Sorry that it's taken so long to update this chapter!!! I've been busy with school and sports so I haven't gotten to write as much, but fall break is this week!!! SO much writing!!! :)
FaithWe decided to stay in dad's loft tonight before we go home. He has four bedrooms for the adults and then the kids get the living room floor.
Thrilling.
We go to the Skyline restaurant for dinner, by dad's suggestion. "While I was in college, this place was my life to the point where I couldn't stand baked potatoes anymore," he joked.
We order the potatoes and eat them, looking on the Chicago skyline all the while.
We finally get done eating dinner, so we walk back to dad's apartment around eight to stay for the night.
We decide to watch a movie, but we can't decide on one until dad grabs the remote and starts flipping through the Hulu shows until he stops on Stranger Things. "Oh, come on, you know I hate this. I'd rather watch the documentary than this crap," Linc complains, and dad keeps going with a laugh. "Okay, fair point," dad says, and clicks on Outer Banks instead. "Who watches these shows anyway?" When he clicks on the first episode, Linc walks out of the room. "Bye! I'll be the lame uncle that goes to bed at nine thirty before I watch that!"
We watch the first episode, and then we go to bed because it's almost 10:30 and the adults claim that they're "old".
Whatever.
I call bullcrap on that.
We lay on the floor with blankets and pillows, and when all the adults go into their bedrooms I walk over to the huge windows behind dad's desk and look out of them.
That's where, nineteen years ago, the hard drives were chucked into oblivion off of this very balcony.
I stand, leaning on the balcony, not too hard because of my shoulder, looking out over the lit Chicago bridge.
Mike comes out a few minutes later and stands beside me. "Can't sleep?" He nods. "Me either."
He sighs and looks out over the river. "How much do you know?" I give him a confused look. "About what?" He sighs and looks down to his shoes. "About mom and dad." Now it's my turn to look down at my shoes. "Everything." He turns his head to mine. "That's how you knew about Luca," he says, and I nod.
"Listen, Mike, I'm sorry about this week. I know he was your friend," I say, and he shrugs. "There was always something off about him, but I just assumed it was the stupidity." His words hang in the air, and I get the idea that he's taking it harder than he shows.
"I don't know how anyone can sleep, because I obviously can't," I say, and as if on cue, Garrett walks onto the balcony and stares at the bridge, but not before he smacks Mike on the back. "What was that for?!" Garrett laughs and runs on the other side of me to avoid the slap that was coming back at him from Mike. "I don't know. I just wanted to, I guess."
Mike looks out on the river and looks like he's about to fall over because he's so tired. "Mike, go inside. You're so tired," I tell him, but he shakes his head. "Babysitters don't get breaks," he says, and I laugh at him. "You can't babysit people who are older than you," I shoot back, and he considers this for a second, realizes that we both are actually older than him, and then goes back inside. "Nice night," Garrett says, acknowledging the cool but not frigid temperature. The tension in the air is so thick over what happened this past week that I could cut it with a knife. "Can I be honest with you right now?" He looks to his right at me, and then looks back out at the river. "Yeah."
"It's not your fault." He looks down at his Nikes and sighs.
"Everyone says that, but I can't believe them. I always think that if I would've done something, it could've ended better…" he trails off. He moves his hand over mine on the rail, and I smile at him. "And, just saying, your shirt is ripped right there," I tell him, and he looks down at my finger. I slide it up his face quickly and he looks mock angry.
"Ha, ha."
I lay back down on the floor in the completely dark living room. "I'm going to grab a snack," I say, and I go to get the food that we brought with us from Baja from the cabinet. There's a box of Cheez-Its that I would gladly take down from the top shelf, except for the fact that I'm not tall enough. "Come grab these for me," I say, and Garrett walks over to get them. I take them right out of his hands with a smile. "Hey, no fair. Give me some of those!" I lay down on the couch with the Cheez-Its under me, leaving him in kind of an awkward situation.
He walks over and picks me up, taking the box from my grip. "Thanks," he says. "I appreciate it."
The night isn't cold, so we decide to lay out on the balcony and look at the stars for a while. "This is what we did our first night as a couple," Garrett remembers. I look up at the stars with a grin. "That would be right," I say, and when he looks over at me I pretend not to notice.
*
When I wake up in the morning, Mike is already in the kitchen eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. "No funny business?" He eyes me skeptically, like he's waiting for me to say the wrong thing. "Nope, not here," I say, and I see a notification on my phone. It's a text from Mike.
He's sitting four feet away from me.
Literally.
Why can't he just say what he's texting me?
I open the text and look at what it says.
"You're a liar" it says, and I'm surprised that Mike has the brain to put the apostrophe in that.
On second thought, autocorrect probably did it for him.
"Why am I a liar?" I say. I'm not going to text him because that's stupid since he's standing right here.
"Because you are. This was probably you last night," he says, putting his hands on his back and moving them up and down. "Oh my gosh, get over yourself," I say, taking the Lucky Charms and pouring myself a bowl. "Hey," Garrett says, his hair completely messed up, sleep still in his eyes. "You," Mike says, and Garrett stops in his tracks.
"What…? Is this about the Cheez-Its? Because if it is, sorry I ate them all," he apologizes, and I almost start laughing. "No- wait- that was you that ate them all? This wasn't supposed to be about that, but it can be now." Garrett raises his eyebrows and looks surprised. "What was it supposed to be about?"
I walk back into the living room and turn on the TV with Maria next to me. "What shows do girls our age watch?" She shrugs and takes the remote. "One that some people watch is Riverdale since the new season is here, and then there's The Office if you're looking for comedy." I feel like laughing this morning. "I want to try The Office. I hope it's really funny," I tell her, and she searches Netflix until she can find it.
Maria insists that the episode she chooses is one of the best ones. As the episode starts, I see a guy blowtorching a door handle. "This is the fire drill episode," she says. "This is the office of a paper company that has the biggest train wreck of employees you've ever seen. Just watch, it's about to get funny in a little bit," she says. The character she calls Dwight throws a cigarette in the trash can, catching the paper inside on fire.
After ten minutes and tons of laughing fits later, dad wakes up and gets a coffee from the kitchen. He sits in the recliner and sips his coffee. Even the smalles movements of his are so deliberate and calculated.
"I've never seen this episode before," he says finally. "I've seen a lot of them, but not this one." As we keep watching, a lady that I don't know the name of throws her gigantic cat (apparently named Bandit) to a guy crawling through the roof trying to find help. "Take Bandit!" She tosses the cat into the ceiling and apparently the man in the ceiling has no interest in trying to catch the fat cat. The cat falls through the roof on the other side of the hole in the ceiling and to the floor, making a sound like a cross between a meow and a squeal. I start laughing and look to dad in the recliner when all of a sudden he spits a mouthful of coffee and starts laughing so hard he's almost crying. Watching dad, who is so particular and neat spew coffee in the living room is probably the funniest thing I'll see all day.
Linc gets up and pours himself a cup of coffee. He sits on the other couch in the living room and takes a sip of coffee. "You will never believe what your brother just did," Maria says. Linc doesn't look at her for a few seconds like he didn't hear her. "Are you talking to me?" Maria rolls her eyes. "No, I was just looking at you and saying something but not talking to you." Linc shrugs and looks back at the TV. "You idiot, yes I was talking to you!" He snaps his head back to her and dad looks into his coffee, grinning. "Okay, okay. Jeez."
"Michael was watching the Office with us, and, mind you, it's the fire drill. The cat got thrown into the ceiling and fell down to the floor, and then Michael spit his coffee all over the living room and started laughing so hard that he seemed like he was almost crying. It was hilarious," Maria says, and then Linc's eyes grow wide. "You're telling me," he says, "that Michael. This Michael, sitting in the recliner, spit coffee across the room because he was laughing at a cat falling through a roof?"
When it's put like that, it's way more funny than it should be.
"I think we're driving home today," dad says, and Mike seems disappointed. "Why?" Dad looks at him, momentarily turning away from the frying bacon. "Because, you have a baseball game tomorrow. Remember?" Mike thinks for a second and then apparently remembers.
We eat a quick breakfast of cereal and then walk to the sidewalk to get taxis back home. I go with mom, dad, Mike, and Garrett in one taxi with the Sucres in another, and then Linc, Vee, LJ, and Michelle in the third taxi. It's only about fifteen minutes from dad's apartment to our neighborhood. We send the taxi driver to our house. He drops us off at our house first and then takes Garrett the next three blocks to his own house.
I've been putting my suitcase and bags away for a while when I get a text. I walk from my dresser to my bed and look at the lock screen of my phone.
You. Me. Tree in your yard in 5
I'm so confused. We just dropped Garrett off at his house twenty minutes ago and now he wants me to meet him?
Okay… is everything good?
A few minutes goes by and then a reply comes through.
Not really
Make sure that no one sees me
I just hope I go out there and he's okay, and just wanted to tell me something.
I run down the stairs to the kitchen, and go out the sliding door to the backyard. I open the gate to the fence and look along the fenceline to see Garrett running from his house to ours, but he looks like he's hurting somewhere. He's still too far away for me to see him closely, but I know it's him.
A minute later, he gets to me and I finally get to see him. "What happened to you?!" He has bruises all over his face, a bloody nose that's getting on his shirt. He lifts up his shirt that exposes red marks that are about an inch wide; they look almost perfectly like a belt. "I'll tell you in a second, let's just get as high in the tree as we can." We climb the big oak tree in our yard, about fifteen feet off the ground where we find a fork in the branches where we can sit without being seen. "Tell me everything," I say, and he sighs.
"I went home and dropped my bags off in my room, and then sat down to play on my phone for a little bit. My adoptive dad came in with his belt and hit me, getting mad over the fact that I hadn't started putting my stuff away yet. He started hitting me, and normally my mom stops it before it gets to be too much, but she's at work. He just kept hitting me, and hitting me, and when he started hitting my head with the buckle I thought I was going to die." I look at him, up and down, and notice all the bruises he has. "You can't go back there," I tell him, and he stares down at the ground and looks like he's about to cry. I put my arm around his shoulder and he sniffs. "I have to. He'll kill me…" I straddle the branch and pull him into a hug, and he hugs me back on the branch. "You can follow me inside and then clean up."
"I can't… your parents can't see me like this." I pull him an arm's length away and look at him in his deep blue eyes. "Garrett Cooper, my mom can help you. Just please, please let us help you. Stay here tonight." He takes a deep breath and sighs. "Okay," he says, and he starts to climb down but I stop him. I lean in and kiss him for a long time.
He jumps down branch by branch, me right behind him and then he hits the ground. I jump down next to him, and he walks tentatively behind me to the sliding door. Garrett and I go into the bathroom to clean him up. He takes his blood-stained shirt off and I look at his back; still red welts from the belt, the cuts from the buckle. "I'm going to rinse these cuts out with just some water first. It won't hurt," I say, remembering what mom told me.
She told me to make sure to let the person you're helping know what you're doing all the time, even if it's something as simple as taking off a band-aid.
He lays over the wall of the bathtub, which must be painful because of the bruises on his chest. "Now I'm going to use the peroxide, which might sting a little bit for a second." He nods as I take the brown bottle from the countertop and pour a little bit over every cut. He grits his teeth and groans, and then seems okay after a second when the stinging stops. I take a washcloth and dab the wounds to get the peroxide off of his back after a few moments. He sits up on the bathtub wall, putting his head in his hands as I examine his chest and face. "Most of this should just go away with time," I say as I move my hand over his chest to feel for weird knots or bones out of place. "Hey, I thought I was cleaning up." I laugh at him. "Don't worry, Mr. Goody Two Shoes, I'm just trying to see if there are any knots or things out of place." He grins at me. "Maybe I need to get hurt more often," he says playfully. "Seriously, I'm glad you're okay." He sighs and pulls me into a hug. "I am too."
We creep up to my room and he lays on my bed, and it kind of makes me happy that we're to the point that he doesn't care that it's mine.
"I'm pretty sure that you used half the box of band-aids on my back," he jokes, and I lay down beside him. "You know, you're the best," he says to me, and I sit up and look down at him. "Why do you say that?" He grins and stares up at the ceiling. "I don't know, maybe it's the fact that you could have just literally saved my life." I look at him, grinning, and he smiles that cute smile back. He sits up and holds my hand over his knee. He kisses me ever so softly, and I kiss him back. My hands stay on his shoulder blades as his move over my back.
Mike walks in and sees Garrett with the bruises on his face. "Dude! What happened to you?! And why are you kissing my sister?!" He blushes and holds my hand, looking down at his knee. "I, uh… ran into a pole," he says, reciting the line from Karate Kid when Dre lies to his mom about the black eye.
"Bull. Crap. What actually happened?" Garrett takes a deep breath. "Do you remember that one day in sixth grade when I told you the reason that I had a bruise on my face was that I was trying to do an ollie and I fell off my skateboard?" Mike thinks for a second and nods. "Yeah, I do." He looks slightly confused. "I told everyone that. What really happened was my adoptive dad had hit me," Garrett says. Mike seems to piece it together. "So that's what happened just now," he infers. Garrett nods and squeezes my hand. "Mom might need to clean that up," Mike says, already partially out the door. "Faith already did," Garrett tells him. Mike leans back in and looks at me, giving me a weird look that I can't really figure out. "Weirdos. And, Garrett," he says, leaning on the doorframe. "Don't touch my sister." Mike walks out and probably goes back to playing Call of Duty. "Garrett, my parents are going to find out at some point," I tell him. He sighs and squeezes my hand. "I know."
It's almost lunchtime by now, so I think mom is getting ready to set the table. "Garrett, they have to know. I'm going to go tell dad, he'll know what to do." I walk downstairs and find dad watching a baseball game with Linc. "Dad?" He turns around to look at me from the couch. "Can I tell you something?" I give him the "By Ourselves Because It's Kind Of Personal" look and he nods. "Sure." He gets up and follows me into the hallway that leads upstairs. "What can they do about child abuse?" His eyes widen for a second and then go back to normal. "Why?" I shrug. "Garrett's adoptive dad… he got him pretty bad today. It's been going on for a long time, I think almost a year." Dad looks surprised. "Is he here?" I nod.
"If he goes back there, he swears on his life that his dad will kill him. He can't." Dad stares off into space, and then I remember that he went through the same thing. "How bad is it?" I think for a minute. "The easiest way I can describe it is 1-10. I'd say 7 or 8." Dad goes upstairs and walks to my room. I open the door and dad stays outside for a second. "My dad's outside. He's just going to see if it's bad enough to take you to a hospital or not, but I would say it is since he hit you on the head." Dad can hear me, so this detail will help.
"Hey, kid." Dad lays his eyes on Garrett laying down on the bed, his bruises on his face looking bad enough. "Is it just his face?" I shake my head. "Everywhere under his shirt, too." I turn away as dad looks at the terrible belt marks and cuts, and the bruises all over his chest that I already know are there. "Who cleaned these up? They did a good job," dad says, and he gets ready to leave the room. "I did." Dad looks at me and smiles. "We're going to make sure he doesn't have anything internal going on, so we better take him to a hospital as soon as we can." I give Garrett a sad smile, and he sighs as he stands up and puts his shirt back on. "You'll be okay," I whisper in his ear. He squeezes my hand as we walk out the door. Dad grabs his keys and kisses mom, leaving Linc looking confused on the couch. "Where are you going? It's only the fifth inning!" Dad gives Linc the "Tell You Later" look and Linc shrugs.
Mom decides at the last minute to come with us, so she climbs into the front seat. "Does anything hurt just sitting here?" She's asking all the right questions to see what the doctors may say when we get there. "My head and my back. That's about it," he says. Mom has that look on her face that says something isn't good. If his head can hurt hours after the fact, then it can't be good.
We check into the hospital when I get a text from Maria.
I saw that u drove by. What up???
I'm trying to decide whether to tell the truth or fudge some lie about why we were driving. But then I remember that Fernando will probably find out anyway.
G's dad beat him rly bad so we're at the hospital
:0 no way he did not
I'll send u a snap in a lil bit
We get into a hospital room and Garrett lays on the bed to have all the monitors and machines attached. "We're just going to do a test to see if you have a concussion or any other brain problems," the nurse says nicely. Garrett nods and complies.
After quite a few lights shining and simple questions asked, the doctors have determined that Garrett had a mild concussion but nothing more.
At this point, I think we need to make a rule that we stay outside a 1 mile radius of a hospital at all times.