chapter five

For the first time in over a week, I talked to Kim.

It was the middle of Saturday after my first shift at the bakery (which, by the way, was hell. I still have no idea what a dacquoise was, and I got yelled at by white ladies at least three times). And I was thinking about how stupid it was that it was Saturday and my biggest plans of the weekend were working at a bakery binge watching true crime documentaries. And it wasn't that I felt like a total loser, but that I knew I was a total loser. I had fallen in social standing so quickly. Without Kim, my social life was dead.

But my phone rang, and I stared down at the name on the screen for three rings before I decided that maybe if I wasn't being so stubborn about all of this than I wouldn't be by myself on my only days off. I chewed on my lip and picked it up. "Hello?"

"Remy. Why the hell have you been ignoring me?" Kim yelled into the phone. "I've been calling you at least three times a day and like, nothing! Like what the hell?"

I sighed. "You know why I've been ignoring you, Kim."

Kim always had this certain tone in her voice when she was mad; it was like she was so overwhelmed with all the rage she couldn't contain that she was just on the verge of tears. "That's not fair! If you had just come up to me and talked to me about Jared, you know I would've defended you! You know I would've talked to him about it."

But I felt rage too. I got mad too. "He's not a dog, Kim. Jared's a big boy and you can't just reprimand him until he learns to stop verbally abusing me. Like, honestly, Kim, how many times can he act like an complete dick before you stop handing him chances?"

And when Kim spoke again her voice cracked like the tears finally won over. "You just don't get it, Remy."

"Then explain it to me, Kim."

She choked. "You'll understand eventually, Remy. I just can't tell you."

The sound of voice on my phone made me feel sick. It was the combination of her refusal to acknowledge how shitty her boyfriend was acting and the fact that she refused to even explain it to me. It made the anger in my chest explode. "Wow, you've done a really great job convincing me, Kim. You're a really great friend."

Kim's anger was raw and emotional and filled with tears. Mine was sharp and jagged and left little cuts everywhere. "Come on, Remy, can you please just cut me some slack? I didn't do anything wrong. I promise Jared will apologize. C'mon, Remy."

I clenched my jaw. "Whatever," I said, and hung up the phone before anything else could go more wrong.

Everything was so delicate, and I opened my mouth one more time I felt like I would've burned it down. I didn't want to hate Kim, and I didn't want to fight with Jared. But that's the position I'd been pushed into, and I wasn't gonna go down without kicking and scratching.

My parents used to fight a lot. Late at night, when they thought their children were asleep. They would scream until their voices ran hoarse, like they had completely emptied themselves of everything they. Their screams echoed, and the boom of my father's voice made my stomach sink. They were so caught up in the details of their credit card bills they didn't notice the floor creak under my weight as I ran into my big brother's room. I cried so I wouldn't have to hear them, and Bear hugged me like he thought it would make the pain stop.

They fought like that every week, when the night was so still that their argument carried out through the trees.

Eventually, I stopped sneaking out of my room and into Bear's, and I stopped letting tears shed at the harshness of their words and convinced myself that it was okay for my parents to hate each other. I would lie on my back and look up at the ceiling, thinking about the stars that hung above it, and counted on morning to come.

"Do you know why they fight so much?" I once asked Bear, sitting on the floor on his bedroom, watching him fiddle with the guitar he didn't yet know how to play.

Bear just gave me a shrug. "They just don't know what they're doing."

And then, one day, they just stopped.

My mother dropped to her knees when she was presented with her son's bones. Her wails were inhuman, a pain that was so deep it felt beyond comprehension. And my father feel next to her, taking her in her arms and wailing with her. I stood beyond them, unfeeling and still, and watched as they clung onto each other, sobs and tears and pain molding together and becoming so powerful I could just stare. They never fought again after that.

I watched my mom scrub the kitchen down with lemon-scented disinfectant wipes so harshly the skin on her fingers started drying out and cracking. I fiddled with the journal, gently thumbing through the pages without looking at them. The room smelled so clean I felt sick, but she kept going, moving from the fridge to the oven to the counter.

I wondered what snapped in her that day.

The pages felt smooth under my thumb. For so long I was convinced there was an answer in there, somewhere, that would give me any sort of closure. Because it was, without a fact, undisputable that Bear was dead. I knew he was, and accepted it. But he didn't do it to himself.

He didn't even leave a note. He wouldn't do that to us.

"Do you have any plans for the night?" my mom asked, and I jumped as her words yanked me back into the lemon-scented kitchen. She didn't look up at me as she spoke.

"No," I replied, tossing my journal to the side.

I could hear the frown in her voice when she spoke again. "Why don't you call Kim honey? You've been staying home a lot lately."

"What, are you tired of me already?"

She stopped abruptly and looked across the room at me. "Remy, you know that's not what I mean. It's Saturday night, you should go out and have some fun with your friends. God knows your father and I were out almost every night."

My mom did this thing where she compared how cool and popular she was in high school to how few friends I have under my belt. She used to compare me to Bear, and even then it pissed me off. I had a crystal-clear picture of what my parents were like in high school. "So you want me to micro-dose Adderall like you and dad?" She shot me a look. "Just not in the mood. So I guess you're stuck with me tonight, sorry."

"Actually, dad and I are going out tonight. So you're stuck at home alone tonight."

"Ah, perfect. That's way better."

My mom dropped her disinfectant wipe and walked over to me, frowning. "So, you think it's cute to act like a brat now?" I rolled my eyes at her. "I swear to god, Remy."

"Sorry my uncontrollable teen angst is too much for you to handle. Good thing you're leaving tonight so you won't have to deal with my unbearable presence." And maybe I was acting like a brat, but I was tired, and honestly, there was something off. Besides the whole Kim thing. There was something in my gut like something awful had just happened, and it lingered in my bones.

"Y'know what? Just go to your room. You're annoying me."

I pushed off the couch and grabbed my journal. "Sure," I said, tone clipped, and started rushing up the stairs. "Have fun tonight."

I stomped up the stairs over the sound of her mumbled complaints about me, and was extra careful that my bedroom door didn't make a sound when I shut it. I guess the mother-daughter conflict comes with the territory. I jumped on my bed, and made sure to stay there until I heard my parents leave.

The sunlight that lit my room was dipping, and the light fading. I watched the rays peer through the trees and slowly lower and lower, my room getting darker. When I heard the door slam and the engine of my parents' car start without a word to me, I knew I could add my mother's name on the people who currently weren't talking to me. The list wasn't that long, but the list of people who talk to me in the first place wasn't really that long in the first place. It didn't leave me with very many options.

Eventually, after being sure that I was alone in the house, I rolled off my bed and stomped down the stairs once more, ready to lie on the couch and watch television all night.

At eight-twenty, I popped open a bottle of wine and poured it into mug.

At eight-fifty, I ordered a pizza and then ten minuets later, I called back and cancelled it, because I found a tub of unopened ice cream in the freezer, and figured that would suffice for dinner. I never opened the ice cream.

At nine-thirty at night, I swung open the front door with sweatpants rolled low on my hips and thumb stuck in a halfway peeled orange. "What, you couldn't be bothered to put a shirt on?"

Embry Call blanched, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. He looked like shit. I mean, I still thought he was pretty cute, but he really looked like shit. Eyes heavy, bags bigger than mine and skin sunken. "Um, sorry, I was just, um working out." I nodded, noting the obvious lie, but not wanting to push it. "Um, can I come in?"

"Why?"

Despite his bold request, he didn't really seem to have an explanation for this. "Oh, it's just that," he paused, searching for his excuse, "Quil said he left something here, and he asked me to come get it."

"Quil didn't leave anything here," I replied confidently. My house wasn't that big; I would've noticed something out of place.

Embry exhaled sharply and bounced on his leg. "Can you please just let me in?"

"Why?"

"I just have to check something, please?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. I couldn't figure out Embry Call. Our first couple interactions, he wouldn't even look me in the eyes. And ever since he did, he hadn't stopped showing up to wherever I was and demanding my presence. And he acted weird. There wasn't a single reason I could think of that would make him want to hang out with me, and definitely not one that would make him wanna look through my house. So I decided to indulge him. "Sure," I said, opening the door and stepping back.

Embry widened his eyes, and then he rushed past me and into the house. I closed the door and leaned against it, watching him shuffle from room to room. He had such fixed look on his face, eyes focused on nothing in particular and nose up. He went from the living room to the kitchen, and then looked back over at me. "You like lemons or something?"

"Are you sniffing my house?"

He looked back over at me for a moment. "Has anyone else come over here today? Like someone you don't know?"

"You mean besides you? No."

Embry shot me a look. "You know me."

"No, I really don't."

And I didn't. I knew he was my age and lived somewhat close to me and that he didn't have a dad but everyone on the reservation knew that. And Embry didn't know anything about me other than the fact that my brother's dead and I slapped his friend in the face. We didn't know enough about each other for him to be standing in my house and leaning against my kitchen counter like we were good buddies and like I'm being difficult.

He smiled at me again. "Well, now we can get to know each other."

I crossed my arms over my chest and stepped towards him. "Okay, well why don't we start with what you're doing in my house?"

He furrowed his eyebrows and looked around for a moment. "I dunno. I can't think of a good excuse. Do I have to tell you now?" he asked, and I gaped. I wasn't expecting that kind of brutal honesty from him. He shifted his weight, standing in my living room.

I kept staring at him, mouth slightly agape. Here was someone I didn't know, barging into my home, not even bothering to tell me why, and I wasn't mad. I wasn't even annoyed. If anything, I felt kinda, I dunno, relieved. Like there was a weight lifted off my shoulders. Embry's face made me forget about Kim and my mom and my dead brother. So I just looked at him and shrugged. "No, I guess not."

Embry smiled at me, eyes warm. "Thanks."

And for a moment, there was just the two of us standing in the kitchen. Ten feet apart, eyes trained on each other and a certain calming stillness between us. Embry and his presence was warm; his skin and his eyes and the little smile that tugged on his lips. I studied him for a moment, his warm hitting me and my brain. I wondered how many more times he would show up at my door or lean against my car and wait for me, cause it's been a fair few times already, with almost nothing prompting it. I wondered if he made me his target the same way the wolf did.

The wolf.

I had almost forgotten about the wolf and Embry's strange and undeniable connection to it. And all the calmness I felt dropped to my stomach. I frowned, crossing my arms over my chest. "Well, if that's everything," and I nodded my head to the door.

And the little smile that tugged on his lips fell. "Right," he said, but didn't move. He gently kicked his toe against the floor without looking up at me. I waited, staring. "Um, I really want to spend time with you sometime, Remy. I hope you, um, I hope you change your mind."

He said it with such sincerity and with such a sweet pleading to his voice that it made my heart tug and I said, "Yeah, maybe."

I liked the smile on his lips.

im sorry this is so short :( i hope you like it anyways