All the Rage(54)

“Dinner was good. I saved you a plate. Tried to wake you up but you were pretty out. You told me—” I hear the smile in her voice. “‘Watch their feathers.’ Thought I’d let you sleep.”

I do that sometimes, when I’m really tired. I only let a small part of myself awake and talk nonsense until whoever wants me up leaves me alone. I could hold an entire conversation as long as it doesn’t have to make any sense. Once I told her this isn’t ours. Another time, the glass won’t break. Mom revisits these moments sometimes, like they’re such great memories. She runs her fingers along the outside of the bandage on my forehead and asks me how it feels. I shrug and tell her, okay. After a while, there’s the sound of another car rushing the pavement. This one’s headed our way.

“Blue Ford,” she says. It makes me ache. It’s a game we used to play, all of us. Her, me, my dad. Only on his good days. Guess the car and color by sound. Since my dad spent all his time around cars, he never seemed to miss the make—but color was anyone’s game.

“Purple Honda,” I say.

We’re both wrong. A black Chevy goes by.

“I know why you started that fight.”

It’s slow going over me, what she’s said. She knows. What does she think she knows? I stare at the walkway, those vines visible, even in this dark, imagining different possibilities. She knows about the photos? The words on my stomach? No—she can’t know anything.

“That’s because I told you why I started the fight.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Look, do we have to do this now? I—”

“Yes, we do. I don’t push you to talk because I don’t feel like I have a right after everything that happened—” She pauses. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me why you started that fight with Tina but I know you won’t. But I know why, Romy—I’ve known.”

I close my eyes briefly. “Then why?”

“Kellan Turner’s coming back.”

All I feel is the shock of it and then the pain, and then all I can think is doesn’t she know a name can be as good as a declaration of war? That I can say anything I want to her now, no matter how cruel it is to get myself—back.

Coming back.

“That’s what happened,” she says. “Isn’t it? Tina said something about it to you.”

Poison. It’s traveling my veins, turning my blood into something too sick to name. It works its way through me, finds my heart and then—every vital part of me turns off.

“You knew.” The words find their way off my dead tongue, slow and stupid, thick like syrup. I feel something new pulling me under now but nothing so merciful as sleep. I struggle against it, fight to stay here even though this is no longer any place I want to be either. “You knew?”

“Todd heard about it from Andrew Ryan on Monday. I wanted to tell you before the search, but it didn’t seem like the time—and then I wanted to tell you on Tuesday, but—” Maybe you could take the night off and we could have some mother-daughter time. Oh. “I just couldn’t figure out how to break it to you. But I knew there was one way I didn’t want you to find out and you did.” She exhales. “That’s what Tina said, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s not back yet,” she says and only the smallest part of me gives in to the relief of that, just the smallest part. “Monday—is what Todd heard. That was the soonest he could get time off from his job—” A job. A job. This little fact lights on me in a way I don’t want it to. I don’t want to know anything about him. “He’s here for Alek, so I get the sense he’ll be keeping a low profile, but … Romy, you don’t have to be brave all the time, you know? You should talk to me.”

I wait until another car moves down the road, its headlights in the distance. I let myself see them and nothing else.

“Black Chevy,” I say because maybe it’s come around again.

“Uh—no,” Mom says. “No, no, I think it’s a…”

Her voice breaks.

She never finishes.

Inside, in my room, I write my name on my lips over and over, but I don’t feel right, I don’t feel like myself. All those parts of me turned off. I don’t want to be a dead girl. I don’t want to be a dead girl. I need to come back. I pick up my phone and text Leon.

IT’S ME, I tell him but what I mean is please.





running seems more important now.

Running is the only thing I want to do. I leave in the morning and I run through Grebe until I can’t anymore, until I almost have to crawl my way home. I want to learn how to pace myself in a way that means I’ll never have to stop.

When I wake in the mornings, I’m so stiff I can barely move. I take showers hot enough to burn past skin to relax muscles. I eat breakfast because I don’t want my body to cannibalize itself. I don’t want to be weak. I don’t want to be sick. I just want to be fast.

By the weekend, the air is changing. Today, I wake up and the sky is a sick green-gray. It might actually rain, like the Grebe News said, or maybe it’s just being a tease. I lace my running shoes, tell Mom I’ll be home later. I walk until the house is out of sight and when it is, I start at a light jog, like this is my dirty little secret. I get the feel of myself before I circle the back streets and make my way out of town.