But I remembered, just as Jan must have, when she took me and Emma to that nail salon while the back rooms were being worked on, and all the hairs on my arms stood on end from the scent of the cleaning fluid, and I threw up my burrito all over the cheap linoleum floor.
The scent of caustic cleaners, Jan wrote in that paper. Though this was a violation of our privacy, we had too much to lose.
Careful, always careful. The word like an echo, always there, always a warning. There were too many ways she could lose me.
Ryan drove a Jeep with a soft top, and doors he could remove in the nice weather, which I’d seen him do when he pulled up to the Lodge in the summer. I could tally the ways my mother would deem this car unsafe. Then again, mine was over a cliff, and his was not.
“Where do you live?” he asked as he opened my door.
“Do you know Sterling Cross? It’s this neighborhood at the end of—”
“Yeah,” he said as he shut the door. “I know it.”
His phone chimed in the space between us as we exited the parking lot, but he ignored it.
“So,” I said, “firefighter, huh? Aren’t you a little young?”
“I turned eighteen last month, but I’ve wanted to do it my whole life. My dad just retired. My grandfather was a firefighter before him, too. The department is practically my family. We were all just waiting to make it official.” He smiled to himself. “It’s in my blood.”
His phone chimed again.
“Are you going to check it?” I asked. If it was my mother, and I ignored it more than once, she’d start to panic.
His hands tightened on the wheel, and his eyes slid over to me for a fraction of a second. “Not while I’m driving. I’ve seen enough accidents, thanks,” he said.
And then I was back there, hanging, my fingers scrambling for purchase….“I wasn’t texting, in case you were wondering,” I said. I picked up his phone, felt him cut his eyes to me again. “A Holly wants to know if you’re going to the party at Julian’s tonight.”
He shifted in his seat. “Uh.”
“She says she really hopes you’ll be there. The really is in all caps, by the way. So I think she means it.”
“Kelsey?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Just a few scratches. More than I can say for you.” I caught myself staring at his bandage.
“No, I mean are you okay?” he asked.
“Oh.” I put his phone back. “I don’t know.” We drove through the mountain pass, and I concentrated on the floorboard instead of the double yellow line, and the narrow shoulder of the road, and the dark night stretching out below us. “Ask me tomorrow.”
“Put your number in my phone, and I’ll ask you tomorrow.”
“My phone is gone,” I said.
His thumbs were drumming on the steering wheel, all nervous energy, and it was starting to catch.
He’s asking for your number, Kelsey. Don’t be a moron.
“For when you get a new one, then,” he said.
Meaning: I lived in Sterling Cross, I could afford a new phone. And I would get a new one soon, because it was doubtful I’d be let out of the house without one.
“Okay.” I added my number to his phone, like he asked.
“Where to?” He pulled into the entrance of Sterling Cross, which was one windy road you had to travel a few miles down until it forked off in several directions, each road leading to a single lot with a stand-alone house. There were only ten houses in the neighborhood, and most were some type of mansion trying to disguise itself as a humble log cabin—mountain chic, Annika called it, when I’d pointed this out to her.
Mine was the only one that didn’t follow the trend. Cole and Emma used to call my place the House of Horrors when Jan would pick me up, and after, I couldn’t see it without looking at it the same way. The house was white and clean and boxy—an exterior that looked slightly industrial with its perfect, hard angles, like cement blocks. The windows were sleek and tinted, and it was set down a slope, so you couldn’t really see it from the road. There was nothing really scary about it, once you were inside. But the metal fence was high and spiked and covered in ivy—and that’s not even counting the wire running along the top—and you could see the bars over some of the windows, which was I guess how they got the Horrors part.
“Here’s fine,” I said at the turn for my road.
Ryan laughed. “Pretty sure you don’t have to be embarrassed about where you live.”
We weren’t rich, like he thought. My mother came into a lot of money, once upon a time, and she’d used up most of it to buy this place, set it up, set us up. She worked from home as a bookkeeper, and we got by just fine. But we lived there not because of the prestige of the houses or the property. We lived here because the houses themselves were all set far apart, and there was only one road in or out, funneled down a finger of land with steep, treacherous terrain on both sides. And people left us alone. Everyone here kept to themselves. It was safe.
“Okay,” I said. It was dark on the drive in, and the lights would’ve been off if Mom hadn’t been waiting up for me. “Turn right here,” I said. But now the front of the house was lit by big spotlights, exposing everything.
It was exactly as I feared. Spikes illuminated, the top of the house—the steep slopes and sharp angles of the roof—just visible from the street, making it look larger than it was. And the camera over the gate, the keypad awaiting my thumbprint.
Ryan looked from me to the house and back again. He unbuckled his seat belt and twisted in his seat, the engine still running.
“Well, thanks for the ride.” I raised my hand to wave, and his eyes narrowed.
He reached out and grabbed my wrist, his gaze searching my palm. No, he was staring at my fingers. I balled them up, but then he grabbed the other hand. “Jesus,” he said. I followed his line of sight to the deep red crease across my fingers. The indentation from the metal. The only thing that had kept us from falling. He ran his fingers just below the raw skin, and I shivered.
My hands started to shake again, and I replayed that moment, my elbows losing their grip, my fingers grasping for anything, and I pulled them back, balled them into fists. “See you in math,” I said, my voice shaking, along with my hands.
“Kelsey, wait—”
But I couldn’t wait. I needed to be inside, with my mother. Behind the gates, behind the walls.
“Thank you, Ryan,” I said as I stepped out of the car.
His eyes locked on mine as I stood before the gate, awaiting my fingerprint. I didn’t want him to see this part. I didn’t want him to know this part.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I called.
I waved goodbye, and eventually he caved. “Okay, tomorrow, then,” he said. I waited until he was around the first curve before letting myself inside the gate.
—
My mother was standing in the foyer, in front of the common area and between the hallways that snaked out into the two wings of the one-level house. She kept touching her shoulder through her loose shirt—an old habit—and she’d been crying. I’d barely had time to lock the door behind me, and she was pulling me to her, gripping me tight, and then holding me back by my shoulders. “Oh, thank God!” She took a quick breath, almost like she was gasping for air. Then pulled me to her again. “Imagine my surprise to turn on the news and see my daughter’s car over a cliff. Kelsey, God.” I felt her fingers pressing into my spine.
“It looks worse than it was, Mom.”
I waited until she slowly released me. Her long blond hair moved over her shoulders as she shook her head, her eyes closed. “I knew it was too soon. I shouldn’t have listened to Jan. You’re too young to drive.”
You’re too young to be living like this, I wanted to say. She was. So young. She looked young enough to be Jan’s daughter, even.