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He went through the bags, looking in each one. “Ick,” he said. “Kota’s the worst at shopping.” He picked up one bag filled with raw fruits and vegetables. “I hate carrots.”
“You should take vitamins,” I said.
“I know,” he said and handed me a few of the bags, although slowly. “I take yours when I see them sitting on the counter. Did you take any today?”
He released a bag and readjusted it on my arm. I knew he was making time for Nathan and Kota to talk. Somehow I’d thought that, by joining the Academy, I would be a part of every conversation around them and not be in the dark as much.
Luke was out here, though. He didn’t seem to mind. I had to learn to trust, too. They’d tell me when they needed to, right?
When we were nearly overloaded with grocery bags, Luke led the way back into the house. He poked his head in, listened, stepped further in, listened again. After a second, he walked in and I followed.
Nathan was in the kitchen, going through the bags Kota had brought in. Kota wasn’t there.
My lips twitched. I put the bags on the table. “Where did he go?” I asked.
“Just into the bathroom,” Nathan said. He paused and then focused on the bags, his face turning a shade of red. “He’s... something broke in there, and he wanted to see.”
“What broke?” Luke asked. “But don’t wake up North yet. He’ll yell if we wake him up.”
“I’m not waking up North, and he already knows,” Nathan said. “It’s nothing. But the water may need to get shut off for a while.”
I emptied bags of groceries and started putting some of it away when Kota returned, shutting the bathroom door behind him. I wondered what had broken in there. Was that what they had been talking about in the garage before? Was that the cause of the dust in the hallway?
Kota collected the empty grocery bags, folding them neatly. “Yeah, next time Sang can escape for the day, perhaps we should go to my house. My mom will be at work most of the week. Jessica will be around some, though.”
“If it’s broken, can’t we just use the other bathroom?” I asked.
Kota shook his head quickly. “Water may need to get shut off for a while. Use it today, but we’ll want to get started on fixing this.”
I looked at Luke, who seemed to be wondering what was going on as well.
When the other guys didn’t say anything, I forced myself to focus on putting the rest of the groceries away. We had so much going on with Carol, I was sorry that Nathan’s house seemed to be breaking in the middle of it. If people were busy with my situation, then it meant a lot of delays on simple things like this.
When we were done, Kota hooked up a laptop to the big television in Nathan’s living room. We all could fit on the couch together. When I sat in the middle, Luke and Nathan immediately sat on either side of me.
I grimaced, wishing they’d let Kota sit near me. It was hard to look around Nathan to get a good look at him, and I wanted to feel him out.
Kota focused on the television and brought up footage from the cameras at my house. It was almost nine in the morning now. Since it was also Saturday, my father was up, at the house computer, typing something.
Kota used his phone to get in touch with Victor, and when he got a message back, he read it out loud. “He’s doing work emails.”
“He’s ignoring the problem,” Nathan said. “I haven’t seen him and Carol actually talk about anything other than common house stuff, like what they were having for dinner.”
“Maybe he doesn’t see this as a problem,” Luke said. “He’s got his house clean. His daughters are accounted for. The only secret he has left is...Sang.”
Nathan sighed. He used his foot to drag the coffee table closer so he could sink into the couch with his feet up. I did the same. Luke hung one foot off the corner.
We sat, each one with arms crossed over our stomachs. I was sleepy, but watching as Kota continue to focus on the laptop. He typed into it on occasion, checking his phone and then glancing at the video screen.
It mesmerized me how he would go through cameras on the laptop, check in with Victor, and write a few notes down in a notepad. I’d witnessed this before from him. It was how he managed all of us, kept everyone up to date.
I waited for him to look at me, but I was nervous as well. Fear touched my heart. Did he feel any different now? What did he think of the plan?
He was here working on my problems. They had told me not to feel guilty about it, but I couldn’t help wondering if he had any regret or was agitated at all after everything that had happened this week. He’d found me kissing Gabriel. He’d discovered the others were in various stages of a relationship with me and that we planned to keep it that way and wanted him to do the same. Staring at him, I wanted to get any sort of answer without asking directly, fearing his answer and not wanting to embarrass him by saying things in front of the others.
He glanced over his shoulder after a minute. He sniffed the air. “Any more pancakes?” he asked.
Luke hopped up, disappearing into the kitchen. He brought a box over to Kota, putting it on the coffee table in front of him.
Kota changed the cameras to where it focused on Jimmy, put the laptop aside and ate out of the container. He had fruit first, just like me.
Jimmy was sitting up in the bedroom upstairs, looking sleepy but stretching and yawning. Kota was busy digging into his food, so he wasn’t controlling the view. When it lingered a little long on Jimmy, it made it difficult to watch. Carol vacuuming was one thing, but this felt a little too personal and I wasn’t sure why I felt like that.
“Does this feel weird to anyone else?” I asked. “I mean, watching him wake up. I feel...”
“Like a creepoid,” Luke said. “And I break into people’s homes...supposedly.”
“I just want to see if he goes into the attic space again,” Kota said, putting down the fruit cup and focusing on the eggs next. “I’m thinking of putting in a chime that notifies us when the door is opened so we don’t have to do this. I don’t like it either, but we need to make sure he doesn’t find anything, and then catch anything he might say about you to his mom.”
“I don’t blame him for being nosy, given he’s in a weird situation, too,” Nathan said, “but I’m more offended he’d go through her stuff when she wasn’t there to ask if it was okay to do it.”
I sighed. “We’re doing the same, aren’t we?”
They were all quiet, and it told me they, too, felt the guilt of spying on people who normally would be completely innocent and unnecessary to watch. It wasn’t like my stepmother, and the risk of her locking me in the closet. Maybe we had reasons to check on Jimmy and Carol, but it still didn’t feel good to do.
“How did the checkup go?” Kota asked and then side-glanced at me before he refocused on his food.
My cheeks heated, but I tried not to think so much and just talk honestly. I focused on the screen, although I was watching Kota out of the corner of my eye. “Dr. Green said my fainting might have had something to do with...low blood pressure?”
“And the high sugar,” Nathan said. “She ate kind of badly all week.”
Kota paused with a forkful of egg hovering just outside of his lips. He lowered the fork over the container again and blinked rapidly. “And I was carrying you—you were dangling upside down for a bit...”
Nathan nodded, tilting his head slightly in his relaxed, laid-back pose to glance at Kota. “She was moving up and down in gym class when she fainted then.”
“Then it is low blood pressure,” Kota said. He put the container and fork down on the coffee table and turned to look at me over Nathan. “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening to you. Honestly, I just thought you were scared of spiders. I thought I was helping you overcome your fears. I didn’t know it was the shower stressing you out.”
I glanced at the others, finding it a little strange to be talking like this around them...but this was going to be our life in the future. I needed to be h
onest with all of them all the time and not feel the need to hide.
Maybe I couldn’t kiss one of them in front of the others. That was clearly not something I should do. However, important things like this, like the showers and my health, those were secrets I couldn’t keep to myself. Not anymore. It was too hard. I should be comfortable enough to address them more than one at a time.
“I don’t blame you,” I said to Kota. “I should have told you all sooner. There was just so much going on...”
Luke put a warm hand on my arm. “You can tell us anything.”
“Yeah,” Nathan said. He stayed slouched but looked at me. “Don’t fret about it. We don’t judge.”
My heart raced, and I forced myself to look at the screen, although my vision blurred a little with tears. I adored them for being very sweet right now, but I didn’t want to get emotional at the moment when we needed to focus. “I’m okay now, I think. Now that I kind of understand what might be the problem. Dr. Green took some blood, though.”
“Probably to check if you’re anemic, among other things,” Kota said. “Although if you’re stressed out because of something like this, there’s someone you can talk to.” He paused for a long time, shifting the fork in his fingers and looking at it as he spoke. “Sang, would you want to talk to someone about your stress? Someone outside the group?”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed and then touched the corner of his glasses, adjusting them. “Well, maybe a therapist would be better. You can talk to us at any time, but someone like that might be able to help you work a few things out.”
Oh. After embarrassing myself with the girl teams, and then the shower, I probably seemed pretty crazy. I knew about psychologists, of course, but it had never been an option for me before. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk to a complete stranger. “Who... would I talk to?”
