As I do, his breathing hitches, just for a moment, almost like it’s static on the line or something, but I know it’s not.
Just like that, I know something’s wrong, and a seed of fear takes root in my heart.
Bastien told Dad and now he’s disowned, I think, mind racing. He hit on some homophobe and got beat up.
On the other end of the line, my brother clears his throat.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice tight, high-pitched. I walk for a door, open it, and instead of another cozy, antique-filled room it leads outside, to a brick walkway and a wrought-iron bench. I go through it anyway, too distracted to care.
“Bastien.”
They found Javier.
No. They found Javier’s body.
“Bastien,” I say, ready to scream, shout, tear out my own hair. “Talk!”
“It’s Mom,” he finally says, his voice a ragged whisper. “She was in an accident.”
It sucks the air from my lungs, feels like the floor is opening under me.
“What?” I ask, my voice high-pitched, shaky, the words spilling out of me like floodgates have opened. “Is she okay? What happened? Was it a car accident? Did someone hit her? Was she driving? Who was in the car? Was it —"
“She’s in the hospital, Ollie,” he says, and it sounds like he’s dredging the words up from somewhere deep inside him, against their will. “They’re taking her to surgery, there was a car crash, she was coming home, we don’t know —"
He takes another long breath, and I don’t move a muscle, staring blindly at the brick walkway and the bench and a wall and a few ornamental trees.
“We don’t know,” he finished.
“Is she gonna be okay?” I ask. I know he doesn’t know, but I can’t stop myself from asking. “Tell me she’s gonna be okay.”
“I don’t know,” he whispers.Chapter ThirteenCalebIt’s not your business, I tell myself, hands in my pockets as I pace in front of the window.
You’re her professor and that’s all.
I should go back to the banquet, talk to smart undergrads about the wonderful world of mathematics. I’ve already been in this dark room for too long, anyway. I don’t need anyone reporting back to Gordon that I disappeared two-thirds of the way through the banquet.
But I can’t erase her voice from my head, the way she said what is it, Bastien? then yanked the door to the outside open and practically fled the room.
I’m not psychic, but I know panic when I hear it.
And I know that she hasn’t come back inside yet. Maybe she’s still out there, talking to her brother. Maybe this door doesn’t open from that side.
I give it one more minute, then two, and then I can’t stand it any more and I pull the door open, the uneven old wood scraping over the threshold.
Thalia’s head jerks up, her face still lit from below by the glow of her phone, her cheeks streaked and smeared with black. She’s on her knees, on the grass next to an ugly bench, curled into herself, and I’m already down the uneven stone steps, already next to her, kneeling on the ground.
“What is it?”
She just shakes her head, gasping.
“Thalia,” I say. My knees are an inch from hers and I curl my hand into a fist against the ground, lean on it so I don’t reach out and touch her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, swiping at one eye with the back of her hand, her knuckles coming away streaked with black. “I’m fine, I’m sorry —”
“Bullshit,” I say, and the force of the word makes her look at me, deep brown eyes ringed with black, already puffy and swollen. “Tell me.”
Now there’s a hand cupping her cheek, a thumb wiping away tears and black streaks.
Mine? Mine.
“My mom was in a car accident,” she says, voice shaking.
It’s like my lungs are lined with lead, suddenly too heavy and stiff to let air in or out, the weight of them pulling down in my chest like it’ll sink me to the ground. Then the bolt of horror, quick, brutal, fresh every single time.
And then I make myself breathe, and it’s gone.
“Is she okay?” I ask, and I force myself to sound calm, to sound collected, like I’m capable of being in charge right now.
“No,” Thalia whispers, and she looks away, pushes at one eye with the heel of her hand, swiping black everywhere.
My heart drops like a bullet through a glass of water.
“That was my little brother,” she says, gasping for air, swallowing convulsively. “He thinks they’re taking her into surgery right now but he’s not sure, he’s in the car on the way there from school so he doesn’t really know anything, he doesn’t even know what she’s having surgery on or what kind of surgery or what happened or —"
Thalia hangs her head and a sob explodes through her, fingers tightening on the bench next to her.