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Ididn’t leave my room.
If I’d had my cell phone or Jamie’s tablet, I would’ve been reading all the articles I could find about the gas station robberies last year, scouring them for one specific name.
My brain literally couldn’t compute the image of Harry walking into a store of any kind, raising a toy gun, demanding money. Harry Russo, with the dimpled smile and infectious laugh. Harry Russo, with the kind eyes and flirty personality. Harry Russo, the boy I’d been thinking nonstop about for months now.
A criminal.
And he confessed to it.Tell me you didn’t do it.
I can’t.
I thought of all the times Harry dodged questions about his past. All the times he’d phrased things vaguely. The time he broke into my car without batting an eye. His past had always been there, smoldering under the surface.
When I thought about Harry, a physical, near-crippling pain tugged behind my chest. It went in tandem with a stinging behind my eyes. So much had happened in the past two months, and it felt as if it had all just been thrown away.
For almost the entirety of spring break, I stayed in my room. My parents didn’t bother me, too furious that I snuck out. When I sauntered back into the house after getting dropped off by a taxi, they were on the verge of screaming. And they might’ve too, if it hadn’t been for the makeup streaming down my cheeks.
When they left for work, only then did I venture downstairs to grab something for breakfast, stashing away food to get me through the night. Even Jamie and Nellie didn’t press. They knew whatever had happened at the gig hadn’t been good.
Everyone left me alone.
Until Wednesday night, when a knock came at my door.
“What?” I demanded, annoyance clear in my tone, angry at whoever crossed the unspoken rule of leaving me alone.
Jamie poked his head in first, eyes darting all over before finding me on my bed. He had his pajamas on, still too small for him. He was finally getting his growth spurt. “Can I come in?” he asked.
I answered by jerking my chin, pushing to sit up. My hair felt several kinds of tangled, my pajamas like a second skin by now. “What’s up?”
Jamie hesitantly sat down on the edge of my bed, his eyes trained on the bedroom door. He looked uncomfortable to be in here, which wasn’t surprising—he rarely ever came into my room. “Nellie is brushing her teeth.”
I nodded slowly, not really following.
“Mom and Dad were talking,” he said softly, kicking his feet against the edge of my bed frame. “About your boyfriend.”
I tried to ignore the pang that went through me, almost like he’d shoved his little fists into my chest. “What were they saying?”
“I couldn’t hear anything else, only his name.” Jamie turned his chin toward me, but didn’t look. “What happened?”
His voice came out so small, almost as if he waited for backlash for asking. But I wasn’t going to yell. Instead, I picked at the hem of my pajama pants, staring at my chipped nail polish. “Nothing.”
“You’ve been crying.” He got the words out quickly, before thinking about it. “Almost every night. I can hear you even with my door shut. Nellie can too.”
Once more, it felt as if he punched me in the chest, all the air forced out of me in a harsh gasp. “I didn’t mean for you to hear.”
He still kicked the bed frame, but instead of staring at the door, he finally turned to me. His eyes were an exact copy of Dad’s, warm and protective. “What happened?”
“He…he lied to me. About who he was.”
Jamie stopped kicking. “Like how you lied about Stella?”
My fingers stopped picking at my pajamas. “It’s different.”
“Is it? Even with the wig?”
I opened my mouth to tell him yes, our lies were much different, when what he’d said really settled in. “How did you know about the wig?”
Jamie knocked his foot twice, harder, against the bed frame. “I saw you put that shoebox under your bed. You’re really bad at keeping things secret, Destelle.”
