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Derrick shot him a look. “Will you cut it out? You’re in her house.” He touched his forehead, covering the area that was bleeding.
I knelt next to him. The blood trickled across his scalp.
“What’s wrong with him?” Marie asked from the kitchen. She half hid herself behind the archway wall, looking in after us.
“Cut his head,” I said. I took out the peroxide and started the process of cleaning and covering.
Derrick’s eyes flitted to Marie curiously. His cheeks tinted. I wondered if he was embarrassed that he’d gotten hurt in front of a couple of girls. He didn’t seem this embarrassed when I first saw his cut.
Marie exposed more of herself, putting her arms over her stomach and watching. It caught me off guard. She hadn’t come out much when the other guys were around.
I touched a cotton ball to Derrick’s head and he seethed. “Ouch. I’ll do it.”
I relinquished the materials to him, but I helped apply the bandage since he couldn’t see his own cut. “Why were you laughing when you got hurt?” I asked.
“Would rather laugh than cry,” he said.
I thought it was a good point. I wondered if I could manage to get myself to laugh next time I was hurt. Was it possible? It didn’t seem like a natural reaction.
“It’s just like last week,” Tom said. “He almost broke his arm trying to climb on top of that barn in the middle of the woods. He was lucky I was nearby and heard him signal.”
“Signal?” I asked. “What’s the signal?”
Tom opened his mouth to reply but Micah punched him in the arm. “Don’t tell her. She’ll tell those freaks and then they’ll know, too.”
Derrick rolled his eyes. “She’s not really with them. I mean, she’s not ...” he looked at me.
I understood what he meant, but at the same time I blanched and tilted my head back in surprise that he said it. I wasn’t part of the secret Academy, so he was trying to say because of that reason, I could be trusted to know their secret signal. What hurt was that he noticed something about me that I worried about. I was friends with the Academy guys, but I really wasn’t a part of it. Outsider.
“We’re just friends,” I said “But I mean, we’re friends too, aren’t we? But if you don’t want me to tell them the signal, then I won’t. What’s it for?”
“It’s just an emergency call,” Derrick said. “We made it so if one of us got lost in the back woods or ended up hurt somewhere, you could call and we would hear it. You know, without the others knowing and calling in Kota or Nathan. They’d ride us about going off alone or treat us like we’re idiots.”
“They probably don’t mean to do that,” I said.
“They still do it,” Micah said. “So don’t tell them we have one. And we’ll know who it is if you tell because we haven’t told anyone for a couple of years now.”
“Well tell me,” I said. “If I hear it, I’ll come for you.”
Micah twisted his lips, unsure.
“It sounds like this,” Tom said. He put a hand to his mouth as if using it as a megaphone and made a call that sounded like a mix between a pig’s squeal and a crow. “Suuweeee!”
I tried to duplicate the sound. Derrick repeated it, and I mimicked again.
“Good,” Derrick said. “You’ve got it. Now don’t tell the other guys.”
A secret from the Academy? It made some sense. Not all emergencies required Academy students running to the rescue. I also liked the idea of having my own secret that wasn’t so important. I was kind of glad Derrick and the others thought they could trust me with it. They didn’t even question the idea of me possibly helping. Not that I knew my way around the woods, but I could at least follow a signal and my sense of direction was pretty good.
“So it’s only for emergencies?” I asked.
Derrick shrugged. “Sometimes it’s because I’ve been looking for these two and don’t want to walk all over the place to find them.”
“You need cell phones.” I grinned. A tickling in the back of my brain caught me. “Speaking of which, I should grab mine before the Academy cavalry comes back after me for not answering.”
Derrick laughed.
Micah groaned. “See? She is mixed with them.”
I ran up the stairs for my cell phone, which was in the bed. I loitered in the doorway of my bedroom. I could almost smell the boys’ scents still lingering in the air. It was tempting to disappear into the attic space, where the secret platform held a bean bag chair and their pictures. For the moment, I was really alone, the first time in a week.
A rush of questions threatened to overwhelm me. They were all the questions I kept in the back of my mind when the boys were around and distracting. What would happen if my mother returned? Would she demand my dad take me then? Would my dad say no? If my parents didn’t want me, and Kota didn’t want me to join the Academy, where else could I go?
I’d have to find my own way, with or without the Academy.
BACK TO WORK
At four a.m. the next Monday, I was jolted awake by another nightmare. I sat up with my heart thundering, feeling Nathan shifting beside me. He half moaned and turned away, drawing up the covers and falling into a deeper sleep.
I eased myself out of the bed, trying not to wake him. I rubbed my hands over my face, to get rid of the images that still haunted my brain. I stifled a groan, realizing North had asked me to call him whenever I had dreams like this. I found my phone in the dark and tiptoed out of the bedroom.
I slipped downstairs in order to be quiet. I parked myself in the family room, sitting on the orange couch. My heart rattled still at the images flashing across my mind. My fingers hovered over the phone, hesitating. It was so early. I wondered about simply waiting until later in the morning or at school.
Part of me knew if I waited, North would be hurt since I’d promised to call when it happened. I sucked in some bravery and pushed North’s app, finding the black button to call him.
North answered on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it’s early.”
“I was up,” he said, his voice gruff and I wondered if what he said was true. “What’s going on?”
“I ... there was another dream.”
North’s end of the line sounded like he was yawning. “Tell me about it.”
I told him about twisting tornadoes of fire swirling over an open sea and how the tides came up and washed out nearly everything. I’d been helping to drag dead bodies to the beach, setting them on fire because there were simply too many to bury.
“Did you know where you were?” he asked. “Where was this beach?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know the people, either. I was just trying to help and didn’t feel ...”
“You were overwhelmed?”
The truth struck me. How did he sum up my feelings so well? “Yes.”
“Things will be okay, Sang Baby. We’ve got to take it one step at a time.”
“It’s just a dream,” I said.
“Dreams can sometimes be what you’re worried about, just painted into a different picture.”
“So you’re saying they mean something?”
“From what you’ve told me about your dreams, it’s like your way of playing out feelings in the worst ways possible. You know you’ve told me about a dream nearly every night for the past week?”
“Sorry.”
“Baby, do you want me to come over?”
I’d already woken him. I didn’t want him to have to drive, too. “No, it’s okay. Nathan’s already over here.”
“I don’t really give a fuck if Nathan’s there. If you want me to come by, I’ll do it.”
The thought was tempting, but I didn’t want to put him out. “It’s okay. I mean I’ll see you in a couple hours at school, right?”
North huffed into the phone. “Sang...”
“Yeah?”
Pause. “Never mind. Yeah. I’ll see you at school.”
