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“Y… you in the military or something?” I ask. “How did you know to do that in the water? To keep us alive like that.”
“Yeah,” he says again. “Yes. I was in the military for two years.”
A different kind of cold seeps into me, freezing my heart until it hurts to breathe. I know where this is going. All of my American guards are ex-military. And he… He’s not a student on scholarship, is he? Guys who spend two years in the military don’t become basketball coaches in UVM. But my mind refuses to believe it. No, it can’t be.
Everything else is a lie.
Not him.
Not him.
But he is. He is so obviously a lie, and I am so obviously stupid. And I can’t help myself, I have to ask him. I have to know.
Hot water splashes around me, filling up the bathtub, as he peels off first my one pant leg, then the other. I’m only in my underwear in the water, but I’m still so cold, I can’t feel anything.
“You a bodyguard too?” I ask him.
He gently lifts my vest over my hair, careful not to rip out my nose. I sink lower into the hot water. My eyes never leave his face; he doesn’t see what he’s doing with his hands, because his eyes are on mine as well.
I remember how he grabbed that cigarette the day I went to his dorm, how he sucked on it like a desperate man, who was at his limit. How he said: ‘I crossed a line’ when he kissed me. How he said ‘why me?’ and laughed hysterically when I asked him to take me to Yale. How he said ‘I have my reasons’.
(And how stupid I was for wanting to believe that he was real, but that’s a problem for another day.)
How easy it was to escape my bodyguards and run away to him.
I think of Hector. How even Hector didn’t notice I gave them the slip. Hector would never allow that to happen. He’s way too smart for that. Did he know? Did he know about Marco, and that’s why he let me go with him?
Of course he knew.
It all makes sense suddenly.
It all clicks into place.
“Are you?” I repeat.
Are you a bodyguard? Are youmybodyguard?
Have you been all this time?
Has absolutely everything, everything, been a lie?
“Yes,” he says for the third time. “Yes, I am.”
Protect Me
BOOK TWO
/Marco/
[audio transcript]
You idiot, I said. You could have escaped.
I was still drowning at that point, you understand, mom, and that’s why I was being an ass. Or maybe I am an ass in general, like you always say. She was drowning, too. Olivia was drowning. Because of me. And sure, it was a stupid thing to say, but at that point, it felt like the most important thing in the world to say that to her. To ask her why she hadn’t run away. Why she’d come after me. Why she’d saved my stupid freaking life.
Why did she do that, mom?
Why, when my life is less than worthless?
