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I double checked my bedroom door to make sure it was locked, pulled a blanket from my bed, grabbed a book from my bookshelf, and collected the phone from the attic. I curled up on the floor near the window. I didn’t expect to be interrupted. It was rare if my mother ever asked for me in the first place. Since she’d already punished me today, she wasn’t likely to ask for me again and wouldn’t come upstairs. Maybe I was being paranoid but the secret cell phone was the only way the guys could talk to me if I was stuck inside. I would do anything to make sure it was never discovered.
I opened the book to a random middle page, leaving it face down on the floor and within quick reach. I flicked on the phone and swiped at the screen.
There were three messages.
Luke: “You okay?”
North: “Call me.”
Nathan: “How bad? Text someone, damn it. We’re worried.”
I felt lighter and curled up into a tighter ball on the floor, holding the phone to my chest as I took a deep breath. Despite what just happened, despite my mom’s warnings, seven guys out there proved that she was completely wrong. They were safe to be around. They thought about me while I was gone. I started typing a message back to Nathan.
Sang: “I’m fine. I just need to hang out here for the day. I’m sorry if I worried you.”
I was just replying to North to say I couldn’t call right now but would try to do it soon when the phone exploded with messages. I fumbled with it, unable to complete a message because it would vibrate and the screen would change for every incoming message.
Gabriel: “Did she yell? Was it bad?”
North: “When are you coming back?”
Silas: “Do you need anything?”
Kota: “What happened?”
Luke: “Did you die? Are you grounded?”
Silas: “How long do you have to stay there for?”
Victor: “Can you sneak back out tonight?”
Nathan: “Why are you apologizing? Just tell us what happened.”
North: “Goddamn it, call me.”
I dropped the phone onto the carpet, pulling my knees up and resting my face in my hands. My heart was beating too hard on too many levels. It was too much to still be angry at my mother and be so excited by the guys. I needed to calm down and find a place to call them from where I wouldn’t be overheard and I couldn’t leave the house.
I crawled to the other side of the room to turn down the volume of the music, listening for the sounds of my family. A radio advertisement floated from my sister’s room. My mom’s television was turned up again. That was a good thing.
I turned the music up on my radio again, this time raising the volume a couple of notches higher. I waited to hear again to see if my mother or my sister would yell at me that it was too loud.
Silence. I scrambled with the phone to the attic door and peered inside. The space was the area between the wall and the slant of the roof. There was a nook in the back that had a flat piece of plywood board, almost like a platform. Once I was inside there, I would be mostly surrounded by insulation in the most remote spot in the house.
I got down and crouched inside the attic door. The air was thick, dry, and hot and smelled like raw wood and insulation. I closed the door behind me. Technically I wasn’t leaving the house but I didn’t want them to know I was using this space. It was the last place I had left that they wouldn’t think to look for me.
Sinking into darkness, I turned on the phone, using the glow to guide me as I crawled on my hands and feet deeper into the tunnel, ducking my head under beams to get to the platform nook. When I was there, I angled myself around a four-by-four beam that partially blocked the opening and climbed in. The nook was wide enough that I could sit cross-legged comfortably and the space above my head was tall enough I wouldn’t hit my head if I tried to stand.
I was still nervous about being heard but I pushed the buttons on the phone, dialing Kota’s number.
He answered before the first ring could complete itself. “Sang?”
“It’s me,” I said in a quiet voice. “There were too many texts to answer at once.”
Questions from six other male voices floated through from the background. I smiled. It was soothing to hear them all.
“Hang on a second, Sang,” he said. There was a beeping noise and the clack of the phone being put on a wood surface. “Okay,” he said. “I put you on speaker. Tell us what’s going on.”
I wasn’t ready for that. I sucked in a breath, trying not to sound so small and lonely. “I’m fine. It’s over with. She told me I had to stay in the house.”
A mesh of voices started at once but it was Kota’s that stood out. “How much trouble are we talking about? Does she know about us?”
“She doesn’t know specifics,” I said. “It was just in general for being in someone’s house. It’s the usual stuff.”
“Sang,” Nathan said, sounding distant from the phone. “Do you want us to try to come over and talk to her?”
“No,” I said, probably a little too loudly and I calmed myself, putting a hand on my heart. “Just let her cool off. School starts tomorrow. We’ll be busy anyway. I’ll be able to get back but not today. I just have to be more careful with how.”
Kota spoke, “We won’t be able to hide this forever.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, trying to sound hopeful. There wasn’t an option for me other than getting better at sneaking out. “One thing at a time. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my head down.”
I wasn’t sure how long I could risk being gone from my room so I told the guys I would text. I just wanted to let them know all at once what was happening.
I got off the phone and leaned against one of the wood beams. A trickle of sweat started at my brow and slid down my face. Maybe I wasn’t so important to them. It didn’t matter. I needed them and much more than I could ever tell them out loud. None of them knew how much I’ve needed to feel like I belonged.
And they were all just out of reach.
I curled up on my side, my face pressed to the wood of the platform. Tears dripped from my cheeks. I was lonely from years without being close to anyone. I’d tasted their kindness and I was starving for more. I would do whatever it took to keep this a secret.
Friendship was hard work.
P olaris
That night, I tucked the phone away into the attic space. I’d gotten more text messages but everyone soon had to go home and deal with their own stuff. Tomorrow was the first day.
When my dad got home, my mom talked to him but they didn’t call me down. I had been forgotten again.
It was after eleven. I slipped into a pair of soft cotton shorts and a black tank top that was almost too small for me. The house was asleep. I was trying to sleep but my mind kept wandering to what would happen tomorrow. Instead, I wrote in a small, brown cloth bound diary my father gave me last Christmas.
Diaries were hard to keep in my family. For one thing, Marie was prone to snooping, as was my mother. I tried to keep a regular notebook diary when I was younger but I often got into trouble when I bothered, because I wrote about how angry I was many times. Marie would use it as evidence if she got into trouble, putting me in the middle of the latest argument with my mother.
To combat this, I found another language to borrow. I used Korean lettering in a slightly different format. I made lines and circles that made up the Korean alphabet, writing my thoughts in a language they couldn’t read. I didn’t know any Korean, the words were in English. The Korean alphabet was simply a code. If Marie tried to use a translation tool from the Internet, it wouldn’t work. If she bothered to decode, it would take some work. I knew Marie tried to read it once, because she wrote in the front of my diary in black Sharpie how I was stupid. I might have been stupid, but it stopped her from using my diary and my mother stopped looking at it, too.
It was exciting to know I would be around the guys all day and my parents couldn’t do anything about it. For once when I was around
them, I could almost relax and not worry about getting caught. I wrote the guy’s names into my diary, admiring how they looked in my secret language.
A soft tapping started at the window.
I sat up from the bed. A human figure shadowed the glass. Shivers ran through me and my breath was caught in my throat, but I dismissed it. I dropped the diary on the bed, and crossed the room, expecting Nathan to be there. He’d climbed my roof before.
Instead, North was crouched and looking in. In his black t-shirt, black jeans and boots, if I hadn’t known him, I would have been screaming.
I waved and unlocked the window.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I pushed the window up.
He held his hand out, his palm up and fingers spread out. “Come see.”
My mouth popped open. “North...”
“We won’t go far.”
My heart thudded hard in my chest. My hand disappeared into his as he closed his fingers around my palm. He tugged to encourage me out onto the roof.
I angled my body and stepped out. The air was sticky warm. The half-moon shed a gentle glow against North’s tall frame.
North kept my hand, his grip strong, and started to step up the incline to the apex.
“Where?” I asked.
“Up.” He motioned and continued to climb.
My legs wobbled as they still ached from kneeling for so long. I hoped they wouldn’t cause me to misstep.
