Thor pops his head up. At least I’m not the only one being awoken out of sweet dreams by loud sounds.
Drix’s sister dumps a bag of trash into the metal can and then places the top back on. “You two are so epically cute together, and just to let you know, Jeremy is on his way over.”
Drix lowers me to the floor, immediately takes my hand and guides me around all the instruments and out of the garage. With a bark, Thor is up and following. “I told you, he’s not allowed here while Elle is visiting.”
Jeremy: Holiday’s boyfriend who every male here hates with a passion and who Holiday appears to have some sort of emotional attachment with. She says she’s in love, but I’m not sure if I buy it. When someone brings him up, the smile on her face never reaches her eyes. In fact, she dulls out at the sound of his name.
I’m not seasoned enough to make a complete judgment on what love is, but I am secure enough in myself that I never want that to be my version of love.
“He won’t say anything, Drix.” Holiday wrings her hands together. “And if I don’t see him now, I won’t see him at all today.”
“Ask me if I care,” Drix mumbles as he pulls me into the house. Dominic, Kellen and Marcus are at the table poring over sheet music, and each offer me and Drix a colorful greeting, but I don’t have much time to offer anything back as Drix pulls me past them, down the narrow hallway and into the living room.
Once there, he drops my hand and collapses back against the wall. The TV is on, the evening news, and I have this awkward feeling that I’m taking up too much room because I have no idea how Drix and I just went from complete heaven to this cold place of purgatory. As if feeling the same way, Thor sniffs, probably wondering if a stranger has entered Drix’s body.
Light footsteps and Holiday creeps out of the hallway and into the living room, reminding me of how I used to feel when I’d sneak out of my bedroom at night, knowing my parents were going to be disappointed I was scared of the dark and of the monsters in my closet.
“Drix,” she says. “Please let me see him. It’ll just be for a few minutes, and I need to see him and tell him I’m sorry. We fought earlier today and—”
Drix cracks his head to the side. “I thought you said you hadn’t seen him today.”
“I meant I didn’t see him today when he was in a good mood. He’s going out with friends tonight, and I need us to leave on a good note, so I won’t worry about him going out.”
My soul twists with her words. It’s such a horrifying, dark and demented shadow that’s cast over Holiday that I step closer to the window for light. Is that how love feels to her? Because that’s not okay. “What will happen if he goes out mad?”
Drix’s eyes shoot to mine, and Holiday looks down at her feet. A pit forms in my stomach, and I wish I could disappear. “Oh.”
Oh. He’ll cheat on her.
“He’s not a bad guy,” Holiday suddenly says. “He’s just real emotional, and I know how to calm him down. I’m the only one who can. Even he admits it, and he tells me all the time he doesn’t think he can live without me. That without me, he’ll fall apart. He says I’m the only good thing in his life.”
The kitchen goes quiet, and she’s staring at me with such hope that I’ll tell her I understand, but I can’t because it’s like she’s speaking a completely different language. If I open my mouth, I know I’ll also be speaking in a tongue that will be incomprehensible to her.
Suddenly, my skin feels like it’s shrinking because being in the same room with Holiday is a type of suffocation. With her brothers, she’s light and love and confidence and beauty, but with the mention of this boy, she turns into a black hole, and that happiness Drix just had about the audition has been lost into the void.
Thor jerks his head toward the door. The hair on his back rises, and he growls. A menacing bark following every low rumble. A knock and a part of me feels like I should run while another part feels like I should throw myself in front of it to save Holiday from the Grim Reaper.
“Drix?” she asks.
He’s completely closed off. Head down, arms over his chest, one foot crossed over the other. “Elle has to leave in twenty minutes, so you have fifteen. You stay in the front yard as I don’t want him to see her car around back, and you two stay within sight.”
Thor keeps growling, keeps barking, and there’s no way that dog is letting anyone out.
“Thor,” Drix says, and the dog automatically glances back at him. Drix snaps his fingers and points at the floor. With ears back, Thor trots to the designated spot. Drix lowers to a crouch, pets the dog, and my heart hurts. It’s almost as if he’s touching the dog to keep himself from going out the door.
Holiday walks out and my stomach flips. Silence. There’s only silence in the house beyond the low voices of the news anchor on the TV. Then there’s two more voices coming from outside. One is Holiday’s, the other is her boyfriend’s, and within seconds those voices are raised and ominous. Like a lightning strike before a storm. They’re fighting.
“Why did you let her go out?” I ask.
“Why are you here, with me, working on a computer program? All three things your parents know nothing about.”
I flinch with his verbal attack, but he keeps going.
“Don’t take it hard because I’m not judging. I’m acting like a dancing monkey for your dad, and I’m keeping you and me a secret for the same reasons you’re keeping quiet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We all have somebody in our life we can’t say no to. Whether it be because they’re our parents, like you, or a person in authority, like me, or because that person makes them feel secure, like Holiday. Some choices, we have to make on our own. I can’t choose who Holiday loves. As much as I hate it, that’s on her, just like my choices are on me and your choices are on you.”
My spine straightens. “My situation is different. They’re my parents.”
“Ellison Monroe and Andrew Morton are turning heads again.”
At the sound of my name, nausea crashes into my system, and the urge is to vomit. On the screen are pictures of me and Andrew. Us together at fund-raisers, us together walking red carpets, us together in what should have been private moments outside of evening events. His jacket is around my shoulder on a cool night. And then there’s the pièce de résistance—the picture of Andrew leaning forward to kiss me at the ballpark.
What they don’t show is that I averted my head and kissed his cheek. His cheek. Sean’s still mad at me, but I don’t care. I couldn’t stomach kissing anyone but Drix.
“You choose to be seen with him, Elle.”
“He’s there to protect me.”
Drix stands, and he levels his dark, ice-cold eyes on me. “Then why aren’t your parents and your father’s campaign staff telling the media he’s not your guy?”
Hurt pricks at my heart and that causes anger to awaken within me. “You think I’m with him? Is that it? You think I’m cheating on you?”
He methodically shakes his head back and forth, pinning me in my spot with that frigid stare. “I think that’s who your parents want you with, and this is their way of making it happen. I also think you’re choosing not to see it.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, but it was more a whisper when I intended it to be strong.
“I’m not judging you,” he says softly. “I’m doing what I’ve been told to do, too. We’re both on a leash.”
“So what are my options?” I snap. “Holiday has options. She can leave him, and that is the best choice. Where’s my best choice?”
He merely shrugs like I haven’t asked the most profound question in my life. “Sometimes there isn’t a best choice. Sometimes we’re given two bad choices. That, Elle, is how life works.”
No, he’s wrong. I’m not on a leash. My parents are guiding me, they’re helping me, but I still have
control and I’m going to prove Drix wrong.
Hendrix
Sitting on a stool in the garage, I mess around on the guitar. Just a few rolling chords to help soothe the edginess and anger rumbling deep inside. I hurt Elle tonight, and while I regret it, I also don’t. Seeing her with Andrew cuts me deep. Each and every time. She doesn’t see it, but I do. I see how that’s the man her parents want her with, and it kills me because I want to be her man, not just in private, but in public.
“Hey,” Marcus enters the garage, picks up a battered acoustic Axle bought at the Music-Go-Round for him and takes the stool next to me. “How are you?”
I shrug while my fingers continue to move over the strings. No need to talk about Elle or Holiday. Our house is so small that we hear when the mice take a dump.
“Yeah,” he says. “I feel like that on most days, too.”
Marcus listens for a few minutes, watches my choices on the strings, listens to the broken melody and slowly begins to join in, playing the same chords, but on a higher scale. The melody we play is sweet and sad, it’s broken and raw. It describes me. It describes Marcus. I wonder how many more people in the world could relate.
“You didn’t apply to the youth performing arts school, did you?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
I think he should have. “You’re talented enough.”
“Maybe.”
I place my hand over the strings to stop the music. “Why didn’t you?”
It’s his turn to shrug. My stomach drops because I see it—fear—and I hate that it’s taken up residence in a guy who I consider one of my best friends. In a guy I’d bet who has never feared another human being in his life.
Marcus strums a few more strings, then stops, but the last note continues to vibrate. “I don’t know.” A pause. “Did you ever feel like life before was easier?”
I nod because I know what he’s talking about. Before being arrested, before going through the program, before looking too deep into myself to see all the hurt and anger that had been controlling my decisions without my knowledge. Back when I didn’t care that the path I was going down was leading to an implosion.
“Every day I wake up, whether it’s here or at home, and I wonder if I have the strength to not mess up, to keep going. Each morning, I know it would be easier to go for the high again. It would be easier to not care, but I do care, and I don’t miss the high, but I’m also scared of failing.
“Each night I don’t return to the life I had before, I thank God for it. It may not seem like much to some people, but just getting through a day feels like I’ve survived the bloodiest battle of a war, and I’m proud. I didn’t have it in me to try for the youth performing arts program and fail. Not when it’s so tough to just survive the day.”
I watch Marcus and can’t help but wonder if he’s a mind reader because he just said all my fears aloud, but the difference between us is I’m more scared of my life remaining in this daily battle to survive.
Marcus is stronger than this. I know he is. During the three months in the forest, we would hike for most of the day, sometimes it felt like in circles, and then we’d set up camp. Every few days, though, we’d come across some obstacle course, and we’d be expected to run it through.
One of the courses was to climb up a sheer cliff and then rappel back down. I was tired, I was weary, and my mind had settled into a dark place. I didn’t see the point anymore. Not in walking, not in setting up camp, not in completing another obstacle, and all I wanted to do was give up. On the program, on my family, on myself.
But Marcus, he didn’t give up. He never gave up.
He had already climbed the cliff, he had already rappelled back down, and so had everyone else. I sat on the ground, my equipment beside me, and I wasn’t going to do it. Throughout the day, counselor after counselor came and sat by my side. They tried talking to me, joking with me, and demanding of me. They even sent for my therapist, and I stonewalled him by my silence, too. I was done, and it just wasn’t with the program, I was done with myself.
I reached a point that I didn’t care if I lived or if I died because living hurt too damn much. It hit me that morning exactly what they were trying to teach us. That the cliff? The walking? The setting up, then tearing down and then doing it all over again? That’s what life was. Life was up and then back down. Life was hard, life was tough, and life meant there would be hurt, and it was up to me to keep going. Life was for the strong, and I wasn’t strong enough to survive.
“You want to eat?” my therapist said. “You’ve got to try.”
“What are you going to do,” I bit back. “Starve me?”
I saw the answer there on his face. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. It was an idle threat, and if I wanted I could have stood up, headed back to camp and stared all those all-knowing adults in the eye and eaten every piece of food in the camp, and they wouldn’t stop me because they couldn’t. The state would never risk a story of starving a teen.
“That food will taste better if it’s what you’ve earned,” he said.
I shrugged. “Food is food.”
The disappointment that covered his face kicked me in the nuts, but I still didn’t move. He left, I sat, and the sun began to dip in the western sky. Everyone, even the adults, left the cliff. Left me alone, and from the distance, I could hear the laughter and chatter of the other teens as they set up camp. I could smell the smoke from the fire, and my famished stomach cramped with the delicious scent of meat being cooked in the pit.
Alone didn’t feel good. Alone was awful. But alone felt safer. So did any wall that was slowly being built up around me.
A stick snapped, and I shot a look over my shoulder. I unloaded an f-bomb at the sight of Marcus. He dropped down beside me, and I expected him to give me one of his two thousand lectures he’d given to drag me through detention, but he didn’t talk. He just sat, and the two of us watched that cliff like it might come alive and eat us both.
The bell for dinner rang, more excited conversation and laughter drifted on the breeze from behind us, but Marcus didn’t move. Just stared at the cliff.
“You should go eat,” I said. “The younger ones don’t think to keep enough for anyone else.”
“You don’t eat, I don’t eat.”
His declaration caused me to swear. “I don’t have it in me.”
“The cliff?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Everything. I’m going to get out, I’m going to go home, and I’m going to screw it all up all over again because that’s who I am.”
Marcus released a breath and stood, my gear to climb in his hands. “Get it on.”
I opened my mouth to argue, and he shut me down with a glare and a harsh tone that even I knew not to mess with. “Get it on.”
I stood and I did, still having no intention of climbing, but it shocked the hell out of me as he also suited up. “You’ve already done it.”
“Yeah.” A look straight into my eyes. “I did, so follow me, and I’ll show you the easiest way up the cliff. Because, sometimes, that’s what we need. Someone to show us how to get there.”
I blink several times as emotion still tears me up when I think of that moment. My throat’s constricted and it burns and I breathe out to try to contain myself. The guitar is heavy in my hands and on my lap. I climbed that cliff, and when I reached the top I’m not ashamed to admit I wept. Something broke in me, and that’s what I needed. The pieces had to be shattered, so I could repiece myself back together.
Marcus saved my life that day. He saved me, and it’s time for me to repay the favor. I’m going to get into this program, and I’m going to get him in, too. He dragged me through my fears before, and this time I’ll be the strong one.
“You know I’m not going to give up on this,” I say. “You’re only a junior so there’s no reason for you to not apply next
year.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.” He begins to play again, and this time, I’m the one who follows his melody. “Dominic and I are talking about taking Kellen and Holiday to the lake soon to get Holiday away from here while you and Axle are working out-of-town jobs. He thinks it would be better if I ask Holiday as she won’t see me as trying to put a wedge between her and Jeremy.”
“Are you?”
He chuckles. “Yes.”
“Thanks for having my back with her.” And with me.
“Anytime.”
Marcus and I, this is how it’s going to be—a friendship where neither dominates or controls. A friendship where we’re both going to have bad days and the other will carry the one down on his luck until he’s strong enough to stand again.
Ellison
It’s seven at night, and Dad’s car is in the garage which means he’s home, and if he’s home, he’s working. There’s so much adrenaline coursing through my veins that when I open the door to my father’s office, I partly wonder if I’m going to rip the massive wooden door off its hinges. Instead, it bangs against the wall, and every head in the room shoots up and stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have, but sometimes losing yourself is needed in order to discover the real deal.
“You have to announce that Andrew and I are not a couple.”
Dad had been in the process of picking up his phone, and he drops it back to the base. “Another time, Elle. I have work I need to do.”
Dad picks up the phone again, his aides start to chat, and I’m left standing in the middle of his office on his red-and-black Oriental rug feeling as if I’m having an out-of-body experience. Did he not hear what I just said? “I’m sick and tired of the media acting like Andrew and I are a couple. We aren’t. I want you to set them straight.”
The receiver is to Dad’s ear, and he glances up like he’s surprised to see me. “I said another time. I’ve got a firestorm on my hands.”