Page 87

From Tessa Canten.

The girl who would rather eat Thanksgiving out of a red box alone in a dorm than ask somebody for fucking help. She doesn’t ask for help.

Whatever is happening across town is bad enough that she picked up her phone and asked for help, and of every person in that phone, she picked me.

I open the map. The dot is at her grandmother’s house. Fourteen minutes.

My chair goes back so fast it scrapes the floor.

“Rafferty,” my mother says.

I’m already moving. My coat’s on the bench in the front hall, my keys are in the pocket, and I’m not thinking about anything except the fourteen minutes.

“Where are you going?” my father says.

I don’t answer.

He says it again, sharper, standing up at the head of the table with his napkin still in his hand. “Rafferty. Sit down.”

I stop in the doorway of the dining room. I look back at him. The whole table is looking at me. Graham Ashby with his brandy. Caroline with her hand on her glass. My mom, half out of her chair.

I have never once in my life left my father’s table without being excused. Not once. Not when I was six, not when I was sixteen.

“No,” I say.

And I walk out.

I’m in the car before the front door finishes closing behind me. The engine turns over. The gates take forever, they always take forever, and I sit there with my foot on the brake and my hands on the wheel and watch them swing open an inch at a time. I type with my thumb before they’re all the way open.

Me: Coming.

Then, because she needs to know when.

Me: 12 min.

I call her as soon as I’m through the gates.

It rings. And rings. And goes to voicemail. Hi, this is Tessa, leave a message. Flat, polite, the voice she uses on everybody.

I call again.

Voicemail.

And that’s when it turns. Somewhere between the second ring and the beep, whatever I’m feeling stops being fear and starts being something with teeth. My hands go tight on the wheel. My jaw locks. I take the hill down from our street faster than I’ve ever taken it, and the trees go by in the headlights like somebody’s flicking through pictures.

I don’t do anything stupid. I want to. I don’t. I go fifteen over on the main road and twenty over on the parkway. I run a yellow at the light by the golf course and it’s red by the time I’m through it. I take the turn onto the bridge too hard and feel the back of the car get light for half a second, and I don’t slow down.

What does help mean?

That’s all my brain will give me. Over and over. She didn’t say call me. She didn’t say come get me. She said one word, the biggest one she has, and then she’s not answering her phone.

I’ll be fine.

I see her at the end of a lunch table with her eyes on her tray.

I see a chain on a dorm room door, and a shadow under it, and me on the other side saying I know you’re in there, little Tessa.

I see her in the east stairwell with her bag held against her chest in both arms, and her eyes on the front of my shirt, and my voice saying look at me.