Linger

I smiled thinly at him. “Sure thing.”

Sam looked like he was going to say something else, but then he just pressed two fingers to his temple and grimaced. The gesture said all the things that Sam hadn’t: He had plenty of problems, and I was just another one of them.

I was enjoying being not-famous more than I’d expected.

• ISABEL •

When Grace wasn’t in school on Monday, I ducked into the girls’ bathroom and called her during lunch. And got her mom. At least, I was pretty sure it was her mother.

“Hello?” The voice that answered was obviously not Grace’s.

“Uh, hello?” I tried not to sound too snarky, in case it really was her mom. “I was calling for Grace.” Okay, so I couldn’t keep all the attitude out of my voice. But seriously.

The other voice was friendly. “Who is this?”

“Who is this?”

I heard Grace’s voice, finally. “Mom! Give me that!” There was a shuffling sound and then Grace said, “Sorry about that. I’m grounded, and apparently that means that people can screen my calls without asking me.”

Color me impressed. Saint Grace got grounded? “What did you do?”

I heard a door shut on her side of the phone. Not quite a slam, but more defiant than I would’ve expected from Grace. She said, “Got caught sleeping with Sam.”

My face in the bathroom mirror opposite me looked surprised, eyebrows hiked up toward my hairline, the black liner around my eyes making them look even bigger and rounder than they really were. “This is the good stuff! You guys were having sex?”

“No, no. He was just sleeping in my bed. They’re completely overreacting.”

“Oh, of course they are,” I said. “Everyone’s parents are cool with their daughters sharing bed space with their boyfriends. I know my parents would love it. So, what, they kept you from going to school? That seems…”

“No, that’s because I was in the hospital,” Grace said. “I got a fever, and again they overreacted and took me to the hospital instead of giving me Tylenol. I think they just wanted a good reason to take me in the opposite direction from Sam. Anyway, it took forever, of course, like it always does in a hospital, and I didn’t get home until late. So I just woke up, basically.”

For some reason my thoughts immediately ran to Grace looking up at Mr. Grant and asking to be excused for her headache. “What’s wrong with you? What did the doctors say?”

“Virus, or something. It was just a fever,” Grace said, so fast that I barely had time to get out my questions. It didn’t sound like she believed herself.

The bathroom door came open slightly behind me and I heard, “Isabel, I know you’re in there.” Ms. McKay, my English teacher. “If you keep skipping lunch, I’m going to have to tell your parents. Just saying. Class is in ten minutes.”

The door swung shut once more.

Grace said, “Are you not eating again?”

I said, “Shouldn’t you be more worried about your problems at the moment?”

• COLE •

After Sam had disappeared to “work,” whatever that was, I poured myself a glass of milk and wandered back into the living room to look through some drawers. In my experience, drawers and backpacks were great ways to get to know a person. The end tables in the living room only offered up remote controls and PlayStation controls, so I headed into the office I’d passed on the way from my bedroom.

It was a way better jackpot. The desk was stuffed with papers, and the computer wasn’t password protected. The room was practically made for ransacking, situated on the corner of the house with windows on two walls, one pair of them facing the street, so I would have plenty of warning if Sam returned. I set my glass of milk down next to the mouse pad (someone had drawn doodles all over the pad with a Sharpie, including a sketch of a very large-breasted girl in a schoolgirl outfit) and made myself comfortable in the chair. The office was like the rest of the house—homey and masculine and comfortable.

On top of the desk, there were some bills, all addressed to Beck and all marked paid by automatic withdrawal. Bills were not interesting. A brown leather day planner sat next to the keyboard. Day planners were not interesting, either. I opened a drawer instead. A bunch of software programs, mostly utilitarian stuff, but a handful of games as well. Also not interesting. I went for the bottom drawer and was rewarded by a swirl of dust, which is what people use to cover their best secrets. Then, a brown envelope labeled sam. Now we were getting somewhere. I pulled out the first sheet. Adoption paperwork.

Here we go.

I shook the contents of the envelope on the desk, reaching in to pull out some of the smaller sheets that stayed inside. Birth certificate: Samuel Kerr Roth, showing that he was about a year younger than me. A photograph of Sam, knobby and small but still bearing the same flop of dark hair and heavy-lidded eyes I’d noticed the night before. His expression was complicated. Last night, the freakish wolf-yellow of his eyes had caught my attention; when I pulled the photo closer, I saw that baby Sam had the same yellow irises. So they weren’t colored contacts. Somehow that made me feel slightly friendlier toward him. I put down the photo. Beneath it was a sheaf of browning newspaper clippings. My eyes scanned the stories.

Gregory and Annette Roth, a Duluth couple, were charged last Monday with the attempted murder of their seven-year-old son. Authorities have placed their child (not named here to protect identity) into state custody. His fate will be decided after the Roths’ trial. The Roths allegedly held their son in a bathtub and cut his wrists with a razor. Shortly after the act, Annette Roth confessed to the next-door neighbor, saying that her son was taking too long to die. Both she and Gregory Roth told the police that their son was possessed by the devil.

I felt a thick, disgusted glob in the back of my throat that wouldn’t go away when I swallowed. I was having a hard time not thinking of Victor’s little brother, who was eight now. I flipped back to the photo of Sam holding Beck’s hand and looked once more at Sam, his half-closed eyes staring at some point past the camera, vacant. The position of his small hand in Beck’s turned his wrist toward the camera, clearly showing the recent red-brown slash across it.

A little voice in my head said And you feel sorry for yourself.

I shoved the newspaper clippings and the photograph back into the envelope so that I didn’t have to look at them, and looked at the sheaf of paperwork underneath instead. It was trust paperwork, naming Sam as the beneficiary of the trust—which included the house—and the contents of a checking account and a savings account, both bearing Beck’s and Sam’s names.