Echo’s foot taps the blacktop as she runs her hands over her arms. “I tried your cell.”
“It’s dead.” Because I wanted to kill the temptation of calling Rachel.
Echo’s head falls back and she sucks in a deep breath. “I screwed up and I’m sorry. So sorry. But she can’t tell anyone. I made sure of it. I slipped during my session yesterday, and what’s said during a session is privileged. I threatened her—if she tells anyone I’ll turn her in.”
My stomach begins a downward spiral. I hate where this is heading. “Told who what?”
“I accidently told Mrs. Collins that you’re living with Noah. I’m so sorry, Isaiah.”
The slap of her words makes me take a step back. Fuck. Echo told her therapist, a guidance counselor at my school, that I don’t live with my assigned foster family. Every muscle I possess seizes with anger.
Her voice breaks and she wipes a hand over her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I swear to God I’ll turn her in if she says one word. I swear it.”
Another tear rolls down her face. Echo means what she says even though Mrs. Collins is the one person who can help her deal with her issues. I’m pissed. No doubt. But families have each other’s backs.
“It’ll work out,” I tell her, though I have no idea if that statement is true. Forgiving her doesn’t erase the fact that she may have ruined my life. “And if it doesn’t, then I’ll fix it.”
Because Echo is a touchy-feely girl, she hugs me. I hug her back while meeting Noah’s stare. He gets that his girl and I love each other in a brother-sister type of way. Noah nods his appreciation and I nod back. How the hell am I going to get out of this?
Chapter 20
Rachel
“YOU KNOW WHAT I NEED?” I lean away from the hood of West’s SUV and wipe my greasy fingers on a rag, careful not to touch my clothing. West snuck me out here to the massive “children’s” garage after dinner, claiming a near-death emergency.
“A life?” West, my older brother by less than a year, slouches against my Mustang. With his baggy jeans and designer black T-shirt, he fits suburban ghetto wannabe to a T.
“Get off my baby.”
“It’s a car, Freak-a-sauraus. You realize most dudes aren’t as obsessed as you are.” Because he knows I’m serious, West moves away from her.
I drop the rag and slam his hood. “I didn’t come out here to be insulted. Go inside, crawl to Dad, and tell him you forgot to change your oil again and let’s see how this plays out.”
West pulls his baseball cap off his head and pounds it against his leg. “Shit. The oil. I forgot to change the oil. That’s why the light came on.”
I snatch my jacket and am reaching to open the door when West steps in my path. “I was playing. You know it. I tease, you take it. It’s the game we play.”
I slide to the right. “I’m done playing.”
He mirrors me. “No, you can’t leave. Dad will be pissed if he finds out I didn’t change the oil again. You’ve seen how he is with me. Come on, Rach. Have a heart. You know you’re my favorite sister.”
“I’m your only sister.” Well, the only one alive, that is.
“Gavin’s a little girly.”
I laugh. “No, he’s not.”
West releases a sly grin. I laughed, therefore he knows he’s winning. “Come on, have you seen the dude’s eyebrows? Unnatural for a guy. I’ll bet you ten dollars he has them waxed.”
Not quite willing to bend, I sigh and cross my arms over my chest.
West drops to one knee. “Please, Rach. Please. I’m begging here.”
“Fine.”
“Great.” He hops up, steals my coat from me and slips his hat on his head backward.
“On one condition,” I say.
“Name it.”
“Change the oil. Regularly. You don’t wait until a light flashes on your console and you don’t wait until you’re near bone-dry. It’s not that complicated. Every three thousand miles or every three months. They put a reminder sticker at the top of your windshield.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” And we’re both aware we’ll be having this same conversation again in a couple of months.
I open the cabinet and shuffle through some boxes to find the extra oil filters I bought for West’s SUV. “If I had a diagnostic code scanner I could tell you if there’s another reason why the maintenance light came on.”
West seats himself on the hood of my car and I throw a rag at him. “For the love of God, get off my car. Touch it again and I’ll crack the head of your engine.”
“Sorry.” Repentant, West heads to the other side of the garage Mom and Dad built to house my brothers’ and my cars. Our parents are the only ones allowed to use the garage actually connected to the house. “I thought you said I just need oil.”
“Yes, you need oil, but you could have seriously damaged other things because the car needed oil a long time ago.”
West slumps against the wall, and I throw him a bone. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”
Hope creeps along his face. “You can fix it?”
“Yeah, I can fix it.” With new filter in hand, I repop the hood and begin the task of salvaging West’s SUV. “But the scanner would be nice for when it’s something more than a missed oil change.”
West’s cell phone chimes, and he pulls it out to read a text message. “You should have asked for it for your birthday or Christmas.”
“I did,” I mutter, but West is too caught up in whatever he’s texting to hear. I asked for the scanner along with a few “girly” things, hoping my parents wouldn’t notice and would just check the item off the list as they went on their shopping spree, but that didn’t happen. They bought me a new ebook reader and jewelry. No scanner.
The tick, tick, tick of West tapping on his cell continues to my right. “Heard Dad asked you to work with Mom and the Leukemia Foundation.”
Is anything in my life not a topic for discussion in this family? “Yep.”
“You know she’ll only accept the position if you agree to speak.”
“Yes,” I say more softly. I hate the guilt festering on my insides.
“And you also know,” he says in a way-too-happy voice, “if she takes on the position, she’ll have that I’m-planning-something manic high all the time.”
And I’ll constantly be on the verge of a panic attack and I’ll have to constantly hide it. With those types of attacks, I vomit. Vomiting is what once led me to the hospital.
When I say nothing, West continues, “She’ll be happy.” He pauses. “Just saying.”
I inhale deeply. Why does my mother’s happiness always depend on me?
“Have you given Dad an answer yet?”
“No, I haven’t.” I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t say yes, either. Like a coward, I escaped when Dad’s phone unexpectedly rang. Dad mentioned later that he was okay with giving me until Friday to think it over. It’s Wednesday night, so I have one more day before the answer is due. Both Gavin and Jack hunted me down to tell me their opinion on the subject, which is to get over my fear of public speaking and work with Mom.
“You should do it, Rach,” West says with his fingers still moving on his phone.
I lift my head and toss my hair to clear my ear. “What? What was that? Did I hear Dad calling for you?”
“Fine. Consider me backed off.” West shoves his cell into his jeans pocket. “Will my car be ready by Saturday? I have a date.”
When doesn’t West have a date? “With who?”
My brother picks up one of my ratchets and spins it so that it makes the winding noise. “Some girl I met in French.”
Surely he knows her name. I mean, he did ask her out, and I assume that was her he was just texting. I place the strap wrench on the filter and hesitate. “Do the girls you date ever mean something?”
“Mean something?” He stares into space for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess. Some I like more than others.”
My cheeks burn and I need to rub my eyes, but if I do I’ll smear grease on my face, and then Mom will know I’ve been out “tinkering with those cars again.” She tries to understand my fascination, but I always see the disappointment in her eyes. So I hide my passion from her and discuss whatever I had read in one of her fashion magazines. Mom loves fashion.
I ask so softly that if West doesn’t hear my question, I’ll know it means he wasn’t meant to answer, “Did you ever tell a girl that you’d call, and you never did?”
The winding sound of the ratchet stops, and the heaviness of the silence cause me to look up. Uncharacteristically solemn, he stares straight at me. “What’s this about?”
I refocus on the filter. “Nothing.”
“No.” West’s sneakers squeak against the concrete floor as he walks over to me. “This is something. You’ve been carrying your phone around like...like a normal teenage girl would, instead of leaving it in your room like you usually do. And you’ve been acting off since the charity ball. Did you meet some guy? Did he not call?”
I yank hard on the wrench, but the oil on the filter created a slick surface. “Make yourself useful and grab that oil pan. Oil’s going to drip when I get this loosened.”
With a huff, West does what I ask and hovers over the engine next to me. “Who is it, Rach? Who’s the asshole who didn’t call?”
“No one.” Just some really hot guy who I shared my first kiss with. I grit my teeth and put all of my strength into the wrench.
“Tell me who it is. His ass is mine.” The pure malice in his tone gives me chills. West has a flash-fire temper when pushed too far, and he can kick ass when the line is crossed. But I’ve never believed he’d hurt a guy in my honor...until now.
“Is it Brian?” The anger within him builds like a snowball. The pan trembles in his hand. “I saw him talking to you at the party. If it is, stay away from him. The guy’s a prick.”
I open my mouth to tell him what type of friends he has, since they were the ones who took me to the drag race and left me to fend for myself. But then I remember that he’d crucify me if he knew that I hung out with them, participated in a drag race, ran from the police and then kissed a guy while alone in his apartment.
West moves the pan to catch the leaking oil as I remove the old filter. “There’s no guy, okay? I’m curious. You date a lot of girls, and I was wondering if you call every single one of them.” I wipe off the filter mount and finish the rest of what I have to say. “And what it means if you don’t call.”
My brother stays unusually quiet while I finish replacing the old filter with the new one and add new oil. When I motion with my head that he can pull the pan away, West finally answers, “The ones I don’t like, I don’t call back.”
