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“Sang and I can go by ourselves,” Gabriel said with a grin. “We’ve got this covered.”
“Not while I’ve got an evening off and nowhere to be,” Dr. Green said. “I’m not going to sit at home alone.”
“I don’t have to get to the diner,” Luke said. “I want to hang out with Sang.”
Gabriel grunted. “It’s going to look all fucked up if we’re all babysitting Theo.”
“Is Charlie home?” Luke asked. He sped up to get around another car on the highway. I checked his speed, and he was ten miles over the limit. The others didn’t seem to mind or didn’t care.
Gabriel took out his phone and started pushing buttons. “Charlie’s at the office. He might be manning the phones tonight.”
I hadn’t realized that they might have GPS trackers on family members and not just their own phones. “Where’s Theo?” I asked.
“In his room,” Gabriel said. He tapped again at his phone and then lifted it to show me the image. It was a top down view, so I could see almost the whole thing from one corner, probably a vent like where they installed cameras at my house. I hadn’t seen the room before, and it was hard to recognize Theo, but he was lying on his bed, sprawled out and staring at the ceiling. The bed just had a blanket over it, no pillows. The room itself had a television and a stereo. I couldn’t hear anything, but it didn’t look like the television was on. Some walls had posters, some clothes were scattered across the floor.
“Do we need to go inside?” I asked. “I mean was Kota just going to sit in a car all night watching from his cell phone?”
“I don’t want to sit in the car,” Gabriel said. “I’d rather stay in Silas’s room.”
“I wish Theo would carry a cell phone,” Luke said. “This would make things so much easier. We could just GPS track him that way. See where he goes.”
“We can’t give him one?” I asked.
“He’s not allowed,” Gabriel said. He put his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. “He ends up calling his old friends in Greece and that always works him up to doing something stupid. Can’t win for losing with him.”
This was sounding horrible every time they talked about him. My heart started to ache at the idea of Theo being so alone. Maybe I didn’t know him, but he was Silas’s brother. Wasn’t there some of Silas there? It was too close to what I’d been, locked away for my own safety, and yet seeing him in his room, possibly for hours on end, I wouldn’t wish being so confined on anyone. It sounded like they were doing their best to protect him from himself, but wasn’t there a better way? “Maybe we should do something with him,” I said.
“What?” Gabriel asked, picking his head up and looking at me, his crystal eyes super-focused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean why can’t we just... have him sit with us through a movie? Or invite him out?” I asked. “I mean why does he have to stay in his room?”
“He won’t hang out with us,” Gabriel said. “We used to try. He wouldn’t come.”
“Can’t we at least ask?”
“Pumpkin,” Dr. Green squeezed me a little tighter with his arm wrapped around me. “We can try, but every time we’ve asked him, he says he’s tired and retreats to his room again. We can’t force him to come out.”
“He went for a walk the other day,” I said. “He calls friends from Greece when he has a phone. Does he really want to be isolated?”
Everyone went quiet for a long moment. The sun was already starting to set now. I hadn’t realized how long we had been at the shops for. Eventually, Luke turned the car into the parking lot of the apartment complex. “Theo doesn’t really trust us, I guess. Or he doesn’t like that we’re Silas’s friends. To him, we’re all just a bunch of kids. He thinks he shouldn’t have to listen to us. ”
“Let’s at least get inside Silas’s room,” Dr. Green said. “We’ll camp out here tonight. Maybe a couple of us will head home, and two will wait here, but for now, let’s stay together. There should be some leftovers in the fridge if we get hungry.”
“Yay,” Luke said, sounding more enthusiastic now. “I love Greek food.”
“What don’t you like?” Gabriel asked with a chuckle.
“Brussels sprouts,” Luke said. “And collard greens. And carrots. I hate carrots.”
Gabriel and I started giggling at the same time. Dr. Green reached around my head, clamping a palm against my mouth and he glared at Gabriel. “Don’t start!” he cried out. “She’ll go all night and we’re supposed to keep things on the down low.”
Luke parked, and we all piled out. It felt odd to be going to Silas’s house without Silas being there. I walked as close as possible next to Dr. Green, behind Luke and Gabriel.
They led the way up to the second floor, the farthest apartment on the right. Instead of knocking, Luke used his keys to open the door. He returned to me, hand-signaling to everyone to be quiet.
Luke tiptoed in, with Gabriel behind him. I followed, and Dr. Green closed the door.
The odd part was having Dr. Green with us. When I looked back at him, I saw someone only a couple of years older than us, being a part of us, rather than a teacher at school. It was almost like he was new to me in some way. It wasn’t bad, just different and unexpected.
We lined up, single file down the hallway. Luke and Gabriel walked into Silas’s room. I lingered a minute, looking down the hallway and listening. The stereo was playing from Theo’s room. It was a low rumble, slow. The tone was depressing.
Dr. Green put a warm hand on my back and leaned forward to whisper close to my ear. “I know the feeling,” he said quietly. “The best thing we can do right now is protect Silas.”
I wasn’t sure how staying out of Theo’s way was the same thing as helping Silas. Couldn’t we help Silas by making Theo happier somehow?
I stepped into Silas’s bedroom. Luke flopped down and sprawled out on the bed, kicking off his shoes. Gabriel sat at the desk and opened up the laptop. He entered in a password and started clicking the mouse.
Dr. Green moved around me and sat on the bed near Luke. He snagged his fingers into the collar of his shirt, and tugged at it, lifting it over his head. The move captured my attention. My heart raced at seeing Dr. Green removing the shirt to reveal the snug black undershirt. The lean muscles in his arms and along his chest were in full view and my heart was pitter-pattering at the sight.
“Do we work in shifts tonight?” Dr. Green asked.
“Luke and I are going to scout the area a bit,” Gabriel said.
“We could just set up the alarm system,” Luke said. He had his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He turned his head to remove the hair clip and set it aside. His blond hair spread out around his head. He turned over on his side, grabbing one of the pillows and stuffing it under his head. “Then we can just hang out.”
“I vote alarm system,” Gabriel said. “I vote that. That’s a plan.”
“What alarm system?” I asked.
“If anyone opens the door,” Luke said, lifting his hand up and pointing out toward where the front hallway was, “there’s an alarm that goes off on one of our phones. It lets us know if anyone leaves or comes in.”
Dr. Green patted the spot next to him. “Come on, P
ookie. Relax a bit.”
I moved to sit down, and Gabriel started laughing, still focused on the computer screen. “Pookie? What the fuck?”
Luke’s shoulders shook as he giggled. “Is it worse than Trouble?”
“She is Trouble,” Gabriel said. He reached up and raked his hand through his hair, messing up the blond and the brown that had been combed back. “Pookie doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s cute,” Dr. Green said. He bumped his arm into mine, looking down at me and grinning. “Like her.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel said. He tapped at the keyboard and turned around, stretching. “Okay. I’ve got it set up to make it ring Luke’s phone if anyone comes through the door.”
“Let’s get something to eat,” Luke said. He sat up quickly and then scurried to the edge of the bed. He pressed his hand on my shoulder for support as he lifted himself up, putting a lot of weight on me until I was falling over on the bed as he moved to the door.
Dr. Green laughed, grabbed my arm and tugged me.
Gabriel and Luke and Dr. Green tiptoed down the hall, and headed toward the kitchen.
I lingered back this time, tempted to hide in Silas’s room in case someone like Charlie came home.
I was standing there, listening to music from Theo’s room, when I noticed it was a little louder now. Curious, I stepped closer to his end of the hallway.
There was a beam of light coming from Theo’s room; the door was partly open.
I listened quietly for movement, calculating where Luke, Gabriel and Dr. Green were. Old habits. I was trying to figure out how much time I had to check things out without getting caught.
I tiptoed over to the doorway and peeked into the room. I didn’t mean to pry. I think I wanted to make sure Theo was okay.
