Robin Wasserman - Torn

Years ago, when Riley was a kid, he’d stolen something from Wynn, and Wynn’s people had struck back, coming after the thief—and settling for the next best thing, Jude. Bashing him into the ground while Riley hid. Which meant, as far as Riley was concerned, it was his fault that Jude had spent most of his life in a wheelchair, dependent on Riley, begging for scraps. But it was also Wynn’s, and Riley had held on to that until he couldn’t hold on anymore. That’s when he went after Wynn with a gun. And shot the wrong guy.

Wynn was never going to forgive the person who murdered his brother. Which made him a threat—and last time I saw him, Sari was his weapon of choice.

“I’m not letting him stay at my place,” Riley pointed out.

“ She might.”

“Why, because you can’t trust a city girl? But you can trust me?”

“You’re not like her.”

“I’m exactly like her.”

I shook my head.

“You don’t want to see it,” he said.

“You come from the same place,” I said. “But you’re not the same. Not anymore, at least.”

“Right, because now I’ve got you, and you’ve got your daddy’s credit. Happily ever after.”

He didn’t know anything.

But whose fault was that? The fight went out of me. “I’m sorry,” I said, because that’s what you say, even when you’re not. “Can we stop?”

He paused. “I should’ve told you.”

I shrugged.

“She’s safe,” he added.

I hugged him. Stiffly, awkwardly, but it was better in his arms than out of them.

“I need you safe,” I said.

“I am.”

“I need you. ”

He laughed and gave me a quick kiss. “You’re Lia Kahn, remember? You don’t need anyone.”

It was a long time before we were ready to talk again. The night was cold, as usual. Riley held me, and waited for me to be ready to explain why I’d come, and why I’d towed my sister along. I could see her through the narrow window, curled up on the couch, head under a pillow. Sari was burrowed into a sleeping bag on the floor. I was tempted to stay outside with Riley, holding his hand in mine, staring up at the dim red glow of the midnight sky.

Riley stroked my hair. “You can tell me,” he said. And finally, I did, all of it—everything I’d found on my father’s ViM, everything my father had said, everything he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said.

“That’s horrible,” he said.

“Tell me what I can do,” he said.

And he wrapped his arms around me, and I leaned my head on his chest and imagined he was breathing.

“At least now you know what kind of man he is,” he said. Was I supposed to be grateful that he stopped himself from saying the actual words “I told you so?” “You don’t have to defend him anymore, or listen to him. Now you know he’s nothing to you.”

He didn’t get it. He was right that I would never know what it was like in the city. But it worked both ways. He didn’t have a father. And so—I felt horrible for thinking it, spoiled and ungrateful and unfair, but it was true—he didn’t know how it felt to lose one.

I stood up. “Let’s go to bed.”

Riley shut down, and I let him think I would too. But I stayed awake. Listened to the unfamiliar hiss of breathing, in and out, in and out. Held myself still beneath the weight of Riley’s arm, as his body molded itself around mine. Tree branches scraped the window, and I watched their shadows play on the wall, seeking animals—monsters—in the flickering dark. A lizard, devouring a snake. A dancing bear with bloody jaws. A ghost.

Zo’s eyes fluttered beneath her lids. I hoped she wasn’t dreaming about our father. I missed dreaming. But I didn’t miss nightmares.

I stayed awake, and I tried to think of what I should have said to my father. The accusations I should have lodged against him, the graphic descriptions of burning and crushing and breaking, the tears of betrayal that, thanks to him, I couldn’t shed. But there was nothing. No words. In my head, in the dark, I faced him again and again, and every time there was only silence. There was only me turning away, walking out the door, closing it in his face. I didn’t want to yell at him, or listen to more of his explanations, let him find the elusive, magic excuse that would change everything.

I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted to hurt him. And words wouldn’t do it.

Another lesson the great M. Kahn had taught us: Words were words, they meant nothing. Facts counted. Deeds counted. Objects counted. Like metal, like concrete. The laws of physics: an object in motion stays in motion until met by an external force. Like a truck.

Laws counted.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

So I lay awake in the dark, and I reacted. I planned.

And by the time the room lit with the red-orange glow of a rising sun, I knew what to do. Words wouldn’t destroy him.

But I could.

The apartment got significantly more crowded when we were all awake. Zo barricaded herself in the bathroom for at least an hour, while Sari stood sentry duty outside it, her back to the living room and her glare locked on the door as if she were practicing her X-ray vision. Every few minutes she would rap loudly; the time in between was spent muttering new and innovative strings of curse words under her breath.

“Wait your turn!” Zo responded every once in a while, the you impatient bitch implied. I could only hope she was leaning against the door, scrolling through her zone or playing a quick round of Akira. Partly because it was Zo’s style, and I liked watching Sari scowl. Mostly because I was afraid the other option was that my sister was curled up on the bathroom floor, crying.

And if she stayed in there much longer, I was going to have to bust open the door and find out.

But the door swung open, and Zo emerged, dry-eyed. Silent and sullen, which was par for the course. And it’s not like I could do anything about it here, in an apartment so small and so crowded that every time Sari crossed the room, she found a new excuse to rest her hands on Riley’s waist or his shoulder or the curve of his lower back, gently guiding him in one direction or another, slipping past, her chest brushing his arm or her hair whipping across his face. Not that I was watching.

“Zo and I are going out,” I said.

“Good,” Sari said, at the same moment Riley said, “Where?”

“Somewhere else.”

“Anarchy,” Zo suggested.

I looked at her in surprise. There was no way she could know how often Riley and I went there—except, I reminded myself, Zo had always known that kind of thing, back when she’d cared enough to pay attention, listening at walls and peering around doorways like charting every peak and valley of my romantic interludes was mandatory preparation for her own. “Anarchy,” I repeated.

“I can meet you there later, if you want,” Riley said.

I looked at Zo, who shrugged, beyond caring.

“Just you,” I told him.

Sari rolled her eyes.

“Walk us out, Sari,” I said. “Let’s chat.”

Riley looked alarmed. “Lia—”

“My pleasure,” Sari said. She followed us out the door.

I stopped just on the other side of it. “I’ll be watching you,” I warned her, inwardly wincing at how cheesy, clichéd, and—more to the point—useless the words sounded. It was like I was still stuck in the vidlife, acting out the part of jealous girlfriend, reading from a script.

“Whatever.”

“He may trust you, but I don’t,” I warned her.

“And I care?”

This was pointless.

“Come on, Zo,” I said. “We’re wasting time.”