no reason to tell. She’d just find something to worry about. Oh, Kenzie, what if all that publicity brings some pedophile after you?
I fall back onto my bed and feel my body drifting into the softness of an afternoon nap, but in the distance, I think I hear the door again. Did she go out? Leave something in the car? I wait for what feels like an eternity, but the exhaustion of the day seems to be pressing down on me.
Images of Levi Sterling and Josh Collier collide in my head, all dark and light like the embodiments of evil and good. My brain’s playing tricks on me, giving them animal faces.
Hac urget lupus, hac canis.
The Latin words float through my head and I have to dig a little harder than usual for the literal translation. But it comes to me: On this side a wolf presses, on that a dog. I know that means trouble on either side, but isn’t a dog a bit safer than a wolf? Levi is definitely the wolf. But he’s also the one that makes me a little … a lot weak inside.
I let out a yawn so giant it cracks my jaw and makes my whole body shudder, slipping me even deeper into nothingness. I’m so unbelievably tired. I have to sleep. I have to …
Next to me, my phone rings, close enough to my ear to jar me awake. Wow, this being-popular business is exhausting. I turn my head, which feels like the most I can possibly do, and read the screen.
Mom.
Mom is calling. Wait? What? How can that be? She probably locked herself out while taking out the trash or something. That’s so like her, the overlocker. I reach for the phone, vaguely aware that my afternoon nap left me with a headache and … the scent of rotten eggs. Gross. What is that smell?
I grab the phone. “Hi.”
“Honey, I’m so sorry to be this late.”
I blink myself awake, which is no mean feat. “What do you mean?”
“Mr. Hoyt had a deposition and made me stay until the client left. I know you’ve been home alone for, what, an hour? Everything okay?”
“Didn’t I just …” My voice trails off as every hair on my arms and neck rises slowly. “You’re not … home yet?”
“Where are you, Kenzie?” she asks sharply.
“In my room.” I roll over on the bed, aware that my heart is jackhammering my ribs. “I fell asleep.”
After I heard you come home.
“Are you sick? Do you have a fever?”
I never, never cop to anything that makes her worry, but … didn’t I hear someone downstairs?
I know I locked the door. I remember putting my bag down, turning the latch, dropping the mail … or did I? My brain is like a blanket of sleepy fog.
“Kenzie? Are you all right?” Her voice rises in a familiar note of grade one panic. Not anywhere near her potential of DEFCON 5 (saved for left turns, no matter how far away the oncoming car is), but she is now alarmed.
Of course, that just means she is now breathing.
“I’m fine, Mom, just sleepy.” But I’m staring at my open door, half expecting an ax murderer to jump into the room. I know I heard something.
I squeeze my eyes shut, as adept at stopping my own fears as I am at sidestepping hers. I must have totally imagined that noise.
“Did you sleep last night? You didn’t tell me you had a bad night. Anything going on at school?”
Oh, here we go. “It’s a nap, Mom, not a coma.”
I hear her sigh at my sarcasm. “I’ll be home in less than half an hour.”
“ ’Kay.” Then I remember the football game. “Oh, Mom, did you have any plans for tonight?”
“Just burgers and fries, honey. I thought we could watch a movie.”
My eyes shutter heavily. She’s lonely, I know, and when Dad doesn’t come over, I’m all she’s got. Whose fault is that? Mine. “Oh, okay.”
“Why?”
“I just thought …” That smell dances up my nose again, putrid and stronger. “I was thinking about going to the football game at school.”
“Oh, Kenzie.” I hear her already digging for reasons why no safe or sane person should go to a high school football game. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Yes, Mom.” I try to dial back the bitchy, but it gets so hard sometimes. What I want to say is, I think going to a football game on a nice autumn night when you’re sixteen years old and