Tavi turns a smile to me. It’s worried, but it feels more real than just about anything about her. “You’d be surprised what you can pay to make—ah, I mean, yeah, Tokyo sucks.”
“Oh, Dylan, your head’s bleeding on your pillow,” Hannah says.
Tavi cringes, and something deep in my chest that I don’t let out often flexes and growls. She’s not in her normal circles here, and I wasn’t clear enough when I saiddon’t tell them.
Or maybe Tavi Lightly has bigger problems than worrying about a bunch of small-town secrets.
Mom hustles over to grab my head and peer at my wound.“New bandages!”
“Enough.” I wave her away. “It’ll wash.”
“It’s blood.Blood doesn’t wash.”
Hannah slips her arm into Mom’s. “It really does. It’s okay. Here. I’ll go get a clean pillowcase, and you can sit down. I know it’s been a hard day for you. But Dylan’s okay. I promise.”
Tavi’s shrinking back out of the door. She sets the oranges on my dresser. Pebbles whimpers in her purse carrier.
“I guess you’re in good hands,” she says to me. And I don’t buy that smile for a second.
Not when it’s coming with shiny eyes and a wobbly chin.
I don’t get her.
I don’t.
She eats meat and probably chocolate, too, when she’s alone, but in public, she’s a paragon of perfection.
How does she live with herself like that?
And why does she feel like she has to?
Whycan’tshe go live that life she talked about this morning?
And why do I want to dig deeper into that question?
I flip my pillow upside down. “There. No more blood. I’m fine. Just need a littlerest.”
“Don’t give me that look, young man,” Mom says. “You arenot fine.”
She probably has a point.
I’m not fine.
My head hurts.
My heart hurts.
And I can’t go work it off with a pickup game of soccer or in answering emergency plumbing calls.
But there’s one thing Icando.
I toss the sheets back. “I’m going to sit in my garden. Alone.”
“Oh, sweetheart—” Mom starts.
“Nagging’s bad for concussions,” I tell her.
She’s not fazed in the slightest. “I’m your mother. It’s what I do.”
