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“Fucking dramatic cunt.” He looks at his friends. “Did you find it?”

They shake their heads.

Dylan reaches for me, and I try to kick him. He grabs my ankle and flips me onto my stomach and laughs.

He starts feeling my pockets. “Where the fuck is your wallet?” Then he thinks about it. “Bedroom! Check her shit in the bedroom.”

Shit.

“Grandma,” I shout, but I can’t see her. I hear the footsteps going down the hallway.

Dylan shoves my face into the couch, and I use all my strength to not let him smother me again. He sits on my back, and I’m completely helpless.

“Get the fuck off me, Dylan!” I shriek.

“You wanted to do this the hard way,” he says. “This is what you asked for.”

I try to get him off, but he keeps shoving my head deeper into the couch. So much so that I can’t breathe again. I keep trying to turn my head, but he’s not letting me.

14

Four Letters

Rafe

Dinner started at four, and it’s eight-fifteen, and it still isn’t over.

My father’s dinners don’t end. They just move to the next room. The turkey was in the dining room under the chandelier my mother had cleaned for the occasion, at the long table with the expensive dishes she saves for this occasion. Dessert was in the same room, three kinds of pie that nobody touched because Graham Ashby’s wife is doing a thing where she doesn’t eat sugar this year. And now it’s coffee and brandy at the table, with the plates still there and the candles burned down halfway. Graham Ashby is talking to my father about a company in Florida that’s going to be worth something in eighteen months, and my father is nodding the way he nods when he already knows.

I’m wearing the navy. I’m sitting where my mother put me, next to Caroline, who’s been asking me polite questions about hockey for four hours and has gotten polite answers to all of them. When somebody says my name, I look up. When somebody asks me something, I answer it. I’m doing everything right. I’m physically here.

The rest of me has been across town since six-thirty last night.

I keep replaying it. I can’t stop. The way her voice got smaller every block once we came off the bridge, like somebody was turning down a dial. The way she pulled the seatbelt tight across her chest, both hands, like it was something to hold onto. That gray car with the garbage bag taped over the window. How fast she said no when I asked if her cousin being there was bad. How she sat in my passenger seat with the engine running and didn’t move, for a long time, staring at the front door of her own grandmother’s house like she didn’t want to go in.

I’ll be fine.

I’ve heard that voice before. And I left her there anyway. I’ve been pissed at myself about that since I pulled out of her driveway. I sat outside until she was inside. I texted her. She said yes and just now, and I said okay.

I’ve checked her location four times today. Five. It doesn’t matter. Same house. Same little blue dot on the east side of town, sitting still.

She’s fine.

She said she’s fine. She’s with her grandmother. It’s Thanksgiving. She’s fine.

I don’t believe it once.

My phone buzzes against my thigh under the table.

My father looks at me down the length of the table. One look. The one that means not here. Graham Ashby keeps talking about business.

I take it out anyway and look down at it in my lap.

Tessa: Help.

Everything stops. Not like a figure of speech. My hearing changes. The room goes far away, the way the rink does when you take a hit the wrong way and the crowd turns into an ocean. Graham Ashby’s still talking. My mother laughs at something. Somebody’s spoon clinks against a cup. The candles move. And it’s all happening at the other end of a long tunnel, and down at this end, there’s just me and one word on a screen.

Help.