Damage Done (10 page)

“Okay.” Her knuckles on the hand clutching the phone were pale, too. “I hope this…helps you.”

My own hands balled into fists. “Me too.”

As I got out of the car, my heart was hammering and my hands were shaking. I pushed my shoulders back, though, and lifted my chin high.
Spence wouldn’t hurt me. If he wanted to hurt me, he could’ve done it already.
I repeated it like a mantra, a rap, against the pounding in my ears.

I gave three quick taps on the door. The front of the house was streaked with brownish-green mold; the blinds were drawn tight, and part of the gutter dangled off the roof over the stoop, loosing a steady drip of rusty water onto the concrete.

The door eased open a crack, and all my muscles tensed. “Julia Vann, it’s about time. I’ve been waiting.”

Not Joseph Goodman. It
was
Spence, the lenses of his glasses shining through the crack. I craned my neck to peer inside and noticed the chain lock was on. Almost like he was the one who was scared.

Of me.

The idea filled me with enough confidence to speak. “You’ve been following me,” I said. “I’m here to tell you to stop. To leave me alone. Or I’ll call the police.”

Spence let out a dry laugh, though he didn’t unlock the chain. “It’s been surprisingly hard to get you alone, Julia—”

“And my name isn’t Julia anymore.” I talked over him. “It’s Lucy. If you’re going to talk to me, if you’re going to come to my school and invade my space, my name is Lucy Black.” My heart beat so fast I thought I might pass out, just give up, and crumple to the stoop. “And it doesn’t seem like you’ve been waiting a long time to talk to me, considering every time I get near you, you run away like a coward. Even now you’re hiding behind that door. What are you so afraid of?” My voice was heavy with sarcasm. “I’m a teenage girl and you’re a grown man. Are you worried I might pull your hair? Scratch you?”

“No,” Spence said. He sounded thoughtful. “That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t care.” I was on a roll, gathering words as I tumbled, a snowball rolling through newsprint. “Just stay the hell away from me or there’ll be hell to pay. For you.” In case that wasn’t clear.

I turned to go, my chin held high, shaking in the breeze like the upper stories of a skyscraper.

“You sound just like your brother.”

I froze. Being careful, very careful, I turned back around. One careless motion and I might shatter. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve been trying to get you alone for a reason, you know,” Spence said. I could tell he was being careful, very careful, too. “You didn’t wonder why?”

I didn’t care. I didn’t
care.
Spence was part of Julia Vann’s life, like Ryan, and I was Lucy Black now. Lucy Black didn’t have to wonder why. “I just want you to leave me alone,” I hissed.

Alane was still far away in her car; she couldn’t have heard Spence’s comment. I couldn’t let her hear any of Spence’s comments. Maybe it had been a mistake to have her drive me here. “I don’t want anything more to do with you or with Elkton.” I turned again to go.

“He said to tell you he loved you.”

I stopped and swiveled again. “Why are you doing this?” My voice broke. Somewhere distant I heard a car door bang shut, and the sound reverberated through me. “I’ve been through enough. Just leave me alone.”

Spence’s face was grim, his chin set. “He told me last week.”

Everything came to a stop. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,
Julia Vann.
”

“Lucy?” Alane, jogging across the lawn, face flushed, held her phone before her like a shield. What had she heard? “What’s he doing? Do I need to call nine-one-one?”

He slammed the door shut. Of course he did. I wasn’t alone anymore.

“No,” I said. “Go back to the car.”

Alane stopped in her tracks. “Are you okay?”

It couldn’t be. I would’ve known. Hell, the world would’ve known. It would’ve been in every newspaper, on every breaking-news alert, on everybody’s social network. If Ryan Vann had woken from his coma, even Lucy Black would’ve known within minutes.

And if not Lucy…Julia would have known. Julia would have known in her bones, because she knew everything about her brother. She would’ve felt his awakening as her own, a heightened consciousness, a nagging feeling of “something isn’t right.”

I launched myself at the closed front door and pounded on it with my fists. “Open the door!” I screamed. Words scraped at the inside of my throat. “Get back out here, you coward!”

“Lucy! Lucy, stop.” Hands grabbed at my back, but they couldn’t pull me away from the door. I was a girl possessed, the Big Bad Wolf blowing, blowing, blowing in vain at the pig’s brick house.

Alane’s shriek brought me back to earth. I spun, panting, to see that I’d thrown her off me in my flailing. I’d pushed her right off the stoop. She was trying to lift herself up, though from the wincing as she tried to put weight on her left leg, it wasn’t easy. Fury drained out of me into a puddle around my feet. “Oh my God,” I said, and jumped down beside her. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“My ankle,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again, my heart fluttering in panic. She had to forgive me. “We’ll go to the hospital. I’ll take you to the hospital.” I glanced behind me, fleetingly, at Spence’s door. I wasn’t done with him, but I wasn’t going to learn any more today. And I wasn’t going to play into his game; look what he’d done to me with a few carefully chosen sentences. He was probably lying anyway. My brother was never supposed to wake up.

Alane snorted. “
You’re
going to drive me to the hospital?”

I leaned over so she could put her arm around my shoulders, so she could use me like a crutch. She couldn’t be mad at someone who let her use her as a crutch. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s my left ankle,” she said. Again, no forgiveness. “I can still drive.”

The drive to the hospital in Sunny Vale was a short and silent one. Alane tried to call her mom but got voice mail. I spent the ride staring out the window, Spence’s words tumbling over and over through my mind. He had to be lying, I told myself. He had to be playing some kind of game with me. My brother couldn’t really have woken up.

I sat with Alane as we waited in the emergency room; I figured it was the least I could do. I kept the conversation light, talking about Michael’s legs and Ella’s new haircut, but Alane stuck to one-word answers and head shakes and nods. Still, she let me go with her into the examination room, sit beside her, and hold her hand as the doctor poked and prodded at her ankle and she sucked in her breath.

“Looks like a sprain,” the doctor said finally. “I’ll wrap it up for you. You should try to stay off it for a few weeks, but you won’t need crutches or anything. How’d you do it?”

Alane opened her mouth, but I spoke over her. “She fell,” I said loudly. “Tripped. On a root.” I couldn’t let her say anything that might expose what we’d been doing.

She let me talk for her but shrugged off my arm the second the door closed behind the doctor. “What the hell, Lucy?” she said. “Or is it Julia?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said slowly. I thought I might vomit.

“Your ex called you Julia Vann,” Alane said. “Did you change your name when you moved here?”

My breath caught in my throat. I could bash her over the head with that IV stand so hard she’d lose her memory. I should. Because all she had to do was Google
Julia Vann
plus
California
and she’d see everything. I was results one through seventeen, where I was briefly interrupted by a Julia Vann who had died of cancer at age eleven in San Francisco and a high school–aged Julia Vann who was agonizing over whether to go to college at Stanford for no money or play volleyball at UCLA with a full scholarship, and then it was back to me. “No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I heard him. Why did you change your name?”

My mouth opened and closed. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her everything. But it was risking too much. I couldn’t handle seeing her face dim as she looked at me. Nobody in Elkton had wanted anything to do with us. I couldn’t handle the same thing happening here. But I couldn’t hide anymore, either. She already knew the truth, or would as soon as she Googled me.

“I have to go.” I pushed the words out through tears, and turned and walked out.

I was really, really, really going to miss her.

Still, my mind was whirling with what Spence had said. It was a blessing, kind of, because it drove away the thought that I’d probably just lost the best friend I’d ever had. I had to call my parents and tell them we’d have to leave. Again. I knew for a fact that my mother couldn’t take it, couldn’t take the looks, couldn’t take the reporters. She’d scrub her way straight through the downstairs carpet and into her own grave.

I couldn’t call them now, though, not when I was still shaking. So I called Michael. “Hey,” I said. My voice was shaking, too. “Are you done with swimming? I kind of need a ride.”

He didn’t ask questions. When his car rounded the curve of the visitors’ lot, I felt as if I were going to burst into tears for the second time in only a few days. For the second time ever. “Thank you,” I said as I climbed in. “Alane sprained her ankle. And…” If I was going to be leaving town anyway, why bother telling the truth? “Her mom is there with her, and she told me I could leave. I have a ton of homework.”

“I hope she’s okay,” he said. “You want to go home?”

“Yes, home,” I said. Home, for however long it would be mine.

We kept ourselves busy with inane small talk (“How was the swim meet?” “How was band?” The farthest from “How are you feeling as your life crumbles around you?” as we could get) the whole ride home. All talk, though, was immediately extinguished when we saw what was waiting for us in my driveway.

Both my parents’ cars. And a black car, smooth and sleek, license plate
3
RTR
779
.

Re: Ryan Vann, age 10

It hasn’t been two weeks since my last session with Ryan, but his parents called in this morning to arrange an emergency session. Fortunately I had a cancellation this afternoon and was free. They practically dragged him into the waiting room, accompanied by his sister, Julia. There were black smudges around his hairline, like he’d been covered in tar or black paint and someone had tried to scrub it away.

“What happened?” I couldn’t help but ask, right there in the waiting room. I should’ve known better. The parents did. They didn’t speak until the five of us were safely in my office. I sat at my desk, the parents in the chairs across from me; the twins sat on the couch, their heads bowed together. The girl shook like a leaf, but Ryan was, as always, calm and still as stone, staring at the floor. His sister was whispering in his ear, her hand on his, like she was trying to calm him. “She should be trying to calm herself,” I thought before turning back to the parents.

“Ryan decided it would be a good idea to light a little girl’s tree house on fire,” the father said, his teeth clenched. “The little girl was inside at the time. She barely escaped.”

Ryan’s cheeks were working unconsciously, like he was grinding his teeth. He was nervous, I was surprised to see. He’d never appeared nervous before. The sister seemed to have taken note, too; she was patting his hand now, and while I couldn’t hear her, from the movement of her lips it seemed as if she was telling him everything was going to be okay.

“The girl’s family isn’t going to press charges,” the mother said, her voice shaking. “The poor thing was traumatized enough. We need to—you need to make this stop, Doctor. Fix him.”

I literally had to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out with
I’ve been trying to treat him, and you’ve been stymieing me at every turn!
“First of all, there’s no fixing to be done, because he isn’t broken,” I lied. Even then, I knew I was lying. “Second, we all need to do our part. You. The school therapist. And Ryan. We can’t help Ryan if he doesn’t want to be helped.”

The father slapped a hand onto Ryan’s shoulder so hard it reverberated around the walls of my office. “Ryan does want to be helped,” he said. “Ryan does want to change. Don’t you, Ryan?”

Ryan wouldn’t meet my eyes. He wouldn’t meet anybody’s eyes, unless the tips of his shoes had suddenly sprouted a pair. “Yes,” he whispered.

“Good.” The father stood, and the mother followed suit. The mother turned and gestured to the sister, who stood reluctantly, her eyes on her brother. “We’ll leave him in your capable hands, Doctor.”

That was the problem. “Wait,” I said. “Can I speak with Julia for a moment? Alone?”

The father nodded, and the mother followed suit. They didn’t even ask the girl. “We’ll see you in a minute,” the father said. “Come on, Ryan.” Ryan followed his parents out the door, turning for one last over-the-shoulder glance at his sister. She didn’t stop looking at him until the door had closed; then she turned and looked at me.

“Ryan said you wouldn’t drug him,” she told me, like she was a teacher telling me I’d passed a test. Now that her brother was gone, she’d stopped shaking. “He was really happy about that. Thanks.”

So he told her what happened in my sessions. The girl sat back down, and I sat in order to better address her on her level. “Julia, your brother needs help,” I said. “I’m sure you know that by now, right?”

She was kicking her feet in front of her—left, right, left, right—and watching her toes. “He kills things sometimes,” she said. “But he said he’d never hurt me. Ever.”

“He burned down a little girl’s tree house,” I said. Left, right, left, right. “He could’ve hurt her very badly. Could you please look at me, Julia?”

She met my eyes but didn’t stop kicking. “He does bad things,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “But you can help me help him. May I ask you a favor, Julia?”

She blinked at me. “What?”

“If he’s going to get better, he needs to do his therapy,” I said. “I think that if you ask him to go to his therapy, he’ll do it. Will you do that for me?”

She shrugged bony shoulders. “I guess. I really want him to get better.”

I could’ve hugged her; I didn’t, because that would have been unprofessional. “I promise I will not give up on your brother,” I told her. “I will be patient, and I will talk to him, and I will help—”

Something hit me in the shin, and I flinched. She’d kicked me. The girl had kicked me. She was studying my leg, the way it jerked, with a look of mild surprise. “Oops,” she said. “I didn’t mean to kick you. Sorry.”

I smiled reassuringly at her. “It’s okay,” I said. “And thank you for your help, Julia.”

She hopped to her feet, a little smile on her face. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Are we done? I have to go to the bathroom.”

“We’re done,” I said. “Would you send Ryan back in, please?”

She bounded out the door without a second glance. A moment later, Ryan shuffled in, his eyes on the floor. “Look at me, please,” I said.

The
please
did it; as I was saying the first part of my sentence, I could see his jaw tighten, his fists clench, but everything loosened when I said that magic word. He brought his chin up to look me in the eye. He was small for his age, and thin, and the overall effect was that of an impoverished chimney sweep. If only that were his problem; I could toss a few dollars at him and send him on his way. “Listen to me, Ryan William Vann,” I said, doing my best to sound strong and commanding. “I promise, I swear, I will help you, or my name isn’t Dr. Atlas Spence.”

“You won’t give up?” His voice was tiny, afraid. “Never? You won’t give up on me?”

“Never,” I assured him. “We will talk and we will work and we will make things better.”

He looked back down and muttered something.

I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like “That’s what I was afraid of.”