All the Little Lights
Page 18

“I’ve gotta get back there.”
“Isn’t football about to start?”
“Can you come get me?”
“Elliott,” Aunt Leigh said, remorse weighing down my name. “You know I can’t. Even if I tried, she wouldn’t allow me to. It’s just not a good idea. I’m sorry.”
I nodded, unable to form a reply.
“Bye, kiddo. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” I whispered, tossing the phone to Dawson.
“What the heck?” he asked. “Someone died?”
“Thanks for letting me use your phone, Dawson. I have to get back before my parents get home.” I jogged outside, the heat blasting my face. I was sweating by the time I reached my porch, closing the door behind me with just a few minutes to spare before the truck pulled back into the driveway. I retreated into my room, slamming the door behind me.
Her dad was dead. Catherine’s dad had died, and I’d just disappeared. As worried as I was before, panic was making me want to crawl out of my skin. Not only was she going to hate me, no one had seen her or her mom.
“Look who’s alive,” Mom said as I burst through my door and crossed the living room, passed the kitchen, stomped down the hall, and out the garage door. Dad’s weights were out there, and I wasn’t allowed to leave the house. The only way to blow off steam was to lift until my muscles shook from exhaustion. “Hey,” she said from the doorway. She leaned against the doorjamb, watching me work. “Everything okay?”
“No,” I said, grunting.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I snapped, already feeling my muscles burn.
Mom watched me finish a set and then another, the wrinkles between her brows deepening. She crossed her arms, surrounded by bicycle tires and shelves holding various crap.
“Elliott?”
I focused on the sound of my breath, trying to make Catherine understand through sheer will that I was trying.
“Elliott!”
“What?” I yelled, dropping the weight in my hand. Mom jumped at the noise and then stepped down into the garage. “What is going on with you?”
“Where’s Dad?”
“I dropped him off at Greg’s. Why?”
“Is he coming back?”
She tucked her chin, confused by my question. “Of course.”
“Don’t act like y’all haven’t been at it all day. Again.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. We’ll try to keep it down next time.”
“What’s the point?” I said, huffing.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “There’s something else.”
“Nope.”
“Elliott,” she warned.
“Catherine’s dad died.”
She frowned. “How do you know that?”
“I just know.”
“Did you talk to your aunt Leigh? How? I have your phone.” When I didn’t answer, she pointed at the ground. “Are you sneaking around behind my back?”
“It’s not like you give me much of a choice.”
“I could say the same to you.”
I rolled my eyes, and her jaw ticked. She hated that. “You drag me back to keep me locked up in my room to listen to you and Dad yell at each other all day? Is that your master plan to make me wanna stay here?”
“I know things are hard right now—”
“Things suck right now. I hate it here.”
“You’ve barely been back two weeks.”
“I want to go home!”
Mom’s face flashed red. “This is your home! You’re staying here!”
“Why won’t you just let me explain to Catherine why I left? Why won’t you let me find out if she’s okay?”
“Why can’t you just forget about that girl?”
“I care about her! She’s my friend, and she’s hurting!”
Mom covered her eyes and then let her hand fall, turning for the door. She stopped, peering at me from over her shoulder. “You can’t save everyone.”
I looked at her from under my brows, keeping my anger on a tight leash. “I just want to save her.”
She walked away, and I bent over to pick up my weight, holding it over my head, lowering it behind me, and pulling it back up slow, repeating the motion until my arms shook. I didn’t want to be like my dad, swinging my fists every time something or someone set me off. It was so natural to want to attack that it scared me sometimes. Keeping my anger reined in took constant practice, especially now that I had to figure out a way to get to Catherine. I had to keep my head. I had to figure out a plan without letting my emotions get in the way.
I dropped to my knees, the weights hitting the floor a second time, my fingers still curved tightly around the grips, chest heaving as my lungs begged for air, arms trembling, knuckles grazing the cement floor. Tears burned my eyes, making the anger that much harder to conquer. Keeping emotion out of the plan to find my way back to the girl I loved was going to be as impossible as getting back to Oak Creek.
Chapter Six
Catherine
Rusted hinges on the outer gate creaked to announce my return from school. I was less than two weeks into my senior year, and already my bones ached and my brain felt full. I slugged my backpack across the dirt and the broken, uneven sidewalk that led to the front porch. I passed the broken-down Buick that was supposed to be mine on my sixteenth birthday, stumbling to my knees when the tip of my shoe clipped a piece of concrete.
Falling is easy. The hard part is getting back up.
I brushed off my skinned knees, covering my face when a gust of hot wind blew stinging sand against my legs and into my eyes. The sign above creaked, and I looked up, watching it swing back and forth. To outsiders, this place was JUNIPER BED AND BREAKFAST, but unfortunately for me, it was home.
I stood up, brushing at the dirt that was turning to mud against the bloody scrapes on the heels of my hands and knees. There was no point in crying. No one would hear me.
My bag felt loaded down with bricks as I lugged it up the steps, trying to get inside the latticed porch before I was sandblasted again. Oak Creek High School was on the east side of town—my house was on the west, and my shoulders ached from the long walk from school in the hot sun. In a perfect world, Mama would be standing at the door with a smile on her face and a glass of sweet tea in her hand, but the dusty door was closed and the lights were dark. We lived in Mama’s world.
I snarled at the oversize door with the rounded arch. It frowned at me every time I came home, mocking me. I pulled on the handle and dragged my bag inside. Even though I was angry and fed up, I was careful not to let the front door slam behind me.
The house was dusty, dark, and hot, but still better than outside with the cruel sun and the screaming cicadas.
Mama wasn’t at the door holding an iced tea. She wasn’t there at all. I stayed still, listening for who was.
Against Dad’s wishes, Mama had used most of his life insurance money to transform our seven-bedroom house into a place where the road weary could rest for a night or the weekend. Just like Dad had predicted, we rarely saw a visit from someone new. And the regulars weren’t enough. Even after we’d sold Mama’s car, the bills were overdue. Even after the social security checks, if we rented every room every night for the rest of my high school career, everything would still get taken away. The house would get taken by the bank, I’d get taken by DHS, and Mama and the regulars would have to find a way to exist outside of the walls of the Juniper.