The dad rests his forehead in his hand and now I remember—Mom told me his wife died a couple of months ago.
Mom sits next to the little girl whose hair is pulled back into the sloppy ponytail that could only be done by the hands of a little girl or a daddy—strands bulge out, making the top of her head lumpy. Loose pieces of hair hang over earlobes where too-big earrings dangle.
Too-big earrings. Grown-up-girl earrings.
A mommy’s earrings.
She uses her fork to roll a meatball around on her plate before using her fingers to bury the meatball with strings of spaghetti. Her fingers get wiped off on her shirt, and her dad doesn’t see but Mom offers a napkin. Then she pops up and rushes back to the kitchen, returning a minute later with a plate with one of my flower cookies from the freezer, setting the plate just out of reach. The little girl unburies that meatball and stuffs the whole thing into her mouth.
Mom moves the cookie plate closer, kisses the little girl’s cheek, and squeezes her dad’s shoulder.
My mom loves these people.
They are like family. And this is what she does with her family—she feeds them dinner, and asks them about their new project at work, and if they passed their math test, and if they’re speaking to their best friend anymore. She asks them about the best part of their day, and she bribes them with dessert so they’ll finish dinner. She rubs their backs when they are tired and offers a tissue when their hearts can’t take it anymore.
She does this because she doesn’t have her own whole family—me and Dad and Kellen—all together to feed anymore.
My mom is happy and I won’t ruin it for her. I won’t ever tell her about the notes or Nick. I’ve gone this long; I can figure the rest out on my own.
When Mom disappears into the kitchen, I sneak up to the apartment. To clear my head I soak in a bubble bath until I prune and the water’s tepid. I toss a frozen burrito into the microwave and get into my pajamas. After two bites of burrito I throw it away and brush my teeth. I’m tired and need the crazy thoughts out of my head so I steal my laptop from Mom’s room and climb into bed with it and a DVD.
“Sweetheart?”
“Yeah, Mom?” I feel a little bad about not getting up to open the door but I’m too tired.
“Café’s closed up early and I’m off to Bible study,” she says. But the floor makes no noise so I know she’s still standing there.
Half a minute passes.
“I love you, Kara.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
The floor creaks and when I can’t hear her anymore I turn the movie back up.
My cell buzzes with a text and I see that Noelle’s called me five times in the last half hour. She calls again.
“God, Kar! Where were you? Didn’t you hear what happened?”
I sit up, fully alert. “No.”
“Noah Bender, Kar. Someone beat him up in the parking lot. That’s why we had the lockdown. Can you believe it, the last five fucking minutes of school and we have a lockdown. Shit, where were you? I texted you! We were going crazy, hearing the sirens and wondering what the hell was going on.”
I can’t even get a word out before she speaks again.
“Noah’s in the hospital and a bunch of us are going there, to see how he’s doing. Mason and I will pick you up in like forty-five, ’kay?”
“Did they catch the guy who beat him up?” I ask.
“I don’t know, the cops were there and people with cars couldn’t leave. Listen, I gotta go. Be ready!”
“It’s like the middle of the night, Noelle.”
“What? It’s only seven o’clock!”
She hangs up before I can say anything.
I WAIT DOWNSTAIRS. THE
cafe rests, quiet and bundled up for the night. Chairs stand on tables and the floor has been swept and mopped with a chalky-smelling solution Raul always uses. The espresso machine is turned off and since it takes too long to prepare I go into the kitchen to grab a Coke from my stash inside the walk-in fridge.
Noah lies in a hospital bed and it strikes me that I might be the reason. I can’t think of a single person who has ever been hurt because of me. Even though he delivered all the notes, he didn’t know his actions hurt me. I think of him peeking at me at school and how at first I thought he just wanted to ask me out. I think of how he shook, and how the color disappeared from his face when I caught him.
And now he could be dying in a hospital.
The fridge drones and clicks and I’m taking my first sip when I hear something out in the dining area. My first thought is that Mom’s home from Bible study, but I know it’s too early. I set my Coke down on the stainless steel prep counter. For a minute I’m still, and I listen, but all I hear is the Coke bubbling and reacting inside my body. I tread lightly to the swinging door, opening it just a crack before I walk through.
Only the front counter section is lit. Inverted chairs are black shadows, all corners and edges against the radiance of street lamps outside. This makes the dining area unfamiliar, and I have to focus to orient myself. Out in the front of the shop, people stroll by laughing and talking. A couple passes by, walking their dog in the frozen night.
I’m jumpy and skittish and I know my mind is playing tricks on me. The sounds I’ve heard must’ve come from outside—there are still lots of people around.
Making my way back into the kitchen, I stop behind the counter because I hear it again. When I turn around, lights scroll along the far wall of the café, casting shadows because of the bus thundering by.
But the night silences itself enough for me to hear more sounds coming from inside. There shouldn’t be anyone here but me, and this realization keeps me locked in place and I don’t know what I should do. The door leading upstairs stands open just a crack.
Each step of the worn staircase up to the apartment has its own sound.
So I know by the familiar creak I’m hearing now that someone treads on the last stair before they enter my apartment.
There’s silence now and I hear nothing but my pounding heart. Then, above me, I hear the slow thump of footsteps, and the groaning pop of the old oak floor. Kellen flashes across my vision and is gone before I blink. I make my way to the stairs and slowly climb them. By the time I’ve reached the last step, my skin crawls with goose bumps and everything inside of me loosens. Any second I might be sick. I climb over that last step so I don’t make more noise and enter the apartment.
Once I’m inside I regret it. I should’ve called the cops, even though nothing looks out of place and I can’t see anyone. The apartment stinks of the burrito I tossed into the little trash bin. I creep along the wall, past the tiny kitchen, and into the hallway. Every other step I stop and listen and hear only my breath, my heartbeat, like I’m underwater. I make my way past the dresser in the hallway and into my room. Everything appears to be the way I left it.
A thud comes from my mom’s room next door.
Kellen’s pink pocketknife and Justine’s pepper spray sit on my nightstand. I hope I never get close enough to use the knife so I grab the pepper spray and tiptoe out of the room. Mom’s door is open and something moves in there. With my arm outstretched and my finger on the trigger I push the door open quickly. But there’s no one there; only magazine pages fluttering from the wind coming through the open window.
I drop the spray on Mom’s bed and rush to the window to see if anyone climbed out. Mom leaves her window open sometimes even in the winter and I always yell at her because we live in the city. I stick my head out even though I know no one’s there. They’d need the hospital if they jumped, and only an incredibly agile person could make it to the tree outside.
I close the window on the night. Safety is mere feet away, really. I think about opening the window again and yelling for help, but I’d feel dumb if it ended up being nothing. I’d have a lot of explaining to do. Most likely I’d be ignored.
Suddenly I hear the floor creak in the hallway.
I squat down and hide behind Mom’s bed and my mind betrays me, making me think of the words he’s written for me and Kellen.
. . . watch you.
. . . your blood . . .
. . . make you suffer.
. . . ways to kill you.
. . . coming for you.
My heart hammers. The creaking and popping has moved to the living room. I wait on the floor by Mom’s bed trying to stop shaking so I can figure out how to get to my phone downstairs. I know I left it on the counter by my Coke.
I don’t hear anything more, so I stand up. My legs are unsteady as I walk back out to the living room. It’s empty. I stop at the top of the stairs and listen but only silence comes from below.
My hands clutch the banister as I make one foot and then the other move down the stairs. At the bottom I hold my breath and try to see my phone, but my view is blocked by the cash register. I wait, hearing nothing but the evening sounds outside. I rush to the counter. My Coke’s still there, but not my phone.
I’m about to go check the kitchen when a movement against the wall makes me stop.
The street lamp’s glow reaches that wall, so there’s enough light for me to see the black form rising out of the dark booth. My pulse starts to throb in my wrists and ears.
I recognize the shape of him before the light touches his face. He moves slowly toward the counter and my shoes are frozen, stuck to the floor.
The counter separates us. I’m not sure how he even got in here since Mom should’ve locked the door on her way out. I let out a half-relieved sigh, even though the fact that he hid in the dark, not showing himself earlier, is not lost on me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him. “We’re closed.”
“Your mom let me stay here to wait for you. I brought you that recipe for baklava. Remember? I told you I’d bring it?” Hayden pushes the recipe toward me.
Mom left hours ago. Hayden smells of sweat and wood smoke and the outdoors. His cheeks look pinched from the cold.
“Hayden, were you . . . upstairs? In my apartment just now?”
The answer to my question is in his eyes, so I don’t wait for him to confirm it. “It’s kind of late. You could’ve brought the recipe by tomorrow. Or—” I stop because now I see what is on the paper.
He’s printed it off the computer and written my name at the top.
Kara, here is . . .
“I was going to leave this on the counter for you,” Hayden replies. “That’s why I started leaving you a message there at the top.”
Kara
Kara
“I should go. I have a lot of studying,” he continues.
My hand rests on top of the paper and I see how my fingers lift and tremble before I feel anything else in my body. His hand is on the paper, too, an inch from mine.
It’s the K.
The same monstrous K, trying to eat the rest of my name.
Like the notes for Kellen.
Like the notes for me.
I look up at Hayden’s face. He’s unnaturally calm, and his eyes are fixed on mine from under lowered lashes. His face answers a question I haven’t yet asked.
“Hayden, what did you do to Noah Bender?”
He is still, offering nothing.
My insides shake, and I try as hard as I can to keep my fear from showing on the outside. I don’t have to speak because he fills the silence.
“You look so much like her.”
His eyes flicker with a glint of something I haven’t seen in him before. At the same time, our eyes go to our hands, so close together. I pull mine away fast but he’s faster, grabbing my wrist. I’m able to wrench it free but Hayden hops over the counter, backing me up against the wall next to the kitchen door.
His arms cage me to the wall, like when I let him kiss me the other night. He hunches over, his face in my face. My fingertips scrabble along the wall, hoping to dig up a hole or something I can escape into.
“When I saw your picture, right there in her room . . .” He takes one hand off the wall to run it down the side of my head and face. His hand is icy from the winter night. I’m frozen and I can’t swallow. “I had to have you, too, Kara. That night, after I followed her to the Halloween party, I tried to talk to her, to get her away from her friends. We sat outside and I kept giving her more drinks, and more pot.”
He smiles into my face, and his mouth is twisted, like when I saw him that night at the Moon Bar with that poor girl. “God, it feels good to let someone in on my little secret. Secrets are hard to keep. You know a little something about that, now don’t you, Carrot ? Your sister talked about you all the time, when we were together. She told me about how she had done that horrible thing to you. How she pretended it didn’t happen. She just kept rambling about you and being sorry and wishing she had done something but that too much time had passed and it was too late. She was stoned, but I believed her.”
My arms are bruising where he pins me against the wall but I cannot speak. I’m trying hard not to let it show how scared I am; if I let him keep talking and confessing maybe I’ll make it out of here in one piece.
“That night at the party, I was going to give Kellen another chance. I knew she had it in her, somewhere, to be the girl I thought she was. When she wasn’t putting on the act she gave everyone else. But then Kellen went right back to it—started telling me about her new boyfriend. I couldn’t have that. Kellen belonged to me. Just like you do. As soon as she was gone I knew I had to find you. The way she talked about you, I knew. That night after she died—”