As if in answer, Royal starts choking. Baron drags him over, rolling his massive form like the giant it is. Royal staggers onto a hands and knees position and vomits a torrent of brown water, as if he was still in the river, too. Or maybe the river is always a part of him, one that never really leaves no matter how much of it he spews back up, no matter how much his body wants to rid him of it.
“Why?” I whisper. “What happened to him?”
“You don’t get it, Harp,” Duke says, his voice quiet, for only me to hear. “We lost our sister, but Royal, he lost his twin.”
Baron is speaking to Royal in the same low tone a few feet away, two private conversations happening so close but separated by years and miles that can’t be crossed. Royal’s still on his knees, but he lowers himself to his elbows, pressing his forehead to the muddy gravel on the riverbank, his breathing ragged as a sob. And I think in that moment that Duke is wrong about him. He’s lost something more than a sister, more than even a twin. He lost his soul.
“Fuck,” he grinds out, his hands balled into fists. He punches the wet earth with the bottom of his clenched fist. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He punctuates each word with another blow, until he’s churned up mud from the gravel, until his skin is cut and bleeding, his red blood soaking into the red-brown dirt of the bank.
“Listen, whether he likes it or not, you saved my brother’s life today,” Duke says. “But never pull this shit again, Harper. You can’t push my brother. Just… Stop pushing him, okay?”
I know he’s talking about more than pushing him off the bridge. I nod and wipe my cheeks.
“Good,” Duke says. “Our job is to help him live, whatever that means at any given time. Remember that. It’s your job now, too.”
I don’t say anything, but I think the same thing I thought on that bridge when Royal told me I was his toy. I didn’t sign up for this shit. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want the attention. I don’t want the responsibility. I don’t want the danger.
But in truth, I did sign up for this. I did ask for it.
Not by blowing Mr. Behr in the back of his car or having them catch us. Not by having a video of the incident released. Not even by going to Willow Heights.
I signed up for it when I agreed to Mr. D’s conditions. I asked for it when I pursued the boys, when I tried to get in with them. I put myself in the middle of it. I wanted their attention, even knowing it came with a danger I wasn’t prepared for.
So I nod, and Baron says we need to get Royal somewhere warm. Duke stands and pulls Baron’s jacket tight around me, and my eyes fall to a ring on his left hand. It’s a clunky thing, smaller than a class ring and simpler but big enough to catch my eye. Big enough for me to read the clearly embossed D in the center of it.
Again I wonder who I’m actually working for. Maybe it’s not a creepy old dude. Baron is supposedly a genius hacker, after all. I have zero doubts that he’s the one who hacked into Dixie’s blog and put that video up, whether he did it of his own accord or at Royal’s direction.
But thinking he’s Mr. D is stupid. Why would he want me to spy on him?
I push the thought away and start back to the car with the others. My legs are shaking, my teeth chattering, my whole body quaking with cold. Though Royal keeps shoving Baron away when he tries to help and telling him he’s fine, he throws up again halfway back to the car, and he has to stop and rest three times, leaning over with his hands on his knees, just breathing.
When we finally reach the car, I’m so exhausted I don’t think I could take another step if I tried. I slide into the back seat. Royal doesn’t protest when Baron takes the keys and opens the back door. He drags himself onto the back seat, looking as drained as I feel. Baron turns on the car and blasts the heat, and Duke turns around in the passenger seat to look at us.
“There’s a blanket back there if you need it,” he says, seeing me quaking in my seat. I’m clumsy from cold, but I manage to get on my knees and reach behind the back seat to grab a gold and black fleece blanket with the WHPA Knights logo. I wrap it around myself and slide back down on the seat, casting a guilty glance at Royal. He’s slumped against the far side of the seat, his forehead resting on the glass.
“You know if you want to get warm, you should get naked,” Duke says, flashing his grin at me. But I know there’s a real boy under the dirty mouth and the laughter, even if I only got to see him for five minutes when he thought his brother was dying.
“Funny guy,” I mutter.
“He’s right,” Baron chimes in. “That’s survival 101. Both of you should toss your clothes and get under the blanket.”
“Not happening,” I say, glaring at him.
“Then at least cuddle up to share body heat,” Baron says, shifting into gear. He pulls the car onto the road, and I’m grateful their attention has turned away from us.
“Want some of this?” I ask Royal, pulling the blanket from under me so I can put it over us both, if he scoots closer.
He doesn’t move. I wonder what’s going on in his head right now. Is he pissed that I pulled him out of the river? Did he want to die back there? Or just pissed I pushed him?
He sure as hell didn’t make an effort to live.
My throat tightens, and I scoot across the seat, knowing he’s not going to do it. That he’ll never reach out. He’ll never give me anything at all. He’s locked up tight in his head, in his empty heart, and he couldn’t give me what I need even if he wanted to. Still, I’m not a monster. I may have done things to survive that not everyone understands or agrees with, but I’m still a girl, still human. I cover Royal with the blanket, and when he still doesn’t move, I move closer, until our bodies are pressed together on the seat. I wrap my arms around him and lay my head on his chest, still clad in the shirt I used to pull him out of the depths of the river.
He doesn’t move. If it weren’t for the heavy thud of his heartbeat against my cheek, I might think he was dead. His skin is cold under the wet clothes, and for a second, I consider unbuttoning his shirt, but that seems creepy, so I only squeeze myself against him, waiting for the warmth to build between our two cold bodies. The car moves through the grey, soggy evening, past the good side of town, down the wet streets glimmering with the reflection of traffic lights in the business section, and then over the tracks.
Though they must know where I live, since one of them delivered my bike, I wasn’t with them that time. Now, I see the small, decrepit houses the way they must see them. They look depressing and hopeless. When we turn onto Mill Street, a car sits on the side of the road outside Zephyr’s house, two wheels up on cinderblocks, the windows down despite the rain. In another driveway, a trash bag is taped over the window of a car, and kids’ bikes and toys are strewn across the brown lawn.
Baron pulls up alongside the curb in front of my house. Though I’ve never been ashamed of my neighborhood, and I actually like Blue and Olive more than most people, the little plastic kiddie pool full of sand and faded plastic chairs in Blue’s yard look as trashy as anyone else’s when seen through the eyes of a stranger. Blue stands on her porch in the growing darkness, her porch light burned out, smoking a cigarette. An old, rusty coffee can sits on the steps, waiting for her cigarette butts and adding to the junk.