Bella pinches her lip between her teeth, then shrugs like it isn’t something to worry about. Probably more for my sake than hers. “They told me I have to go. I don’t make the rules, I just follow the orders.”
“But you should try—"
“Mickey,” she says calmly, eying the stress ball that looks a hair away from exploding. “I’ll be back at school on Monday, and you won’t even notice I’m gone.”
She’s wrong. I’ll notice.
Ialwaysnotice.
Unless I’m in the basement, I’m loitering on her lawn, or terrorizing the neighborhood, which she isn’t really a fan of.
If it were up to her, she’d have us both curled up with a book. She’s been doing this annoying thing where she likes going to the park to sit down and read, but I hate it. There aren’t enough noises, and I like hearing the sound of her voice.
“Isa,” Mitchell yells from somewhere inside the house. “Get inside. Set the table up for dinner.”
Pigtails steps back with a slight shake of her head, and I jump to my feet.Two days. She’s gone for two days. That’s nothing. That’s like… Like… Forty-eight hours.
I can count down or something.
I move forward to give her a hug, but the rejection smacks me in the face as she turns and runs up the stairs, avoiding my touch entirely. I know she wouldn’t have done it on purpose, I just guessed—well,hopedshe’d be a little less scared now.
We never used to be able to high-five without one or both of us flinching, so when she hugged me for the very first time two years ago on my birthday, it was like I saw the light. Then, when she hugged me last year, I’m pretty sure I understood why people find religion.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been hugged—that I can remember—and Bella takes both places. I wasn’t even sure I liked it at first. It felt so claustrophobic, and all her hair was shoved in my nose and mouth, but the second those small arms of hers wrapped around my waist, everything stilled. The noises, the need to move, to burn energy by taking it out on another person.Sheis the only one who has ever been able to calm me. Sometimes she does this special little laugh, and the world quietens, but it doesn’t go away forever. Until she hugged me, and for once, everything felt normal.
Peaceful.
Right.
“See you Monday,” she half wheezes over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” I say. “Monday.”
Forty-eight hours.
I can do forty-eight hours.
It turns out I can’t count. Either that, or she’s been gone formorethan forty-eight hours. But whatever. I survived. Barely. I’ll see her today, and that’s all that I care about.
I show up at her house earlier than usual and tug at the bracelet she recently made me as I wait, leaning against the fence. I’m still not used to wearing it and it makes me feel uneasy. Something about the bumps of the cotton strings sends weird shivers down my spine.
Not that I’ve told Pigtails that.
She was so excited to give it to me—even blew me off for a whole afternoon just to make it.
If I lost it, I’m not sure how I’d react. Or how she’d react—probably cry. So the simple solution is never to take it off, even when I shower. But now the thinning fabric has me on edge.
Bella has what she claims is a matching one, even though the pattern is different, and hers is a mixture of teals and reds, while mine is simply red and black. She claimed it was so I didn’t need to worry about getting blood on it.
Well, she didn’t use the wordblood; she useddirty, but we both know what she really wanted to say.
Time ticks by at an agonizingly slow pace until it’s time for her to come out. Then five minutes pass. Then ten. Then twenty. She never walks through the front doors.
Uneasiness wedges itself into the space beneath my ribs. This isn’t like her. This isn’t like Bella. She is never late. If she is, she’ll stick her head out of the window and wake the neighborhood just to tell me how much longer she needs.
I mutter, “Fuck it,” under my breath as I storm to the house.
Mitchell never lets me inside, so I only get to see its interior if he isn’t home or if I sneak in. When I go for the lock, the handle doesn’t turn. Not caring if Mitchell rips me a new one, I pound my still-healing fists against the door, peeking through the window as I wait.
