The Academy - Friends vs. Family (14 page)

Someone spent the night every evening, although my father was home
in the evenings and my mother was subdued, in a gentle phase of sleeping most
of the day and eating regularly. A doctor called, conveniently, on Tuesday
afternoon to ‘verify’ which pills she was taking and to schedule an appointment
in a month. She complained about doctors telling her what to do and tried to
get them to put the appointment off but they said the next available date would
be in three months.

Part of me wondered if it was Dr. Green on the phone, but I would
never know.

After the first night, the others slept only in the attic under
Kota’s command. I would stay out at Kota’s or Nathan’s as late as I could risk
it, usually until a half hour before my father got home. There was less of a
chance for us to get caught together in my room if we weren’t there in the
first place. One of the guys followed me home, climbed the roof and waited for
me to open the window. They’d slip into the attic. I spent a lot of time next
to them as they huddled inside the attic door to finish up homework or to play
on some electronic device they brought with them or just to talk. If there was
Academy business to deal with, they closed the attic door, disappearing to the
platform in the back to make phone calls. In the morning, I had to get up early
to give whoever it was time to run to Nathan’s to shower and change for school.

We tiptoed around eggshells in my hollow house. The Academy became
my shadow.

 E
scape

I dreamed of being chased on foot through the woods. I was weaving
through the trees, but no matter how hard I tried to run faster, my legs felt
lumpy and sluggish.

Growling emanated from behind me.

“
Aggele mou
,” Silas pressed a hand to my back, shaking me.

I was sleeping on my stomach. I twisted to look at him and pressed
my palms to my face to rub out the sleep. “Hm?”

Silas was kneeling on the floor near my bed. His dark eyes
softened with concern. “You were shaking. Are you okay?”

I sucked in a deep breath, with my cheek rubbing against the
cotton of the pillow case. “Yeah,” I said. “I was just dreaming.”

He nudged me and I flipped over on my back, and shoved my body
over to the side so he could sit on the edge of the bed. He dropped a hand on
the bed close to my stomach and half hovered over me. “What about?”

“Running,” I whispered. I yawned, pushing a finger over my
eyebrow. “Too slow in my opinion.”

He chuckled, his deep voice reverberating through my bones. “Tell
your dream self to exercise more.”

“Did you sleep?” It was Silas’s first night of staying in the
attic.

“No,” he said. He lifted a finger, dropping it to my cheek and
sliding a lock of hair away from my face.

“You’re on the football team,” I reminded him. They’d gotten the
official word the day before. Silas and North were first string for the varsity
team, no surprise considering their size and sheer power. For sophomores, I
supposed it was pretty good. Neither of them seemed too excited. “You should
sleep. You can’t stay up all night and then go to school and practice.”

“I can’t sleep in that thing,” he said, nodding his head toward
the attic. “It’s like a coffin. And I should be listening for trouble.”

“We can’t do this forever, Silas,” I whispered. “You guys can’t
come over every night and stay awake all the time. And we’ll get caught one
day. We’ve been lucky so far.” Every night, I was paralyzed that my sister
would pop in at the wrong moment, or I would go to the bathroom and come back
to find my mother peeking inside the attic door, or my father overhearing our
early morning shuffle to get out of the house before anyone woke up. I snoozed
more than I actually slept because of how terrified I was. I wouldn’t be able
to hide how tired I was for much longer.

His lips pursed. He leaned closer to me, his face inches from
mine. “I know. We’re working on it.”

I blinked at him. “How? On what?”

The corner of his mouth drifted up. The finger returned, coarse
and strong, and it slipped across my cheek again. “You’ll see. Soon.”

I started to pout. Secrets.

“Don’t give me that face,” he warned. He nudged me, tucking an arm
around my body. “Come here.”

I kicked the blanket away, blushing because I was wearing Nathan’s
blue shirt and really short shorts. The shirt was long enough to make it look
like I wasn’t wearing shorts.

Silas never hesitated and picked me up, placing me in his lap.
It’d become almost a tradition for all of them. They woke me up and the next
thing I knew, I was in someone’s lap. It was like if one of them did it, the
others followed. How they knew, if they told each other, I wasn’t sure. I
didn’t complain, but it did confuse me why they did it. I could only trust it
was because they were my friends and they were doing their best to make me feel
better.

I buried my face into his chest, inhaling the faint scent of the
ocean mixed with attic dust. He dropped his chin to the top of my head. His
strong hands rubbed at my back and side. “I can’t stand when you pout.”

I smiled against his chest. “Gabriel said it doesn’t work.”

“He’s full of shit,” Silas said. “It totally works on him. He just
tells you that so you don’t try it or to get you to stop. Watch. Next time you
feel like it, do it and keep doing it. Just not to me. And don’t tell him I
told you.”

I giggled, shaking my head. “He’ll be mad that you gave away his
secret.”

“If he gives you a hard time, tell me. I’ll beat him up.”

I stuffed my hand to my mouth, smothering a laugh.

He dropped his face, pressing his nose to my hair. “Ready to get
going? I want to stay but I can’t sit here with you like this.”

I sighed, nodding and wriggling to get up. He was right. The
longer we were there, we were more likely going to get caught.

He squeezed me once more before his hands slid away from me. I
stumbled to my feet and a wave of shivers swept through me.

“Will you stop shaking?” he begged quietly. His hand smoothed over
my back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, being honest. “It’s just early and I’m still
waking up.”

“You shake all the time. That’s going to drive me crazy.”

The tease of a smirk touched my face but I turned away to hide it.
I went to my closet to figure out what I was going to wear today.

Silas followed, standing behind me. I fingered over the blouse and
skirt Gabriel had picked out for me.

“Wear this one,” he said, pointing to a thin dark blue hoodie.
“You look good in it.”

I smiled softly. Having the boys pick out my clothes was peculiar,
but I appreciated their opinion and it gave me a small surge of confidence that
the clothes I wore weren’t too weird. “Gabriel...”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. He turned to me, bowing his head closer
to my face. “It’ll drive him crazy.”

We shared a conspiratorial smile and I took the hoodie along with
a matching sporty skirt. “It won’t match the pink wristbands.”

“I don’t care,” he said. He turned away, heading back to the
attic. “Knock when you’re done.”

Twenty minutes later, I was out of the bath, with my hair still
wet but smoothed out and twisted into a clip. I dressed in the skirt and hoodie
and went back to my room. I knocked at the door to the attic. Silas emerged,
crawling out on his hands and knees. I collected my book bag and he took it
from my hands, along with my violin case and his own overnight bag. I crept to
the window to open it for him.

He hefted the bags and crawled out onto the roof. My heart
thundered in my throat as he did. I did it now every time they started to
leave. I don’t know where it came from but the five minutes between being
upstairs with them and then downstairs in the yard was by far the scariest for
me. I wondered if they’d fall or if someone would hear their footsteps on the
roof or someone in the neighborhood would notice.

I grabbed my shoes and slipped down the stairs, stopping short
when I spotted my father in the foyer. His head tilted up and looking puzzled.

“Up early?” he asked. He was dressed in an oversized shirt and
pajama pants, looking sleepy.

I felt the blood draining from my face but nodded quickly. “Yes.”

“It’s too early for the bus, isn’t it?”

“I... like going for a walk before it’s time. Clears my head a
little before I have to study inside all day.”

He raked a hand through the curls on top of his head as if
considering this. “Oh.” He moved on to the laundry room.

Were we late getting up? That was close. If he’d been listening
earlier, he might have heard Silas’s deep voice through the walls. Maybe that’s
what woke him.

I chewed on my lower lip, pondering my next move. It seemed
obvious, I should do just what I said, pretending to go for a walk.

I slipped my sandals on and cut through the house to the back
door. By the time I got there, my father was leaving the laundry room with
folded clothes.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go,” he said. “You know how your mother feels
when you go out. It’s still dark.”

He had an opinion? I stuffed my fingers into the front pocket of
the hoodie to hide how they trembled. Nathan was right, I needed to learn how
to lie better. “I just go to the woods behind the house. No one is ever out
there.”

He frowned but shrugged me off and headed back to his bedroom. I
hesitated, waiting for him to relay what was going on to my mother and my
mother to start yelling at me to talk to her and ground me to my room or tell
me to kneel on the floor. I couldn’t spare another minute. If I wasn’t outside
now, Silas would come back for me. If I ended up kneeling in rice again, I
wasn’t sure what I could do. He’d pull me out for sure.

I opened the side door and slipped out into the early morning. It
was the risk I had to take right now. Maybe by that afternoon when I got home
from school, she’ll have forgotten or I’d get lucky and he wouldn’t think to
mention it to her at all.

Silas stood, ready to go in the drive. He turned to me when I
rushed out, his eyebrows going up. ”What took you?”

“My dad’s awake,” I said, frowning. I grabbed his arm, tugging him
toward the back yard. “Let’s hurry. I don’t want him looking out and spotting
you.”

He frowned, shaking his head. “Forget the long way.” He jerked his
head toward the neighbor’s yard. “Come on.”

I followed on his heels behind him as he cut through the
neighbor’s front lawns, taking the shortest distance possible and one where we
wouldn’t be seen by any windows by my parents. If anyone else was awake, I
wondered what they would have thought of two teenagers sneaking off together
before dawn. Would they think we were running away together? Would they assume
we were off to have sex or get high? Would they believe that he was helping me
to escape my mother’s crazy punishments and I was helping him evade being
discovered?

I yearned for a time we didn’t have to slip out into the shadows
of the night in order to find some peace. How long did we have to sneak around
like the bad people my mother thought Silas and the others to be? Would they
ever get tired of having to deal with this? Would the boys eventually hate that
they made this decision to include me? It took a lot of work to survive around
my parents. How could it be worth it to them?

When we got to Nathan’s, I reached the door first and started to
knock but Silas nudged me aside and opened the door without warning. He pushed
me in, entered and shut the door behind himself.

He dropped our things onto the floor, pressing his back to the
doorframe. My fingers fluttered to the base of my throat as he scanned out the
glass panes on either side of Nathan’s front door, waiting. My breath caught.
Did my father see us at any point? Would he go out looking for me? Would my
mother demand for my return?

“What are you doing?” Nathan’s voice cut through our silence.
Silas and I jumped and spun around. Nathan was wearing only shorts, rubbing the
back of his mussed, rusty hair and half yawning. A shiver of guilt slid through
my spine as I admired the muscles in his chest and arms. It wasn’t the time to
stare, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. He was incredible.

“Her dad woke up,” Silas said. He stepped away from the door.

Nathan frowned, looking to me. “What happened?”

I relayed the events from the moment I spotted him in the foyer
until we were running through the yards. “I had to go,” I said. “If he told my
mother, she’s yelling for me right now. But if I stayed, I don’t know what
she’d do and Silas was outside waiting and...” I swallowed, rubbing a finger
across my lip. Maybe it was the wrong move. I’d panicked, worried about Silas
and because of my own selfish desire to escape. Maybe I should have told my dad
I was going to stay and sent a text to Silas that I was going to be delayed and
to go to Nathan’s without me.  

Nathan collected my hand at my mouth, squeezing. His blue eyes
darkening on his face. “Wait here with Silas.”

My eyes popped open at his words. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going back to check.”

“You can’t!”

“We have to make sure,” Nathan said. “I’ll go listen and see. If
she’s calling for you, I’ll call Silas and let you go back, but we’ll be there
if she tries one of her punishments. We just need to make sure she isn’t
calling the cops on you or anything. We’ll try not to let this get out of
hand.”

I turned to Silas. “Don’t let him. He’ll get caught.”

Silas sighed, looking conflicted. “He’s right,
aggele
.”

There was nothing I could say. Nathan ran to his room, coming back
out to the foyer where we were still standing as he dropped a t-shirt over his
head. Silas stepped out of the way and opened the door as Nathan walked back out
into the early morning, disappearing across the lawns that we’d come from.

Silas repositioned himself into the kitchen, watching from where
he could see out the front windows toward my parents’ front lawn. He dug his
cell phone from his pocket to keep in hand.

I wanted to curl up in his lap again. I wanted to go back and
change my decisions. I wished I had fought them on this harder. If Nathan got
caught, it would be my fault. If I had to go back for a punishment, and Silas
and Nathan had to pull me out, it’d be my fault.