I smiled. “No, I don’t mind your germs.” I probably couldn’t catch them anyway. “But it’ll take you a while to get here.”
“Why, where are you?” he asked, sniffling. Over the phone, loud grunge music echoed with a reverberation apparently unique to thin apartment walls.
“Twenty miles north of Waco.”
No pause, and no questions. “Okay, but it’ll be cold by the time I get there.”
The grimy concrete seemed to absorb the sound of my laughter as soon as it left my throat. Andrew’s sense of humor was contagious. It made him very easy to be around, which had become my only prerequisite for boyfriends lately. Not that he couldn’t set the jokes aside when he needed to. But his smile was genuine, and it was always lurking on the edge of his other expressions. Talking to him never felt like work, as it did with some people. Andrew knew how to take things in stride, such as my sudden departure from campus.I glanced at my face in the grease-streaked mirror. I looked tired, but it was probably just the thick layer of dirt. On the mirror, not on me. “I think you’ll have to eat without me tonight. And tomorrow. And maybe for the rest of the summer.”
“Why, what’s up?”
“My dad’s mad ’cause I didn’t invite my family to graduation. He threatened to yank my funds unless I spend the summer at home.”
Andrew laughed. “So the mysterious Faythe Sanders does have a family. And where is home?”
I hesitated long enough that anyone else would have commented on my reluctance to answer. Not Andrew. He never acknowledged an uncomfortable situation, unlike Marc, who wallowed in tension like pigs roll in the mud. “A ranch near the Louisiana border,” I said finally.
For years, I’d carefully avoided any conversation that might have led to questions about my childhood, because it had always been easier for me to pretend I hadn’t had one than to try to explain the Sanders family dynamic. From a human perspective, we didn’t make sense, and struggling to explain it only made things worse.
As children, humans learned to compromise, share and make friends. I learned to identify animals by scent and to stalk them without betraying my presence. While normal parents discussed political elections and spiking interest rates, mine discussed expanding territorial boundary lines and how harshly to deal with trespassers. Humans just didn’t understand my childhood, so I generally avoided the subject altogether.
Andrew coughed, but the sound was muffled, like he’d covered the mouthpiece. “So you withdrew from school?”
“Not yet.” I cringed at the very idea of withdrawing, as if my absence from school wasn’t real as long as I was still enrolled in a class. “I’ll do it over the phone tomorrow, but it’s only for the summer. I’ll be back in September. Maybe earlier. It depends on how long it takes me to talk some sense into my father.” Yeah, right. Like my father and I had ever had a sensible discussion. Or even a calm one.
“No problem. I’ll come see you during the break between summer sessions.”
My stomach lurched at the thought of introducing Andrew to my parents. And to Marc. “Um, let me talk to my dad first, okay?”
“Sure. But don’t worry, parents always like me.”
Not my parents, I thought, leaning against a sink jutting from the wall like a porcelain ledge. Not unless you’re hiding fur and claws beneath your Abercrombie khakis. But he wasn’t. I didn’t know every cat in the country personally, but I’d know one if I met one, and Andrew was one hundred percent certifiably human. Which, of course, was the attraction.
“I have to go now, but I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I glanced in regret at the bathroom door. If the facilities had been nicer, I might have considered staging a sit-in, in protest of being taken home against my will. But one glance at the filthy floor drove that thought right out of my head.
“Sure. I’ll give you a wake-up call before my first class,” he said. “Or do you farm girls get up with the roosters?”
“Not this farm girl,” I said. “We don’t have roosters.” Or any other livestock, for that matter.
“Good to know,” Andrew said. “I’m going to go eat now, all by myself. Talk to you tomorrow.”
I said goodbye, and my stomach growled as I hung up. I thought of Andrew’s pizza with envy. Maybe I could talk Marc into swinging by a drive-thru on the way back to the highway. But I’d probably have to say please.
Suddenly I wasn’t that hungry.
Back at the car, Marc was nowhere in sight. I was searching the glove box for a spare key when I noticed him walking toward me from the burger joint next door. He carried a grease-stained paper bag in one hand and a cardboard tray of drinks in the other.
Damn. Now I’d have to say thank-you.
“Four double cheeseburgers, extra pickles,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat with a creak of leather. “But two of them are mine.” He dropped the bag in my lap and settled a drink into each of the cup holders in the center console.
I opened the bag and stuck my nose inside. Warm, fragrant steam engulfed my face, and my mouth watered. The meat was grilled, my preferred way to have a burger. Marc had probably chosen this particular gas station just so I could have my favorite fast food.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush with guilt. Maybe he’d think it was the steam.
He almost smiled. Not quite, but almost. And his eyes practically glowed when they met mine. “So how do you manage to eat enough at school without looking like a pig?”
“The same way I did in high school.” I tore into the first cheeseburger, barely bothering to chew before I swallowed. “Carry snacks, eat on the way, then again when I get to the cafeteria. And tell everyone I’m bulimic.” I snorted, doing an uncanny impersonation of a pig, if I do say so myself.
His eyes widened for an instant. Then he laughed. The sound of pure amusement caught me off guard, and I smiled, leaning back against the headrest as I watched him. For a moment, that old familiarity crept in, like the comfort of my favorite well-worn T-shirt. Then I remembered I didn’t want to be comfortable with him, and my smile died on my lips, even as his laughter faded from my ears.
Marc watched the change in my expression with mounting disappointment. He knew what it meant. Jaw tight with tension, he slammed the car into gear, reversing in a tight arc across the empty parking lot.
I bit another chunk from my burger, staring out the windshield as he shifted into First gear. The beef, so appetizing moments earlier, was suddenly bland and difficult to swallow.
Marc snuck one more glance at my face and tore from the parking lot as if we were being chased. And we were, but you can’t outrun your own memories. Not for long, anyway.
Three
I’d fallen asleep for real by the time we got home, but the crunch of gravel and the unmistakable sway of the car on our quarter-mile-long driveway woke me. I sat up, staring out at an impressive display of stars as we pulled through the open wrought-iron gate. Marc poked at the remote clipped onto his visor, and I turned around in my seat to watch the gate close. At the top was a capital S lying on its back, as if at rest.
Ours wasn’t the only Lazy S Ranch in the country, or even in Texas, but it was the only one I knew of which housed cats instead of cattle. I’d told Andrew we didn’t keep roosters, but the truth was that we couldn’t keep them or any other livestock, because when animals smelled us, they smelled natural predators and they reacted in panic.Years ago, in an uncharacteristic burst of optimism, my father bought a horse for my brother Owen, but it took one whiff of him and went crazy, charging the gate of its stall and running into the walls. They had to shoot the poor thing because no one could get close enough to sedate it. So, ours was a ranch in name only.
I sighed, staring through the windshield at land and outbuildings I hadn’t seen in years. Nothing had changed—at least, nothing I could identify in the dark. Waist-high grass grew in fields to the east and west of the main house, destined to become hay when the season changed. I smiled as we passed the barn in the eastern field, empty but picturesque in the moonlight with its peeling red paint and gabled roof. As a child, I’d spent entire summers playing in there, hiding from life in general and my mother in particular.
And directly ahead lay the main house, stretched across the yard like a lion at rest.
Marc parked in the circle driveway, behind the Volvo my mother hardly ever drove. I got out and looked around, glancing at the guesthouse, where Marc lived with three of my father’s other enforcers. All the lights were out. No one was home.
Gravel shifted beneath my feet as I passed the cars lining the drive, trying to identify the owners. I’d been gone a long time, having spent vacations at school for the last two years, and I could no longer say for certain what each of my brothers drove. But I could guess.
The Porsche—solid black and gleaming in the glare of the floodlights—had to be Michael’s. No one else was that ostentatious, except maybe Ryan, who would never come home voluntarily. He’d left when I was barely thirteen and wouldn’t be back, because for him, that was an option.
Ethan drove the convertible, no doubt about it. But if I needed further evidence, there was plenty to choose from in the front floorboard, littered with fast-food wrappers and empty plastic soda bottles. I grinned, staring through his driver’s-side window at the collection of CDs, ranging from nineties grunge to the latest hip-hop.