Page 19 of Across His Line

The door three rooms down closes. The chain slides again. Footsteps come back.

Kylie comes in with the charger, plugs her phone into the wall by Kennebeck’s desk, and flops down on his bed with a sigh.

“She’s still not coming,” she says.

“Who?” Kennebeck says.

“Tess. Tonight.”

I look up.

I don’t decide to. My head just comes up off the pillow, and by the time I catch it, it’s already done, and Kylie is looking straight at me.

That little line between her eyebrows.

“What?” she says.

“Nothing.”

She keeps looking at me. Kennebeck looks at her looking at me, and then at me, the same second and a half he gives everything.

I turn on my music. Loud enough for them to hear it through the headphones. I close my eyes.

She’s not coming.

Good.

At nine, Kennebeck is standing in the middle of our room in a leather jacket and a pair of aviators, looking like a man who’s been kidnapped.

“Don’t,” he says.

“You look like a cop who got fired.”

He takes the sunglasses off, looks at them, and puts them back on. “You coming?”

“No.”

He doesn’t ask twice. That’s the best thing about Kennebeck. He asks once, you answer, and he believes you, and he leaves. He picks his phone up off the desk and goes to wait for his girlfriend. Then, a door opens three rooms down, and Kylie says something I can’t make out, and her boots go down the hall to the stairwell alone.

The building empties out after that. Doors on four. A group on the stairs. Somebody’s speaker going past outside the window and getting farther away. By ten, it’s so quiet on the third floor I can hear the heat come on.

I’m not going because Halloween is stupid and I’m tired and there’s nothing at a party I can’t get in this room with the window open. That’s why.

At ten-thirty, I go down to my car.

My phone lights up on the dash at ten forty-one.

My dad doesn’t call. So, when he does, it’s because a decision has already been made somewhere above my head, and he’s letting me know where it landed.

“Rafe.”

“Dad.”

No hello. He’s never said hello to me on the phone in my life. He says my name, and then he gets to the point, because his time costs money and mine doesn’t.

“I spoke with Coach Berwyn this afternoon.”

My hand tightens on the wheel. The two knuckles I split on Tuesday pull open under the skin.