Wing Jones(61)

And that it’s his fault.

My mom tells me there’s nothing I can do, that it has nothing to do with me. They’ll handle it, the man in the suit was using scare tactics, she’s going to call another bank, get another loan, it’s all going to be all right.

I don’t believe her.





CHAPTER 41


I can’t sleep. Not after seeing that man in our kitchen, not after hearing him say he’s going to take everything we have left.

The poster I saw in the Riveo store is blinking in my head, all lit up in neon, like a fast-food sign you can see for miles and miles on the highway, in your front and rearview mirrors. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to sleep with images of that Riveo poster and that awful man in the black suit playing through my head.

I slip outside and do what my body wants me to do, the only thing I can do now.

I run. So fast that even my dragon and my lioness can barely keep up.

But as I wait for the calm to come over me, and for everything to disappear except me and the sky, the way it usually does when I run, something else takes over. Anger.

I’m so angry that even running can’t shut it out. I try to channel the rage to make myself faster, but I can’t.

I can’t outrun this anger.

I hear a clap of thunder, but I don’t care. I keep running, not paying attention to where I’m going, not caring.

The rain starts as a drizzle, light and soft. But this is Georgia, and we don’t just get drizzles. This is a weather warning; in a few minutes the rain will really start, but I don’t stop running. I keep going. Not caring where.

When the rain comes, I welcome it. I lean my head back and howl at the sky, feeling the fat drops on my face and in my mouth and down my neck, drenching me.

I yell until I can’t yell any more. I yell at the sky, at my dragon, at my lioness. I yell at the road. I yell and yell and yell at everything because I can’t yell at the person I want to yell at the most.

I can’t yell at him for everything he’s done. For everything he’s ruined. It’s all his fault and he can’t ever, ever, ever make it better.

Damn you, Marcus. For doing this to us. For doing this to Monica. For doing this to Michael and his family and that woman, Sophie Bell.

For doing this to yourself.

I’ve been running and yelling and yelling and running for what feels like hours. The rain drowns out my shouts so that no one hears me, and soon it starts to drown out my anger too. It’s hard to stay angry when you’ve been running in the rain all night. Hard to stay anything but tired.

I recognize the intersection ahead of me and I push myself toward it, make myself keep running. My dragon and my lioness are still by my side, but I can tell my lioness doesn’t like getting wet.

“Tough,” I tell her, and turn down a street I’ve only been down a few times before. I’m soaked and feeling stupid but I don’t want to go home just yet, I don’t want to keep yelling at things that can’t yell back.

I step in a puddle, soaking my shoes even more, not caring, and then go up the driveway, and knock on a window, hoping it’s the right one.

No answer. I knock again, louder. Then a face appears at the glass and when the face sees my face, the window opens, letting rain in the room.

“Wing? What the hell?”

“Wanna go for a run?”

It’s almost like when we first started running. When it was just the two of us and the track and the sky and my dragon and my lioness.

But we aren’t on the track, we’re tearing down some back alley behind Aaron’s house and I can’t see, am just chasing him blind, hoping I don’t trip on something. His shape is a shadow in front of me, until lightning lights up the sky, turning him back into a person, a person I’m pushing myself to catch, and when I do, I scream at him and I don’t care that the wind is screaming at both of us and instead of screaming back at me, the way I want him to, he takes my hand, and when he does, the touch of his skin in the dark, the sense of his fingers intertwining with mine, does something to me. He pulls me toward him, out of the rain, into a covered doorway, and then he’s holding me and letting me scream into his chest.

Scream until there is nothing left inside me.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Not really,” I say. Because it’s the truth.

“You will be,” he says. Then he hugs me tight and his hug gives me hope that he’s right, that it’ll all be OK. And it gives me hope that maybe he’ll still be hugging me when I’m all right. That he isn’t hugging me just because right now I’m a blubbering mess who happens to be his best friend’s little sister.

I stomp on that stupid balloon of hope. It is pretty darn resilient, though, and won’t pop. I can’t bring myself to puncture it, so instead I cradle it against my heart and hope Aaron can’t see it.

Three days later I come down with a cold, a real bad one that comes with shakes and shivers and a runny nose and a scratchy throat, and I can’t go to school for a week, and no matter what I tell my mom about needing to stay in shape for track, she makes me miss practice and stay in bed. Granny Dee and LaoLao fuss over me, bringing me cups and cups of tea and soup and then more tea and more soup, and when I’m sure I couldn’t swallow another drop, they bring me even more. So I drink it down, because Granny Dee and LaoLao have been looking after sick kids and sick grandkids for a long time and I trust them.