Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,55

to do something good, to make up for the other things. Was that enough of a reason? Enough for her?

I decided to tell her. I hoped she wouldn’t be disgusted by me, but I had to find out.

33

Wyatt

The sun had finally risen high in the sky, stretching its fingers through the many branches and lighting the room. I tried to make myself comfortable, but I couldn’t. There would be no comfort for me. Telling this story might help, but probably not. Probably, only doing something would help.

“I used to have this friend named Tyler,” I explained. “He lived next door, and he and I were best friends, almost like brothers. You know what I mean?”

Too late, I realized of course she didn’t. She’d been locked in a tower her whole life, no friends, nothing. Which was mind-blowing, when you thought about it. Locked in a tower. You could say it a hundred times, and it still seemed like something not real, like something from a book you read a long time ago, before you were old enough to question how crazy it was.

She’d been locked in a tower. Oh, and her tears had healing powers. That too. What else? Maybe, if you dropped her out the window, you’d find out she could fly.

I looked at her. Her skin was the same translucent white as the snow outside, and her eyes saw right through me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you don’t really know what I’m talking about.”

“Don’t be. I’ve read books. My favorite was called A Little Princess. There was a girl named Sara, and she had to stay in an attic, which was like a tower. She thought she would be so lonely, but then, she discovered a little girl named Becky in the next room. They became friends and had so many adventures. I used to long for a friend like that, just on the other side of the wall. In fact, at night, I pretended there was someone there. Was that what it was like?”

“Sort of.” I didn’t want to say it was nothing like that. Tyler wasn’t some theoretical soul mate, some pretend friend like in a book. He was a real person, a person who let you copy his homework if you left yours at home, a person to throw a ball with. When Tyler and I went out for the travel baseball team in seventh grade, he made it and I didn’t. So he said he wouldn’t do it either because it wouldn’t be fun without me, even though he really wanted to do it. That was the kind of friend he was. “Yeah, it was like that. We were best friends. His parents were divorced, and after his mother got remarried, we became even better friends. He was over at my house all the time.”

“That’s so nice,” Rachel said. “I always dreamed of having a friend like that. You must miss him, being away from him.”

“I do.” I felt a lump forming in my throat, but I swallowed it. “Anyway we always hung out at my house. Tyler said we couldn’t go to his anymore because his stepfather worked the night shift. I wished I could go over his house more so I could see his sister, Nikki.”

“Nikki?”

“Yeah, Nikki. Nicole. I’d known her since we were little kids too, and I never really thought of her like . . . well, you know. I never thought of her. But last year, I suddenly started noticing that she was, you know, pretty. I’d known her my whole life, and she should have been like a sister, but suddenly, she wasn’t.”

“I understand. Like Laurie and Jo March.”

“Exactly.” Even though I had no idea who Joe March was, he sounded familiar. I thought maybe he was from one of those girl books like Nikki had liked. I’d look on Wikipedia when I got back. “Anyway, one day I decided I’d go over there, just to say hi to her. And Tyler too, of course. I wouldn’t make any noise or disturb their stepdad. We’d pretty much had the type of friendship where you could just walk over without knocking, so I didn’t tell Tyler I was coming.

“But when I got there, Tyler’s stepdad was awake anyway. I knew because he was screaming and yelling. I could see them through the little window in the front door. Just barely, but they couldn’t see me.”

I could still picture the scene, through the thick, mottled glass shaped like a