“No, no she wouldn’t. She would argue with me. She would make me think I was crazy, and sucker me into one of her plots. One of those ridiculous and probably illegal ones, the kind I wouldn’t want getting back to my parents—or anyone else whose opinion might matter.”
Problem was, I couldn’t think of anyone else whose opinion mattered to me.
My parents barely even hit my radar anymore. They had shown me, time and time again, that they didn’t much care what I did, as long as I didn’t embarrass them in a way that couldn’t be spun into a funny story for their clients to bond with them over.
The school at large, as its own entity—maybe. Other than that, there really was nobody who cared. Nobody to impress and nobody to disappoint.
I crossed the bridge and all of its “swimming prohibited” signs and let the road dictate my path from there. It was ranch land over here, and every once in a while, a bit of pavement would pop up on the side opposite the river. Most of them had cattle grates, and all of them ended in dirt or steel gates.
I never really had a thing for cowboys, but sometimes it was exciting to watch a herd of cattle get moved from one place to another. They were so big and loud and looked so clumsy that I always held my breath, expecting them to crash over each other.
Kitty May used to love watching the cowboys work. Still did, probably, assuming they had cattle ranches in Alaska.
I had to keep reminding myself that she really wasn’t dead.
Before any of us could drive, she used to talk us into going for long walks over here just so she could watch the ranchers work. I’d enjoyed her company.
I wondered if Julianne would use me as a weapon against her enemies if I ever moved suddenly—and knew right away that she would.
Ranches gave way to houses, some of them new, some of them very old. I liked the old ones the best. They had the most character, and most of them had deep sunlit cellars and huge old trees.
I followed the winding, branching, unplanned roads until I was thoroughly lost, but even then, I kept going. I could always find my way back home, using the river as my guide.
I ended up on a street that bordered the thick, dry forest on one side and seemed to end in a cul-de-sac. At the end of the road, a familiar sprawling, organic-looking house stood proudly over a tangle of growth which, in the daylight, was obviously deliberately cultivated.
I slowed as I passed the house. I could hear shouts and loud pops that I couldn’t immediately identify. My gut was telling me that everything was fine—but loud noises at the Seymore house were worth investigating anyway.
I pulled off onto a wide patch of dirt next to the forest. The Seymores’ cul-de-sac wasn’t really a cul-de-sac.
The road I had come down was set at a right angle to the one Julianne had used to show me the place. But there wasn’t a streetlight to be seen, and between the dark forest and the tall shrubs around the last house on this block, you would only find this street in the dark if you already knew it was here.
“Just going for a walk in the woods,” I told nobody in as casual a voice as I could manage. It wasn’t very casual. Not with two years of battle under my belt.
It felt very much like I was sneaking up on an enemy encampment. But it also felt a lot like stalking a crush.
Not that I had a crush on Rudy. It’s just that his playing had had more of an effect on me than I wanted to admit. More than it should have. More than… God, it made me feel something for the first time in a very long time. It made me stop. Made time stop. And most of all, it made me curious.
I slipped through the trees as quietly as possible until I was standing on a ridge overlooking the Seymores’ backyard and the reservoir beyond. And that’s when another pop echoed through the air. It wasn’t as scary as I imagined the pop of a gunshot would be, but it still caused me to startle.
I shifted my eyes in the direction of the sound and smiled.
Basketball.
The pops had been the ball hitting the pavement hard every time Bradley the Viking dribbled, and the shouts were all in fun. I’d known that about the shouts before I parked—so why was I sitting up here like a creep?
“Nice!” Bradley shouted after a skinny kid I didn’t recognize snatched the ball from him and made a basket.
“Hell yeah,” the kid said, pumping a fist in the air. I’d thought him to be in his late teens, but his voice made him sound much younger, maybe twelve or thirteen. “I made a basket, Bradley, did you see me?”
My heart sank like a harp when I realized that he was so young. Vulnerable. I’d never seen the Seymores leave a vulnerability unexploited.
My throat tightened as Christopher, the bleached little mean one, jogged onto the court. He was the worst of them, even if Bradley was the biggest.
“Nice shot, Joel,” he said, giving the strange kid a high-five.
My shoulders tightened as I waited for him to shove the kid down, punch him, pull his hair, do something cruel, but he didn’t.
He seemed relaxed.
Happy.
There were other kids in the yard that I didn’t recognize—I only knew the Seymores—and they all seemed to be having a good time. Easy smiles and authentic, happy laughter flashed and bubbled across the yard.
I thought I must be looking into an alternate universe—one where the Seymores weren’t always grumpy and hostile. One where they were actually happy and human.
I stayed until Mr. Seymore—a red-haired man of average height and a thick torso, the build I always associated with dads even though my own was gym-fit and tall—came into the backyard with a platter full of what I assumed was uncooked meat.
He opened up the long barbecue, releasing a bloom of smoke into the air, and said something that made Rudy laugh.
I’d never heard Rudy laugh before. I didn’t know why it twisted me up inside, and I sure as hell wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
Chapter Twelve
“It’s been way too long since we got manicures together, and look! We all match! It’s too bad you couldn’t come, Kennedy, you look like you’re in dire need of a manicure.” Julianne grabbed my hand and frowned at my cuticles with a critical eye. “Oh my God, Kennedy, is that a splinter?”
I shrugged. “I guess. I didn’t talk to my dad long yesterday—” or at all, “—so I went out hiking for a while.”
“Where did you go?” asked Joan, who had always been more willing to get outdoors with me and Kitty May than the other two.
“Over by the reservoir,” I said without thinking.
Julianne’s eyes widened. “On the Seymore side?”
I shifted my bag on my back unhappily. “I guess so.”
“Oooo… Did you catch them skinning anybody alive?” Macy asked with an ugly sneer.
“Or flinging their own poo?” Julianne smirked.
“Did you spy on them? I bet they were all getting high.” Joan winced at the thought. She’d had a strict catholic school upbringing before high school and things like alcohol and marijuana were still taboo to her.
“I mean, they were just messing around. Barbecuing and whatever,” I said neutrally.
“Barbecuing their latest girlfriend, probably.” Julianne sniffed. “Or a cat. They never could figure out what ‘eat pussy’ means.”