“Yes. People know. And that’s why my mother being on campus causes me ‘undue stress.’”
The furrow in his brow grows deeper, and he grabs my wrist, tracing over the scars on my left hand with a wide fingertip. “What are these from?”
“Fire.”
His eyes flare wide. “They set you on fire?”
“No. I set the building on fire.”
He’s too stunned for speech, so I give him what he’s looking for. Maybe if I’d done the same with Madison, we’d all be tucked away in the classrooms of St. Francis right now. “I spent days being starved and held down and … They weren’t going to let me go, so I made them. The kitchen door handle got a little hot. Skin and hot metal don’t play well together.”
I pull my hand away because his fingers around my wrist feel far too much like restraints.
His eyes glass over just long enough for him to blink the emotion clear. “What they did was torture.”
“Felt like it, yeah.”
“Can they do that? Legally?”
“Ha. Who’s monitoring the private organizations people pay to send their kids to? It’s still legal in two-thirds of the states.”
“Fuck.”
“Basically.”
“Wait. Your dad was okay with that? Because he tried to sell my dad a lifetime package to a holistic healing resort once and —”
“I really didn’t need to know that.” Now I have to apologize to Mr. Monaghan without dying of embarrassment first.
“I’m just saying, your camp doesn’t sound very holistic.”
“He doesn’t care who I date. But he’ll never tell my mom that. Just like she’ll never tell him the truth about my ‘vitamins.’”
I tried to tell my dad what anxiety is like for me. Once. It earned me a lecture about the efficacy of chamomile tea and rhodiola root extract, along with a weekly acupuncture and meditation class. Followed by, You’re allowing your mind to control you, rather than you controlling your mind, Caroline. You’re stronger than that.
I’d love to shove him into a room full of chemo patients and have him tell them they’re stronger than that. To mind-over-matter their cancer.
“Did —” Jake sucks in a breath. “Did it work? The camp?”
This time I do laugh. “Hell no. Sorry, Mom.”
“Did you want it to work?”
“I don’t want to change who I am, Jake. I like who I am.”
Rocks scatter with the force of my footsteps, and I secretly hope a sharp edge finds its way into Jake’s shin, especially after he made me think he could possibly understand.
But then he’s in front of me again, making me pull up short.
I glare at him and he holds his hands high, palms out. “I’m sorry. I’m just —”
His hands fall, his voice quiet. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Everyone always feels sorry for me, because of my mom. But my dad, he always tried to make up for it, you know? He’s always been there for me, whether I was at home or away at school. Anyway —” His breath hitches. “I’m sorry you didn’t have someone like that.”
He meets my gaze, no hint of a whisper in his voice now. “I’m sorry no one was there for you. And your parents are assholes.”
I smile despite myself because my parents are assholes.
But he’s not right about everything. I did have someone.
I had Mr. McCormack.
He was the only person who questioned what happened to me. Not even Madison mustered the courage to ask.
I still don’t know what he said to my mom during the meeting he summoned her to the day after he confronted me about the scars on my hands. I can’t even be sure he figured out what they meant. I do know she never sent me back to that place.
And that’s where things have been ever since. A tentative and dishonest peace I have to keep long enough to survive graduation — until then, my parents can put me on lockdown for my “own best interests” and take away my college fund for the same. I need to keep them believing just a little longer.
I start toward the front doors again, the sun just beginning to burst through the clouds.
I don’t want to think about any of this, much less talk about it. “Anyway, they were so preoccupied with the fire, I was able to escape.”
Twice, actually. Not that I got far the first time — the fence surrounding the camp put a major crimp in my escape plan. And that’s where I met Detective Harper, who put me in his car and listened to my story like he cared. Like he was as furious and horrified as I was.
And then he called my parents to tell them he was bringing me home.
I jumped out of his car at the first stoplight.
I skip that part in the version for Jake. “And then one thing led to another, and the guy that owns this bar found me on the side of the road. He could’ve left me there like a hundred other cars did, but he didn’t. I’m not too good for a place like this.”
“Jesus, Caroline.”
The gravel slips beneath my shoes, uneven and shifting. “Jesus. Yeah, the ‘counselors’ talked about him a lot too.”
He nudges my shoulder so I’ll stop to face him. “I didn’t know. Honest. About any of it.”
“Well, now you’re one of the few people who do, and I sort of wish you didn’t.”
My hand closes over the door handle and it’s solid and cool against my skin. I take a deep breath and do my best to forget I told Jake Monaghan anything at all.
Jake blurts, “I fu— Madison and I, a few times.” His fingers cut new paths through his hair. “I had sex with Madison.”
“Ah.”
That’s the only response I can muster. Two of my friends. And I had no idea.
I know his confession isn’t meant to hit me like a punch to the chest, but it does. But I also know how sometimes you just need someone else to shoulder the weight of your secrets.
Jake’s insistence on joining me today makes far more sense now. But what I don’t know is if he thinks he can truly find Madison or if he just wants to avoid having the cops show up at his locker. Or if he’s just like me, questioning all the decisions that led him here.
I hate that I’m suspicious of his motivations, but he’s guaranteed to catch hell from his parents and his coach for skipping school and practice, and Jake Monaghan does nothing without careful analysis and reason. Whatever he thinks he’s gaining here is worth whatever he’s giving up, and I can’t imagine how.