No One Knows Us Here(79)

But I insisted on washing the glasses. Stood over that sink and scrubbed at them with a soapy cloth. I felt him step behind me. I smelled him, a milky-minty odor, the vestiges of toothpaste and hair gel.

His hands clenched my hips. “You don’t have to do that,” he whispered into my ear.

Every muscle in my body stiffened, but I didn’t push him away. The water rushed over each glass, and the suds swirled down the drain.

His fingers traveled to the hem of my dress. He inched the hem up and pressed himself against me. I set the glasses at the bottom of the sink and turned off the water. Only then did I grip the edge of the counter and jerk back, sending Leo stumbling into the island behind him.

Without saying a word, I reached for a linen dish towel, polished each glass dry, and placed them both back in the cupboard while Leo watched. Slowly, I walked around the island so we faced each other once again, the block of cupboards and quartz between us.

Leo recovered quickly, making himself busy, wiping the counter down with a dry bar towel. He tossed the cloth back so it rested over his shoulder like a limp epaulet. “You seem to be doing much better,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant, at first. “I was worried about you.”

He was talking about France. That all seemed so long ago.

“This summer, we’ll go back. You’ll be amazed. Warm weather, cicadas. Swimming in the Mediterranean. Sitting outside in cafés . . .”

“I’m not going back.”

“We can go somewhere else next time. Italy or Croatia—”

“One last dinner. You promised.”

Leo grinned a devious little grin and shrugged, palms up. “I changed my mind.”

Once again, I struggled to pry the diamond ring from my finger. It wouldn’t budge. I kept pulling, twisting my swollen skin, jutting the metal against my knuckle. “I just want to leave.” My voice came out cracked, like a sob. “I want this to be over.”

“You can’t leave.”

“Watch me.” I pivoted and strode across the room. It was a triumphant moment. I was seconds away from freedom. I would grab my coat from the hook and dash down the emergency stairs. Wendy and I would pack our bags and disappear. We’d cut our hair and dye it in a gas station bathroom and take a Greyhound bus to the Mexican border. We’d ride on the back of a pickup with some friendly farm workers who would take us to the next town, and eventually we’d end up in some small fishing village, some little place where no one spoke English and no one even had the internet, let alone a Lookinglass account. We’d learn Spanish and rent out a little hut covered in dried palm fronds.

“What about Wendy?” Leo shot out.

I should have kept walking. I shouldn’t have listened. I froze in place, deliberating with myself. Then I turned around. “Don’t.” I pointed a finger straight at Leo, a warning.

“She needs help. Professional help.”

The hairs on my arms bristled with energy, stood straight up.

Leo was still talking. “When she first moved in, she was—how should I put it—full-figured, right?” He cupped his hands in front of his chest. “Buxom.”

“Stop talking,” I said.

“She just started shrinking, didn’t she?” Leo frowned, feigning perplexity. “Wearing all those baggy clothes. She stopped eating, for attention, maybe. Who knows. It didn’t work. You didn’t notice. She fainted in class, and still, you’re like, sure, that’s normal—”

“You’ve been watching my little sister? Creeping on her like some—some pervert?”

“She has a public account. Her friend, that woman, Hannah Westover? You know where Wendy met her?”

“On Lookinglass,” I said flatly.

“In a pro-ana group. Ana Glass, they called it—you know, where girls get together and talk about starving themselves, brag about surviving on nothing but a head of iceberg lettuce. Hannah, she’s like an old pro. In and out of facilities for years. She had to be tubed the last time. She was down to eighty-five pounds. She almost died.”

“Wendy’s not anorexic,” I said, reeling. “She’s vegan.”

Leo raised his eyebrows as if to say, You’re sure about that? “There’s an in-patient eating-disorders clinic right here in town. Doctors, therapists, nutritionists. Wendy needs that.”

My mind scrambled to make sense of everything. What Leo was telling me was true. It hit me all at once, a giant crashing wave, the truth of it. The baggy clothes, the empty containers in the sink, the fainting. I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t paid attention. I’d let this happen, and Leo had watched everything, watched my sister dwindle down to skin and bones, and he hadn’t said a word.

“Will they take her away from you, do you think?” Leo asked, as if this thought had just occurred to him. “When they find out? You’re not even Wendy’s legal guardian, and you’re leaving her for weeks at a time with an unstable twenty-year-old. Your poor little sister is suffering, hurting herself. She could die from this. What’s CPS going to say, I wonder?”

Leo wasn’t going to give me a severance package. He wasn’t going to let me walk away. I knew that. I had prepared for that, hadn’t I? I’d been preparing since that day I held the steak knife to Jason’s throat and told him to never touch me again.