Uninvited (Uninvited, #1)(39)

If I wasn’t so weary, so beaten, I’d lash out at her. Why is she angry now? What happened to the afternoon Pollock first showed up with the headmaster? Why didn’t she get angry then and do something? Take me away, run off with me to some remote cabin in the mountains where I would have been safe from the world?

Now it’s too late for me.

Mom must read some of this on my face. My knees wobble and she tightens her arm around my waist. “C’mon. Let’s get you inside.”

We’re on the porch when Pollock calls back, “She can stay home tomorrow, but I’ll expect her back in school the day after. And I expect no more incidents from her in the future.”

Mom stiffens beside me. I hear her inhale and she starts to turn. I know she’s about to respond.

“Don’t,” I hiss, understanding how this game needs to be played. Maybe I didn’t understand before, but I do now. Fighting back— openly fighting back—isn’t the way.

I urge Mom ahead into the house. When the door shuts behind us, I want to weep with relief. I feel safe inside these walls. Finally able to drop my guard. However false the perception, my body turns to lead, almost taking Mom and me both down.

She cries out my name, wrapping her arms around me and heaving me up. “Davy! Davy!” A feat. She doesn’t weigh much more than me.

She manages to slow my descent. The floor rises up to meet me, the tile cool and slick under my cheek. I sigh and press my palms to the tiles, welcoming the chill into my body. My neck burns like fire.

Mom’s voice is frantic above me.

“Just want to lie here . . . for a bit. . . .”

She tugs at my arm. “Let’s get you into bed.”

“Mom! What’s wrong?” I turn my face at the sound of Mitchell’s voice. He clears the foyer and hurries toward us. “Davy? What happened?” His fingers gently brush the gauze covering my neck.

“Mitchell,” I breathe, a slow smile curving my lips. “How are you?”

“Is she high?”

“They must have given her something. Let’s get her to her room.”

Mitchell picks me up and carries me up the stairs and into my room. Mom pulls back the covers. He sets me down and stares at me, his gaze riveted to my neck as Mom slips off my shoes.

“They imprinted her,” he spits the words out. Not a question. A statement. His hands open and shut at his sides like he wants to punch something.

Mom nods, not saying a word.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

I find my voice. “I slapped Zac . . . at a party. . . .”

“You slapped Zac?” Mom sounds appalled.

“He was being . . . jerk.” I giggle at this.

“This is because of Zac?” Mitchell growls. “I’m going to kill him.”

Now I laugh harder. “That would be funny. You ending up . . . killer . . .”

“Mom . . . how could you let them do this?” There are tears in his eyes, and this sobers me. I can’t remember my brother crying. Nothing ever gets to him. Not the fighting with our parents, not getting in trouble at school—not getting kicked out of school. Not flunking out of college and moving into the guesthouse.

It’s not that he was indifferent to all that happening. I know he cared. I know he hated being the “disappointment.” But he never cried. Not like now. Not like he’s crying for me.

“I didn’t have a choice. They just took her. I didn’t know until it was done.”

“You should have stopped them!” He whirls from my bed and faces Mom. “They can’t do this to our Dav!”

“I know!” she explodes, waving her arms through the air at her sides. “But she’s not our Davy anymore!”

This hangs on the air.

Mitchell doesn’t react, and I’m past reacting. I stare at his back. He’s rigid, his spine ramrod-straight, gone is the chronic slouch that is so very him.

Right now, I just want to pull a pillow over my head and hide in my room forever. Even though I can’t. The Agency won’t let me. And I have to finish high school. Not just for them but for me.

And yet there’s some comfort in this bed I’ve slept in all my life, my head resting on my familiar pillow with my stuffed duck staring at me. Dot is faded to a dull yellow now, the polka dots beneath its wings no longer identifiable.

I blink burning eyes. The days of my youth when this duck had been bright and shiny—when I had been bright and shiny—are like a dream. A dream growing dimmer and dimmer with each day. The bed sucks me in deeper and I never want to leave it.

A door slams downstairs.

“Caitlyn!”

Mom inhales at the sound of her name and squares her shoulders like she’s bracing for battle. “Up here, in Davy’s room!”

Footsteps pound the stairs. Then Dad’s in the doorway, panting like he’s run a mile. His hair is wild around his head, like he dragged his hands through the strands. The tie around his neck droops, mangled and twisted, the knot loosened around mid-chest. His suit jacket is missing.

“I came as soon as I got your message. What happened—” His voice dies the instant he sees me.

My eyes well with tears as his gaze lands on me . . . on my neck.

All the life, the last of his energy, bleeds out from him in that one look. Suddenly, he appears smaller, shrunken. A shell of my dad. Empty and dead-eyed.