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Which meant doing whatever it took to redirect Alice, to get away from the Academy so people like her never found out what they were about.
THE ROAD TO RECOVERY
Brandon had brought some new clothes for me. For the first time, it was jeans and a black T-shirt that actually fit, along with bra and underwear. It was like someone else helped them pick out my clothes. They usually gave me sweats because no one could figure out what size I was. Not that I really remembered either. It wasn’t like I went shopping for clothes often.
I got dressed, and after talking with a head nurse who insisted on wheeling me outside in a wheelchair herself, Brandon followed us to the lobby. The lobby had a few people putting up Christmas trees and decorating the space for the holidays.
I’d no idea what day it was and realized I must have missed Thanksgiving while in the hospital. How long had I been here, really? It felt like weeks.
We stopped at the in-hospital pharmacy to pick up birth control and other fake prescriptions. We were giving the illusion I was leaving to the cameras. Whenever Alice did show up, if she came to look for me here, she’d find footage of this. It was hard not to look for the cameras.
My father was waiting in the lobby, not by the car. He stood when we came by and offered to wheel me outside. The nurse stayed nearby while he did so.
Oddly enough, this looked completely normal. Would this be believable to Alice?
Were we inviting trouble for Jack if she went to him to ask where I was?
I could feel his huffing and puffing behind me while he pushed. I mentally yelled in my own head at Brandon for abandoning me when he went to go get the car. He wasn’t strong enough to push me and it was getting awkward, but Brandon just let him do it.
It was agony waiting for the car to come around, a black SUV.
After he parked, Brandon skirted around the nose of the vehicle and opened the front passenger door.
Jack offered to help me out of the wheelchair. I waved him off. “Stop,” I said. “I can walk.”
“Sorry,” he said.
The apology rattled through me. In a strange way, the more he was nice to me, the more I didn’t want to see him. I needed time to think about how I felt about the new Jack. I motioned to the front seat. “You get in there. I’ll get into the back.”
He protested but I wasn’t listening. I opened the rear door myself to climb into the middle seat. I did let Brandon close the door, and my father got into the front passenger seat.
Brandon got back behind the wheel, and the car was silent as he pulled away from the hospital.
I leaned against the window, staring out and hoping this car ride would be over quickly. I kept an eye out for anyone following us, but before Brandon left downtown, he made so many turns that even I got lost for a few minutes.
Brandon eventually took to I-26 and headed west for a bit, before getting off a ramp somewhere amid North Charleston. I had my nose nearly pressed to the window. I’d been outside that morning, but I still felt I’d been cooped up in the hospital for eons.
I was free.
I could go where I wanted. Not that I had any idea where to go or knew what I wanted.
The North Charleston streets were broken, filled with ruts and potholes. I’d been through such neighborhoods nearly all my early life. There were dangerous parts in this area, depending on which street you landed on, with crumbling industrial buildings and homes that hid whacked out druggies and gangs if you entered at the wrong times. However, North Charleston was starting to have pockets of nice areas where some homes and even some business sections were getting redone.
Brandon pulled into one of these newly redone streets. It was a single lane of various late 60s model homes with short front porches screened in. The street ended in an empty lot. The lot had a path and benches and a few toys left out like the local kids used it as a park.
Brandon stopped at one single story house with a wide front porch and a short fence surrounding the front yard.
I leaned over, looking through the front windshield at the place. My mind was reeling. “Are you renting a room?” I asked. “Here?”
“I’m renting the whole house,” Jack said. “It wasn’t a bad deal for the place. It’s only two bedrooms, one bathroom, but…it’s not bad.”
He had enough money for this? He was able to get a place...like this? A house. An actual house. With a yard. No wonder why he was trying to offer a place to stay. Before, when we were in a hotel room with my brother, we could barely afford the weekly rate rent there. Before that, we were in falling apart apartments that were probably never up to code.
And here he was, in an actual solid house.
I tried not to let the anger bubble up inside of me over it. Let him keep his house. I didn’t want it.
Jack got out and stood by the open door, waving at Brandon. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Brandon said.
Jack turned to me, doing a short wave. “Come by sometime, okay?”
I didn’t say anything but nodded. I just wanted him to go away. I didn’t dare open my mouth as I was sure I’d just rail at him.
He could have provided this for us.
For Wil and me. We could have had a place like this. Wil and I were working hard, and we could have helped out.
If he’d only tried. And that’s what sucked about it all. He could have worked. He could have been fine. He’d just given up. Wil and I weren’t enough for him to worry about or make an attempt for. It was only after we were gone, he’d given a shit about his own life and made some sort of effort.
I wasn’t sure I was happy with the Academy helping him out. I wasn’t sure he deserved it.
But did I deserve all the help they’d given me? I wasn’t sure any more about who deserved what exactly. Or if deserve was an actual thing to be concerned with.
My mom didn’t deserve cancer and to die so young. Maybe that word had lost its meaning.
And I got the feeling, with the Academy, with what Axel and the others had done for me, it wasn’t about what we deserved. They were just trying to do something good. They had the opportunity to help and they did. They put so much effort into my family, into me.
My fingers clenched into fists as Jack shut the door and headed to the porch of his house.
I jumped over into the front passenger seat, crossing my arms over my chest. “How could he afford a place like this? In this neighborhood?”
“Don’t you recognize it?” Brandon asked.
I squinted, looking over the place again, noting the trees that were lined up along the back of the house, providing some shade to Jack’s house and his neighbors. The place did look a little familiar. “Have I been here before?”
Brandon chuckled. “Maybe you don’t remember because that’s when you got pissed off at Marc and shot him in the leg.”
My mouth wrenched open and I blinked rapidly. I’d been up on the roof trying to help them put new shingles up, when Marc made some sassy comments and I shot...at him. I didn’t mean to shoot him. I just
missed the ground. And it was only a nail gun…
I was leaning forward, looking at the place now. The roof had been completed. The whole place had been tidied up. The fence hadn’t been there before. Other houses in the neighborhood had not been in as good of shape either and now looked okay. “You were redoing the whole street?”
“Academy neighborhoods are designed to be safe areas where people can rent clean and upgraded houses for a low cost. It gives them confidence to be able to support themselves in a nice place, and the rent money pays for the entire project over a few years.” Brandon leaned over to me, putting an arm on the seat next to me and focused. “We didn’t just help him, Kayli. You did, too. And we can do a lot more.”
I said nothing as Brandon put the car into reverse. Several houses had Christmas decorations already out, with lights around the edges or wreaths at the door. A normal neighborhood.
When the house was out of view, I sat back, my arms folded across my chest, processing the information.
I hadn’t thought about that house and why they were fixing the roof until now. I’d assumed at the time it was some sort of job. I didn’t know it was for the Academy.
Brandon was right. There was a lot I didn’t know about their group. The more I learned like this, the more questions I had, and the more I realized they’d woven themselves into my life so very deeply.
AN ILLUSION OF NORMAL
Brandon avoided getting back on the highway and drove slowly through smaller roads I wasn’t sure I was familiar with until he pulled into the lot of Henshaw Customs. I recognized the place, although during the day, the entire building wasn’t what I remembered.
Given the last time I was here, it was under duress after being kidnapped…
Henshaw Customs was actually two buildings instead of the one I remembered. The first building was a large warehouse with three large garage doors along the right side and an office in the front. Directly behind it, and hard to see from the road unless you were in the lot, was a second, even longer warehouse with several more garage doors. Most of those doors in the second building were open now.
