But she doesn’t leave. “That’s okay. I didn’t talk at first either. But you’ll see. This place is different.” She moves to sit beside me. “You should see the grounds. They have horses and hiking trails and there’s even an indoor swimming pool.”
I peer up at her, skepticism keeping my shoulders rigid and my eyes narrowed. “A swimming pool?” Right. Funny. If there’s a swimming pool it’s not ours. Unless they want us to clean it.
The girl smiles. “Food here’s decent too,” she says. “They have a nutritionist on staff who creates an individual meal plan for you. Your lunch won’t always look so—”
“Pitiful?”
“Bland.”
Sounds too good to be true. I’m not buying the nice place act, though. Not for one second. “I’m not going to be here long.” I decide.
“But you’re here today.” Who is this girl? The positive pill is going to get old. Fast.
“’Kay, bye, then.” My dismissal sounds as if spoken by someone else. I’m an observer outside my body, frowning down at this bitter, hollowed-out creature I’ve become.
She shifts but doesn’t leave. She shoves her right sleeve up to scratch her arm, then quickly pulls it down. The movement was quick but I saw them. Her arm is covered in scars.
Trigger.
She is no stranger to darkness.
Bang.
I shake off the déjà vu feeling once more.
“I know my way around, which makes me super useful.” She hitches a thumb over her shoulder. “Bathroom’s right outside your door and to the left. Kitchen and dining are downstairs. Gathering room is at the front. It’s the one with the big bay window.”
“Gathering room?”
“It has a nice ring, don’t you think? ’Cuz we don’t really live there and we’re not exactly a family, you know? But we do gather there for group therapy and stuff . . .”
The girl goes on and on about schedules and sessions and anger management and mindfulness exercises and chores and homework. I’m more overwhelmed with every word and I haven’t even gotten dressed yet. I hold my head between my hands, thoughts swimming toward that familiar spiral again.
“Hey.” The girl kneels beside me, placing a hand on the bed inches from my knee. She doesn’t touch me this time, and I am grateful for the respect of personal space. “I talk too much, I’m sorry. It’s . . . the only way I know how to distract myself, you know?”
My shoulders relax and the spiral slows. I do know. I swallow. “I’m Brooke.” I stand, fighting the cold that seems to grow from the inside out.
“See, you’re adjusting already. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She sits on the bed and pulls some of my blanket over her legs. “Call me Hope.” A striking grin grows across her porcelain features, lifting the freckles on her cheeks to her salted-sea eyes. “I prefer to go by my middle name, if you don’t mind. One of the few things I can control around here. Plus, every time someone says my name, I remember I don’t have an excuse to give up, you know?” She winks.
Before I know what’s happening, my throat constricts and my eyes burn. The sudden swell of emotion comes uninvited. This girl is trying so hard to be nice. All I want to do is tell her to go. Leave. And don’t come back.
“Look, Hope? I appreciate you wanting to help me, but seriously, you’re, what? Eleven?”
“And a half.” She rises. Crosses her arms over her chest once more.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, same difference. Anyway, I’m seventeen, so we probably aren’t even in the same group. You’re a kid. You don’t have a clue what real problems are yet.” Why did I say that? Where did that come from? Am I really such a witch?
Her expression shifts from amused to shell-shocked. She finds her way to the door. “You’re mean.”
Now it’s my turn to be shell-shocked. At least she’s honest. “Yeah. I guess I am.” I’ve accepted my story. She should accept hers as well.
Hope grazes the doorframe with her fingertips. Then she says the last thing I’d ever expect. “I’m sorry. For whatever happened to you. I’m sorry.”
The apology I don’t deserve stirs me. This kid is something else. This place. I don’t dare hope it might be different too.
When she’s out of sight, I bolt for the door and shut it. Slide down the length of it until I’m hugging my knees again.
Wish granted. I wanted to be alone.
So why, then, do I wait? Listening intently for Hope’s too-young-to-understand footsteps to return?
Three
Merrick
This was total and complete capital B capital S if someone asked Merrick.
Which no one ever did.
He’d been arguing with his father for the past ten minutes. An argument that had taken a one-way train to nowhere.
Why couldn’t the man get it through his head? Nikki Owens was great. Perfect, Merrick believed, was the word she often used to describe herself. She wasn’t wrong.
Confidence was a rare trait. She was smart too. She was perfect.
Just not perfect for him.
Not that such a thing existed. Did he know what he wanted? What he sought in a relationship? To be honest, Merrick didn’t have any life goals in general. He’d graduated last year and hadn’t filled out a single college application.
“You’re going. That’s final.” His father didn’t even bother to set down his copy of the Wall Street Journal as he said it.
Typical Dad. CEO of the big-shot company everyone was talking about. San Francisco’s golden boy and everyone’s most likely to succeed.
“I’m not.” Merrick was eighteen. His father couldn’t tell him what to do. Besides, it wasn’t as if he needed to please his dad to protect anyone these days. His sister, Amaya, was tackling fifth grade like a boss, already taking a few middle school classes, well past her juvenile peers in, well, everything. She was good. His mom smiled more now. They were 90 percent okay.
“You are.” This time his father peered at him over the top of his paper. His obsidian eyes stared right through Merrick, disdain apparent across his stoic brow.
Merrick crossed his arms. Leaned back against the frame of the arch separating the formal dining room from the modern kitchen, all sharp angles and black granite countertops. An oval mirror on the opposite wall reflected back what he didn’t care to see.
He was the spitting image of the man he couldn’t stand. Narrow gaze as dark but not as cruel. Black hair. Attenuated jaw. Eyes that tapered on either end. But this was where their similarities died.
“Oh,” Merrick replied. “But I’m not.”
His father heaved a sigh. Folded his paper in that precise way of his. Intertwined his fingers on the antique oak table before him. “Oh, but you are.”
It was a stare-down. And Merrick was determined to come out the champion. He refused to let his father control him for one more day. “Nikki and I have nothing in common.”
“Except, you do. I am in the process of merging with her father’s company. Now, her father has been”—he steepled his fingers and tapped them against the cleft in his chin—“difficult. He’s not so sure about the merger. He’s resisting. He thinks he can continue to ‘make it’ on his own. I am trying to correct that serious error in judgment. And the shareholders are watching.”