No One Knows Us Here(71)

“I know that.” He sounded calm and reasonable, too. “And that’s why the contract didn’t say anything about making you be my girlfriend. What it said was that you agreed to provide your services in exchange for a salary and reduced rent.”

“Okay—”

Leo rattled off something about the contract, back payment, an early termination clause.

“I don’t care.” I tried to think. I couldn’t remember how much money I had in my bank account. I had meant to spend as little as possible. Save up so at the end of the contract we would have a cushion. We could stay in the apartment until I got into law school. Once I did that, we’d get by on student loans.

But then I had to go on that spending spree, right from the beginning. Student loans, credit card bills—I didn’t know how much money I had. I did know it wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t care. I would figure something out. I always did.

The flight attendant walked up and down the aisle with a plastic garbage bag. Leo held up a finger to detain her, and then he made a big show of digging around in the pocket in front of his seat. He produced a crumpled-up napkin and an empty foil peanuts packet, which he tossed into the bag. “Thank you,” he said to the flight attendant, flashing her a bright smile, revealing all his teeth. Like a jackal, I thought.

“Thank you, Mr. Glass, for flying with us today.” She had a bit of an accent, a southern drawl. She knew who he was. Of course she did.

After she left, Leo turned back to me. This time his face was wide-open innocence. Round eyes and raised eyebrows. “Aren’t you worried they’ll take Wendy away from you?” I stiffened, but he acted like he didn’t notice. “You won’t be able to afford that apartment. You’ll have no place to go.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“You don’t have legal custody,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him. “Just temporary guardianship.”

“So?” This was true. Had I mentioned it to Leo? I might have. We used to talk, the way boyfriends and girlfriends do. It wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t all acting. Still, this didn’t seem like the kind of thing I would share with him, even after sex, while we lay naked under Belgian linen sheets in his king-size bed.

“So they’ll take her away from you.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked carefully.

“How much do you know about Hannah Westover?”

“What?” Of all the things I thought Leo might say to convince me to stay, I hadn’t been expecting that. “What about her? She’s just a girl from Wendy’s school.” I tried to remember when I’d told Leo about Hannah. I’d definitely never told him her last name. Hannah Westover. I hadn’t even known Hannah’s last name.

“She’s not a girl,” Leo said. “And she doesn’t go to school.”

The plane was plummeting down to earth. We were almost home. Ever since we left the South of France, I’d been telling myself something, over and over again. I’d been telling myself: As soon as we get back to Portland, it will be over. It will all be over, and everything will be fine.

Leo went on. “Wendy’s friend, the one she’s been spending all her time with? The one you let her stay with for a whole week while you jetted off to France? She’s an adult. She’s twenty years old.”

I knew Hannah was older—she could drive after all. I assumed she was sixteen, tops. She was so tiny. She could pass as a seventh grader. “So what?” I responded, but my voice sounded small. Twenty years old. Hannah was twenty? She was closer to my age than Wendy’s! Why would a twenty-year-old want to hang out with a fourteen-year-old? How did they even meet? It didn’t make any sense. Unless she was—what? Some sort of child abuser? A sex trafficker? My mind was running wild, and Leo was still talking.

“It’s no wonder they’re friends. They’ve both been in treatment for attempting suicide . . . What’s Wendy’s grandmother going to say when she learns about that? That you left Wendy with an unstable twenty-year-old—”

“She was staying with Hannah’s parents—” I cut myself off. Did Hannah even have parents? I didn’t know. It had seemed like a reasonable thing to assume, that your sister’s friends had parents. That your sister’s friends were not full-grown adults with places of their own. That your sister was not spending spring break unsupervised with a deviant criminal.

“Is that what Wendy told you?” Leo’s eyes went huge. “Because if that’s what she told you, she was lying.” Had Wendy lied? I’d offered to call Hannah’s parents, to speak with them on the phone to make sure they didn’t mind having Wendy spend spring break with them. Wendy said she would die of embarrassment if I did that. I never called.

She hadn’t lied. Not exactly. She just left out quite a few details.

The wheels of the plane hit the runway at what seemed like full speed. We bounced on the asphalt, and the aircraft juddered before righting itself, screeching to a halt.

I felt sick. A different kind of ailment this time. Like I was going to throw up. I riffled through the pocket in front of me, searching for the sickness bag. I unfolded it and held my face over it, heaving, but nothing came out.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the flight attendant announced. It was the same one who had collected our trash, the one with the slow southern drawl. “Welcome to Portland, Oregon. The local time is 2:47 p.m. The temperature is fifty-six degrees Fahrenheit.”