Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

W hen Mom and Max came downstairs, his face was bleeding again, so I got out my first aid kit and cleaned up the scrapes on his cheek to start with. It was better than thinking about Darius. I did not want to think about Darius; I loved Darius, but just no if he wouldn't listen to me. I iced Max's bruised lump, and he said manly men didn't use ice except in a drink, which made me laugh, which was good.

When I was finished cleaning the scrape, I said, "Do you need a cone to keep from scratching it?"

"Funny girl," Max said, and I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

I really don't want him to leave.

Mom made kid food for lunch—toasted cheese and tomato soup—except she uses three kinds of cheese in her sandwiches, too, so it's really not kid food. Except it was what I ate when I was a kid, so it was comforting. Then she made Max go back upstairs and rest, which was good because even after toasted cheese and tomato soup and all my good patch-up work, he still looked like screaming hell.

Then I went back to work in what I was calling the library—sorting the books, cleaning the shelves and the window—which was kind of fun because I could really see a difference. So much great light. Something was going right. I was finishing off the last bookcase when I heard somebody come in. I went out to see who it was since we were closed and, with none of the lights on in the front part of the shop, only saw a tall, dark guy heading for the kitchen.

"Hey," I said, and he turned, and it was Marley.

"There you are." He came toward me. "Can I talk to you?"

"About what?" I was not in a talking mood.

"Darius," he said.

"No." I turned and went into the other side of the store and then turned toward the back. To the library. I liked the library.

It felt safe.

"He's worried about you," Marley said, following me.

That made me mad, so I turned on him. "He's worried I'm not doing what he wants. He's upset that I'm not following his plan. He just tells me I'm wrong when I tell him what I want. He's not worried about me, he's worried about his future ."

Marley shook his head. "He just wants what's best?—"

"For him, " I said, louder than I'd meant to. "Not what's best for me ." I'd leaned forward when my voice went up, and his eyebrows went up, so I retreated a little. "Okay, look, you're not going to college, right?"

"That's different."

"How is it different? How are we different? We just both know what we want to do now, and we know a college degree wouldn't help either of us right now. Maybe later you'll want to be an engineer?—"

He shook his head.

"—but for right now, we know what we want and college is just a waste of time and money."

"You and I are not the same," Marley said.

"How are we different? I've known you since I was nine years old and you were ten. We grew up in the same place, had the same teachers, hung out with the same people; hell, Marley, you and I are more alike than Darius and me. He half killed himself to get into Harvard, not just college, Harvard , and you and I don't even want a state school."

"Not the same," Marley said stubbornly.

"Why? Because I'm white and you're Latino? When has that ever mattered to us? Because I have a mother and you don't? You have a father and I don't. I don't get it. I do not get it at all ."

My voice was too loud. I was getting upset again. I could feel all the anger rise, all the fear, and none of it was for Marley, he was a good guy.

" I'm sorry ," I told him, close to tears again and furious that I was close to tears. "I'm kind of screwed up right now. I'm not yelling at you."

"I know," he said.

I felt myself tense. " How could you possibly know? "

He looked at me steadily for a moment, and then he sat down on one of the tables there. "When my mother was killed, my father went out to find her murderers and didn't come back. My grandfather came the next morning and told us to fill a backpack and brought us to the US. It was a rough trip, and he got sicker and sicker. He got us into the country, across the border, but he couldn't travel anymore, so he gave us all the food and water he had, and a letter with an address on it and directions to find the guy the envelope was addressed to. We said no, we wouldn't leave him, but when we woke up in the morning, he was gone. The directions were to here, to Rocky Start, and we made it, although we'd run out of food, and we'd had some pretty bad scares along the way." He looked off. "We met some bad people on the way. And some good people who helped us. They can surprise you both ways."

"How old were you?" My tears had stopped, I was that appalled for him.

"Reggie was almost nine, I was ten. We got to town and Coral was baking so we followed the smell. Reggie thought she might feed kids, and we really were starving."

"And Coral did, of course," I said.

Marley grinned. "Always. Good people. We knocked on the door at Ecstasy and asked if she knew where Pike Bernard was, that we had a letter for him, and she took us in and piled food on plates for us and called Pike, and he came and read the letter and said, ‘Okay.' He told Coral we were his kids now, and he took us out to the cabin, and we've been there ever since. But it wasn't easy, we still don't know what happened to anybody in our family or how our grandfather knew Pike, but Pike knew we were screwed up from the trip and from losing everybody and being in a new country with somebody we didn't know, and he gave us time. We were pretty bad for a while, just really scared and sad and mad at the world, but he waited and we got better."

"So this goes away?" I said, desperate to believe it would. "I'll be normal again if I just wait?"

"No," Marley said, and his eyes were so kind I almost cried again. "It never all goes away. I still dream about my mother. I still tense up when I hear loud voices. I still wake up sometimes and I don't know where I am. But it's bearable. It's not the hell it was when I was a kid. I know I have Pike and Coral behind me, that my brother will always be by my side. You have your mom, and Coral and Pike and Darius, and I bet Max is in there somewhere." He must have seen something in my face because he said, "Did I ever tell you how I met Max? Reggie fired a warning shot, which he didn't mean to do, and Max knocked me out with his gun."

" What? "

"It's okay now." Marley grinned at me. "Just a communication problem. Plus, we were both high, which was just plain dumb. I've recently realized it's kind of dumb for me to be high anytime, to be honest. I need a clear head to get what I want." Then he stopped smiling. "You are going to be okay."

And you know, when he said that, I thought, I'm going to be okay.

"One day at a time," he said.

"Mei is so lucky to have you," I said.

He shrugged. "She has plans. Big plans. My plans . . . are different."

"I know the feeling," I said, and he nodded. So I took a deep breath and said, "I need food," and Marley said, "You sound just like your mom," which made me laugh, and then we went to Coral's for something warm with sugar, and I was okay for a while.

I mean, I'm not okay.

But I will be.