Put Me Back Together(16)

Only one person called me Katie Kat.

But how? I knew Brandon couldn’t have sent it—I’d looked up the rules on internet access for youth offenders in custody somewhere around two o’clock in the morning—though I figured it was possible he’d snuck onto a computer somehow and sent the message from the account he’d created with the name “Somebody You Know.” I didn’t even want to think about the alternative, that he had help, a buddy out here in the world, a friend willing to do his bidding. A friend free to go anywhere, do anything, without the restriction of the bars that held Brandon in. A friend whose face I wouldn’t recognize if I passed him on the street. A friend who could be anyone: the guy, or girl, sitting next to me in class, the guy having a cigarette outside my apartment building, my mailman, my professor, Mariella.

You’d better watch yourself, Katie Kat.

I hadn’t left the apartment in three days.

Logically I knew there probably wasn’t anything to worry about. Brandon was locked away; he couldn’t hurt me. The message was just an empty threat. It was incredibly unlikely that he had a friend on the outside loyal enough to travel across the country just to find me. But then, there were a lot of things about my relationship with Brandon that were unlikely. The truth was, I had no idea what Brandon was capable of these days. I had absolutely nothing to go on, and nothing, unlike something, left room for my imagination to come up with a thousand different possibilities, each one more terrifying than the last. I’d always had an active imagination. It was what fueled my art. I’d never thought of it as a curse until now.

So I’d hidden away in my apartment, painting and skipping class and eating every single thing in my fridge, including a Tupperware container full of pasta I was pretty sure was two weeks old, a shriveled peach, and the healthy cereal I’d bought after I’d watched the documentary about how fast food was killing us all and had never opened.

I’d forgotten that I’d agreed to go out with Em and her friends—it was someone’s birthday; I couldn’t remember whose—until she’d texted me saying she was on her way over. I’d only just managed to change out of my pajama uniform when she’d knocked on the door.

“You know, I think I might be coming down with something,” I said, giving what I hoped sounded like a pathetic cough.

Emily was texting and didn’t even notice.

“It’s okay,” she said with audible relief. “Sally says she can bring you something to wear.”

Oh, wonderful. I’d seen the type of outfits Slutty Sally normally wore. (To give you a hint, she’d given herself that nickname.) We’d once had to force her to go back to her room and change when she’d come outside wearing underwear instead of shorts. They were boy-short undies, but still. I’d also once seen her nipple in a disastrous cleavage incident.

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” I said to Em.

“What?” she said, oblivious to my discomfort, still busily texting on her phone.

Close as we were, Emily had never been great at sensing how I was feeling. Maybe because I hid my true feelings from her, as I did everyone else. But even if I’d been in full-blown panic attack mode, I wasn’t sure she would have really understood. Dark feelings didn’t really exist in my sister’s world; I’d worked hard enough to keep it that way. Emily had never been depressed, sick to her stomach with fear, or even lonely as far as I could tell. How could she possibly understand the tremulous emotions that coursed through my body on a regular basis? Which was why I was pretty shocked at the words that came out of her mouth next.

“Are you okay?” she asked, glancing up from the glowing screen of her cell phone. “You just seem a little off today. Is anything the matter?”

“I’m fine,” I lied, digging farther into my package of chocolate chips. It was almost empty, which meant I’d eaten the entire bag in one sitting—gah!

“Mom wanted me to ask,” she said. “She’s always asking me about you. Have you been avoiding her calls? Because you know that only makes her manic.”

Well, that explained it. This was all my mother’s doing.

“I guess I must have missed them,” I said, throwing the empty wrapper in the garbage. A part of me wanted Em to call me on my crap. (How could you miss a call and not realize it when your cell phone yelled this information at you whenever you turned it on?) A part of me wanted Em to realize why Mom was calling constantly to check on me. A part of me wanted my sister to remember the date on the calendar and realize what it meant.

But Emily was Emily, and I knew deep down that I wouldn’t have wanted her to be any other way.

“They’re here!” she cried, bouncing off the bed and down the hall, our conversation forgotten.

I heard her yank the door open and the racket of a gaggle of girls crowding into the small space of my living room.

I lay back on my bed and enjoyed my last ten seconds of quiet. Maybe this night would be good for me. I’d be surrounded by people I knew the entire time. I wouldn’t be alone. I could pretend I was someone else for a night, pretend I was my sister and had no problems, no demons, no worries. I could escape the funky smell in my apartment. I could get away from myself.

Then Sally burst into my room, the other girls on her heels, holding up a sheer black top with a plunging neckline and a pair of knee-high leather boots.