“I know. And Tara understands that. But this is all new to her. New husband, new house. New teenage daughter. It’s a lot to take in. She just wants to make this work. She wants us all to be a family. Can you give her a break?”
Sawyer felt the tears stinging behind her eyes. She gritted her teeth, digging deep into her molars until her jaw hurt. “It’s a little new for me too. Remember? When she was getting a new husband, I was getting a new stepmom. And a new house.” She swallowed hard, trying to wash down the thick lump in her throat. And losing my real mom, she wanted to say.
Andrew rubbed his palm over his mouth and sighed. “But you’re strong, sweetheart. Tara’s not like you. She needs a little more help.”
Sawyer caught on that word, strong. When her parent’s marriage fell apart, people started calling her strong just because she didn’t start cutting herself or bring a gun to school. But she wasn’t strong. She was weak and small and afraid, and she felt safe when Kevin opened his arms to her, tucked her forehead under his chin. She remembered the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, the first time they had had sex, the first time in so long that she didn’t have to be strong. Back then, Kevin protected her.
“Sawyer?”
The lines of her binder paper blurred in front of her, but she refused to cry. She sniffed instead and nodded. “Sure, Dad. I’ll try.”
Sawyer flopped down in her bed at half past eleven, her body heavy with exhaustion. But sleep wouldn’t come. The words of the note hung heavy on her periphery, like if she just read a little more into them, gave them a little more thought, they would reveal her mysterious admirer. At close to 1:00 a.m., Sawyer finally kicked off her covers, frustrated, and retrieved the note from her underwear drawer where she had stashed it. She read it, turned it over and over again in her hands, but nothing was shaken loose, no memory or insight. She was smashing the letter back between a pair of boy shorts and a sequined thong Chloe had given her as a gag gift when light flooded the room. It came in a smooth, blue-white arc, pouring over her open bathroom door, her computer desk, her bulletin board, until it shifted over Sawyer. She was paralyzed under the bright light. When it had washed over her, plunging her back into blackness, her eyes burned and the adrenaline rushed through her, working her already aching muscles.
“Oh God.” Sawyer grabbed at her chest, feeling the spastic thud of her heart under her hand. “Now I’m scared of light.”
She felt the giggle twitter through her as she crawled back into her bed, sinking into her pooled covers. When the arc of light came one more time, she talked herself out of her nerves, out of the niggling feeling in the back of her mind that something was wrong.
“Headlights, freakazoid,” Sawyer said out loud, keeping her voice throaty and low. “Nothing weird about—” She sat bolt upright and kicked out of bed, falling to her knees on the carpet. She pressed her palms against the windowsill and sunk down so only her eyes and the top of her head were showing.
She swept the street.
“Who the hell is driving out here now?” she mumbled in the darkness. She had no neighbors, no guests, and civilization—anything other than cows and model homes—was at least a twenty-minute drive from her housing tract.
Sawyer poked her head up another half-inch and craned her neck, trying to see down the connecting streets. But it was dead silent outside. There was no wind rattling what remained of the leaves this autumn, no neighbors with lights still on or TVs blaring. Sawyer hated the empty housing development. During the day, the houses looked cheery and welcoming, like some apron-wearing mom was in the model kitchen baking cookies, her perfect kids ready to spill out of the front door at any moment. But in the dark, the same houses seemed to boast their emptiness, and the windows that looked like they hid the perfect American families by day were gaping, menacing, and black at night. There was no sound and no movement—until Sawyer caught a beady red eye out of the corner of her eye. It was the taillight of a car—the other must have been broken—and it sailed down the street, a leisurely coast. Had it been daylight, a lone car on the street wouldn’t have piqued Sawyer’s interest—people were always cruising through, pretending they were heading to their new homes, she guessed. But tonight was an unusually dark night, starless, and without streetlights, there was nothing to see—unless you knew what you were looking for.
Sawyer shuddered and pulled her curtains closed. She slipped slowly back into bed, pulling the covers to her chin, her eyes wide, focused on the ceiling. She willed them to shut but then her mind kept spinning. She rolled over onto her side. Her eyes—suddenly very used to the darkness—flicked over her nightstand, the stack of books lying there, and settled on the prescription bottle shoved behind this week’s US magazine. Sawyer sighed and rolled over, clamping her eyes shut.
And then she rolled back.