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Luke, Gabriel and I collected back up in my room. Luke settled into drawing out a map of the house on notebook paper and occasionally left the room to go measure something with the tape. Gabriel kicked his shoes off, dropped into my bed, pulled the blanket up and fell asleep.
With nothing else to do, I sat on the floor and I finished up my homework.
About an hour later, Luke crawled over to where I was sitting in the corner of the room on the carpet. I was finishing the reading assignment for English.
“Sang,” he said, his eyes big and his hand on his stomach. “Will you make something to eat? I’m starving.”
I found a pencil and wrote to him so I wouldn’t have to talk. “What would you like?”
“Anything,” he said. He tugged a band from his blond hair. Locks tumbled across his face. He raked his fingers through the strands, pulling them back to redo the pony tail. “I’ll eat bread and water.”
I smirked at him. I thought I could do a little better than that.
A sharp ringing sound cut through the air. Gabriel’s outline shifted on the bed. “Yeah?” he said in a groggy voice. “No, she’s right here. Fuck, yes, I’m sleeping. Shut up. Luke’s here. Stop yelling at me. We’re supposed to be up all night watching her, so I’m trying to sleep now. Fuck you.” Gabriel’s hand appeared from under the blanket and he dropped the phone onto the carpet with a thud. “Sang,” he called. “Phone’s for you.” He flipped over. The top of his hair appeared as the blanket shifted but he settled down, going back to sleep again.
I looked at Luke. Who expected me to talk to them now?
Luke laughed. He walked over and scooped up the phone. “Yes? Yeah, she’s right here.” His eyes flickered to me. “No, he’s just napping. You know how he is when you wake him up. Yes, she’s still asleep. Yes, tell North Sang finished her homework.” Luke made a face at me. I smiled at him. “What? No.” He held his hand over the end of the phone. “Silas wants to know your favorite color.”
“Pink,” Gabriel mumbled from under the blanket.
Luke checked with me to confirm and I nodded. “She said pink. Well if they don’t have it in pink, go to another store.”
I tugged on Luke’s shirt sleeve, quietly asking him what in the world he was talking about. He waved me off, holding me back with his hand and tilting the phone away. I could hear Silas talking but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying. I blew out a breath, shaking my head. I got up, crossing the room. If there was nothing else they needed, I was going to make food.
I padded down the stairs. I popped my head into my mother’s room. She was still in a deep sleep but the color in her cheeks looked better. I was going to try to get her to take a bath when she woke up so I could wash her sheets. Usually my dad did it but now that I knew how bad her illness was, I thought maybe if I helped out more she wouldn’t be so crazy when she was awake.
I meandered into the kitchen. I checked the fridge and started collecting ingredients to make bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches with apples.
Butter melted in the frying pan when I sensed someone stepping up behind me. I spun around, nearly knocking into Gabriel.
“Watch yourself, Trouble,” he said. He yawned, rubbed a palm against his eye. He combed the lock of blond back to mix in with the rest of his brown hair behind his ears. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Grilled cheese,” I whispered. I slipped bread into the pan, layered it with cooked bacon and cheese. I thinly sliced Granny Smith apples to add on top, plus another slice of cheese and another piece of bread.
“What’s with the apple?” he asked. “That’s weird.”
“It’s good,” I whispered.
“Whatever you say.” He folded his arms across his stomach and leaned against the counter.
“Gabriel,” Luke said softly as he walked into the kitchen. “We’re not supposed to leave her room.”
“Who the hell is going to tattle on us? Her mom’s still passed out. We’d hear her coming if she came through here.”
Luke made a face but his head turned as he spotted me cooking. “Oh thank goodness.”
“She puts apples in her grilled cheese.”
“Cool.”
“Do you not want apples?” I whispered to Gabriel.
Gabriel slipped next to me, dropping a hand on my hip and pressed his cheek to my shoulder. “Is it good?”
“Try a bite of this when it’s done,” I said. “If you don’t want it, I’ll eat the rest.”
Gabriel’s phone went off again. He let me go and stepped away from us to answer it. “What? Yes, she’s here, would I be all calm if she wasn’t?” He held the phone away from his head. “Sang, Victor’s outside. Run out there.”
I passed the spatula to Luke. He took it and flipped over the grilled cheese. Gabriel followed me to the side door, opening it for me. He hung out in the doorway as I ran through the garage.
The gray BMW was parked at the end of the driveway. Victor was leaning against the side door. Black slacks. White Armani shirt. The fire in his eyes was lit to a cozy setting. “Hi,” he said.
I smiled at him.
“Are they driving you crazy yet?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
He straightened and turned to open the back seat of his car. He lifted out a brown leather messenger bag. “There’s two laptops in here. One is for you to play with. The other is for Luke to work on.”
He handed it off to me. The leather bag was stiff. It appeared brand new.
He dipped his hand into his back pocket and pulled out an iPhone with a pink case attached. “This is yours.”
The cell phone was identical to the old one. “Did you fix it?”
“Sweetheart, you demolished the other one. This is new.”
Heat teased my cheeks. “I didn’t… I don’t really need…”
He dropped a finger to my lips, squishing my mouth closed. “Just say thank you.”
I smiled and mouthed a thank you around his finger.
He encircled me in another hug. “I’ve got to get some things done. I may not see you tomorrow. Text me.”
“I will,” I whispered, mashing myself into him. I didn’t want to let go.
He released me and stepped away. I held back and watched as he started his car and backed out of the drive. I waved as he drove off. How normal was that? Why couldn’t that happen all the time? Why couldn’t my mother accept that people weren’t all that bad? I was making lunch for Luke and Gabriel. We’d been hanging out all afternoon. No death. No raping. Just friends.
I collected the mail, too, since I was outside. Back inside, burning bread and butter met me at the door. I dropped the leather bag and the mail on the floor, sprinting to the kitchen.
The kitchen was empty. Grilled cheese smoked on the pan. I snatched up the spatula to plate the sandwich. Two additional sandwiches were sitting on the plate, too. Where did the guys go?
“Sang!” My mother’s voice clattered through my ears. Thudding footsteps sounded from the hallway.
My heart stopped. I dropped the pan on the stove and shut off the heat.
My mother appeared from the hallway, hair mangled against her head. She tugged the IV pole with her. It was on wheels so she could roll it along. “There you are,” she said. “What’s burning?”
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I left it on when... when I went to go check the mail. I thought I would get back quickly enough.”
My mother blinked at me. “Why are you whispering?”
She didn’t remember. The worst experience she’d put me through and she didn’t know. If I had never called Silas and if they never saved me, I’d still be there now, or dead. “Sore throat,” I whispered. I coughed softly once but swallowed hard so I wouldn’t go into a fit.
She staggered backward. “Don’t come near me,” she said. “I can’t get sick.” She paused. “When did the doctor come?”
I assumed she meant the IV. “I called him,” I lied. “You weren’t waking up so I call
ed. They set you up with that. I hope that was okay.”
She shuffled on her feet, putting her weight on one leg and then the other. She didn’t look happy about it, and I knew it was because there were strangers in the house, but to her they were doctors. They were who she saw in the hospital. I wondered how she rationalized it. She was okay with doctors but not anyone else? I wonder if she’d like Dr. Green.
She settled finally, as if accepting this answer. “Make sure you call your father if you need to do that again. Let him call.”
“Okay.”
“Where’s the mail?”
I retraced my steps to the side door. She followed me and I was worried she’d ask about the leather bag.
The messenger bag wasn’t on the floor where I’d left it. Luke or Gabriel must have used the back steps to collect the bag. My heart fluttered, hoping they could remain quiet. I scooped up the mail from the floor and carried it over to my mother.
She took it from me. “You made three sandwiches?” she asked me, pointing to the plate I had made.
“I’m really hungry,” I said. She noticed that but she didn’t notice the bandages on my wrists and ankles?
Now that I was focused on her, I realized she hardly looked at me. Her eyes darted around me, occasionally looking at my knees or something similar but always out of focus until she looked at something else. Did I not notice before? Being around the others, they often touched at my face to bring my eyes to theirs. Did I divert my eyes too much without realizing it? Was I looking around others but not really at them?
“You’ll get fat,” she said.
“Do you need anything? Water? I can make you grilled cheese. I could make some soup.”
She considered this. “Bring me water and some yogurt.” She rolled her IV pole back to her bedroom.
I collected what she wanted quickly and raced to her room. I was there before she made it to the bed. I gave her a plastic spoon and her water bottle. I nudged the plastic trash can closer to her bed. “If you’ll take a bath, I’ll change your sheets.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “What do you want?”
“Huh?” I meant to ask more, but dry air caught in my throat and I started coughing.
She reeled her head back, taking the top off of her water. “Go away. You’ll make me sick.”
