Introductions

  I watched his arm motions and then nodded. It didn’t look difficult. I sucked in a breath and kicked off.

  While I wasn’t trying to go at my fastest speed before, knowing he was watching now, I threw my body into the motions. My body curved against the water and I tried the hand movement he was showing me. It was more work forcing my arm muscles into sweeping motions but he was right. The stroke was much more powerful and the effort was twice as effective.

  I broke the surface at the far corner and I heard him hooting.

  “You’re good,” he said.

  I was breathless but I smiled at him. I moved a hand to my arm, rubbing the bicep. It was going to be sore tomorrow if I kept up that pace.

  “You should do some weight training.” He walked over to where I was against the edge of the pool and slid in to stand next to me. He tilted his head at me. “Are you going to join the swim team?”

  I blushed, shaking my head. “I’m not much of a competitor.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  I half laughed. “I don’t mind a short race.”

  He blinked at me, smiling. “Should we race?” he asked.

  Race him? He had to be kidding. “I’ll try,” I whispered.

  “Should we bet on the outcome?”

  My eyes narrowed at him. “You’ll win.”

  “You don’t know that. You’re pretty quick. You’re smaller than me, too. You could probably move through the water faster than I could.”

  “What do you want?”

  He shrugged. “If you win, what would you want?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him, unsure of his motives. Was this a trick to get me to do something else crazy? “I want to know the secret to getting into the back woods.”

  His mouth broke into a wide grin. “I was going to show you that anyway.”

  I made a face. I didn’t know what else to ask for. Then I pointed to the t-shirt I was wearing. “This?” When I said it, it seemed to be too much. Was he being serious at all about it though? Or was this just for fun?

  He nodded. “If I win...” he paused, looking at my face like he was trying to read something from me. I got the feeling he was weighing out what he could get away with asking me. “If I win, you promise that if we end up with a class together, you’ll sit next to me.”

  It was an odd request. I felt my brows lifting. I wasn’t sure if he was serious. “That’s it?” I croaked out.

  “Hey, if I’m going to cheat off of someone, I’d like a willing participant.”

  My mouth popped open and my fingers flutter to the base of my throat. “Nathan?”

  He shook his head, laughing. “I’m kidding. I don’t cheat.”

  I grinned. “I do.” There was no way I could win this race. I knew he wouldn’t let me. I positioned my feet up against the edge of the pool.

  The smile remained on his face and he tilted his head toward me. “Really?”

  Before he reacted, I shot away from the wall under the water, pushing myself against the resistance with what strength I had inside me. I managed to get past him and I tried to widen the distance to be out of his reach. I used the arm movement he showed me, throwing my whole body into the stroke. If I was going to have a chance, I needed to get clear of him.

  I was halfway through the pool when I felt a hand on my ankle. In one pull, I was sailing backward through the water faster than I’d ever moved at my own doing. Nathan flew ahead of me. His reddish hair broke the surface and in a few easy breaststrokes, he was on the other side.

  I made it over hallway again before I surfaced. I bobbed in the water, my chest heaving as I was laughing too hard. “Cheat!” I gasped out.

  “You can’t cheat if you didn’t set rules.” He stood up, drips of water sliding over the muscles in his chest and stomach. I tried not to gape but it was hard not to be in awe of the power he had.

  I made a face at him, sticking my tongue in his direction.

  “Don’t go pulling that face on me. You owe me now.”

  I laughed, splashing him. I didn’t think I would have minded sitting next to him in class, anyway. Although when I thought about it, I wondered how I would concentrate if I had someone like him nearby.

  He smirked, sizing me up and positioning his legs against the wall. “I warned you about splashing.”

  He caught me before I had a chance to move.

  It was another hour before I crawled my way out of the pool, falling on my stomach on the concrete, gulping in air.

  “Give up?” Nathan asked, coming up beside me and sitting on the edge of the pool with his legs in the water.

  “You play rough,” I wheezed out. Between all the races and him tossing me around the pool, I was dizzy.

  He laughed and shook his head, rubbing a palm at his temple. “And here I thought I had my own little mermaid who could keep up,” he challenged.

  I blushed. Was he claiming me? “You know she dies at the end of the original story.”

  His eyes darkened and his lips twisted. “What? Why?”

  “She sacrifices herself for the prince’s happiness.”

  “That’s fucked up. Wasn’t he happy with her?”

  “He was in love with another girl.”

  “What an ass.”

  I rolled my eyes and then flopped over until I was on my back, letting the sun warm me. There was a gentle breeze that flitted around us. I remained jealous of the pool he owned. Whenever I could own my own house, I decided I wanted one just like it.

  His eyes focused on my body. I thought that he was being perverted for a moment as the shirt was sticking to my chest but I felt the breeze on my skin and then realized my side must have been exposed. The bruise near my butt was prominent.

  “Where’d you get that?” His eyes focused in on it. He reached out as if to touch it but he only lifted the shirt a little to get a better look. He sucked in a breath and then reached for his other hand to pull down the fabric of the shorts, leaning in to get a closer look. “Jesus. What’d you do that for?”

  “I fell,” I said softly.

  “On to someone’s foot?”

  “On to the concrete.”

  “How the hell did it get that bad on your hip?”

  “It was the angle, I think.” I moved a hand to pull away the shirt and stuff it down to hide the bruise. “It’s fine,” I recited. “Looks worse than it feels.”

  “Probably not,” he said. “I’ve had my share of bruises. That’s a nasty one.”

  I shrugged and swallowed to try to get some voice back. “I can’t do anything for it.”

  He pushed himself up until he was standing and then reached a hand down to me. “I’ve got something.”

  I wasn’t sure if this was another trick but I’d gotten sort of used to his face. When he expressed that serious look, he meant it. Then I hesitated because he was asking to touch him again. I reached up, feeling his hand wrap around mine and he pulled me up until I was standing.

  He held on to my hand, walking around the pool and heading toward the large shed that was in the back. It made me blush that he was holding my hand. We’d just met. He was touching me. Was this normal to happen right away? I mean friends held hands sometimes, I was sure. I’d read about it in books. It also happened when a guy liked you a lot and wanted to be your boyfriend. So which was it? Why did these things have to be so confusing?

  “Wait here,” he said. “The floor is wood. I don’t want you to slip.”

  “What about you?”

  He ignored the question or did hear me that time and opened the latch, pulling open the wide barn-like door. The inside of the shed did have a pine floor. The polish gleaned. There was black padding along the edges about a foot high against the wall and karate posters above them. There were a few belts in cases in different colors, dates etched into gold plates in the frames. A skylight at the top let in some natural light but he flicked a switch and two rows of fluorescent lights turned on.

  I knew he said not to but I could
n’t resist wanting to get a closer look of the belts and posters on the wall. There was his name, Nathan Griffin, etched into those gold plates with the various degrees of rank that I didn’t quite understand. There was a framed newspaper clipping with his name on it, too, and a picture of a much younger looking Nathan holding up a trophy. I sensed him stepping up behind me, looking at what I was looking at. “You do karate?” I asked.

  “Kind of.”

  I turned to face him, blinking, not understanding.

  “It’s Jujitsu. And Taekwondo. And some other martial arts. Karate is just a different style.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s really cool.”

  His face softened and he smiled at me. “I know.” He crossed the room to a small closet that protruded from the rear wall. He searched the shelves until he found what he was looking for and turned around. “Let me see that bruise again,” he said, coming back across the floor.

  I stepped back out onto the pavement and he turned off the light, closing the door. He turned to me and I lifted the shirt to reveal the bruise. He held a crumpled white tube in his hand. He opened the top and squirted out a white cream onto his palm. He pressed his fingers to the bruise to lather it into my skin.

  “What is this?” An acidic medicine smell made me crinkle my nose. The cream was greasy and while he was delicate as he rubbed, it did hurt as he touched me. Part of me wondered if it was because I was super sensitive that he was a boy I still didn’t know well and he was touching a part of me that made me shiver.

  “Arnica cream. It’s supposed to help with bruising and sore muscles.” He dipped his fingers down into the shorts a little to cover a little more of the area, then wiped his hand off on his shorts and closed the cap on the tube. He handed the tube to me. “Put this on twice a day until it starts to turn green.”

  I took the bottle and held it to my chest. “Thank you.”

  He was standing close to me. His blue eyes fixed on mine. “You’re pretty nice for a girl.”

  I half choked. “What?”

  “You know,” he said, waving his hand around his head, being dismissive. “Girls are all ‘give me that’ and usually want to get all cute on the couch and not get their hair wet and... yeah, indoor types.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Girls don’t like wet hair?”

  He laughed. “You’re totally missing the point.”

  “Probably because I’m a girl.” I don’t know why but I felt defensive about being separated from other girls. Normal girls don’t like to swim?

  He rolled his eyes, waving his hand again in the air but laughed. An alarm noise sounded nearby and he raced over to where he had dropped his shirt near the pool. He pulled from the bundle a cell phone and answered it. I was trying not to overhear the conversation but it was difficult not to. “Yeah? No, I was just swimming with Sang. She’s the... oh. You know her?” He turned, looking at me with his eyebrow raised as he listened. “Yeah, okay. We’ll come over.” He hung up.

  I swallowed. Uh oh. That had to be Kota or one of the other guys. So they knew each other?

  He check the sports watch at his wrist. “Have to be somewhere?”

  I considered what I should say. Should I lie and go home? No, I still had to ensure they didn’t try calling. I still wasn’t sure how to explain what happened to my voice or why they couldn’t do something as normal as call me. I shook my head.

  Nathan’s head tilted toward the house. “Let’s get dressed. How’d you meet Kota?”

  “Long story.”

  He smiled. “Tell me on the way to his house.”

  I stood with Nathan on Kota’s front porch. My hair was still wet and my jeans were still kind of dirty. I was grateful they were fully dry. I pulled my hair out of the mess on top of my head, untangling the clip. I held the clip with my teeth and twisted my hair again, replacing the clip in a quick movement. Drips fell on my neck as the tips of my hair spilled out from the top of the clip.

  Nathan watched me as I did it. “Looks like shit,” he said with a teasing grin.

  I made a face at him just as Jessica opened the door. She looked cute in a little pink flower dress. She peered out at us, took one look at Nathan, turned bright red and rushed away from the door, leaving it hanging open.

  I lifted an eyebrow and turned toward him.

  He looked perplexed at me and shrugged his shoulders. “She caught me sparring with a friend one day. It probably looked like I beat him up pretty bad. I heard Victor tell her one day if she didn’t get straight A’s like her brother, I’d come over and do the same thing to her.”

  I was still laughing when Kota came to the door.

  “There you are,” he said. He wore Calvin Klein jeans and a short sleeve, white dress shirt, buttoned to his neck. His slid his glasses up further on his nose, looking relieved. “What happened to you?”

  I blinked at him. “You were looking for me?” I whispered.

  His eyes focused on me. “What?”

  “Her voice is gone,” Nathan said. “She can’t talk.”

  Kota’s expression changed, his eyebrow raised. “It was fine yesterday. What happened?” His eyes were intense on me.

  My heart was throbbing so hard that I wasn’t sure how to react. My lips moved but I couldn’t figure out what to say.

  He frowned. “I almost went over to your house. I wasn’t sure how to reach you. I tried walking by just in case you happened to look out. I wondered if you were in trouble.”

  I pushed a finger toward my lower lip. “Sorry,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “What’s the problem?” Nathan asked, shifting on his feet and looking between me and Kota. “What’s going on?”

  Kota fumbled with the button at the collar of his shirt. “Well, it’s something we’ve got to figure out. Come on in. I’ll look at your throat.”

  My hand fluttered to my throat, touching delicately at the dip at the base. “It’s not a problem,” I whispered, forcing a smile. The last thing I wanted was this sort of complication. It was my responsibility to act as a barrier between my parents and anyone I met. If I was going to keep any friends at all, I had to stop them from discovering my problems at home.

  How was I going to keep this peace, this separation of my friends and my family?

  Gabriel

  I trembled as I followed Kota through his house. Nathan closed the door behind us and fell in behind me. I could only take a glance but there were a ton of family photos on the walls, decorations in displays, rugs spread across the floor, and knickknacks on tables through the foyer. Compared to my own empty house, it felt almost cluttered but I loved it. It felt so full and lived in. The living room had a blue carpet that was similar to the one in Kota’s room. There was a beige sofa with plump embroidered pillows. A wide screen TV sat inside an entertainment center. There were a couple of plants sitting on top of side tables and a bookshelf along one wall filled with novels.

  “Where’s your mom?” I asked in my cracking voice, trying to pull the conversation away from me.

  “She’s at work.” He looked at the sofa as if considering it. “We should head up to my room. But keep an ear out. Victor and Gabriel should be here in a minute.”

  I looked at Nathan, wanting to ask who Gabriel was but he wasn’t looking at me and instead headed off after Kota past the dining room toward the start of the stairs.

  I slowly followed them, trying to come up with something to tell them that wasn’t the truth, or to make it lighter than what was going on. Only my mind went blank. I’ve already been not fully honest about other things. Did I really want to make some of my first friends here hate me because I lied to them? How would I ever explain my mom?

  At the top of the stairs in his room, Kota started to drag his computer chair across the floor. He opened a side drawer at his desk, picking up a flash light. He positioned the chair in the middle of the room and then pointed at it. “Sit.”

  The command and power in his voice caused a knee-jerk rea
ction. I sank into the chair, unsure of what else I could do.

  Kota stood in front of me, with Nathan beside him. They bent over me. Kota held the flashlight toward my face, flicking the light on. “Open up,” he said.

  I swallowed, opening at his request. Kota squinted through his glasses as he looked into my throat. He studied my mouth. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. My heart was pounding.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Nathan asked next to him. He was trying to glance around Kota’s head to look inside my throat, too.

  “It’s... burned,” he said. He flicked the light off. With his free hand he tugged at my chin, making me look at his eyes. “What happened yesterday when you got home?”

  I moved my lips as the power in his voice lured me to, but I couldn’t find the words. I was unable to lie to him. Was it his devouring green eyes or the way his concern for me was apparent on his face?

  Kota frowned. He knelt in front of me, wrapping his warm fingers around mine. “Sang, I’m going to assume if you’re not telling me, it’s something bad. I’m going to ask you some questions. Just nod if I’m right. Did you get into trouble yesterday with your parents?”

  I sighed, nodding.

  “Was it because you left with us?”

  I shook my head. Nope.

  Nathan sat on Kota’s bed. I felt him looking at me but I couldn’t make myself face him.

  Kota grasped my hand a little tighter. “Did they have you drink something?”

  I bit my lip, closed my eyes and nodded. I swallowed hard. This was it, I thought. They would send me home now and I’d never see them again. Who wants to deal with a girl with crazy parents?

  “What was it?” Kota asked softly. When I didn’t respond, he squeezed my hand again. “Sang? Tell me. What was it?”

  I peeled my lips apart to whisper. “Lemon juice... and vinegar.”