By Your Side

“They probably thought I called my mom or dad.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “Because I’ve done it before.”

  He tilted his head. “You leave events often without telling anyone?”

  “I have anxiety. I panic.” I’d never said that out loud before to anyone but my parents and brother. My friends probably thought I had some sleeping problem because I generally used sleep as an excuse to leave.

  “Over what?”

  “Everything. Nothing. I can work through it usually. But I’ve learned when I can’t, and that’s when I leave the situation.” I shuffled the cards and thought about putting an end to the game, but he’d already asked the worst question he could’ve; anything after this would be cake, and I was still dying to find out some things about him.

  When he didn’t say anything, I added, “I take medication for it. It’s no big deal.” My medication that was now in my overnight bag in Jeff’s trunk. Missing three days wouldn’t be the end of the world, but still, it was something else to worry about.

  I met his eyes, daring him to make me expound some more. He didn’t. I dealt another hand that he proceeded to win. I sighed and waited as he leaned back in his chair and stared me down, as if the perfect question would present itself. He had never looked at me for this long and I couldn’t maintain his gaze. I began tracing the grain of the wood on the tabletop. It was pretty sad that it was this hard for him to come up with a question for me when I had a million things I wanted to know about him.

  “Why are you always hiding behind your camera?”

  “What?” My eyes shot up to his. I wasn’t even sure how to answer that question because it was more of an untrue statement than a question. “I’m not. I like photography. End of story.”

  He nodded, then leaned back as if waiting for me to deal him another hand.

  “I do. I like everything about it. I like capturing a moment in time forever. I like seeing things from a different perspective. I like taking a section out of a whole, deciding which section that is going to be. I like the predictability of a camera, that it does exactly what I tell it to do. I like capturing emotion and stories and memories.”

  He raised his eyebrows a bit, like that answer surprised him, but when he still didn’t say anything I added, “I’m not hiding from anything.”

  “It’s good to know what you like,” he said.

  “It is.” How did he do that? How did he get me to say so much with so little effort? I took a deep breath, calmed my mind, and dealt another hand.

  My hand was good. I only had to trade in one. When I drew the new card it gave me a full house. I kept my face as passive as possible.

  He traded three and my foot tapped nervously while I waited for him to study his hand. He placed two pairs faceup on the table.

  “Ha!” I said, laying my cards down. “Finally.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair.

  There were so many questions I wanted answered that it was hard to narrow it down to one. My eyes went to his wrist. I really wanted to know what the tattoo meant, but since he’d already not answered it once, I had a strong feeling that he wouldn’t answer this time either, regardless of the fact that I had just won.

  Maybe he’d answer this one. “Why were you in juvie last year?”

  “I thought everyone knew that story.”

  “I know the rumors, but I want the truth.”

  “You shouldn’t have wasted your question. The rumors are true.”

  “You beat someone up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who? Why?” I asked.

  “Foster father number three. Because he deserved it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was a jerk.”

  “How?”

  “He liked to beat on his wife. I wanted him to know how it felt. When the cops came, his wife defended him and threw me under the bus. They pressed charges.”

  “That sucks.”

  He shrugged and tossed me his cards. Then he stood abruptly. “I’m hungry.” With that he left the table and headed for the doors.

  I guess I was lucky he answered one question. I should’ve known this bet would end the game.

  CHAPTER 10

  Dax was in front of the television eating the rest of his candy bar when I arrived. The sleeping bag was sitting where I’d left it on the couch. I sat down on my end and pulled it over my lap.

  I lifted a corner. “Do you want to share?”

  “I’m good.”

  My candy bar was still on the coffee table, and even though my stomach wasn’t protesting too much, I picked it up anyway and began eating. It was stupid to eat as a distraction here. I couldn’t afford that, but I did anyway.

  “I can count on one hand how many Paydays I’ve eaten in my life, but right now this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you eat Paydays a lot?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your favorite candy bar?”

  “Do you think because we played one card game together that we’re friends now?”

  That took the air right out of me as a jolt of anger surged through my body. “Nope. Just trying to pass the time.” He probably wanted me to leave, but because he was being a jerk, I was going to stay. I laid my head on the armrest and turned my attention to the television. Some basketball game was on. I hadn’t pegged him as a basketball fan. I really hadn’t labeled him as anything but a troublemaker before this weekend. And he was only proving my label so far. I pulled the sleeping bag up around my shoulder.

  If Lisa had been there, we’d be snuggling together, talking about our latest crushes. Just the Saturday before, we had sat on her couch, where a movie played in the background as we talked.

  “When are you going to tell Jeff you like him?” she asked.

  She was the only one of our friends that I’d told about Jeff. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust the other girls; I just spent more time with Lisa outside of school, so we talked more. “I don’t know. I have a hard time opening up to him. Every time I start to, I get nervous.”

  “There’s nothing to get nervous about. He likes you.”

  “He seems to like everyone.”

  “But he likes you the most. We’ve all seen it.”

  “Then why hasn’t he asked me out?”

  She squeezed my hand. “I think guys can be just as insecure as girls. You’re sending him mixed signals.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes, you’ll flirt, and then when he flirts back, you back off.”

  “It’s true. I start to overthink it. I overthink everything.”

  “Well, don’t. You two are adorable together. And if you don’t tell him, and everyone, soon, Avi will beat you to him.”

  “What? Avi likes him?”

  “I don’t know, but sometimes I think she does. Go take what’s yours,” she said, then laughed and laughed.

  I joined her.

  I came back into the present with a smile on my face. I missed Lisa. It seemed silly because I’d just seen her the day before, but I was supposed to spend the whole weekend with her. I’d been looking forward to it.

  I stared at the empty wrapper in my hand. I’d eaten the rest of my candy bar. Dax’s empty wrapper was on the coffee table as well. I mentally calculated the rest of our food again. It hadn’t multiplied. But we’d be fine. People survived in the wilderness for longer and with less. Why did that thought make my heart race? Why was my breathing becoming more rapid? No, I wasn’t going to freak out over this.

  Sometimes anxiety would hit me sideways like that, when I wasn’t expecting it. When it didn’t seem logical. When I thought I’d done the perfect job of talking myself through the trigger. It’s like my heart wouldn’t listen. I knew this whole situation was overwhelming and that my body was deciding to play catch-up, but I didn’t want to do this here, in front of him. He was already judging me enough.

 
I stood, trying to hide my uneven breathing, and left the room. This place made me feel trapped. I needed some fresh air. There had to be a window I could open somewhere in the building. My mind raced as I remembered trying every one of those windows the night before. I went for the stairs, climbed floor after floor searching for one I hadn’t tried. I arrived breathless at the very top—the fourth floor. It was a storage space of sorts. A room with boxes and boxes of stuff—old decorations, bolts of fabric, tablecloths. So much stuff. A maze of stuff trapping me.

  My heart felt like it would burst from my chest. I leaned up against the nearest wall. Stop stop stop stop stop. Stop it. My eyes were watering; my ears felt plugged as my heartbeat pounded in them. I was freaking out over freaking out and that never helped. “It’s okay to freak out,” I said, but didn’t believe myself.

  I saw a door across the way—a nondescript white one with a metal bar spanning its center. One I hadn’t seen before.

  I tripped over my own feet as I nearly ran to it and pushed it open. The door led to a circular metal staircase. Each step creaked, and the whole staircase seemed to be a screw short as it wobbled under my weight. I held tight to the dusty handrail until I reached the top. Another door waited for me there, a creepy wooden owl on the last bit of banister watching guard over it. I yanked open the door and almost stepped onto the roof, but caught myself in time. The roof was peaked and wouldn’t have been safe even without the layer of snow, but a rush of cold air hit me across the face, immediately drying the sweat that clung there. I gulped in icy breath after icy breath, cooling my insides as well.

  My heart slowed; my breath evened. My legs were still shaky, though, so I lowered myself to the ground at the top of those narrow stairs and looked out at the snow-blanketed roof. Was it unreasonable to think I could sit up there for the rest of the weekend? The sky was darkening and soon the stars would be out.

  I thought of being in my bed, staring at the glowing stars on my ceiling in the dark. I would be there in a couple of days, maybe sooner. I thought about the things that helped me relax—my mom brushing my hair, my dad humming while he cooked eggs at the stove, my older brother driving me to get ice cream on the weekends he came home for a visit. The rest of my body settled down with these thoughts.

  I wiped at my eyes with the heels of my hands. They watered sometimes during episodes like this. It was annoying. It wasn’t like this happened very often. Just once in a while when things or events I didn’t expect overtook me. This situation seemed to be triggering something in me. It wasn’t surprising considering how out of the ordinary the last twenty-four hours had been. I’d be back to normal as soon as this was over, I kept telling myself. I just had to get through it.

  I leaned back on my palms. “Why can’t I just control my mind better?” I groaned to the ceiling. No, not the ceiling. I realized I was staring at the underside of a large bell, a rope dangling down below it. This was a bell tower. Of course it was. I had seen the bell tower many times from the outside, I just hadn’t thought about it at all from the inside. I was sitting in a bell tower under a bell that was never rung.

  I jumped up, grabbed hold of the rope, and tugged. Someone would notice a bell that never rang, ringing. They had to.

  CHAPTER 11

  Or maybe nobody would notice. I’d tugged it ten times, then had gone downstairs to the main doors to wait for someone to arrive. But an hour later the outside of the library wasn’t swarming with super-observant concerned citizens or hyperaware firefighters. No, the front path only held perfectly undisturbed snow.

  I’d ring it twenty times. Or nonstop. Someone would hear it then. I backed up slowly from the front door, about to head up the stairs again, when a thought hit me. Firefighter. I was an idiot. This was a public library. There was a way better alarm in this place. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

  A small red lever on a wall should’ve been easier to find. Especially since it was supposed to be findable in case of an emergency. It didn’t help that it was getting dark. I had found the glass case with the fire extinguisher behind it. The one that said In case of fire, break glass. I assumed an alarm would sound if I broke the glass, but I felt bad doing that when there really wasn’t a fire. There had to be a basic lever somewhere. Something of the non-glass-breaking variety. Maybe it was in the main room.

  Dax was back in his usual spot, book in hand, when I walked in, like he’d never left. After one lap of the library, he asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I have a plan.” One he would probably hate, because it involved bringing the authorities right to our doorstep, but he hadn’t told me why that was such a big deal anyway, so I didn’t care. I went to the checkout desk and searched the underside for a panic button. Did all buildings have those or just banks?

  “Are you going to share?”

  “Oh, now you want a commentary?”

  He didn’t respond, and I was done playing his surly game. The one where he put in minimal effort and expected maximum results. I didn’t have to talk either.

  Kitchen! There would be a fire alarm in the kitchen for sure. That was where a fire was most likely to start in a place like this. I headed there. I heard Dax’s footsteps on the stairs behind me. That was fine with me. He could see my plan in real time.

  I was right. Directly outside the kitchen on the wall was my red beacon of hope. I let out a cry of relief. But as I reached for it, I was abruptly pulled back by my hips.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I turned to face him. “Saving us. The fire department will come and realize someone is in here and save us.”

  He moved between me and the fire alarm. “After breaking down the door with axes. Not to mention the alarm is probably attached to sprinklers. Is your family going to pay for the damage?”

  I looked up at the ceiling. Sure enough, there were sprinklers.

  “Can you really not last two more days in here? Is it that bad?”

  I thought about the episode I’d just had where it felt like my heart was being ripped from my chest. I didn’t want to live through another one of those. “Yes. It is. I want to go home. I doubt the alarm will set off the sprinklers. Usually there has to be smoke for that. There’s a window by the front door. I’ll stand there and let the firefighters know there is no fire, just trapped people. They won’t break anything. They’ll go get a key or something.” I wasn’t sure if that was true. Maybe someone would try to come in from the back or a window. But I really needed this. “Move.”

  “I need to be able to leave undetected. Don’t do this. For me.”

  “We play one card game together and you think we’re friends?”

  He gave a breathy laugh. “I’m a jerk. We both know that, but you’re not. Don’t bring the fire department here.”

  “Why? What’s the big deal? What are you hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding anything. I just don’t need to be on their radar.”

  “Why would this put you on their radar?”

  “A teen accidentally locked in a library with his overnight bag?”

  “You can say you were going to a friend’s after you studied. I would’ve had my overnight bag here too if I hadn’t put it in my friend’s car.”

  “I have one more chance, okay?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to end up in a group home. If I get one more strike, that’s where I’m headed. I wouldn’t last a day in there. They have curfews and rules. I need my freedom.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and let out a puff of air. “So why are you here? Really?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. It could be the difference between me pulling that alarm when you’re asleep or not.”

  “You’re blackmailing me for information?”

  “Let’s call it sharing between friends.”

  He shook his head and a smile stole across his face. There was something very satisfying about a smile tha
t had to be earned. It was gone as fast as it had appeared. “My stuff was on the porch. I was heading toward the canyon when it started to snow. That’s it. Will you leave the alarm alone now?”

  “Wait . . . what? Your foster parents put your sleeping bag and duffel on the porch?” Was that why he really didn’t have a charger for his phone? Because he hadn’t packed his own bag? “Why did they do that?”

  “I don’t know. They’re probably having a members-only Tupperware party tonight. I don’t ask questions. I don’t care.”

  “At least they packed you a toothbrush.” I was trying to find the positive in this when it was obvious there was nothing good about it.

  “I always have my own bag packed, ready to go. I like to sleep up in the canyon sometimes. It’s amazing up there. But I don’t like sleeping in the snow.”

  “So you came here.”

  “Yes. Mystery solved. See, not as seedy as you probably imagined.”

  No, it was actually worse than I’d imagined. Who did that? Who put a teenager out on the street to fend for himself so they could do . . . what were they doing that they didn’t want him there for?

  “Will the whole school know about this on Tuesday or just half?”

  “No. I mean, of course not. I won’t tell anyone.” But maybe I should tell someone. My parents or something. He shouldn’t have to live like that.

  My thoughts must’ve been written all over my face again because he said, “Autumn. Do I look like I’m not taken care of?”

  I looked him up and down. He was right. He didn’t look starved. He had a lean body but it was strong. His skin was smooth, no dark circles under his eyes or anything. His hair was thick. He looked really good, in fact. Really good. My cheeks went hot and I stopped my analysis of him immediately. “No. You look . . . It’s just—”

  “Then let’s move on. I’m fine.” He pointed to the fire alarm. “Don’t touch.”

  His story and the fact that I actually wasn’t sure that the whole library wouldn’t be soaked with the sprinklers if I pulled the lever made my decision for me. I could stay here. This was no big deal. He had way more to lose than I did. I held up my hands. “Fine.”