Breaking the Rules

  “How’s Ashley?” My stepmom, and an excellent change of subject.

  A year ago she was my wicked stepmother from Oz. Now she’s my stepmom who means well, but doesn’t know when to stop. Like when I ask her thoughts on an outfit, and I’m not really searching for complete and utter honesty, and she drones on for twenty minutes about how I should wear something that flatters my figure because, let’s be honest, God blessed me in the top area, but fell short on the hip portion...yeah, that’s how Ashley talks.

  “She’s good. Alexander still wakes up at night so she’s having a rough time functioning during the day. I’m worried that she’s sleep deprived.”

  “Uh-huh.” Try two years of insomnia, then we can discuss tired.

  “Where are you heading next?” he asks.

  “We’re going to stay in Colorado Springs for the next two nights, then we’ll head to Denver. Noah and I are visiting a gallery there. This one is huge. I hear people have been trying to get an invite into this show for weeks.”

  “That’s good.”

  That’s good. I roll my eyes. The men in my life don’t understand the biggest part of me. Sometimes Noah shows the same disappointing amount of enthusiasm.

  “I assume Noah’s treating you well,” Dad says, like he’s one hundred percent on board with me being on this road trip with—how did he refer to Noah before I left Louisville? Oh, yeah, as a guy I barely knew, that is if I really paused and thought this through. Which, according to him, he doesn’t believe I did, but hey, I’m here and Dad’s in Louisville. I won this round.

  “He’s treating me great.” My dad and Noah have an unsteady relationship. Dad respects Noah for seeing beyond my scars and for being there for me during an awful period this past spring, but he’s still wary.

  On the outside, Noah can still come across as the rough foster-care kid, and what parent would be thrilled with his daughter taking off for an entire summer with a guy half her school is terrified of? The day before Noah and I left, Dad sat me down and talked to me for a long time about how “this is a phase in your life” and not to do anything I would “regret” and that if I ever needed him, to call.

  “Echo...”

  Warning flags. The use of my name along with any dramatic pause by my father means bad, bad—very bad—news. I accidentally forgot your favorite stuffed animal at the hotel...your mother is bipolar...your brother, Aires, is being deployed to Afghanistan. Bad news.

  “I’m considering selling the house.”

  “Oh.” I slump back in my seat, half relieved to discover that the plague hasn’t been intentionally released into the world, but then a sickening sensation strikes. “Oh.”

  “I’ve considered it for years,” he continues. “But it was your home, and I didn’t want to take something else away from you after you’d lost so much.”

  Like how I’d lost Aires when he died in Afghanistan, or how I’d lost my mind after a visit with my mother went horribly wrong at the end of my sophomore year of high school.

  That type of lost.

  “But now that you’ve graduated and are moving on, I thought Ashley and I could start somewhere...” He cuts himself off.

  “New,” I finish for him.

  There’s a crackling silence on the line, and Dad releases a heavy sigh. “Yes.”

  He’s not replacing me. He’s not shoving me away. Yes, Dad has a new wife and a new baby, but I’m not being thrown out of this family. I’m part of it. I’ve talked this over with my therapist, Mrs. Collins, again and again, but the nagging doubt still slices through me like a ragged knife.

  “What are your thoughts on my selling the house?” he asks.

  I’ll miss sitting in the garage and watching Aires’s ghost work on his car as he counseled me through my high school life crises. I’ll miss staring at the constellations my mother painted on the ceiling of my room. I’ll miss the happy memories. That house has been one of the few constants in my life.

  A knot in my throat keeps me from saying those things. My world’s changing again, and sometimes I hate change. “Mom called this morning.”

  The hydrogen bomb I dropped alters the entire conversation.

  * * *

  I ram my thumb on the icon for Off and toss my cell onto the table. Blood swooshes in my veins, and each throb in my temple ticks me off more. Obviously, Dad and I were never meant to see eye to eye.

  With his legs kicked out onto the sidewalk and his fingers laced across his stomach, Noah regards me from across the table. “Vexed?”

  “Vexed? Did we enter medieval times?”

  “It means mad,” he says.

  “I know what it means. Why are you using it?”

  He shrugs casually. “It was an ACT word. Figured if I had to learn the shit I might as well use it.”

  I giggle in spite of myself then stop when dread weighs down my entire body. “Yeah, I’m vexed.”

  Noah edges my ignored latte toward me. I pick it up and attempt to disappear by pulling my legs along with me onto the seat. “Dad doesn’t get it.”

  He says nothing and glowers at the mountains in the distance. Noah overheard most of the conversation between me and Dad, at least my side of it. I drink, and the latte is like little shards of heaven in my mouth. A part of me relaxes with the introduction of caffeine into my system.

  “What if I told you I don’t get it, either?”

  With the coffee still poised at my mouth, I have to force the swallow. “What?”

  “I don’t get why you’re interested in talking to your mom. What she did...it’s not forgivable.”

  My forehead wrinkles as I set the cup on the table. “I never said I’ve forgiven her. I told Dad that maybe I should answer if she calls again. Maybe I should listen to the voice mail instead of deleting it. She’s my mom.”

  “You talked to her before and didn’t get anywhere.”

  “But maybe I should talk to her because...because...” Because...I don’t know, but I do know that there’s a hollowness inside me. This dull ache that screams that something’s missing. I felt this before—after I lost Aires and before I recovered my memories.

  I believed that the cure would be this summer. That leaving home and spending time with Noah would heal the wound.

  “I did get someplace the last time Mom and I talked. I remembered what happened that night, and I learned that she’s on her meds again, and that she’s being responsible about her condition. You don’t understand what life’s been like for her.”

  “She tried to kill you.” He says it as if he’s telling me something new—something I don’t agonize over every single time I look in the mirror.

  “Really?” I thrust my scarred arms into the air. “Guess I forgot.”

  Noah swears and glances away. Two guys our age walk past, gawk at my scars then stare at each other. Ashamed, I lower my arms to my lap and close my eyes when I hear the whispered “freak.”

  The table slams into my knees, and metal cracks against the sidewalk. My eyes flash open to find Noah’s chair flipped backward. I’m trapped by the table, and I press my hands against it, desperate for escape.

  Noah grabs the nearest guy, twists the material of his shirt near his neck and pounds him into the wall. “Say it again, asshole. Say it to my fucking face.”

  The table screeches against the sidewalk as I push it away and scramble to my feet. “Noah! No!”

  The guy trembles in Noah’s grasp and his friend, thankfully, isn’t much help as he gapes at a distance. If this had happened to Noah and Noah’s best friend, Isaiah, had been here, it would have been a bloodbath. But then again, Noah would never disrespect a girl.

  I place my hand on Noah’s biceps. His eyes flicker to mine and soften the moment our gazes connect.

  “Let him go.”

 
It takes a second, but Noah releases his white-knuckle grip, though not without an extra shove. He refocuses on the guy then jerks his head in my direction. “Apologize.”

  My lips flatten, and I wish I could disappear. One minute here. Another gone. Into thin air. No longer freaking existing.

  The guy’s eyes linger on my arms, and it’s not too different from the way Noah stared at me the first time he saw my scars this past January when I’d fallen on the ice. Except back then, I was hiding them from the world. This spring, I gave up trying to care what the world thought, but moments like this...I have to admit I care.

  “I’m sorry,” the guy whispers.

  “It’s okay.” But it’s not. He called me a freak. I heard it, and so did Noah. Once an insult like that has been released, there’s no way to take it back. It becomes one more cut on my soul.

  Noah slides away and the guy runs off, his friend trailing close behind. Around us, people have stopped what they were doing to focus on me and Noah. What’s worse is that when they reanimate, they lower their voices and talk to one another as their eyes zero in on my scars.

  My foot taps the sidewalk. Somehow I thought graduation was going to be the end of this torment. That the moment I walked across the stage, all the demons that haunted me during high school would somehow be exorcised.

  I can handle the questioning looks and sometimes the appalled shock, but the words still hurt. Even if they’re whispered. Especially if they’re whispered. I wonder if I’ll ever fit in.

  Noah reaches over and touches my cheek, but I lean back, not allowing him the opportunity to seek redemption. Noah should have let the taunt go, but he didn’t. He drew more attention to my scars. He made more people stare, made me more of a spectacle than I already am. Instead of two guys thinking I’m a freak, an entire crowd of people thinks the same thing. For the first time since we left Kentucky, Noah did something that made me feel worse.

  Noah

  My younger brother Jacob inherited my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile. I normally love the familiar sight on the computer screen, but today it slowly strangles me from the inside out. If my parents had survived the fire that claimed their lives three years ago, today, July twenty-seventh, would have been their nineteenth wedding anniversary.

  It doesn’t help that I’ve pissed off Echo.

  I glance out the window of the coffee shop. Echo sits on the hood of her Honda Civic and burns a hole into the sidewalk with her glare. It’s hot out there and cool in here, and that shows the intensity of Echo’s anger. She’d rather roast in the sun and inhale gasoline fumes than be with me in an air-conditioned building that smells like ground coffee beans.

  If I were a great guy, I’d be out there instead of in here chatting with my younger brother, but I suck at the boyfriend thing. If I went out there, I’d succeed in ticking her off more.

  I lower the picture of me and Echo at the Great Sand Dunes, and Jacob remains transfixed like the photo is still there. “Mountains of sand in Colorado?” he asks.

  “This is in southern Colorado,” I answer. “The forests are north. You’d like it here, Jay Bird. Enormous dunes of sand right next to towering mountains.”

  I don’t know if he would or wouldn’t like it, but I pretend that I do. These Skype visits and phone calls have been a summer-long reintroduction to each other. Until last week, I didn’t know that he was allergic to peanuts. Until last month, he didn’t know that I have a long scar that snakes up my biceps and down my back.

  His eyes got big and moist when I explained I got it by protecting him and our youngest brother, Tyler, from falling debris when our home burned down at the end of my freshman year of high school. The same fire that killed our parents.

  I saved him from the play-by-play of how I hauled Tyler and Jacob through the choking smoke and fire. They didn’t see much as I had swaddled them in blankets and half pushed, half carried them out of the house, using my body as a shield.

  I also left out how I failed him and our parents—a secret only a few that were at the scene know. Some hero I’d be to him if he knew the truth.

  Jacob stares at his picture at the bottom of the screen when he talks. “Did you know that there’s an entire planet of sand in Return of the Jedi?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jacob leans closer to the computer, and his baseball cap hits the monitor. I chuckle and in the background, his adoptive mother, Carrie, whispers for him to take the hat off. “Dad and I watched the whole trilogy last weekend. It was super awesome, Noah. I think you would have liked that.”

  The jacked-up social services system in Kentucky kept me away from Jacob and Tyler for over two years when I was labeled a discipline case. It happened after I hit an adult because he beat his son, then no one backed my side of the story.

  “You’re right. I like it.” I clear my throat. “I first watched it with our dad.”

  It no longer feels like someone’s yanking my balls through my ass when he refers to Carrie and Joe as his parents. The pain’s been downgraded to a railroad spike being shoved into my eye every ten seconds. The adoption became official last month. Now and forever, Carrie and Joe will be Jacob and Tyler’s mom and dad.

  I’m okay with it. What I’m not okay with is being alone—being the one without a family. Echo’s the lone string that’s held me together since I decided to walk from the custody battle, and sometimes I’m afraid she’ll get tired of my shit and snap.

  “When are you coming home? I want you to see me play.” Jacob had a baseball game today, and his team won. He had a double, a single and one home run. I missed each and every play. Not just today, but for the whole summer. “Mom said I only have a few games left.”

  “I’m heading back east after Echo’s last gallery appointment.”

  “Hasn’t she seen enough art galleries? Paintings look the same, right?”

  I laugh, and Carrie reprimands Jacob in the background. “Sometimes,” I answer.

  “Try to come soon, okay?”

  Now washing dishes on the other side of the kitchen, Carrie says, “The last game is in two weeks.” Jacob parrots the message, then the two of them have a sidebar on whether or not he has a make-up game.

  I relax back in my seat and let them talk. Jacob’s nine and thinks he’s right. Carrie has a patience with him I’m not sure I would have possessed.

  Echo slides off the hood, and her hips have this easy sway as she walks to the back passenger door. Damn, she’s gorgeous—red, curly hair flowing over her shoulders, a pair of cut-offs hugging her ass and a blue spaghetti-strap tank dipped low enough to show cleavage.

  My fingers twitch with the need to touch. I’m going to have to pull some major groveling to gain forgiveness. If I were smart, I’d find a way to say sorry without opening my mouth. Never fails that half the time I try to apologize, it comes out wrong.

  It also doesn’t help that I’m not sorry for throwing the asshole against the wall and twenty bucks I don’t own says that’s what she longs to hear.

  “So maybe my last game is in two weeks,” says Jacob, drawing me back to him. “But you need to see me play.”

  Echo’s had a rough tail end of the summer when it comes to selling her paintings, and she’s contemplated adding more appointments on the way home, which could prevent me from seeing Jacob’s game. I rub at the tension forming in my neck, hating being torn between two people I love. “I’ll try.”

  “Awesome!”

  “Tell Tyler I’ll be home soon and that I love him.” I already told him earlier, but I want Tyler to hear it as many times as possible from as many people as he can. He’s five, and because of the foster care system that kept us apart, he doesn’t have a decent grasp of who I am.

  “I will.” Jacob says goodbye and I do the same.

  As I’m about to end the connection, Carr
ie’s blond ponytail swings into view. “Noah.”

  My finger freezes over the touch pad of Echo’s laptop. Carrie and I have despised each other for three years and when I stopped pursuing custody of my brothers, we called a truce. I don’t hate her anymore, but it doesn’t mean I want to chat with her. “Yeah?”

  Carrie scans the room around her then settles into the seat Jacob abandoned. “Are you really in Colorado?”

  Unsure where the hell this is going, I scratch at the stubble on my face. “Yeah.”

  Lines clutter Carrie’s forehead, and she releases a long breath. “I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. Joe thinks it’s wrong. He says that you’re doing well and that we should let the state handle this, but when it comes to you we’ve made too many wrong choices. I’m afraid this will get lost in the system and, besides, you’re an adult and you should decide.”

  “Decide what?”

  “About your mother’s family,” Carrie says.

  “What about them?” My mother told me she was an only child and that her parents had died before my birth. This past spring, Carrie’s husband, Joe, informed me that was a lie. At night, when Echo’s tucked close to me asleep, my mind wanders with thoughts I don’t dare entertain during the day. I have living blood relatives. Ones I could meet.

  “They live in Vail.”

  It’s a town north of here. “And?”

  “They emailed us, asking if they could see Jacob and Tyler.”

  “So?” Though my fist tightens under the table. Mom’s family didn’t try for custody of me when Carrie and Joe asked them to sign away their rights to Jacob and Tyler for the adoption. I may not have admitted it to a single soul, but the idea that I was forced into foster care when I had living blood relatives makes me feel like trash thrown to the curb.

  “They also asked to see you.”

  Her words land like a blow to the gut. “Little late, don’t you think?”