Steel fingers clutched my chest, making it hard to breathe and making me aware of how unwelcome I felt here, in a place that should have been steeped in memories and warmth and understanding.
“And what about Dad? How come you . . .” I shrugged, slipping my knee from beneath her hand. “Why is everything so different now?”
She sighed, and I knew this was all hard for her too. Hard to explain. Maybe even hard to have me back. “You saw him, Kyra. He’s been like that ever since . . .” She frowned over her own explanation. “Ever since you’ve been gone. He couldn’t get over it—you disappearing. He stopped going to work. At first we all did; we were all so focused on finding you. But eventually, when everything led us to dead ends and there were no real clues to follow and no signs you were ever coming home . . . eventually we had to get back to living again. It was hard, almost impossible, but we had to. Your dad, he couldn’t do it. He started hanging out online all day, trying to find evidence, explanations, anything to figure out where you’d gone, even if they weren’t logical.” She sighed. “When he lost his job, I told myself to give him time, that he just needed time.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she shook her head. “But time just made it—him—worse. He started drinking. Eventually . . .” Her voice wavered. “Eventually, I asked him to leave. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m sorry,” she told me, reaching over and trying again, this time squeezing my knee. “Things’ll be okay. We’ll be okay,” she offered pensively. The attempt wasn’t great, but it was better. She got up then, the bed shifting the way it used to when she was finished reading to me after she’d tucked me in at night.
My tongue glided over the chiseled plane of my tooth as I watched her go, back to her other family. When the door was closed, I reached beneath the pillow to where I’d stashed the phone Tyler had given me.
I longed so badly to hear Austin’s voice. Maybe then I’d stop feeling so adrift. So . . . alone.
I opened Tyler’s contacts list and found Austin’s name right below someone named Ashley. I figured now was as good a time as any—it was barely after ten o’clock, early still.
Yet five years too late.
My stomach knotted as I pressed the button and waited.
I didn’t wait long. “Hey, Ty-Ty,” The girl who picked up on the other end was most definitely not Austin, but I knew her voice almost as well as I knew my own.
“Ty?” she tried again.
I was suddenly less certain than ever, and I thought about hanging up and pretending I’d never placed this call in the first place. Maybe even set the phone on fire.
“Tyler . . . ? Are you there?”
I swallowed, trying not to vomit on my own incredulity as I opened my mouth to speak. “Cat? Is that you?”
My words were followed by the longest pause in history. Longer even than the time I dared Cat to call Nathan Higgins, her eighth-grade crush, and she’d accidentally professed her love to his dad in way-too-explicit terms.
As I waited, I thought maybe we’d gotten disconnected, or that she’d had the same thought I had and decided to toss her phone in the trash and direct a flamethrower at it.
And then I heard her. “Oh my god, Kyra, is it really you?” It wasn’t really a question, even though it technically was, and I knew right away that she’d already heard from someone that I was back. “I—I—” she started, but she choked on her own words.
On my end, I couldn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what I felt. I didn’t know whether I was relieved she’d recognized my voice or curious about why she was answering Austin’s phone . . .
. . . or angry because I wasn’t really confused at all.
It all made perfect sense.
They were together . . . at CWU. Living the life Austin and I had always dreamed of.
She cleared her throat, and then I heard her again, her voice all watery and wobbly. The way I felt inside. “Kyra, oh my god, I never thought I’d see you again, and then we— I—heard you were back, and I couldn’t . . . I can’t . . . I . . .” She fell apart again, and I could hear her hiccupping as she tried to gather herself so she could start rambling once more.
But I didn’t want to listen to her ramble. Heat crept up my neck, and my jaw tensed. “What’re you doing there, Cat?” I asked, not wanting to sound like the jilted girlfriend but feeling it all the same.
She sniffled. “Kyr . . . come on. . . .” It wasn’t an explanation, or even an apology. But I understood all the same.
“So that’s it then? You and Austin?” My voice cracked. “Really? My best friend and my boyfriend?” It was the oldest and lamest story in history. Betrayed by the two people you trusted most in this world.
There was another record-breaking pause. I had no idea if she was alone or if Austin was there with her, and they were communicating silently while I sat on my end like a fool.
“Kyr,” Cat tried again. “I swear to you, we never did anything before . . . well before . . . you went missing. . . .” She fumbled over her words, and my humiliation deepened. “We searched so hard for you, with everyone else. And we waited forever for you to come back. We just . . . we thought you were . . . dead.”
I wanted to slink beneath the too-stiff covers in my fake bedroom and hide away forever. Instead, I hung up the phone.
Some habits died hard. And sneaking out to Austin’s house in the middle of the night came to me as naturally as riding a bike or tying my shoes or adding extra butter to my popcorn at the movies. I get how that sounds, but mostly when I’d snuck into Austin’s room at night, we really just slept. We’d been doing that since our parents had put a ban on our boy-girl sleepovers, deciding they were inappropriate the older we got. We thought the late-in-the-game rule change was unfair of them, especially after we’d grown accustomed to our overnight playdates.