The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things(39)

Shane looks around, admiring pictures of my aunt and me while I go into the kitchen. I don’t ask if he’s hungry. I just start making grilled cheeses. And these aren’t ordinary sandwiches; I use sourdough bread, butter, and three kinds of cheese. While those are in the pan, I also open a can of tomato soup and start stirring, so it’ll be ready around the same time. By the time he realizes I’m making food, it’s pretty much done. I set the table for two, not wanting to deal with the stress of eating on the sofa. There’s a zero percent chance that doesn’t end with my shirt covered in red splotches.

“This is so good,” he says, after the first bite.

No point in false modesty. “I do make a mean grilled cheese.”

“I was talking about being here with you.”

I have no idea what to say, but I feel heat creeping into my cheeks. Fortunately—or unfortunately—depending on your point of view, my phone rings. It’s my aunt checking in, so I have to take it. I hold up a hand at Shane, motioning him to silence.

“How are things?” I ask Gabby.

“Good. But it’s raining pretty hard and Joe’s worried about the drive back.” My aunt’s never indicated she wanted to stay out all night before, so this feels oddly like she’s asking my permission. The weather is an excuse.

“Don’t take any chances,” I tell her. “It’s bad here, too.”

“Are you sure you won’t be scared?”

I glance at Shane. “No, I’m fine. I’m home already. The movie was fun.”

It’s not lying if she doesn’t ask, right?

“Okay, Sage. Make sure you lock up and check all the doors and windows. I won’t make a habit of this, I promise.”

It’s okay, I think. You deserve a life.

“I’m fine,” I repeat. “Have fun. I expect all the hot, sweaty details tomorrow.”

This is a safe joke because I know Aunt Gabby will never open her bedroom door to me. Proving me right, she makes a horrified noise, and I laugh, disconnecting the call. Shane has paused, waiting for me before he continues eating. This strikes me as incredibly polite.

He gives me a questioning look as we go on with our meal. “You’re on your own tonight?”

“Apparently,” I answer. “Do you want another sandwich or more soup?”

“If it’s no trouble.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I’m glad he’s not complaining anymore about how I feed him like a stray dog. That’s not it at all; I just can’t stand anyone going hungry, mostly because I had my share of it, growing up. Shane’s not a helpless kid like I was, but I can’t change how I respond to his situation. Efficiently, I fry another grilled cheese and pour the rest of the tomato soup into his cup.

“At school, you said you lived in a bad area before.” It’s not a question.

I get that he deserves to know more about me, but I can’t spill everything. Not yet. The whole truth will probably change how he sees me. But … this is the first time I’ve wanted to let anyone else all the way in—and it’s fairly terrifying.

So I nod. “Before I moved here, I lived in a scary part of Chicago with my mother.”

“Where is she now?” he asks.

Sickness roils in my stomach. “Gone.”

All kinds of questions percolate in his gaze, but this isn’t something I can confide over bowls of soup. In fact, nobody here knows about my life before I moved. At first it was because I was struggling so hard to keep my head above water, and then my silence came from shame. I didn’t want anyone to know the girl I was before. In order to survive, I had to reinvent myself. I glimpse the moment he decides my mother abandoned me … and she did, when I was a baby. But the whole truth is so much worse.

“What about your dad?”

That’s simultaneously easier … and harder. “When I was seven, he died in a car wreck.”

“Oh God, Sage.”

This, I can talk about with him, an offering out of respect for what he shared the other day. “I was in second grade … the police came to school.”

In halting words, I tell Shane how I sat outside the principal’s office after the teacher pulled me out of class, wondering what I did, why I was in trouble. Up until that point, my life was pretty normal. Like other people, I had one parent at home. My dad had a mail route; I took the bus to after-school daycare, where he picked me up around four thirty. But that day, I sat for half an hour outside the main office waiting for someone to explain all the whispering and sad looks. Eventually, a policewoman came and said, “I’m sorry, honey.”

I stayed at school for a long time while they tried to figure out what to do with me. My dad didn’t have any near relatives on file, so I ended up with a foster family in the district. The courts thought it was best not to disrupt my routine any more than necessary, but I’d just lost my dad. Everything was messed up, and it got worse when the system located my mother.

I stop talking then. This feels like a fair distribution of facts; he knows one of my secrets and I know one of his. I take a deep breath because it’s hard talking about my dad. He was a good guy, who made pancakes with smiley faces on Sunday mornings. He took me to the park and he helped me with my homework. But when your whole world hinges on one person, it’s like a house of cards that collapses at the first gust of wind. Yet when things were at their worst with my mom, I clung to those memories. In the end, they weren’t enough to keep me from the flames.