Wish You Were Gone(7)

Kelsey didn’t want a snack. She wanted a new life. For the first time ever, she felt like maybe she could have one.

With everything off her shelves and all the throw pillows off her bed, Kelsey went to Hunter’s room and knocked on the always-closed door.

“Yeah?”

“Can you help me with something?” she asked, rising up on her toes.

She heard him groan and then the door opened loudly. How did he manage to open a door loudly? He must have slammed his hand down on the lever handle with a hundred pounds of force. The room behind him was dark, only a sliver of sunlight shining from beneath the blinds on each of his three windows. The bed was mussed, and crusty plates and dirty laundry littered the floor.

“What is it now?” he asked. Though not entirely unkindly. Hunter towered above her, almost a foot taller and definitely a foot wider. He looked like crap. Well, for him. His skin was pasty and he’d sprouted a zit on his chin, and his hair flopped the wrong way from his part, creating a sort of wing on one side of his head. Plus he smelled rank—like the locker room after a wrestling match. Even so, her friends probably still would have fallen all over themselves at the sight of him.

“I’m moving my furniture and I need a big, strong man to help me.” She pitched her voice higher and put on a southern accent for the second half of the sentence. “Would you help me, kind sir?”

Hunter rolled his eyes, but laughed shortly and followed her back down the hall, doing that wide-legged walk that made him look like he was in a western film and had just dismounted a horse.

“Whoa,” he said, when he saw the state her room was in.

“I know, right?”

He stepped inside and picked up her old, pink piggy bank off the floor. The coins inside crashed around. “What made you do all this?”

“I just needed a project, you know?”

He looked at her like he was trying to decipher a particularly complex calculus problem. Then he put the bank back down.

“Okay. What do you need me for?”

“I want the dresser over there and the desk across from it and the bed under the window.”

Hunter glanced around, assessing the situation, then clapped his hands together. “Let’s do it.”

They got the desk out of the way and moved the dresser first. Even without the drawers in, it was ridiculously heavy, and Kelsey had to stop five times as they shimmied it across the room. She could feel her father hovering over her shoulder, telling her to just let Hunter do it, that she was weak, that she was good for nothing, and on the last push she let out a half-groan, half-scream that startled Hunter.

“All right there, killer?” he said.

She stared him down. It was a sarcastic nickname he’d had for her ever since she murdered five goldfish in a row in second grade. She’d always hated it. She’d mourned those goldfish. It wasn’t like she’d meant to kill them.

Hunter averted his eyes. “Sorry. My bad.”

He picked up the desk himself, as if it was a bag of popcorn, and plopped it down where she wanted it, then lifted her laptop from the window seat onto the desk. It was open to the website for The Daltry School.

“Wait. Are you applying?” he asked.

Kelsey was shoving a drawer full of socks back into her dresser. “Yeah, well, nothing’s stopping me now.”

“That’s cold.”

Kelsey blushed. “Sorry.”

It was her father who hadn’t wanted her to go. Her dear old dad who had said that no child of his was ever going to attend art school as if the words burned holes into his tongue. He’d refused to pay the tuition. He’d refused to pay the application fee. But she knew her mother would give her the money, and she knew she would get in. She already had her audition pieces all picked out and perfected. When she got the acceptance letter, her dad would roll over in his grave.

Except, well, he didn’t have a grave. Which was kind of a shame. She would have liked to have gone there and read him the letter herself. Maybe she could read it to his urn. Kelsey had yet to cry over her father’s death. There were moments in which she wondered if there was something wrong with her, but then she’d feel a phantom throbbing in her throat and remember all the awful, hurtful things he’d said and done to her, and think maybe not.

Hunter went to lift one end of the bed. “By the window? You’re sure?”

“By the window,” she said.

She grabbed the headboard and they shoved and dragged and dragged and shoved until the bed was right where she wanted it. Kelsey jumped on the mattress, making the springs creak, and looked out at her new view of the backyard.

She hung over the side and lifted the comforter, scanning the floor underneath. When she popped up again, a head-rush blurred her vision. She saw her brother’s hand coming toward her and she yelped, shrinking back.

Hunter raised his palms. “Sorry, I was just… you looked like you were going to faint or something.”

Her hand was on her heart. “Oh. No. I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?” His expression was wary. “We good, Kels?”

“We’re good,” she said.

But her hands were still shaking. Hunter looked at them and she tucked them behind her back.

“You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, right?” he said.