“Oh, Kensi. I’m just messin’ with ya,” he says, snatching the ball back from me and passing it around his body once or twice, his eyes squinted, waiting for me to react.
“Owen’s at work,” Andrew says, saving me from all this.
“Oh…okay,” I say, suddenly feeling awkward, like I no longer have a reason to be outside my house.
“You can hang out with me? I’ll show you a good time,” House says, sliding his giant arm over my shoulder, the material of his sweatshirt is actually damp with his sweat.
“I’m good…thanks,” I say, slinking out of his grip. His laugh is almost demonic as he tosses the ball back to Andrew and pulls his keys from his pocket.
“All right, but you’re missin’ out,” he says, walking to his truck near the curb.
“Am I?” I ask, my heart actually hurting with the anxiety coursing through my chest. House makes me nervous. Owen may think he’s harmless, but I’m not convinced.
“You let me know when you’re done playing footsies with O, and I’ll show you a real man,” he says, nodding to Andrew, then stepping up into his truck and roaring his engine loudly.
“He’s all talk,” Andrew says, bouncing the ball a few times to draw my attention back to him.
“Sure he is,” I say back, not believing it for a second. I know House’s type, and it’s entitled. Money has nothing to do with it. He just needs to know he’s not entitled to me.
“You like my brother?” Andrew says, and my throat burns with fear at having to answer that question. I can’t look at him, so I keep my attention on House’s taillights as he pulls away.
“We’ve become friends,” I say, my voice unsteady, unsure, and my mind flashing through the dozens of nights I’ve waited to see just a glimpse of Owen outside, my palm burning with the memory of the touch of his hand in mine. “Yeah…” I add, my voice even softer now. “I like him.”
“He’ll be home late tonight. But…he’d like to see you,” Andrew says, his foot kicking into mine, teasing me like a little brother should. I nod once and smile at him, and his smile is broad and satisfied.
I head back into my house and tiptoe up the stairs to my mom’s bedroom door. Her shift was late, and she’s been sleeping most of the morning, so I don’t want to wake her, but when I press my ear to the door, I hear her talking on the phone.
“We can talk, sure…but…not now. I’m not ready to talk now. I think I just need time,” she says, her half of the conversation piquing my curiosity about the other end of the line. I’m sure she’s talking to my father, and I don’t like that she’s talking to him. I want to cut him out of our existence, to just take a giant eraser to all he was and all he is, and I want to do that for Gaby, too. But then there are those memories, the few good ones of us as a family, home together, on holidays. And maybe we can only let in those small things, but keep everything else out.
I hear the conversation end, so I step quickly to my room, folding my legs up on my bed and pulling my laptop in front of me, acting busy. My Facebook page is still up. I had been looking for pictures of Owen—anything about Owen—but he seems to avoid being online. I found a mention of his name in a town newspaper archive; he was named to the state’s all-star basketball team. But that was all.
My exploration started with a hunt for pictures because I wanted to see his face. But soon I started looking for the bad things, arrest records and proof that Owen was also all of those things Willow and Jess and Elise say he is. But those records don’t exist online. And even though it’s probably just because he’s a minor, I still like the fact that I can’t find the bad things. I’m ashamed I even started looking for them in the first place.
What I settled on, though, was my folder full of photos of Gaby and me. I’ve dragged them into the trash a dozen times, but I keep pulling them back out. As much as I want to erase my father, I don’t want to erase Gaby. I only want to erase what she did. God, how I want to erase that.
“So I was thinking of making pasta for dinner. You know, Grandma’s sauce? What do you think?” My mom startles me when she comes in my room, and I snap my laptop to a close. Her eyes linger on it, her head tilting, but she doesn’t question. It’s almost like she knows enough to know she doesn’t want to know what I’m looking at.
She doesn’t. It would kill her to see these photos—reason enough to delete them all the moment she leaves my room.