Eve Silver - Push

Marcy.

Kathy.

Mrs. Tilson, carrying her mug of steaming tea. Any one of the lacrosse guys shoving one another and laughing as they walk.

“Not them,” I say again, but I’m not so sure anymore.

“Someone else?” Jackson asks.

“Some thing else.”

It’s as if Jackson dons a different persona. Gone is the teasing and the flirtation. His posture changes, not a lot, but enough that I notice. He scans the perimeter, watching, weighing.

“You still feel it?” he asks.

I think about that for a second, then shake my head. “Not now. And I’m not even a hundred percent certain I felt it to begin with. It was just for a second.” I pause. “You didn’t sense anything?”

“No.”

If the Drau were here, I think Jackson would have noticed. I glance over at Marcy. She’s still staring at us.

“Oh, give it a rest,” I mutter, then to Jackson I whisper, “Maybe it was her all along. Maybe I’m just edgy.”

He smiles a little and leans in to whisper against my ear, “Maybe we should find a way to work off that edge.”

“We are in school,” I point out.

He grins in reply.

Carly and Dee come up the hall, heading for the caf. Carly does a quick assessment of the situation and gives Marcy an are-you-kidding-me-back-off-now look. That’s Carly, always the peacemaker except when someone goes up against a friend. Then she’s Carly-the-poison-tree-frog—gorgeous but deadly.

“I’ll save seats,” she says as she walks past us.

Marcy stalks off, but I can’t help looking around one last time, feeling like something’s still not quite right.

“Aren’t you dying to know what was in that note?” Jackson snags my backpack, slings it over his shoulder, and starts walking down the hall. I take four steps to his two and catch up.

“No.”

“Liar,” he says, then after a pause, “Her phone number and a time.”

Pretty much what I expected. The phone number part, anyway. The time? Not so much. I can’t imagine assigning Jackson a time to call me, as if he’d take orders from anyone.

“Dying to know what I said to her?”

“No.”

It isn’t until I’m tucked in front of him in the cafeteria line that he leans in and says, “I told her I already have what I need. And that any little girl who has to send her friend to pass me a note instead of walking up to me herself isn’t the girl for me.”

“Harsh,” I say, feeling a little sorry for Marcy.

I’m in the kitchen trimming Brussels sprouts when I notice the counter’s completely clear. No bottles. Not even one.

As I pop the Brussels sprouts and cubed squash in the oven to roast, I think back to the past few days and realize that Dad’s started putting his own empties away.

We’ve reached a new understanding, it seems. Ever since the day I told Dad about the AA meetings, I’ve stopped counting the cold ones in the fridge and the empties under the sink. At least, I try to stop. Sometimes I slip and when I realize he’s had five or six or nine, I wish I could go back and unslip.

I’m still working on the whole chillax, go-with-the-flow thing.

When we’re done with dinner, Dad helps me clean up, then grabs his keys.

“Going out?” I ask, trying to sound casual. He’s been going out almost every night, leaving after dinner, coming back after I’m asleep.

“Yep.” He kisses my cheek.

I almost ask where he’s going, and if he wants me to come.

Then I don’t, partly because I can’t be the parent here, can’t control his actions or his choices, and partly because if he’s going to meetings he might not want me there. I don’t want to do anything to make him stop going.

I’m in my pj’s before he gets home—showered, teeth brushed, homework complete, ready for bed but not for sleep. I lie in the dark, waiting for the sound of his car in the drive, his key in the lock, knowing that what I’m doing isn’t good for me. Not knowing how to fix that.

Sometimes, when I’m alone late at night, tossing and turning, my thoughts start to spiral to places I don’t want them to go. To places I inhabited for nearly two years. To the negative self-talk. To the creeping fingers of gray fog that want back in.

Tonight’s one of those nights.

I’m tempted to call Jackson, to let him shoulder the weight of my mood. And that’s exactly why I don’t.

I will not let anyone be my crutch.

At least, that’s what I tell myself.

But then that little voice, the one that’s sibilant and cruel, reminds me everyone leaves.

The only person you can rely on is you.

Better not to fully let down my defenses.

Tonight, like every one of those nights, I cry in my sleep. I know that because I wake up in the morning with tracks along my cheeks.

“I CAN’T HELP FEELING THIS NIGGLING SENSE OF EXPECTATION, like something bad is waiting in the wings. Like the other shoe’s about to drop,” I tell Jackson later that day, trying to explain it.

“Wings . . . shoes . . . that’s quite the mix of metaphors,” he says, taking a bite of his sandwich.

I roll my eyes.

Despite the cold weather, we’re sitting at the top of the bleachers, sharing the lunch I made for both of us. I shiver, partly because talking about this makes me nervous, mostly because I didn’t dress warmly enough for the weather. Jackson shrugs out of his jacket—the brown leather worn and faded to beige in spots—and drapes it around my shoulders.

“You’ll be cold,” I say.

“I have my hoodie.” Last word.

His jacket’s still warm from his body and I hug it close, watching Luka and Carly and Dee race one another up and down the stairs. We haven’t been pulled since the time I almost died—the time I thought Jackson’s dead sister saved my life—and that’s freaking me out.

Jackson bites off half a sandwich, chews, swallows. “I’ve gone up to three months without getting pulled,” he says. “A few weeks isn’t unusual. Be happy for the break.”

“How do you handle the not knowing?”

He shrugs. “I can’t control it. I know that, so I don’t even try. When it happens, it happens. I’m not going to waste my good moments by obsessing about the bad. The Beast in the Jungle , right?”

“What’s that?”

He finishes his sandwich and eyes the half of mine I haven’t gotten to yet. “You going to eat that?” he asks, reaching for it.

I shift the container out of his reach. “Yes.” Then I dig through my pack and pull out another container. “But I made extra.” I hand him his second sandwich.

“You are a goddess,” he says around a mouthful.

“Your turn to make lunch tomorrow,” I remind him. “And no cheating by buying crap in the caf like you did last time. So . . . The Beast in the Jungle ?”

The wind catches my hair, blowing it all around. I reach back and gather it in my fist, then tuck the length under my collar, down the back of my—Jackson’s—jacket.

“It’s a story by Henry James.” Jackson catches a stray strand and tucks it in with the others. “It’s about a guy who’s obsessed with the belief that something catastrophic is going to happen to him, like a beast waiting to pounce, so he wastes his whole life, afraid to do anything that’ll encourage it. Terrified. Waiting for it to happen.”

“So what happens? What’s the catastrophic thing?”

“Nothing. That’s the point. Nothing terrible happens. The catastrophe that gets him in the end is the fact that he didn’t really live. He was too afraid.”

“Sounds like an uplifting read.” And it sort of sounds like my panic attacks.

I put my empty container back in my pack, watching Carly run down the stairs shrieking and laughing, with Luka a step behind.