“I’ll see you next week.”
“You will.” Mom’s vow is steel. “I love you, Jason.”
“You too. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I say his name as soon as I hear the click from Mom hanging up. “Jason?” There’s a pause, and I think I’ve waited too long.
“Brooke?”
A sigh of relief slips past my lips. “It’s me. I thought you already hung up.”
Another pause. “I’m still here.” But by the sound of it, he’s ready not to be if I say the wrong thing.
“I just—I heard Mom on the phone with you and I wanted...”Deep breath, don’t cry. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.” I bite my lips, hard, as soon as I say the words. I’m not as good as Mom at hiding my emotions from him and the last thing I want him to hear is the anguish clawing at my throat.
“Sorry?”
“For Saturday,” I say. “I don’t know why I jumped all over you the way I did. I know—I know it’s hard for you to deal with me pressing you for answers and explanations that you won’t give me. I wanted there to be something you could tell me that would help me understand.” My voice cracks a little, but I go on. “I hope you’ll tell me one day, but I won’t... I’m not going to push you or anyone else anymore.” My eyes roam sightlessly around my room, seeing nothing as I wait for Jason’s response. It takes a while, and I can’t tell what he’s feeling from his voice when it does.
“Yeah, okay—Wait, what do you mean anyone else?”
My hand tightens on the phone. “You. I’m not gonna push you anymore.”
“Brooke.” There a low, alien current in my brother’s voice, a warning to tread carefully here. My heart stops and starts in the pause before he says, “What did you do?”
“I couldn’t get it out of my head,” I say, rushing to get it out and over as quickly as possible. “You said you ran after someone.”
There’s a sound from Jason’s end of the phone, a strangled word that might have been my name again.
“And—and I suddenly realized there was only one person who’d have been there with the two of you, so... I went to see Allison.”
I think he hangs up. I don’t hear the phone slam down or a dial tone, but he’s so silent... “Jason?Jason?”
Then a breath, a harsh and ragged one fills my ear. “You. Stay. Away. From. Allison.”
My lungs seal shut, not letting a breath in or out.
“Do you hear me?” my brother says, and I can tell that his lips are barely moving.
I nod, though he can’t see me, and then flinch when I hear something bang from his side of the call.
“DO YOU HEAR ME? YOU STAY AWAY FROM HER!”
I recoil from the roar that comes through the phone, dropping the handset in the process, then scrambling to pick it up again as soon as it crashes to the floor. As though from a distance, I hear a squabble and inaudible commands shouting in the background, a grunt that sounds like Jason.
“Get off me! I said get your hands—”
And a dial tone.
I sit on the edge of my bed with the phone lying limply in my shaking hands, the dial tone still wailing dimly up at me.Thatwasn’t my brother. Denial rings over and over again in my head.That wasn’t my brother. I couldn’t see his face; I can’t even imagine what it would have looked like in those last few minutes. My brother’s sweet, smiling features wouldn’t know how to contort and scream at me. He’s never—he’d never—I half convince myself that another inmate must have taken the phone from him, because Jason would never act like he hated me. Like he would hurt me.
My thumb moves to end the call and silence fills my room. I slide down the side of my unmade bed until my back rests against it and my knees are tucked to my chest. The phone weighs my hand down to the wood floor.
Every time my brain starts to turn in one direction, the gears grind to a halt. I try another and again they refuse to turn. Nothing makes sense. Nothing.
CHAPTER 36
