The Academy - Friends vs. Family (2 page)

H
idden
B
ruises

What felt like eons later, I was able to
get up, and get redressed. I found Luke and Gabriel and Nathan in a waiting
area. They were still wearing their faux school uniforms, although they’d all
shed the blazers. Luke’s white button up shirt was undone halfway down his
chest. Gabriel had removed the white shirt, wearing just a ribbed tank undershirt.
Nathan was wearing a white t-shirt. I thought their uniforms looked good on
them, but hated that those uniforms also made them targets at school.

Luke noticed me first and whistled a catcall.

I huffed. I put my lips together and
blew, only getting empty air and a raspberry at the end.

“Your whistle broken?” Nathan asked.

“Never had one,” I said. “I can’t
whistle.”

“Sure you can,” Gabriel said. “Put your
lips together.”

I did.

“Now blow through them.”

I blew a raspberry.

Gabriel snickered. “Guess you can’t.
Come sit by us, Sang.” Gabriel patted the empty chair between him and Luke.

“No,” I said, tucking myself next to
Nathan in a loveseat across from where they sat. Nathan was buried in his
phone, punching in a message. He hooked one hand under my thighs, scooting me
around until my knees were over his legs so I could prop up my sore ankle.
They’d all done similar when they could, and it no longer fazed me that I was
practically sitting in his lap this way.

“We were just teasing you,” Luke said.
“Besides, it was cute.”

“Not really worried about what you’ve
already done. It’s what you might do,” I said. It was difficult to smother my
smile, though.

“She’s on to you, Luke,” Nathan said,
finishing his message and putting the phone down. He sat back, his elbows
propped up on the low seat cushion behind him. This caused his chest to flex
out, and the white t-shirt he was wearing did little to hide the defined
muscles. “The only reason she hasn’t gotten you back is because she’s nice.”

“Or maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just
waiting for the perfect moment.” I widened my eyes to emphasis my threat.

“Ah ha,” Gabriel said, pointing a lean
finger at Luke’s brown eyes. “Trouble’s gonna get you.”

My chest started buzzing. I blushed,
ducking my hand into the cup of my bra to pull out my phone. North was calling.

I was hitting the button to answer when
Luke, Gabriel and Nathan started giggling at me.

“Hello?” I answered, my voice wavering.

“What’s wrong with you?” North asked.

“We don’t know yet. They’re looking over
the MRI now.”

“No, I mean, why do you sound weird?
What’s wrong?”

I should have suspected. Ever since the
fight, the guys had been more aware of every little thing. I couldn’t sneeze
without them asking if I had a cold. I glanced at Nathan, narrowing my eyes.
“The guys are laughing at me.”

“Why?”

“Because I had the phone in my bra.”

North chuckled. “Sang Baby, don’t you
have pockets?”

“A lot of the skirts I wear don’t.”

“You were wearing shorts today.”

I blushed again. Nathan’s bemused smile
was teasing as he listened in, and he was brushing his fingertips along the top
of my knee. It was almost distracting me from what to say to North next. “It’s
a habit. I’ll put it in my pocket.”

“You don’t want perverts watching you
messing with your bra. You get too much attention already.”

“How’s practice?” I asked him, wanting
to stop talking about my bra.

“Hot. I hate this kind of stuff,” he
said. “How was the MRI?”

“Cold. It rattled. Luke made me wear a
hospital gown when I didn’t have to.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “Traitor!”

North grunted in the phone. “I’ll give him
a good thumping later if you want.”

“Don’t for a while. Make him sweat it
out.”

Nathan laughed next to me. “You’re mean.
Remind me not to cross you.”

I got off the phone with North, tucking
my phone into my back pocket this time. I made sure my blouse hung over far
enough to where when I did stand, the phone wouldn’t be seen. The guys knew I
had it, but my mother could never learn about it. I didn’t want to forget where
it was and get caught with it.

Kota appeared from a door down the
hallway. From behind him emerged Victor, Dr. Green and Dr. Roberts.

Luke and Gabriel stood up to address
them. I was about to do the same, but Nathan held on to my thighs, shaking his
head. “Nope. You sit,” he said.

When the others got close, they pulled
chairs away from the walls and clustered them around the loveseat Nathan and I
sat in together. This made the fact that I was nearly sitting in his lap a
little more embarrassing. I tried to sit up to at least create some semblance
of professionalism like they were showing.

“Well the good news is, it isn’t
broken,” Dr. Roberts started, winking at me. “No casts for you.”

“What’s the bad news?” I asked, my eyes
flitting from Kota to Victor and the doctors. “Don’t tell me you have to cut it
off.”

I’d said it since I was nervous, but I
regretted making the joke after, because they all started laughing, leaving me
hanging longer for an answer until they recovered.

“No, not that. Not yet at least,” Dr.
Roberts said.

“Your talus and calcaneus bones are
bruised,” Dr. Green said, sitting forward to put his elbows on his knees. “Your
heel and the bone right below your ankle.”

“They must have made contact when you
touched down,” Kota said.

“If it’s a bruise, why hasn’t it healed
yet?” I asked. Normal bruises didn’t take two weeks to get better.

“Bone bruises are more severe. You’re
looking at maybe a month longer before it goes away,” Dr. Roberts said.

I sighed, twisting my lips. “And there’s
nothing you can do about it. I’m so sorry. It was a waste of money.”

“Hey now,” Dr. Roberts frowned, but his
eyes betrayed his playful nature. “Don’t give me that tone.” He raised a hand
and waved it back to the room they had come from. “That was a perfectly brand
new MRI machine we needed to test out and you, girl, just gave the training
radiologist someone to practice on.”

I felt my lips curling up. “Thank you,”
I said softly.

Dr. Roberts beamed.

Nathan cupped his palm over my knee.
“Now you’ll have to listen to us when we say stay off your feet.”

“I know, and I am trying,” I said.
“Unless I’m walking to class or going home. I can’t do it forever.”

“You don’t have to go that far,” Dr.
Roberts said. “You should be able to walk normally. Just no more jumping from
balconies for a while.”

“How about ever?” Gabriel asked. “Let’s
go with that. Never ever jump off the school balcony again. Or any balcony.
Stay away from balconies.”

The others laughed.

“Thank you, Dr. Roberts,” Kota said. He
held out a hand for the doctor to shake. “I’m glad the results are positive,
but we should get Sang home.”

“In a hurry?” Dr. Roberts asked, an
eyebrow shifting. He took Kota’s hand to shake, but his gaze fell on me. “Have
a date?”

The question glued my tongue to the roof
of my mouth, and a finger hovered over my lip. Me? He had to be kidding.

“Concerned parents,” Kota said.

That was putting it mildly, I thought.
Concern wasn’t exactly the word I would have used.

Victor and the others stood, except for
Nathan. They shook hands with the doctor, and fixed the chairs.

Nathan gathered me, lifting me off of
the loveseat and held me in his arms.

“He said I can walk,” I said.

“I heard him,” Nathan said.

I grunted, but smirked, shaking my head.
They never listened to me.

Dr. Roberts’ eyes sparkled and he winked
at Dr. Green. “She’s cute. Keep an eye on that one.” He patted Dr. Green on the
back and started down the hallway.

“I should go on to work,” Dr. Green
said. “Who’s going where?”

“I’ve got Luke and Gabriel,” Victor
said. “We’ve got some work to do as well.”

“Nathan and I will be taking Sang home,”
Kota said.

Dr. Green nodded. “Sang, listen to the
guys. Be careful.”

“Thank you,” I said.

His easy smile and dazzling eyes left me
feeling lighter and he turned and walked in the direction Dr. Roberts had gone.

Now the only
thing I had to worry about was getting home without getting caught. My mother
couldn’t find out.

Kota seemed
to read my worries on my face. “We’re going now,” he said, pulling keys out of
his pocket.

There was
nothing else to do. At least I didn’t have to wear a cast and try to explain
that to my mother. Now I just had to handle a couple of bruised foot bones.

And prevent
my mother from ever finding out about Kota, Nathan, and the others in the
Academy.

Easier said…

F
riday

It wasn’t as late as I’d been worried
about. We arrived back on to Sunnyvale Court before the bus was scheduled to
arrive. When the bus pulled onto our street, Kota, Nathan and I emerged from
Kota’s garage. My sister, Marie, started talking to Danielle, the next door
neighbor girl. Derrick, Danielle’s brother, was already heading up the road. I
lingered with Kota and Nathan. No one seemed to have noticed we hadn’t gotten
off the bus.

Only now when I knew I had to get going,
I didn’t want to leave.

“So what are we doing?” Nathan asked.
“It’s Friday. What’s the plan for the weekend?”

“Sang goes home and checks in,” Kota
said. He put a palm on top of my head and rubbed. “We’ll get homework out of
the way and figure things out from there. I’m thinking we’ll start with
self-defense training. Something light though because of your ankle.”

I smiled, feeling better. I was welcome
back. Hopefully I could get back. In the last couple of weeks, my mother had
told me to get on my knees three times and to sit on the stool four times.
Punishments lasted for hours and I was often so sore and tired and angry
afterward that I couldn’t return for a while.

Kota and the others didn’t know about
the latest punishments. When I was disciplined and they were expecting me, I
would text to tell them my mother was hovering so I couldn’t escape. I knew
they would be worried if they figured out the truth, but I didn’t see a way out
of it and there were enough problems with school for the Academy guys. They
didn’t need to worry about me.

It also didn’t matter to me. My mother
would punish me. I would sit for hours and when it was over, I’d be out the
door to Kota’s again. I did whatever I had to do to keep my secrets.

If a few hours of punishment was the
cost of my friendship with the guys, I’d take every second of it.

“You want to spend the night again?”
Nathan asked, looking at me.

I brightened more, nodding. “I’d like
to. Can I?”

Kota smiled softly. “Only if...” he made
a face, reaching into his back pocket for his phone. He checked the messages,
frowning. “We might have to see,” he said. He looked at Nathan. “We’ve got to
go.”

“Not another fight,” I complained. “Did
Silas and North get into trouble with football tryouts?”

“Nothing so tragic,” Kota promised.
“Academy.”

I pursed my lips to hold back the
buzzing questions collecting at my tongue. Despite trying to keep out of
trouble at school, Kota and the others still got called out on occasion for
Academy business. “What do I do?”

“Check in,” he said, moving toward his
car at the end of the driveway and pulling out his keys. “If you need anything,
call Victor if it isn’t an emergency. Call me if it is.”

“Call me if it is,” Nathan echoed.

They waved to me and headed toward
Kota’s old, clunky sedan parked at the corner of his driveway. Kota was still
wearing the blue blazer with the faux school badge. Nathan was in his white
t-shirt and uniform pants. No time to change. The Academy was calling.

I started down the road, disappointed
that the weekend might be delayed. Kota and Nathan were off to work. North and
Silas were probably still at football practice. Luke, Victor and Gabriel were
busy. I was bummed, already lonely without them and without an idea of when I
would next see them.

I heard Marie catching up with me. We
walked alongside each other. It felt awkward. She and I rarely talked unless we
had to and often times we avoided it as much as possible. It was completely
different than how I felt about the boys. I knew it wasn’t normal. Sisters were
supposed to be close, right?

“Are you still spending the weekend with
Danielle?” I asked. She’d talked about this last week. She was getting good at
disappearing, and running off to Danielle’s house. She never got into trouble like
I did, though. I wondered how she got away with it.

“Yes,” she said, shifting her nearly
empty book bag on her shoulders. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her
t-shirt clung to her tall frame.

“Check in every once in a while,” I
reminded her.

“Since when were you the boss?” she
snapped at me. “Just don’t tell mom.”

I sighed, rolling my eyes. It wasn’t
like I wanted to stop her from a good time. I was probably the only one around
who could understand. We escaped to be around people that liked us. I didn’t
want to see her punished like me.

She sped up, heading to the garage door
of our house. I hoped she listened to me, but if she didn’t, I hoped she
wouldn’t get caught. There was nothing else I could do.

The house was quiet. It was then I
remembered that my father would be gone all weekend. I sunk into myself,
disappointed. I might not be able to spend the night with Kota and Nathan after
all. I felt guilty about leaving my mother by herself all night. Marie would be
gone for the weekend. If something happened and I wasn’t home, it would be my
fault.

I wondered if my mother had eaten. I
wanted to change my clothes and planned to check on her after. If she was
sleeping, I’d wake her to get her to eat something. It was risky. Depending on
her mood, I might end up on my knees again. Still, since Kota was gone, it
wasn’t a problem now. No one was expecting me.

I skipped the steps two at a time and
walked into my bedroom. I dumped the contents of my book bag onto my bed since
I needed to clean it out. I told myself I would get all my homework done like
Kota said before I attempted to text Victor or Luke or someone just to talk.

When I was done emptying my book bag, I
tossed my bag on the floor. I stripped off my shoes and socks, leaving on the
shorts and the blouse I had worn to school.

I went to the upstairs bathroom, turned
on the faucet and washed my face. I heard fumbling in the hallway and I thought
it was Marie getting ready to go to Danielle’s. I brushed my teeth just to feel
fresh. I touched the cup of my bra, expecting to feel my phone there but
remembered it in my back pocket. I pulled it out, wondering if I should charge
it. I returned it to my pocket, drawing my shirt down far enough so the lower
hem hid the bulge.

Out of habit, I tidied the counter,
getting rid of a hairbrush and some of Marie’s makeup and tossing it into a
drawer, wiping down the white countertop and cleaned off a smudge from the
medicine cabinet mirror. If I left it to Marie, the bathroom would be a wreck.

I opened the bathroom door and crossed
the hallway again to my room and stopped cold. My mother was inside and bent
over my bed. She was sweating. Her dark, graying hair was matted against her
flushed forehead and cheeks. Was this the same person I’d left this morning?

Her face lifted and her gaze met mine. I
could have died where I stood.

She crumbled papers in her hands. Blood
drained from my face as I recognized the detention slip and the unread notes
I’d collected from school.

“What,” she seethed, “is this?” She held
up the detention slip toward me and the opened notes. Had she read them?

I swallowed, holding my place by the
door. “People pass notes to me in class,” I said. “I don’t read them. I just
throw them away.”

She narrowed her eyes and her voice
gurgled as she pointed at me. “You wear shorts like that to school?” she
demanded. “Do you expect me to believe for one moment...” Her breathing sped
up. “And you got detention.”

She never talked about my clothes
before. I rattled, unsure what to say. “The clothes are within school
regulation. And that was an accident--”

“Inappropriate touching,” she called out
to me, her voice grating in a higher pitch. “You’re touching boys in school.”

“No,” I said. I eased back a step and
sighed, not sure if I should fight it. If I started kneeling now or sat on that
stool, maybe I could get it over with in a few hours. I swallowed again when I
realized my dad wouldn’t be here this time to help if she left me alone for too
long. At least I had the phone with me. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about
that detention slip. I’d been so busy with the fighting at school and trying to
keep up with the boys that I’d neglected a lot of things.

“You wear those clothes. Boys write
nasty things to you. I have the teacher’s note right here telling me what
happened to you in school,” she declared. Her fists crumpled the papers in her
hands tighter and she let go, letting them fall around her feet. “What else
have you been hiding from me?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but
she spun toward the bookshelf, yanking novels off of the shelves. She glared at
the covers and pitched them to the ground. “Is it these books? Are they telling
you to allow boys to touch you? To touch them back?”

“No,” I said, trying to look humble, my
eyes downcast. My insides quivered. I didn’t understand her questions. Did she
think books told me what to do? Like demon possession? I was ashamed of myself
already and couldn’t face her. I knew I was fibbing. Some boys did touch me but
not like she was thinking. She would never understand.

“You’re lying,” she cried out. She
pointed a finger at the papers on the floor and glared at me. “I know I didn’t
teach you to do these things. Inappropriate touching!”

I bit my lip, closing my eyes.
Please,
please just get it over with.

“Well?”

What did she want? I didn’t know how to
respond. “I’m sorry,” I said softly, unsure what else to say. I trembled. “Mom,
you haven’t eaten. You should eat something. You don’t look good.”

I sensed her crossing the room and out
of some deep survival instinct, my arms swung up as I tried to cover my head.
She grabbed a handful of my shirt, yanking on it until it twisted around my
neck, and dragged me out into the hallway. “Shut up. I will not have a child
lie to me and think she can get away with behaving like a tramp.”

She pushed me through the open bathroom
door across the hall. I stumbled onto the tile, standing in front of the shower
tub. She pointed a chubby finger at me. “Stay right here,” she demanded. “When
I come back, you better be right here.”

I shivered, crossing my arms over my
chest and nodding. I swallowed back tears, unsure of what she was going to do.
Why was I in the bathroom?

She left and she was gone for so long
that I thought maybe she had forgotten about me. Did she mean for me to wait in
the bathroom all day? Where was Marie? Was she hiding or did she already leave?

Clunking sounds erupted from the
hallway. I recognized the sound of the stool scraping against the wood floor as
she pushed it forward. I sighed, feeling a bit better. If she wanted me to sit
in the bathroom on the stool, that would be better for me, too. She usually
made me sit in the kitchen. Upstairs I wouldn’t have to be so paranoid looking
over my shoulder. I could text with Victor and the others for a while until I
was released. I could probably get up and walk around, too. That wouldn’t be so
bad.

She pushed the stool through the
doorway. She threw it at me. I ducked, holding up my arms as the wood hit me
across my shoulder. “You will not,” she screamed at me, “leave here. I
absolutely can’t believe you are making me do this.” Her eyes were wide and
wild. She pointed at the bathtub. “Put the chair in there.”

With shaking hands, I pulled back the
curtain of the shower, putting the stool on the floor of the tub. It wobbled a
little as the bottom of the tub was uneven.

“Sit,” she said.

I carefully climbed in, putting my butt
in the seat and placing my feet on the wood supports. I was confused as to why
she wanted me in here but wasn’t sure what else to do.

She held out a couple of thick cords and
my eyes bulged out of my head. I remembered them from when we moved. We’d used
them to strap a couple of boxes to the top of the car.

She gripped my arm, twisting it around
until I almost toppled from the stool. I corrected myself, and she wrenched my
hands around my back. She weaved the cord between one of the spokes of the
stool behind me and she twisted the rope around my wrists. She tied off the
cord around a slat well outside of my reach. I tested the cord, pulling against
it. I was tied to the chair and wouldn’t be able to get up without bringing it
with me.

She used the other cord around my
ankles, interweaving the rope on another spoke of the chair. I shivered hard,
suppressing tears. Now I wouldn’t be able to get up at all. I was already
wobbling to keep balanced. If I tilted too far one way or another, I could
easily fall over, hurting myself.

When she was done, she stood back. I
swallowed, uncomfortable and worried the guys now wouldn’t hear from me for
hours if she left me here as long as she usually did. I wasn’t sure I could
reach my phone.

And no one was around to save me. Marie
was gone. My father wouldn’t be home for days. If she forgot about me this
time, I had no one to help.