Suddenly, a heavy hand falls on my shoulder. I look into Cameron’s grim face. “You’re on one,” he says. He looks angry. “When’s the last time you slept?”
I don’t respond. I can hear rain pounding against the windows. Even though I’m totally dry, I swear I can feel it running down my spine, soaking my shirt. I shudder.
Cameron sighs. “All right. Come on.” He keeps his hand on my shoulder as he propels me to the front door. “You can’t drive like this. I’ll take you home.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he ignores me, kicking the front door open. Rain falls steadily overhead as he shoves me through the wet car park to his truck. He yanks open the door. “Get in,” he orders.
I don’t. I don’t know what to say. “I’m fine—” I start.
Cameron snaps. “Get in thefuckingcar, Alec!” he bellows, his voice reverberating around the small car park.
I slide into the leather seat. He slams the door shut behind me.
SEVENTY
ALEC
Ten minutes later, Cameron pulls up outside the farmhouse. For a moment, we just sit in silence. Through the falling rain, I can make out the blurred shape of the ruined lambing shed. Fraser and I haven’t had any time to fix it yet, and the damaged roof yawns like a jagged open mouth.
I clear my throat. “How’s the new job?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he says, grip tight on the steering wheel.
Right.
I expect Cameron to kick me out and drive off, but he pulls his key out of the ignition and steps out of the car. Hope lurches in my stomach as I join him. We walk in silence up to the farmhouse.
He gives me a sidelong look as he shoves his key in the front door. “Still have stuff to collect,” he mutters. “May as well do it now.”
The hope dies. “Right,” I say, following him inside the house.
It’s dark and shadowy inside. With Summer gone, Fraser and I haven’t been bothering to light a fire. There’s crap everywhere—misprinted posters, half-eaten plates of food, empty mugs. Cameron surveys it all with a cold eye.
“Fraser here?”
“I don’t know,” I say. He avoids me whenever we’re both at home.
He’s furious with me. I understand it. I’d hate me too, if I were him.
Cameron heads to his room. A few minutes later, he comes back with two bags full of clothes thrown over his shoulders. I get a sudden flash of memory from eighteen years ago.
I’m seventeen, working in the lambing barn. It’s been three months since my dad took me out of school. He spent all morning having me euthanise sick sheep to “toughen me up,” and now he’s having me reclean the lambing shed. I’m so tired and sad I want to stop existing.
There’s a crunch in the hay behind me. Cameron’s lanky teenage frame appears. He looks over his shoulder to check no one saw him sneak in, then he pulls a sandwich out of his bag and hands it over.
“Here,” he says without preamble, following it up with a stack of library books. “And I brought you books. Hide them. Fraser and I are going to ask your dad if we can work here after school and on the weekends.”
I’m horrified. “What? No?—”
“It’ll help,” Cameron insists. “He’s off his head. But he won’t treat you like this in front of us. He knows we’d tell someone. And he’s too greedy to turn down the under-eighteen minimum wage rate, I’d bet. Or we’ll ask to do an unpaid apprenticeship. There’s no way he’ll say no to that.”
I look down at the sandwich in my shaking hands. “Just forget about me. You need to study.”
His eyes are hard. “We’re not going to forget about you. Get over yourself.”
Cameron was right. It did help. With them on the farm, my dad mellowed out, and things went back to how they werebefore I was pulled out of school. God knows what would have happened if they hadn’t done it. They could have just given up on me.
In the present, Cameron’s face is stony. I wonder if he’s remembering the same thing. Decades of friendship seem to unspool and hang in the air between us.
