5. Grey Girl

FIVE

Grey Girl

I had crossed a line.

I could feel the whiskey in my stomach turning sour and threatening to come back up again.

I was at Duke's trailer—he was celebrating something, but I didn't know what. He had turned up to my trailer after a month of silence, telling me that he had broken up with his girlfriend. I didn't really care, but then he asked me if I wanted to hang out with him and his brothers, and I suddenly found that I did care.

I liked the idea of seeing his younger brothers again. There was something easy and simple about them. I wondered what it was as I ignored everyone at Duke's party, looking around for another drink.

Marcus had seemed happy to see me when I arrived, pushing his dark hair back from his forehead and grinning at me, his arm around a girl, before turning back to his conversation—but we hadn't spoken. The youngest brother, Smith, was nowhere to be seen.

"Here." Duke pushed a plastic cup into my hand before banding his arm around my waist and dragging me to a chair.

I sat in his lap, drinking whiskey that seemed strangely out of place in a plastic cup while people hovered around us in a circle. They were all older than me, though a few of Marcus' friends lingered around, too. When Duke laughed at something a guy had said to him, his hand cupping the back of my neck, I knew that I had crossed a line.

I felt like vomiting.

"Need the bathroom," I muttered, slipping from his lap.

I stumbled inside, trying to recall how many times my cup had been refilled. Counting was difficult, so I stopped to lean against the table. Someone came up behind me, a small hand on the middle of my back.

"Grey-girl?" a feminine voice asked. "You okay?"

I straightened up and turned. Her hand fell away. I knew who she was at once; her arresting dark eyes were the same shape and tilt as Duke's, and her soft black curls reminded me of Marcus.

"You're the sister," I said .

"Yeah," she replied, a grin lighting her face. "And you're plastered, babe."

"Sorry."

She shook her head, the grin remaining. "No problem. Want to go for a walk? Might be better than locking yourself in here."

"Okay."

She gripped my arm loosely, leading me out of the trailer and around to the path that twisted toward the train tracks. Duke's gathering had been a relatively quiet one, so it didn't take long to fade out of earshot.

"I'm Jean, by the way," she said, as soon as the silence wrapped around me.

"I'm Grey-girl," I returned.

Jean made a face, twisting her features until she was transformed from a soulful beauty into … an awkward teenage girl. "Sorry about that. It's how they mentioned you to me— they being my brothers."

"It's okay, I don't mind."

"Your name's Mika, right?"

I nodded.

"Mind if I call you Grey? It kinda suits you."

"Uh."

She laughed, the sound genuinely amused. "Don't take it the wrong way. Grey is my favourite colour. It's the only colour that isn't attached to an emotion. Grey just is . "

"My teachers think I'm detached," I spilled out. The whiskey was probably making me chatty, but Jean didn't seem so bad a person, so I allowed her to lead us further out, closer to the train tracks.

"My teachers complain that I'm a Moreno," she replied. I cast her a confused look, and she shook her head. "That's my last name."

"Is it a bad thing?"

"It's not a good thing. You know my brother's kind of a bad guy, right?"

"Which one?"

"The one you're fucking."

I didn't bother to correct her. She shrugged her shoulders a little, stepping onto the tracks, facing the direction I walked to get to school. She seemed very small to me. She stood there, adrift, and I wanted to stand next to her. I wanted to understand , which was more than I had wanted for a long time.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She glanced to the side, seeing that I had moved to watch the tracks with her. She examined the curve of metal as it crawled into the distance, disappearing into darkness.

"Nothing." She blinked, surprised at my question, but then she paused, and her eyes narrowed on mine. She took a deep breath, and then another. "Everything. "

"Yeah." I kicked at a rock by my feet, looking away. "Me too."

"Hey!" Marcus called out to us, appearing some way down the path that led back into the trailer park. "I was wondering where you went."

I didn't know which one of us he was talking to, but I replied anyway. "Hey."

He stopped by the edges of the tracks, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes shifting between us.

"Bored of the party already?" he asked.

Jean made an almost silent scoffing sound. "That wasn't a party, Marc. That was a chance for people to kiss Duke's ass."

Marcus shrugged, but the expression on his face was troubled. "Yeah, well, anyway … I'm hungry, wanna get some food?"

"Yeah." Jean stepped off the tracks, pulling her dark hair into a ponytail. They began to walk off together, but they both paused after a few steps, turning back to me.

"Are you coming?" Jean asked.

I didn't know how to answer. I was uncertain all of a sudden. I couldn't label the emotions that stole the words from my tongue. Insecurity, maybe, or guilt. They didn't deserve a friend like me. I didn't deserve another friend like all the friends that came before them. I realised they were forcing me to make a decision—and I had been avoiding decisions of all kinds for months now.

"Come on," Marcus coaxed, his hand extended. "I know where to get the best pizza around here. Seriously, you'll die."

Jean tilted her head to the side, her eyes seeing straight through me. "It's just food, Grey."

"Okay," I mumbled, stepping from the tracks to follow them.

I learned that Marcus and Jean weren't anything like their elder brother. Jean might have had his eyes, and Marcus might have shared his build, but they were as different on the inside as they were similar on the outside. Jean didn't actually eat any of the pizza Marcus paid for; she just sat there, her eyes always wandering to the window, only occasionally contributing to the conversation. Marcus acted as though his sister's strange attitude was nothing out of the ordinary, prompting me to do the same. He spoke about how Smith wanted to become an engineer—the first of the family to try for a degree. Marcus himself wanted to work in his dad's fast food shop, because he liked food.

"No." Marcus shook his head, a wry smile twisting his lips as he answered something I had said. "I don't just like food , Grey. I'm good at food. Great at food. I'm going to turn Dad's place into a chain." He tapped the side of his head, winking at me. "I'll go to night school after working the day. I have it all planned out."

"What are you going to do?" Jean asked, eyeing me over the table.

This was the moment.

I had a similar moment a while ago with a girl from my class. She had visited me at the institution, sitting down at my small, shared study space, her hands wrapped around a takeaway cup of coffee—she had only brought one, so I sat there with a Styrofoam cup of tea. She had spoken about an upcoming test, and I told her I didn't care. Not to be rude, but to be honest. She changed the subject, but I didn't care about whatever the next topic was.

I didn't care about the future. Period.

"I don't want to look that far ahead," I eventually admitted, my eyes on my fingers as I gripped the edge of the table.

Marcus and Jean were sitting opposite me in the booth. We were in the only all-night diner in town, which Marcus had been surprisingly right about. Their pizza was great. The booth seats were faded and red, a worn-thin leather that edged into the corners of my vision, reminding me.

The red wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

"You don't want to go to college?" Marcus asked, curious. "You don't have any … I don't know … interests?"

"I like walking." God , I sounded like an idiot.

"How come you're not on the track team?" Jean asked.

"Because she likes walking , idiot, not running." Marcus was rolling his eyes.

"You should join the track team," Jean insisted, ignoring her brother. She still wore the same expression, but there was a touch of concern in her features now. She tried to mask it, tried to sound casual. "I'm on it, too. I could talk to the captain if you want. Kells—you probably already know her."

Did I want that?

"Sure." I shrugged.

"Great!" Jean whipped her phone out, sending off a text right then and there, before shoving Marcus' shoulder to get him to move from the booth. "Let's go. Smith is looking for us."

"Smith was at the party?" I asked, sliding out from the booth to follow her. "I didn't see him."

"He was probably hiding." Marcus appeared behind me, herding us toward the rusted yellow sedan parked outside the diner. "Those guys aren't the sort of people you want paying attention to you. And yeah, that's supposed to be a warning. "

"Duke's your brother," I replied evenly, sliding into the backseat.

Jean snorted. "That doesn't make him a good guy."

"If you care about yourself at all, Grey-girl, you won't get mixed up with him." Marcus swallowed, shook his head briefly, and started the car.

The engine turned over noisily, eliminating the need to reply. It was better that way. They didn't need to hear my answer. I stayed silent as we returned to Summer Estate, and they fell into a matching silence as we approached Duke's trailer. The number of people had dwindled, but Duke was in the same place, on the same chair. There was a girl on his lap, sitting the same way I had been sitting, probably drinking from the same cup I had been drinking from. She glared at me as I walked past, following Jean.

Duke grabbed my arm, halting my progress. Jean turned around, her dark eyes landing on her brother's hand for a moment before flicking up to my face. She sighed, continuing on without me.

"Where'd you go?" Duke asked me.

"Probably back to mommy and daddy," the girl in his lap sneered. "Did you sneak out tonight, princess?"

I blinked, deciding to ignore them both. Duke wasn't being mean to me, but I didn't need to deal with his drama right now. I gently tugged my arm, prompting him to release me, and I started after Jean again. He stood, setting the other girl on her feet and grabbing the back of my jacket. He stepped up to me, his hands sliding around to my stomach, his chin lowering to my shoulder.

"Ignore her, Grey-girl."

The name didn't sound the same, coming from him. With Marcus and Jean, it had sounded like a nickname, casual and meaningless. With Duke, it held meaning. It was what he liked about me. The fact that I was grey, emotionless, reaction-less.

"Should I ignore you too?" I asked.

He chuckled, pulling me further back against him. "If you want. Let's go for a walk."

"I just went for a walk."

"Let's go inside."

"Why?"

An older guy stopped directly in front of me, his eyes drifting over my shoulder to Duke. "Dude." His attention snapped back to me for a moment before re-focussing. "We gotta talk."

Duke jostled me to one side, slinging his arm around my neck roughly. "She doesn't matter, you can talk."

The other guy narrowed his eyes on me again, but then shrugged. "I just got a text from Cassidy—we need to drop off a package. "

"I can't fucking drive right now," Duke growled. "Go get my brother. Tell him I'll pay him."

"He left already."

Duke released me, swearing again. He grabbed the guy and dragged him away, muttering quietly to him. I decided that it was time for me to leave. I walked back to my RV and grabbed my bathroom bag, making my way to the amenities block. A scruffy little shadow prowled through the gardens after me. Satan waited outside the block while I showered, occasionally meowing in annoyance.

After my shower, I slept on the couch again while Satan took the bed. It was not an easy sleep. I woke with a splitting headache, which lasted the next two days, forcing me to finish up the school week in a state of pain. Nicholai didn't work on Thursdays and Fridays, and I tried to tell myself that the pain had nothing to do with him, but my head wasn't willing to listen.

For some inexplicable reason, I needed to see him.