Burn Before Reading(19)

"She was," He agreed.

"Is it -" I swallowed hard. "Is it true he doesn't like touching people?"

"Now where did you hear that?"

"Burn told me."

He nodded with a little exhale. "Yes."

"Did he always -"

"No. It began when his mother died."

I was quiet. I read about that sort of thing in my psych books, too; phobias that manifested out of trauma. Mr. Blackthorn forced a smile.

"It shouldn't be a factor into attempting to 'befriend' him - he never lets anyone touch him, regardless of who they are. Not even me." He glanced at his watch. "Oh, look at the time. You should get home before it gets too dark. Keep the document with you, and I will see you next Wednesday, here, at the same time."

I got up and put my sweater back on. Just as I walked away, Mr. Blackthorn called out to me.

"Oh, and Beatrix?"

I turned. His smile this time was an almost-smirk, infuriating in its composed, perfect arrogance. A smirk I'd seen Wolf throw around before.

"Remember - this is our secret. My sons must not know."

"You got it." I turned on my heel and left, only the barest hint of an uneasy feeling in my stomach.





Chapter 6


In case you haven't noticed yet, pen-and-paper, making friends is extremely easy for me. I have lots of friends. Hordes of them. Gengis Khan would be jealous of how big my horde of friends is.

That’s why I never eat in the cafeteria alone. It’s why people always fight over being my partner during duo projects in class.

I’m the sole reason the PE teacher has to divvy up the dodgeball teams by himself – because everyone wants to be on my team.

My shitty phone literally never stops buzzing with people texting me how much they love me.

Okay, fine. You got me. I had – have - zero friends at Lakecrest.

I hadn't had a proper friend since like, middle school. I lost most of my friends at my old high school, when I decided in freshman year I wanted to go to Lakeview. I totally get it, though, because I shafted my old friends until they stopped texting me, and then they stopped eating with me at lunch or asking me what was wrong. I didn't do it on purpose, I swear - I just didn't have time to hang out with them when Mom needed me to come home early for Dad, or clean the house when he couldn't, or make dinner for him when he didn't have the energy. And I had to study on top of all that, so maintaining friends or any sort of social life became impossible pretty quickly. So yeah, I shafted them. I figured that was the nicest way, the easiest way to get them to stop wasting their time on me.



Besides - what could I have told them? 'My dad has depression and I need to be home'? They'd never understand that. They had moms and dads who functioned without chemical brain imbalances. They'd tried to force me to come out with them, and trust me - I wanted to. For a while, I really wanted to try to be normal again, or whatever normal was for me before Dad's illness. I wanted that more than anything. But I knew going out with them was just a short fix - a quick escape into not-reality. Sleepovers and movies and coffee shops meant nothing. They'd accomplish nothing. The reality was Dad was sick. And the only thing that would help long term was my education. I could help. I could become someone who could really, truly help him; not as a daughter, but as a person.

I tried not to think about how often the books on my desk I'd checked out from the library told me that depression sometimes, oftentimes, never truly went away for good. That it always remained, just below the surface.

I skittered my eyes away from that passage. I didn't have time to read, right now. I needed to catch up on my homework - hanging out with Mr. Blackthorn put me back a couple hours. If I finished quick enough, I could go back to reading, so I microwaved some tea and fired up my laptop. A knock on my door resounded, and Mom poked her head in. She was none the wiser that I'd left - she came back an hour after I did from hanging out with her nurse-friends.

"Hey, sweetie. Why aren't you in bed? It's almost one."

"I know - I just have to finish this paper."

Mom stared at me very sternly. "Ten minutes."

"Thirty," I insisted. "And then I promise I'll go straight to bed."

"You know, you could've gone to a normal high school. One that didn't give you this much homework."

"Hey, come on now! You know me - challenge is fun. And challenging. But mostly fun."

Mom chuckled. "You did always try to climb the highest you could up the kitchen counters. Or the TV. Or the fine china shelf. Anything that looked dangerous." She walked over and kissed the top of my head. "Sleep well."

"You too."

When she's gone, I leave two answers on my homework wrong. My hand shakes while I do it, and I have to nuke my urge to correct from orbit, but I do it. Before I go to bed, I put my old, beat-up gym shoes by my bed. I set my alarm for the ungodly hour of four-thirty in the morning. And last but not least, I search on my tiny phone screen for 'different types of motorcycles and how to recognize them'.

I turned over to the cool side of my pillow, my thoughts choked with the Blackthorns. Wolf’s phobia started when his mother died. If I lost Dad, how would I deal with it? I wouldn't. I'd break, utterly and completely.