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  Lane left the cash in the family room, on the coffee table. I scooped it up and headed out to the garage.

  I was the only one without a car because I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t go out, and I didn’t talk to anyone at school. Frankly, I couldn’t deal with them. They were all loud and young, not my kind of people. Though, I didn’t really have a kind of people. I found peace in my bedroom, and that was all I needed. Better than having to get people to like me.

  When I opened the car door, I bent to put the bag on the seat. The garage was pure silence, and I found it beautiful. I closed my eyes and leaned my head on the window of the car. It was cold on my forehead, and I had plenty of room to lean on it. At an inch over five feet, this was one thing I was happy I didn’t tower over.

  I closed my eyes, inhaling through my nose. This time, I had a lot longer than a second, and I took advantage of that. The cold air leaked through the garage, surrounding me pleasantly. I wanted nothing more than to go and lay out on the driveway, staring up at a black sky while my skin got covered in goosebumps. But I couldn’t just take off like that. Not until everyone was asleep and no one would know I left my room.

  The yelling started again, making me jump a little. I listened out for my name but didn’t hear it. That meant I could breathe again, and I went back to closed eyes and even breaths. No more silence but that was a rare gift anyway. I could live with just the emptiness. It felt more natural to me.

  I would need to slip into my room before my father wandered downstairs. Running into him now would have been a risky move, and I just wanted a little rest. I could get it, as long as I moved fast.

  I didn’t even notice that the yelling had stopped until the garage door closed. Lane walked through as I shut his car door.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he snapped, walking toward me. “Where did you put it?”

  I moved out of the way with lightning speed as he ripped the door back open to see what I’d done. He grunted and slammed it shut again.

  “I’m sorry. If I could have thought of something to say to him, I would have. But he doesn’t seem too mad.” There was a big difference between annoyed and angry in this house.

  Lane glared harshly at me. “No, you wouldn’t have. You would’ve sat there and said nothing so that you could keep the heat off of you.”

  “Well... I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Pain shot up my spine, and I realized he had shoved me. My back hit Mom’s van, knocking a little air out of me.

  My brother was a bulky guy, towering over me by almost a foot. I didn’t have a chance at defending myself against him, so I did what I needed to do. I groveled.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, gasping. “I should have tried something with him.”

  “I help you,” he said, his eyes not leaving mine. “Three days ago, when you forgot to dust, I told Mom and Dad that you were helping me with something.”

  To be fair, I was helping him with something. Bringing it up now wouldn’t have done much for me.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I sputtered out another apology. That didn’t help my cause.

  “Stop gasping,” he said, shoving me back again. “You’re such a fucking drama queen.”

  Since I couldn’t talk without gasping, I said nothing at all, hoping that would be all right. It was not.

  Lane grabbed me by my hair, yanking me over to him. I paused, letting the world freeze along with me. One second. I took one second and put myself in a different place. Somewhere with the comforting bite of cold air and a dark sky. It was quiet there, and I could have spent an eternity lying on the hard ground. But I did not have eternity, and I’d used up my one second.

  My face slammed hard on the hood of the car as Lane bent my body over it. It had trapped my arms against my chest and the metal, and I couldn’t get free. Lane bent over me, pressing his body to mine, and applying enough pressure to make me feel like I was being crushed. I waited for my ribs to snap, feeling the tension grow as he held me down. My mistake for not going back to my room.

  He said nothing at all, holding me by the hair and pressing me to the car. He wanted me without air, and he got it. I couldn’t even gasp, and I forgot what it was like to breathe easy. I didn’t fight, and I didn’t move. I only closed my eyes and waited for it to end.

  It whispered to me then, like it always did. Lane’s skin sang out, tempting me to take the control I needed that would set me free. I could take this power given to me, and I could make the world mine. Set myself free, and save myself from this pain forever. But why would I do that? Why would I hurt my family?

  Lane held me for a few more seconds before he pulled me by my hair again, and threw me against the van. My head bashed into the side, and I fell to the cold floor. I stayed down because I knew better.

  I watched my brother as he cocked his head and used his power to smooth out the dents he had put in the two cars, using my body. It gave me about a minute to recover, getting my breath again and remembering how to think.

  He grabbed me by the arm, hauling me up to my feet. “Go to your room now,” he ordered me, pulling me through the garage. When we got to the door that led to the basement, he opened it and shoved me toward the stairs.

  Once I was through, the door closed, I was safe again. Hobbling down the stairs, I thought about when Lane and I were little. Before he was angry, and before the world felt so heavy. Maybe he was always angry, and now I could see it clearer. Or maybe I didn’t see anything clearly. I lived behind foggy glass.

  I flipped the light on and shuffled over to my bed in the corner of the room. The big space was so empty that the walk felt like a mile. I collapsed onto the mattress, whimpering quietly at the pain in my side. Carefully, I laid on my back, trying to catch my breath without hurting myself. It proved to be harder than I thought, so I decided air was more important than not being in pain. I tried to stay quiet, so that they wouldn’t hear me upstairs.

  If I was lucky, I would be able to walk normally in the morning. My parents wouldn’t know what happened, and Lane wouldn’t get angry with me again. Yes, it would be fine in the morning. I would clean the dried blood out of my white-blond hair, look in the mirror at pale green eyes, and say out loud that I was fine. For now, I could take in the infinite seconds I had all to myself.

  My curtain-less window was above my bed, and I stared out at the dark sky, seeing only a handful of stars. I couldn’t name any of them, and I wasn’t sure of the patterns they were supposed to make. That didn’t matter to me. I liked the little burning points of light. Illusions from the long dead. Something about them burning so brightly after they were gone made me feel better. I wanted a life of laying down and watching them burn. I wanted to watch them until they became nothing at all.

  That way, we would have something in common.

  Chapter Three

  Pecking Order

  Becket

  My stomach turned, and I hunched over the sink. I should have been fine but I had felt sick all morning. I hadn’t been able to eat anything since the night before, and that was probably why I felt so ill now. Sighing, I leaned back on my heels, and stared at myself in the mirror.

  Dark circles were under my eyes but that wasn’t really anything new. I turned the faucet on and dunked my head underneath the water for a few seconds. The cool flow felt good, so I stayed like that until my neck started to hurt. Then, I grabbed a towel and put it over my head to dry my hair off before going downstairs. Dad hated when I came down looking anything less than presentable.

  Once that was taken care of, I left the safety of my bathroom. It was upstairs, across the hall from my bedroom. My father’s room was downstairs, so I had the entire walk to compose my face so that I wouldn’t look ill.

  He sat at the table in the kitchen, with breakfast spread out before him. I sat down as well, not saying anything for several minutes. There was a platter of eggs that had probably gone cold but I reached for them anyway.
r />   Dad looked up from reading the news. “Good morning, Becket.”

  “Morning,” I said, while pouring orange juice.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I lied. It felt wrong to do so but I didn’t want him asking why I hadn’t. He would worry, and I didn’t want him to worry when he had so many clients coming and going today. I took a sip of my juice, and felt immediately full. My stomach didn’t want to take anything else in.

  “Really? You have dark circles underneath your eyes.”

  “Do I?” I asked. I stuck my fork into the eggs and took a breath. I could do this. It wouldn’t be that difficult. I put the fork into my mouth, and discovered that I had been right. The eggs were cold and disgusting. I swallowed them anyway.

  My father popped a piece of cantaloupe into his mouth. “Yes, you do. Are you sure that you slept well?” He arched an eyebrow at me, and I knew he was waiting for me to lie again.

  I pushed the eggs around on my plate, frowning. “It was okay. Nothing to worry about.”

  “We’ll have to do something about that,” Dad said. He set his tablet aside, and put another bite of fruit into his mouth. “If you’ll excuse me now, I need to get ready for my first client. She’ll be here shortly, and I don’t want to be unprepared for her. You keep eating, though. Finish that whole plate. You’ll feel better afterward.”

  He walked away, and I stared down at my plate. It would be easy to dump it in the sink but we both knew that I wouldn’t do that. He would know what I had done. He always did. I started eating, finishing the plate as quickly as I could. I just needed to get it over with.

  My stomach turned over when I finally finished, and I ignored the too-tight, shaky feeling while I rinsed off my plate. It was tempting to stick my head underneath the water again, to cool some of the burning in my head. I thought about plugging the sink and dunking my head completely beneath the water, then just staying there. Until my lungs burned, and my mind couldn’t think anymore.

  I turned the thing off and stepped away. The entire house went silent, and it disturbed me. I walked through the rooms, towards the front door. Everything was in its place, and I couldn’t hear a thing, not even my father moving around in his office. It always disturbed me when that happened.

  My bag was where I left it, by the front door. I picked it up, realizing with a jolt that I hadn’t done any of my homework the night before. After my father and I had finished talking, I’d gone upstairs to nap but only laid in my bed. I had stared at the ceiling, doing nothing.

  It had been a long night.

  I stepped outside, and my stomach rebelled. I barely managed to get to our bushes before everything came pouring out of my mouth. The retching went on for nearly two minutes after that. When it finally came to an end, I lifted my head to see my father’s client. She stood by her car, watching me with wide eyes.

  I wiped my mouth and walked past her without saying a word. She jumped out of the way, like she worried that I was contagious. I kept my head down all the way to school because I didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. Even at the front of the school, where people milled about, I didn’t lift my head.

  At the front of the stairs, someone threw something at me. I lifted my head to see it was a frog from the science room. It looked like it had already been dissected. Another couple of feet up, and I saw who had thrown it. I wasn’t sure of the guy’s name because it didn’t matter to me but he was the same person who always threw things at me.

  He laughed with his friends. “What’s wrong, creep?” he asked. “Don’t you know what to do with a dead frog?”

  I blinked at him. “There are several things you could do with a dead frog. You could toss it in the trash, or bury it, or give it back to the environment some other way. Why you think throwing it at me is somehow a better option is something that only you know. Bleach will probably remove the smell from your backpack, though.”

  The guy sneered and looked back at his friends. “I told you he was dumb as well as a creep.”

  I cocked my head. I didn’t know what about me was creepy to them. I did nothing to bother them, and never would.

  I started up the steps, so that I could head to my first class of the day. The guy stepped in front of me before I had gotten very far. He shoved at my shoulders, and I had to move quickly to catch my balance. It was that, or risk splitting my head open on the steps. I didn’t think the school would appreciate that.

  “What do you think you’re doing, creep?” he asked.

  “Is there a reason you keep saying that?” I queried.

  “Yeah. Because you’re a creep,” he told me. He gave my shoulders another nudge but I stood solidly on my feet. He couldn’t budge me if I did not want to be budged. I did not, so I refused to move.

  “I gathered that you thought so the first time. The repetition does not make me feel like a creep but tells me that you do not have the ability to come up with a different name for me. Is that true?”

  “What?” he asked, getting in my face. “Did you just ask if I was stupid?”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  This time, when he shoved me, it was with the intention of pushing me down. Only, when he moved in, I got into his personal space, planting a hand against his chest, and shoved. It was a gentle movement, meant only to get him out of my way. Instead of doing that, he toppled over backward, landing hard. Then he stared up at me with horrified eyes.

  “Don’t touch me!” he shouted.

  “Then I would suggest you don’t touch me either. When you put your hands on me, we are, in fact, touching.”

  “Get away from him!” one of his friends shouted, coming at me. I turned to look at him, and he stopped dead in his tracks. I wondered why but didn’t get the chance to ask before another person joined us at the front of the school.

  Mrs. Flannigan – or Angie, as she liked to be called – stepped out of the school. “What is going on here!?” she demanded. Her eyes were narrowed on the guys in front of me, and her hands went to her hips. She was an older woman, with white threading through her red hair. Today, she wore a paisley dress and had her glasses pushed up on top of her head.

  The guy on the ground pointed at me. “He started it!” he shouted, climbing to his feet.

  I frowned and looked at Mrs. Flannigan. “I did not start anything. I am merely trying to get into school.”

  Her expression softened. “I’m sure, Becket. Julian, Derrick, Ricky, all of you head back inside. Right now.” They scrambled to listen to her, all of them rushing into the school and away from me.

  I still frowned. “I was not trying to start anything. I promise.”

  “I know you weren’t, Becket. Come to class, before anything else can happen.”

  I did not know what that meant but I listened to her. She led me back to my senior English class, and I went to sit in my seat. It was in the back corner of the classroom, and there was an empty seat in front of me, and one next to me. Mrs. Flannigan insisted that I sit there, and she told everyone else that they were not allowed near me. This meant that she had to bring in two other chairs, which made no sense to me. It would have been easier to let people sit in the empty seats.

  She was the teacher, though, so arguing did not seem like a good idea. She surely had a reason for doing it.

  I took out my notebook and set it down on the table in front of me while she started writing questions about the book we were reading on the board. I answered all of them before the class started because I had finished the book a week ago. So, when the class filed in and the bell rang, I began doodling in the back of my notebook. Nothing extensive. Just a dragon, with eyes that I imagined to be blood red but I only had a standard pencil to work with.

  First hour went by quickly, and second hour did as well. For third, I returned to Mrs. Flannigan’s, for my TA class. She never had me do anything. I worried that she didn’t trust me with her things. I would never mess anything up and leave her to deal with the c
onsequences.

  While I sat there, one of the girls threw a piece of paper at me. It was folded neatly into a note. I debated throwing it away because I knew that Mrs. Flannigan hated note passing in her class but thought it would be rude to do so. I unfolded the piece of paper, and it said, Stop staring, freak

  I had not been staring at anyone but the notebook in front of me. How could I stop staring?

  I threw the note away but another came sailing at my head a few seconds later. It bounced off the crown of my head and landed on the desk. I read that one as well. Thinking of me? Well stop, it’s creepy. Underneath the words were a poorly depicted version of me, hanging from a rope.

  It was not hard to figure out who had sent these from that note. I looked up, directly at Hel. Her real name was Helena but she liked the shortened version more. Her crazy, curly brown hair puffed around her head like a cloud, and her dark eyes sparkled when she saw me staring at her. She puckered her mouth in a kiss, which looked odd with the black lipstick. She had painted her face white, which did not help either. She had been pale before all the additional makeup. She had a few extra pounds on her but her waist was tiny, so she had a tendency to wear corsets. Today, that also meant she had her cleavage out for the world to see.

  I threw the piece of paper away and went back to staring at my notebook, inspecting the doodles that I had made across the page. Still nothing fancy. I didn’t draw much because my father said it was a distraction from more important things. The last time he caught me doing it, he had taken the entire notebook and thrown it in the fireplace.

  Another note came flying at me. This crude picture was of some particular pieces of anatomy that would get anyone in trouble if Mrs. Flannigan saw them. Luckily, the bell for lunch rang right after that. I dumped the piece of paper into the trashcan and rose to my feet.

  On her way out, Hel made a comment about me that had her friend laughing. I waited for the rest of them to depart before following.

  “Goodbye, Becket,” Mrs. Flannigan said. I waved at her but didn’t respond. When I got to the cafeteria, it was mostly full. Everyone moved out of my way when I went to join a line. I never understood why but I always got my food, so I also didn’t care. I collected a lunch of rubbery chicken nuggets and vegetables that looked somehow mutilated.