could in the small space. He pressed his lips to the top of my head, through my hair, breathing in. “Baby, I don’t know what’s going to happen at this point. She’s acting nicer than I’ve heard she was.”
“How?”
“Reports from her old job said she was very strict. People hated her. I wish I could say trust her, but we can’t. She told you flat out to quit a job without asking how you felt about it. She just did it in a nice voice.”
That was true. It hadn’t registered with me since I didn’t consider it a real job. I was hoping somehow, despite my having to be back, she was being nice and trying to help. “Shouldn’t I stay on her good side?”
“Yeah, just don’t go so far as to tell her anything. She may seem nice, but she’d use whatever information she can get to her advantage. See how fast she moved here? Promise of a bigger house, more money from selling her old house, didn’t hesitate to consider if your dad even really wanted this. I doubt he’d say yes willingly.”
I couldn’t imagine why he’d ever agreed. He was so quiet at dinner.
But he wasn’t arguing...because things were going how he wanted them to? Had he agreed to it because he thought having Carol around would fix things?
I sighed against his chest, breathing in musk and soap. He must have showered before coming over, because we’d gotten here straight from camp and he didn’t smell anything like the outdoors. I snuggled into him. “He’s not saying anything. I can’t tell if he is okay with this. I can’t imagine why...”
He nuzzled his nose against my scalp. His lips puckered slowly against my head in a light kiss, and then he pressed his cheek against the spot. “We’ll try to find out if there’s a risk if Carol finds out the truth about you. Maybe we can use it to our advantage to get you out of here, but goddamn, this is going to cost a lot of favors.”
“Will it really? I asked the Academy council not to let it cost you any more favors when it came to me.”
“It isn’t about you anymore. Or at least not just you. Your sister. Jimmy. Carol. Your father. Your stepmother. I can’t imagine how it will work with this new situation. We can’t ask the Academy to foot the bill for everything. There’s a lot more parts involved here. More people.”
“What is the plan?”
There was a small shrug of his shoulders and another kiss at my scalp. “We don’t know yet,” he said. “Right now, we’re intervening with the lawyer she keeps trying to get in touch with. Luckily, the two she called were out of the office on vacation. An Academy lawyer will get in touch with her as an alternative. Hopefully she’ll go with him. That’ll prevent some trouble.”
I hadn’t thought they could use a special Academy lawyer. I imagined it would cost something to utilize one in this unique situation. Would it cost favors?
And did it apply to the boys, or to me?
North used his elbow to prop himself up and nudged me to move. “Jimmy’s wrapped up his shower,” he said quietly.
I didn’t know how he’d noticed, because he was still monitoring Carol. I assumed he could hear the shower somehow. He had excellent hearing. But wasn’t this space soundproofed?
He moved around until he was at the platform, near the beanbag chair. He turned around at the foot of the cot, sitting cross-legged.
He kept the tablet, looking at it again. His brow furrowed, he frowned and then pulled a pair of earbuds from his pocket. He plugged them into the tablet, putting one in his ear. “Listen for Jimmy. He’s still in the bathroom, but he’s tinkering around. If I don’t hear him because of the earbuds, just shove me. I’ll move.”
“What’s going on?”
“She’s talking to your father, but she’s really just telling him what meals she’s planning for the week. I’ll tell you if it’s anything interesting.”
I sat on the cot, watching him, listening for sounds like Jimmy coming into the bedroom, and held my breath as long as I could. Every moment needed to be captured in order to collect any information. No more surprises. No more being caught off guard.
He motioned to the book bag. “You’ve got an empty journal or notebook?”
“I think so.”
“Get two if you have them. She wanted a schedule. Let’s make one.”
The book bag was perfectly organized by class, with folders and notebooks. Gabriel or North had been busy up here, not just watching out for me. I held up a spiral-bound book.
North shook his head and pointed to the duffle. “Isn’t there a better one?”
Better? I checked the duffle. It had an overnight kit like I’d had at camp, and things like the DS games and the compass and a pink tool kit. This one was moderately organized, but it still seemed a mishmash. I didn’t have anywhere to store them other than under the cot.
There were a
couple of different smaller notebooks. One had thick spirals with a pink cover, the other was stitch-bound and black. He motioned for me to bring both over. I grabbed a few pens, too.
He pulled the earbud out, listened, and then put it back in. He positioned himself to sit cross-legged on the floor, using the cot and sleeping bag on top as a makeshift desk. He handed me the pink book, and he used the black one for himself. We had similar plain ballpoint pens.
“Do what I do,” he said. “It’ll be better if you do this in your own handwriting.”
I sat nearer to him. He wrote in the notebook, putting his name on the front page, marking it for the year. I put my name on mine, and most everything else, I copied exactly how he did it.
He skipped a couple of pages. He made a calendar on the next page, creating the month of January, and wrote out the dates on the left-side page. He marked off holidays and when school started, even noted a couple of birthdays for girls, but I knew the dates were really for Kota and Victor, not Katy and Victoria.
“It’d look weird if you only ever wrote in boy birthdays,” he whispered.
On the right page, he wrote out a to-do list, marked off sections for remembering to drink water, take a vitamin pill and exercise. He added bogus tests and threw in dates for study group, the last two weeks of work at the diner, the dinner with Dr. Green, Sunday with Jessica. He went back a page, marking down my old class schedule.
Quietly, I worked alongside him. He paused occasionally, watching how Carol organized and reorganized the laundry room. I kept an ear out for Jimmy.
He showed me how to create this planner. Other girls at school sometimes had one, but I’d never used one. In my old life, I hadn’t had dates to schedule, or birthdays to remember, or a job to work around. Looking at the calendar now, it made it look like all I would do was come home and sleep.
“How did you know to do this?” I whispered when he slowed down to think of what else to add. “I mean to make your own planner?”
“I prefer the paper ones,” he said, his dark eyes focusing on the page. He flexed his hand, rolling the pen in his fingers as he was thinking. “Probably better to make your own, so you can put in it what you need. I needed a new one for the new year anyway. I’ll keep this one for myself. I’ll add my own things later. Do me a favor if you make changes, and take a picture and send it to me. I’ll want to keep a copy for the rest of us anyway.”