I want to go home. He finally took in the room he would be living in for the next year. It wasn’t much, but he supposed it would have to do until he could make his escape. It certainly could have been worse.
He missed his friends, his mother. He missed his siblings, even though he had duties as the eldest child. It wasn’t his choice to have children, yet he had to share the responsibility of caring for his three sisters and one brother while their mother worked herself to the bone. He often felt he was their father as much as he was their brother, all because their dad walked on them when Ethan was just a baby.
Now Calum was stuck in Oak Creek, and he wished he could be home with his family. He would have gladly done everything his mom asked of him if it meant being there.
The bed creaked when he laid down, and the pebbled ceiling offered nothing as he stared at it. He let his mind wander back to when his mother had left him at the airport. He should have left as soon as she was out of sight. He should have never gotten onto the plane. He should have run to Kyle’s house and hidden away.
The worst part was he couldn’t even blame his friends for what he did. They’d gone along with it, sure, hadn’t told him it was a stupid idea. But it was his fault for nearly burning down the school. It was the last in a long line of stunts causing damage around the city, and his mother finally reached her wit’s end. Calum didn’t even know why he’d done it or anything else he did.
All he knew was he’d been a horrible son, and his family deserved better.
True to Charles’s word, he and Georgie spent Saturday carrying boxes to the attic through the pull-down door in the living room ceiling. Calum watched them for a few minutes then muttered that he was going to explore the town. His aunt told him to be home by sundown, but that was it. No warnings to behave, no specific time to be back in the house, no threats to check in on him. His mother would have vowed to call him every hour if her workload allowed it.
There was nothing to see in the town. Calum ambled through the streets, inspecting everything while pretending he wasn’t, but none of it truly captured his attention. Dead grass, flowers blooming in front of rundown houses, and roads that had seen better days. There weren’t even any sidewalks, for God’s sake. Then again, he had only seen three cars coming and going since he arrived four days prior. What was the point when what you needed was within walking distance?
Kids were out today, running through streets and gardens, squealing as they sprayed each other with water. They all came to a stop as he passed, watching him closely with wide eyes. Calum ignored them. He didn’t need to hear what they mighthave learned to parrot from their parents. He could only focus on planning a way out of Oak Creek and back to Nevada where his real life awaited.
Calum was back at the house before sundown even began. There was nothing to see and no one to care about.
Tuesday arrived too early. Georgie woke him promptly at seven, but Tiffany was already in the bathroom getting ready for school. So Calum changed in the bedroom—not his, never his—and struggled to make his hair lie flat before giving up after ten minutes. His aunt had made breakfast. She didn’t know he never ate breakfast. All he needed was a cup of coffee, and he was ready to go.
Tiffany agreed, with no small reluctance, to walk with him to the bus stop. She didn’t talk to him on the trek, and he didn’t care. His heart raced under his ribs the closer they got to the junction of Pine Lane and Maple Street, a painful tattoo that reminded him he didn’t belong. He hated the bile creeping up his throat. The acid burned its path, and he wished he could get rid of it. Oak Creek High wasn’t the first new school he ever attended, but he was sure it would be the last.
He would graduate and go back home.
He had to.
Tiffany spoke long enough to tell him the ride would only be a little over thirty minutes. Then she fell silent as a group of teens approached.
The bus was empty by the time Calum stepped inside. The driver grunted in greeting, and Tiffany shoved at his back, hissing for him to get a move on. Calum swallowed and sat in the seat behind the driver. His cousin flounced toward the back and dropped into a seat while the other kids piled on. They were still finding their seats when the doors shut with a grinding sound, and the bus pulled away from the stop.
No one gave him a second look as more and more students filled the empty spaces. He listened with half an ear to the conversations going on around him—tales of summer events and parties, lamenting being back in school, even sexual escapades.These kids aren’t prudes, he thought, as one girl recounted what she’d done in bed. Calum promptly stopped eavesdropping.
He’d just retrieved his schedule from the front office when a girl popped up beside him. She grinned and shoved her neon green wire-rimmed glasses more securely onto her face. Her hair fell around her thin face, a curtain of nut-brown that gleamed in the harsh lighting, but her smile took him aback. A small gap resided between her two front teeth. Freckles dotted her cheeks under stormy gray eyes.
“Hi, you’re Calum, right?”
He could only nod. She had to have known already what his name was. He saw her at the bus stop, he’d seen her hesitate beside his seat on the bus before moving on. She lived in Oak Creek, so she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know all about Georgie and Charles Stone’s nephew. He was probably the first unfamiliar face she had ever seen in her life. She cocked her head before shoving a hand out toward him, seemingly unaffected when he didn’t shake her hand.
“I’m Rett. Well, technically, it’s Loretta, but it’s such an old-fashioned name. What’s your first class?”
“Animal Science,” he mumbled after a quick glance at the paper in his hand.
“Johnson?” He nodded again, and she gestured for him to follow her into the crowd of students. “C’mon, I’ll take ya.”
He trailed after her without thinking. A large part of him already disliked the girl. She was bubbly and kind, the kind of good girl to take home to Mother. The opposite of his friends. The voice in his head screamed for him to ignore her. Rett was the type of person his mom wanted him to be. His motherwanted him to change who he was and make friends who wouldn’t enable his reckless, dangerous behavior.
Allhewanted, however, was to do his time here, pretend he’d changed, and go home.
But as he followed Rett to a building behind the school, he wondered if she could help him pretend. He could emulate her personality long enough for people to think he was a good guy. Maybe if he did, Natalie would let him come home before the year was up.
He watched Rett’s hair sway with each step, her loose-fitting top fluttering in the breeze. She glanced back at him every so often and beamed when she saw him still following. Calum hoped she couldn’t see the nervousness consuming him. He waited until her back was turned to wipe sweat from his brow. To steady his hands and his breathing.
There was no point in allowing anyone to see him as anything less than collected. It was a weakness that would only invite questions he couldn’t care less about answering, inspection from people he’d rather never have met.
three
Rett
