His uncle chuckled from the porch swing, leaning forward out of the shadows and into the moonlight. “Lucky I woke up for a cigarette, ain’t ya.”
Calum didn’t consider it luck. Not of the ‘good’ variety, not really. He hadn’t wanted to get caught. He should have just left the screen off the window until morning, slipped it back on his way to the bus stop. Charles let out a quiet, rough laugh again and began rocking on the swing. He gestured for Calum to join him. Calum hadn’t known his uncle smoked. He figured no onein the town so much as drank, even with the bar on the corner of Main and Pine. Risking Charles’s judgment, Calum asked for a cigarette.
“Little young to be killin’ your lungs,” said Charles even as he held out the pack.
“Old enough.”
“What are ya, seventeen? Guess I can’t say much. Started smokin’ when I was twelve and never quit.”
Calum ran the toe of his shoe along a crack in the wood. “Does Georgie know?”
“Boy, you’ll learn Georgie knows everythin’. Ain’t a durn thing you could do that she won’t be able to sniff out within seconds. Just you watch, she’ll have you cornered and spillin’ secrets you didn’t even know you had.”
“I don’t have secrets,” Calum lied only to receive a snort in response.
Once the smoke disappeared from the air, Charles led Calum back to the window. The teenager climbed through and dropped to the bed, watching his uncle replace the screen. Charles disappeared around the house, and Calum flopped backward to lie down. The front door squeaked open then closed, heavy footfalls across the living room, then the house fell silent. The night had turned out far differently than he’d expected. Charles was more talkative in the midnight, Calum realized. Or maybe he’d been trying to put the teen at ease. Welcome him to the family dynamic.
The sun rose before Calum could fall asleep. He’d spent the hours flipping his cellphone between his hands, but the screen only ever said ‘No signal’. Georgie had warned him, but he hated the lack of connection to the outside world. He wanted to call his mother and text Kyle, to see what was going on with the group lately.
Georgie didn’t let him get by without eating breakfast for the second day in a row. Nothing of what was on his plate looked appetizing—some kind of lumpy gravy over misshapen biscuits, a slab of ham, and eggs with runny yolks. He forced it down anyway, not wanting to offend his aunt. He had to admit afterward that he felt less awful with his stomach full.
And the food hadn’t been half-bad.
Rett waited at the bus stop when he arrived, and Calum almost smiled. They shared a secret, after all, but it was too close to friendship. So he settled for his customary scowl which received an eye-roll and a quirk of her lips. He loathed the fact she was so kind to him.Be rude for once. Then I can justify hating you.
But he didn’t hate her. Not really. He only hated what she stood for: kindness to a complete stranger, not pushing for information but willing to listen. She represented a place he wanted to escape.
They walked together to every class, even though it wasn’t needed. He could find his way through the school with his eyes closed. He disappeared at lunch but stayed in the building. The hallways were deserted, and it made it easy to find a place to hide for the half-hour. Rett beamed when he appeared at her side at the bell, and he swallowed thickly at the sight. Her gray eyes sparkled behind her round wire-rimmed glasses. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and bounced off down the corridor toward the English classroom.
“And Mister Wilson, you’ll be paired with Miss Cox.”
Paired? Paired for what? And when had they arrived at Child Development? A full hour had disappeared, and he had no idea where the time went. He’d been too distracted by the nearly-black hair draped over Rett’s shoulder, the occasional twitch as she focused but couldn’t sit still. The smell of her body wash—coconut. He hated coconut.
Miss Young announced the next partnership, and Calum glanced at Rett from the corner of his eye. She smiled back and leaned over. “We’re parents.”
“Excuse me?”
Giggling, she gestured with her chin to the box on the teacher’s desk. “It’s robot-baby time. It’s always the first project of the semester. Then we learn all about how we messed up being parents.”
“Do I have to?”
“Don’t if you don’t wanna,” she said with a shrug. “You’ll just fail and not have enough credits to graduate. Then how will you get outta here?”
“You really want me gone, don’t you?” he asked, letting out a humorless laugh.
She stared at him, her gray eyes too scrutinizing. Calum resisted the urge to squirm in the silence between them. Finally, she glanced at Miss Young before turning back to him. “I’m not the one who wants you gone, Cal. And I don’t like seeing people miserable. You’re clearly beyond that.”
“I hate it here,” he whispered and winced when he realized what he just said. He hadn’t meant to put it into words.
Miss Young placed something on Rett’s desk, moving on immediately. Calum stared, horrified, at the thing. The longer he stared, the worse it got. The thing’s ‘flesh’ was more gray than peach, scuffed up from years of use. Its head was dented in, and a thick layer of silver tape kept its arm attached to its body. Obviously, it had seen better days. Calum finally closed his mouth, blinked owlishly, then turned his gaze onto Rett. Her shoulder rose and fell.
“We get the handouts from the larger schools. Sometimes, we end up with abominations like this.”
Miss Young clapped her hands and called out the rules for the assignment. Calum struggled to understand her throughher accent as she told them to take care of their ‘babies’. Just because they were beat up, she said, it wasn’t an excuse to treat them horribly. When she announced it was time to choose which ‘parents’ had the thing first, Calum immediately faced Rett. She raised a brow and shoved the doll toward him.
“Don’t think I’m takin’ care of it first just ’cause I’m a woman.”
He couldn’t help it: He laughed and shook his head, but he caved anyway.
