Page 17
I know that face.
Just as well as I know that voice.
Ronan Sutter, one half of the duo I called my best friends, stands staring at me on the steps, his brown eyes wide with concern. When my movements calm down, becoming less frantic, he releases my wrist and takes a step down, hands raised in surrender.
“Just me,” he repeats. “And Ansel.” When he gestures back over my shoulder, I turn to see the other two men standing on the platform have removed their masks as well.
The blue painted mask belongs to my other best friend, who I haven’t seen in years. Ansel Whitlock looks at me with just as much concern as Ronan does, eyeing me like I might have gone crazy.
The other man, with the green mask, is one I don’t recognize. I eye him with suspicion and he offers me a lazy grin from his tanned, handsome face.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, my hands still shaking as my brain tries to figure out if I really am going crazy. “You’re supposed to be in Washington. Or San Diego or…or somewhere out west.”
“Well, yeah, but.” Ansel looks between the other two and gives me a small, almost embarrassed grin.
“We’re here to save you, Sable.”
7
Eleven Years Ago
It’s going to rain.
Growing up in a small town near the ocean means that if nothing else, I can smell a storm blowing in off the water hours before it hits. I love the slightly sharp, ozone smell of petrichor, and I breathe in more deeply so it can sting my nose and lungs on every breath.
The only sound in the small grove of trees that sits in the far side of the yard is the wind as it ruffles the late spring leaves, and I filter out anything else that might try to disturb my peace. Cars on the freeway. Yelling from the house. If dinner is ready, I don’t care. I have enough stashed food in Ansel’s room to make it through a week, thanks to my careful planning, so I won’t go hungry. Besides. Missing dinner means missing the forced conversation that our guardian always demands we perform.
Nine kids, and none of us like each other very much, outside of our little, closely-formed groups. I’d die for Ansel and Ronan.
I’d kill Charles if given the opportunity.
Or at the very least, throw him off the dock at the beach a few miles away. As far as I know, Charles still hasn’t learned how to swim, the poor thing.
But surely that’s what extreme exposure therapy was made for.
My eyes drift closed under the trees, and absently I register the towel I’m lying on has bunched up under one knee. I move my foot, kicking at it, but give up when I realize the problem is the whole towel, not just there.
Fuck it, I sigh internally. I don’t care enough to move. It’s nice out, with the wind gusting across my bare arms and face, and the rain creeping in. If I’m lucky, it’ll storm tonight.
Though a storm means all three of us sharing a bed so that Ronan can curl up between Ansel and me, while reminding us he’s not actually afraid of storms, he just wants us to be safe. Just in case.
Just in case, he says, like he doesn’t have a reason to fear the thunder after his dad killed his mom and went after him too.
Just in case. Like we’re the next ones to get dragged out of his life by violence. I love storms, but I definitely pity one of my best friends who can never have that same joy.
Our guardian yells again, louder this time, from the back porch. This isn’t a new occurrence. I usually miss dinner once a week, and her frazzled voice fades after another call. She’s not terrible, as far as group home guardians go. Though on weeks where she’s the sole adult here, I can tell she gets nervous that we’re going to burn the house down and all escape into the wilds to become feral.
I, myself, have absolutely considered it. Before learning there are no true wilds left in America, so we’d most likely get caught within our first week and end up right back here or somewhere worse.
I won’t risk being separated from Ansel and Ronan. Even if that means losing out on my feral seaside witch aspirations.
Finally the door slams and I open my eyes, peering up through the trees to the greying sky beyond. The sun has fully retreated behind the clouds, though I doubt it’ll start raining for at least another hour. The air doesn’t quite feel right yet, though I’ve never learned how to explain it any better than that. The boys don’t get it. But they don’t get a lot of things that require them to be quiet and take a minute, instead of approaching the problem straight on.
Thirty or so minutes go by before the door opens and closes once. Twice. A third time, though by now I’m half asleep as the petrichor in the air grows heavier, until it feels like a physical weight in my lungs every time I breathe in. I hear voices, all of them I recognize, though none of them come over to my little stand of trees in the corner. While none of us own the large, three acre yard that wraps around the house or any part of the home in general, we all have ‘our’ spots. This one just happens to be mine.
Not that I’d chase anyone away.
Except Charles.
