“He could be,” Micah whispers, sitting beside me on the sofa. I glance his way, taking note of his glassy green eyes, and the way his mouth tightens into a thin line as he says those awful words.
“Take that shit back.” Tobias spins around, ready to start a fight with his brother. The McCarthy twins have been doing this on and off, ever since we got to the hospital. They actually got into a full-on fistfight in the exam room, and Tobias gave Micah a nosebleed. Of course, that was after Micah gave him a purple shiner on his left eye.
“Why?” Micah looks up and then rises to his feet. Church and Ranger are up in the next second, getting between the two of them. “We have to face facts here: the boy in the tree was wearing a gym uniform. He had silver hair. Spencer is missing. How long do you want to lie to yourself before you start accepting it?” Micah's eyes water and he turns away, scowling.
Nobody stops him as he takes off, disappearing up the stairs and into one of the guest rooms. I let him go, feeling this strange numbness inside of me.
“You two need to learn to stop taking your emotions out on each other,” Ranger whispers, voice dark and low. He levels his sapphire glare on Tobias, shadows dancing behind his eyes. “You're lucky you're both still alive.”
“We're lucky you're alive,” Church whispers, his face impassive and closed-up. He hasn't smiled once since we left for the hospital, not once. That over-the-top cheerful side of his that I used to think was the result of like, him being a psychopath or something, I'm pretty sure now that it’s real. After seeing Church's emotions in the woods, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. He's a happy, but damaged individual.
Right now, however, there's not much to be happy about.
“I'm glad you're here, Ranger,” I tell him, my voice cracking. He looks over at me, dressed in sweats and a hoodie. We're all still in recovery here. We were all in the second stages of hypothermia; we're all lucky to be alive.
He looks at me, long and hard, and then turns away toward the window. He doesn't talk much on a good day, but after everything that just happened? I'm not surprised that he's at a loss for words.
The front door opens and my dad walks in, glasses fogging up from the change in temperature, hair disheveled. He looks like he's aged ten years in the last twelve hours.
I stand up from the couch, heart racing. Archie Carson isn't a man that's easy to read. I can tell he's upset, but he's holding all his emotions in. One day, the guy is going to crack and lose his shit. Or hell, maybe he never will? Maybe he just doesn't care enough about anything to let loose like that?
“Dad, is it—”
“I can't tell you anything, I'm sorry.” He looks over at me with sympathy in his face, but I can feel my hands curling into fists at my sides. The tears I've been fighting back for so long tease the corners of my eyes with salt. It hurts; I've been crying far too much, mostly in the bathroom where the boys can't see. It feels selfish of me to be so sad over Spencer when he was their friend first, their friend for longer. If you think about it, I barely knew the guy.
But there was something there.
There could have been something great there.
My knees shake, and my throat feels suddenly dry.
“I've spoken with the police, and until they release an official statement, I'm not permitted to say anything regarding—”
“I'm your daughter,” I spit out, shaking, my eyes lifting to Dad’s matching blue ones. “I'm your only family. You know how much we care about Spencer. Can't you just tell us if that was his body, swinging in that goddamn tree?”
“Charlotte, I'm not going to—” He calls me by my name, but it doesn't matter since everyone in that room knows my secret. Now we all know another one, don't we? There are at least three people who want me dead and gone. And there's at least one student at this school who won't be coming back to class after break.
“You can't break one, tiny little rule for one stupid second? Just one second to make your daughter feel better?” My temper is white-hot, and I can barely breathe. Church reaches out a warm hand and lays it on my shoulder. His dry palm feels good against my skin, and I take a deep breath, a strange sense of calm washing over me. My mind strays back to that hot water bottle and chocolate he brought me. That was a surprisingly thoughtful gesture for someone I thought was a psychopath. “Please. Just say yes or no. That's it. That's all you have to do to change our world.”
