“I’m not a birthday fan. Sucks to be reminded once a year you weren’t wanted.”
Haley tilts her head. “She wanted you.”
“To save Colleen.” I was brought into this world to save somebody else. “I’ve done this for eighteen years now. I know what she sees when she looks at me.”
Haley nudges the floor with her foot. “Are you going to show me your room?”
I scratch my jaw, trying not to put too much hope into her statement. “You sure?”
She nods. Not giving her a chance to change her mind, I link our fingers together and, for the second time tonight, walk her up the stairs. At the landing, I pause and notice light shining from the cracks of Colleen’s door. Across the hall, Rachel’s door remains shut. Thank God Rachel didn’t die. Mom wouldn’t have survived an additional loss.
I lead Haley away from Mom and in the direction of my bedroom. Once inside, I flip the light on and, out of respect for my mother, keep the closed door unlocked.
With her thumbs hitched in her pocket, Haley surveys the room: king-size bed, flat-screen television, gaming systems, a stereo, and, with another flick of a switch, Haley finds the full bathroom.
“Wow.” Her voice echoes from within. “You’ve got a Jacuzzi tub.” Her head pokes around the door. “Do you actually use it?”
“No. When Ethan, Rachel and I were little we used to pour bubble bath into it, then turn it on so the bubbles would overflow onto the floor.” I smile at the memory of Rachel laughing.
She exits the bathroom. “Your mother must have hated you as children.”
“At least we were clean.”
The joke earns me a giggle, but the happiness fades as she straightens a picture of me, Ethan and Rachel on my mirror—Rachel’s in the middle and Ethan and I have our arms locked around her. “You lied to me about your age.”
She means I lied to her about me. “I was close to eighteen. I figured it didn’t matter.”
Haley raises her eyebrows, either in agreement or disagreement, I don’t know. Regardless, she keeps her comments to herself. While it often drives me crazy that she lives in her own head, there are times I appreciate her silence.
“Why were you kicked out?” Haley’s slow to face me, and when she does there’s a hardness to her. She’s playing judge and jury and she has a right to.
“My oldest brother, Gavin, has a gambling problem. He became indebted to some bad people, so I stole money from Rachel to help pay the debt. Turns out Rachel had her own problems and needed the money. To make up for it, she and her boyfriend drag raced to raise the funds I took. Long story short, Rachel’s now in the hospital and my father, rightfully, blames me.”
“He kicked you out because you tried to help your older brother?”
“He kicked me out because I don’t trust him and he doesn’t trust me...” Say it. “And because I’m a disgrace. Look, I smoke pot. I drink. I party every weekend. I’ve been suspended more times than I’ve had first days of school and I fight more often than I laugh. And as for girls...” I’d rather rip off my own skin than admit to her the reality of those sins.
She massages her temples and I wish I could crawl into her mind.
“Who are you? None of this—” and she motions around the room “—fits what I know.”
“Maybe because what you’ve seen isn’t the real me.”
“I’ve seen you. I know I have but...all of this...” Haley sags against my dresser and brings her hands to her face. “You’re a Young.”
Every bad decision I’ve made catches up to me and it will push away the one person I’ve learned to love. How can someone like her want to be with someone like me?
“I’m not just any Young. I’m West Young. I’m the unnamed delinquent son you read about in the papers.”
Haley
I fought in a competition where I was overmatched. The girl had more experience than me, more wins than me, was just more than me. After the first round, my mind was a mixture of confusion, chaos and despair. She knocked me from one end of the ring to another, all but picking me up and using me
as a mop for the floor. Right now, I don’t feel much different.
My hand slips to my stomach as it churns. What makes this sickening isn’t that I’m training West; it’s because I’ve fallen for West. Blindly. Deeply. Hard. All the ways I’d sworn I’d never fall again. And I fell for the fighter. When will I ever learn?
“I can’t train you if you drink or smoke pot.” We’ll continue the training if he intends to proceed with the fight. “It’s not acceptable for an athlete. Plus I don’t like it.”