Never Never(15)

My phone pings a second later.

Silas: Hell no. OMW!

I smile.

It shouldn’t be a problem slipping out of the house since my mother has passed out on the sofa. I watch her for a moment, studying her sleeping face, trying desperately to remember it. She looks like Charlie, only older. Before I head outside to wait for Silas, I cover her with a blanket and grab a couple of sodas from the barren fridge.

“See ya, Mom,” I say quietly.





I can’t tell if I’m going back to her because I feel protective over her or possessive of her. Either way, I don’t like the idea of her reaching out to someone else. It makes me wonder who this Brian guy is, and why he thinks it’s okay to send her flirty texts when Charlie and I are obviously together.

My left hand is still clutching my phone when it rings again. There’s no number on the screen. Just the word “Bro.” I slide my finger across it and answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Where the hell are you?”

It’s a guy’s voice. A voice that sounds a lot like mine. I look left and right, but nothing is familiar about the intersection I’m passing through. “I’m in my car.”

He groans. “No shit. You keep missing practice, you’ll be benched.”

Yesterday’s Silas probably would have been pissed off about this. Today’s Silas is relieved. “What day is today?”

“Wednesday. Day before tomorrow, day after yesterday. Come get me, practice is over.”

Why does he not have his own car? I don’t even know this kid and he already feels like an inconvenience. He’s definitely my brother.

“I have to pick up Charlie first,” I tell him.

There’s a pause. “At her house?”

“Yeah.”

Another pause. “Do you have a death wish?”

I really hate not knowing what everyone else seems to know. Why would I not be allowed at Charlie’s house?

“Whatever, just hurry up,” he says, right before hanging up.



She’s standing in the street when I turn the corner. She’s staring at her house. Her hands are resting gently at her sides, and she’s holding two sodas. One in each hand. She’s holding them like weapons, like she wants to throw them at the house in front of her in hopes that they’re actually grenades. I slow the car down and stop several feet from her.

She’s not wearing the same clothes she had on earlier. She’s wearing a long, black skirt that covers her feet. A black scarf is wrapped around her neck, falling over her shoulder. Her shirt is tan and long-sleeved, but she still looks cold. A gust of wind blows and the skirt and scarf move with it, but she remains unaffected. She doesn’t even blink. She’s lost in thought.

I’m lost in her.

When I put the car in park, she turns her head, looks at me and then immediately casts her eyes at the ground. She walks toward the passenger door and climbs inside. Her silence seems to be begging for my silence, so I don’t say anything as we head toward the school. After a couple of miles, she relaxes against the seat and props one of her booted feet against the dash. “Where are we going?”

“My brother called. He needs a ride.”

She nods.

“Apparently I’m in trouble for not showing up to football practice today.” I’m sure she can tell by the lackadaisical tone of my voice that I’m not too concerned about missing practice. Football isn’t really on my list of priorities right now, so being benched is probably the best outcome for everyone.

“You play football,” she says, matter of fact. “I don’t do anything. I’m boring, Silas. My room is boring. I don’t keep a journal. I don’t collect anything. The only thing I have is a picture of a gate, and I didn’t even take the picture. You did. All I have with any personality in my whole room is something you gave me.”

“How do you know the picture is from me?”

She shrugs and tugs her skirt taut across her knees. “You have a unique style. Kind of like a thumbprint. I could tell it was yours because you only take pictures of things that people are too scared to stare at in real life.”

She doesn’t like my photographs, I guess.

“So…” I ask, staring straight ahead. “Who’s this Brian guy?”

She picks up her phone and opens her texts. I’m trying to look over at them, knowing I’m too far away to read them, but I make the effort, anyway. I notice she tilts her phone slightly to the right, shielding it from my view. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I tried to scroll back and see if I could figure out anything from texts, but our messages are confusing. I can’t tell if I was dating him or you.”