The Academy - Friends vs. Family (10 page)

North: You’re still full of shit.

Sang: Do you still like me?

North: Yes. Do you still like me?

Sang: Yes.

Sang: Kota, I made grilled cheese. My mom woke up.

Kota: Did she notice anything?

Sang: She doesn’t remember. She asked when I called the doctor for
the IV but she didn’t seem too surprised by it. She did ask about my throat but
I lied and said I was sick.

Kota: If she forgets what happened, don’t remind her. Keep me
updated.

Sang: Nathan, are you awake?

Nathan: Nope.

Sang: Sleep texting?

Nathan: Yes.

Sang: That’s a talent.

Nathan: I want to come hang out.

Sang: Will everyone take turns?

Nathan: Yup. I think that’s the plan. Don’t get caught before it’s
my turn. If you get into trouble, run over here.

Sang: Thank you, Victor.

Victor: You’re very welcome. Keep it close.

S
ign
L
anguage

After another hour, I slid off the bed onto the floor to go back
downstairs. I collected the plate and the empty water bottles.

Downstairs, my mom was asleep again. The yogurt remained unopened.
I slipped in quietly to take it back. I didn’t want it to spoil and have her
eat it. I found some crackers and left them for her.

When I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen and rambled back
upstairs, Gabriel was sleeping in my bed again. Luke was still behind the
bookshelf. With the door to the attic open, it made the room warmer. I hit the
ceiling fan to help cool things off a little.

I angled my way behind the bookshelf and sat next to Luke on the
floor. He was putting together some final touches to his map about the second
floor. He wasn’t just doing exit points and a basic outline. He had images of
furniture around the house as well. He tapped in the size of the platform in
the attic. I had my cheek nearly pressed to his shoulder as I watched him work.

“I didn’t know the platform of the attic space met with the
upstairs closet,” I whispered.

“It’s really convenient for us,” Luke whispered back.

“Why?”

He turned his head, pressing his nose to the top of my head. “It’s
a secret.”

“Will you tell me?”

His nose rubbed against my hair. “Not this time.”

I pouted. “Is it bad?”

“No.” He shifted until he could thread an arm around my shoulder.
His fingertips traced along my collarbone. He worked one handed with the
laptop. “I shouldn’t say secret. It’s more like a surprise.”

“You guys are full of secrets.”

“You are, too. Hidden hearts. I heard you know how to read Korean.
Plus the sign language.”

“I only know the alphabet,” I reminded him.

“I could show you more, if you want.”

“Where did you learn how to do it?”

His fingers rested at the curve of my throat. “When I first met
North, he wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t talk to Uncle, either. I’d say good
morning, and he’d walk by me like he didn’t hear me. I thought maybe he was
deaf. I learned sign language because I thought he’d know it if he was. I spent
two weeks practicing with Kota.”

“You didn’t just ask him if he was deaf?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t talk at all,” Luke said. “I’d ask him a question and
it was like he’d drift and wouldn’t answer.”

I sat up and his arm fell away. I was sorry I did it because it
was cozy. “You had a brother you didn’t know anything about?”

“I didn’t know he existed. One day when I was eleven, he showed up
in the middle of the night. My uncle said we were step brothers but he wouldn’t
tell me why or where he came from. That was it. North moved in.”

I couldn’t imagine an 11 or 12-year-old North, quiet and alone.
How did he go from traveling around Europe with his father to ending up on
Luke’s and their uncle’s doorstep? And he was so vocal now. “What happened when
you tried to talk to him using sign language?”

“He glared at me like I was an idiot.” Luke grinned. “So it didn’t
work, but I picked up something new. I used to practice with Kota for a while
just for fun but it’s been a few years since I’ve actually used it.” He placed
the laptop on the floor. He sat cross legged in front of me. “Let me show you.”

I wanted to ask him how he got North to talk but the topic seemed
out of place now. I sat in front of him and he wrapped his hands around my
thighs, dragging me across the floor until our knees were touching. I hid a
wince as my tailbone struck funny and pain crept up my lower spine. Thankfully
he was so focused on where he wanted to place me that he didn’t notice.

When he was satisfied with where I was, he started signing. “This
is asking what your favorite color is.”

He showed me the motions and I mimicked as best as I could. When I
did one incorrectly, he repeated the motion again and re-positioned my hands.
He started with some easier things, like asking about music and movies and
showing me how to answer.

When he signed the word for ‘cute’, Gabriel flipped over on the
bed. He shoved the blanket away from his face, watching through sleepy eyes.

“So when you do this,” Luke said, motioning with his hands,
“you’re saying, ‘You are really cute.’”

I mimicked.

“Why thank you,” he said, winking at me.

I smirked at him.

“Try to guess what this is.” He made different gestures with his
hands but at the end he shook his hands in front of himself to indicate it was
a question.

I tilted my head at him. “What are you asking?”

He grinned, but his eyes sparked something mischievous. “Say yes.”

“Yes?” I whispered carefully, making hand signs to say it.

“What did you just get her to do?” Gabriel said, yawning.

Luke smirked. He held up five fingers. Since it was out of
context, I didn’t quite understand. It took a few moments before I remembered
he kept score any time someone at school asked me to marry them.

“God damn it,” Gabriel said, and he must have realized the same
thing. He grabbed at my arm, pulling me toward the bed. “You can’t do that shit
to her.”

Luke laughed, tugging at my other arm. “Hey, you can’t pull on my
fiancée like that.”

“It doesn’t count. You tricked her.”

“Guys?” I whispered, grinning.

Luke let go of my arm. “She’s gotten a bunch already.”

“That makes you as bad as Rocky and that other idiot,” Gabriel
said, pulling me onto the bed with him. I crawled up until I was sitting on the
edge. Gabriel stuffed the blanket around his shoulders as he sat next to me. He
rubbed a palm at his sleepy eyes. “Which reminds me, we need to figure out how
we’re going to stop this stupid obsession. If this catches on, it’ll turn into
guys bullying her instead.”

The house creaked. I froze, trying to fix on the sound. Was it a
normal house settling creak or something else?

Gabriel was oblivious. “And Rocky’s on the football team. We don’t
need the whole team doing that to her.”

I leaned over, hovering above him, as I extended a finger out to
his lips, pushing a fingertip to his mouth to get his attention. His eyes
widened and his lips closed. My cheeks teased with heat. It was like he was
kissing my finger.

A distinctive creak of the pushpin being pulled from the wall sent
me falling to the floor in a panic. I meant to get out of the way for Gabriel
to get past me to get inside the attic. Instead, he shoved the cover over his
head.

Luke seized me by the waist, dragging me into the attic with him.
I spilled out onto my back. My shirt got shoved up, exposing my stomach and my
back scratched against the wood. My bad ankle locked into an odd position, and
I bit at my tongue to try to ease the pain. Luke hovered on all fours over me,
closing the door behind us.

The door to my bedroom crashed open against the wall.

“What are you doing in bed?” Marie’s voice filtered through to us.
I heaved a sigh. While it wouldn’t be good for Marie to catch Gabriel here, it
wasn’t as bad as my mother.

Through the attic door, Gabriel groaned, girly, muffled.

“Sick?” Marie asked. “Why’d you move your stuff around?”

More mumbling.

Dry air clamped down on my throat. I started coughing. Luke
shifted above me, drawing himself down against my body and covering me with his
frame. His hand found the back of my head and he stuffed my face into his
chest. I tried to swallow and breathe but it felt like the more I breathed in,
the more I needed to cough.

Outside in the bedroom, Gabriel started coughing, too, masking my
noise.

“You’re not going to puke, are you?” Marie asked. “I came to check
in. I’m going back. She’s asleep again.”

Tears threatened my eyes. My body shuttered against Luke’s as I
tried to swallow back a cough. His lips found my ear.

“Hang on, sugar,” he whispered. “One more minute.”

I pressed my face to his chest and smashed my mouth against his
shirt.

“You should get some water,” Marie said.

Silence lasted for a few minutes. I swallowed over and over again
to hold back a cough.

The attic door burst open. Gabriel lunged inside and Luke pushed me
out. Coughing spasms took over. I scrambled for the bed.

The door was still wide open but Marie was gone. I gasped for air,
got up from the bed and crept to the door.

Marie was in her bedroom, digging through clothes on her floor. I
crossed the hallway to the bathroom, tucking my head under the sink to drink
water from the tap.

Marie entered and nudged my body while I was upside down and I
ended up with some water up my nose. I pulled back, pushing a palm to my face
as I coughed and sneezed out water. Beautiful.

Marie yanked open a drawer and dug through the back for some make
up. She shoved some into her book bag. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. She
walked down the hallway and down the back stairs.

Did she really check in with mom? She didn’t even notice the IV.
She also didn’t notice the bandages on my wrists and around my ankles. How
often did my family walk by each other and never really see? The guys noticed
bandages, bruises, my hair pulled back in my clip, the way I moved... How blind
was I to their movements and the small things? I vowed to myself to start
noticing everything. It mattered to me. I wanted to notice those things because
it touched me when they noticed them about me.

I found a wash cloth and cleaned my face. I selected a bottle of over
the counter pain medications. I was tired of my ankle throbbing and my tailbone
aching.

When I got back to my room, the boys were still behind the attic
door. Did they not hear her leaving? I closed and locked the door again, moving
to the attic door and pulling it open.

It was dark and I didn’t see them at first. “Luke?” I whispered.

His head popped out from the back. He crawled forward. “How did
you hear her coming?”

I shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

“Yeah, but Gabriel was talking,” he said. He knelt on all fours
just inside the door as if hesitating.

“Oy,” Gabriel called from behind him. “Get out.”

“We should stay in here,” Luke said. “That was close enough.”

“We won’t go far,” Gabriel said. “We’ll stay behind the bookshelf.
It’s too hot in here.”

I backed away as the two of them slinked out onto the mauve carpet
behind the bookshelf. Luke did look relieved.

Gabriel sprawled out on his stomach, breathing in the air. “Oh
god,” he said. “I was flipping out. I thought she was going to look under the
blanket for sure when I started coughing.”

“How’s your throat?” Luke asked me.

I smiled. “It’s fine now. Are you guys okay?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “Where did she go?”

“She went back to Danielle’s.”

He smirked. “Those two deserve each other. She didn’t even care you
were sick.”

I twisted my lips. “There wasn’t much she could do if I was.”

“Sure she could,” he said, getting up on his knees. “She could
have offered to get you medicine or at least checked your temperature.
Something. Anything.”

I rattled the bottle of medicine in my hands. “I’m not five,” I
said, grinning. “I can take my temperature.”

“That’s not the point,” Gabriel said. “You’re family and
everything.”

My eyes drifted and I noticed I was looking at the wall, the
carpet, the open attic door, Gabriel’s black sneaker. I forced my eyes to look
at his crystal blue ones. “Is that what your family does?” I didn’t want to
challenge him. I was curious. I’d read different things in books and watched
how people responded to family in movies.

Was it real that a mother would make a kid chicken soup and tuck
him into bed? If I was sick, my mother told me what to do for myself. Maybe
when I was really young, around six or so and before my mother got sick, I
could remember her hovering over me. It was distant, a hazy memory that didn’t
seem to match who she was now.

Was it even real or was I just hoping that once upon a time, my
parents might have been normal?

Gabriel’s lips pursed and he shrugged. “All families should do
it.”

He didn’t directly answer the question. It had me curious but Luke
leaned forward, reaching around me for the laptop that was still on the floor.
It distracted me and the question was lost.

Gabriel’s eyes latched onto the bottle of medicine again. “What’s
wrong?” he asked.

What wasn’t wrong? I was sore, my tailbone hurt and my throat was
itching. “My ankle,” I said, reaching for the easiest thing. “I don’t think
sitting on that stool helped the bruised bones.”