“You jerk!” she hissed. “How could you do this, Michael!?”
Her voice was a type of screaming whisper, as low as she could manage in her fury. The darkness did little to cover her reddened face and eyes brimming with tears, seething through her teeth in rage and hurt.
“I didn’t—!” but she wouldn’t let me get more than that out before she slapped me again.
“I’ve cried for you for days!” she said. “Mom and I thought you were dead.”
I finally freed myself from her grip, grabbing both of her wrists before she could hit me again, holding them down as she fought me. She was a mess of tears and fury, struggling to breath and to keep quiet at the same time but failing miserably at both.
“Shh!” I commanded. “Don’t wake Mom up!”
She wrenched herself free, feet getting tangled in the bed sheets as she tried to sit up. I got one more strike, this time from the other direction.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Have you been out on some job all this time? Because if you have then I’m going to tell Mom.”
It was the strongest menace she could muster. Her hair was in chaos over her shoulders, strands of it sticking to the tears on her cheeks. I was still in shock—everything had happened so fast, and now that I’d heard her voice for what felt like the first time in forever, I didn’t know how to react.
There was really no easy answer to her question, either. I sighed and sat deeper on the bed, pushing my legs up from the floor: she wanted to know I wasn’t going to bolt.
“You didn’t even call,” she said accusingly. “You didn’t send me one text.”
“I didn’t have my phone,” I said weakly. That only made her angrier.
“What sort of a lame excuse is that?” she replied with shoulders lifted in disbelief. “They still have pay phones. I don’t care if you’re in trouble or you’ve killed somebody or if you can’t talk to mom. But you call me.”
She broke down after that. She didn’t weep or sob, but her head fell forward weakly, like there was no more energy left to fuel her anger. She pulled her knees up close to her chest like they might protect her, laying her forehead on them and creating a wall between her and I.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could muster. No words would equal the apology I wished I could have said. What confession could I offer that would make up for the pain that she was in? I had abandoned her. I’d disappeared and let them come to their own conclusions. Even if I was running away—even if I’d planned to kill myself—I’d have left a note. Somehow I’d plucked myself from one world and moved to another, and forgotten the fissure my absence would create.
Her back pressed against the wall, eyes staring at me over the tops of her arms. She wanted more of an explanation. There was no way I was going to give her one—I didn’t care how much she begged, how much she cried or hit me, I was not dragging her in to the peril I’d found myself in.
So I said nothing. Eventually she picked up on my silence and tried to break me down with her gaze, but I still refused.
“How did you get in my window without a ladder?” she asked instead, voice muffled into her knee. She was trying to keep her eyebrows narrowed at me, though her relief at seeing me again was beginning to wear down her wrath.
“I climbed,” I said, reaching to brush away the hair that was stuck to her face.
“You’re not part spider now, are you?” she asked, only with half sarcasm. I sniffed.
“I think that’s more ninja than anything,” I replied. She let out a slow breath, looking away from me and then back again.
“Don’t try to make me laugh,” she said. “I’m still mad at you. Why’d you go?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
“Then what should we talk about?” she asked with an irritated shrug. “You just disappear and make us think you’ve been kidnapped. The police think you’ve just run off because of the car crash and won’t do much to help us. Mom’s been trying to hack into your computer for days now to find your clients.”
“Any luck?” I asked.
“What do you think?” Alli said. “Mom can barely type.”
I sniffed in amusement. It was true: she hated most computers.
“Then she wanted your cell phone to dig in that,” Alli went on. “She told me if she could find it, she knew the password because she’d seen it over your shoulder: 3140.”
What was up with my mom always being a step ahead of me? All at once the pages of data and contact lists and snapshots I’d collected on my phone rolled through my head. And worse, I hadn’t cleared my web history from reading Father Lonnie’s blog.
Alli stared at me strangely. “You look nervous.”
“Did she get it open?” I insisted. “Don’t look at me that way, what happened?”
Alli pressed her lips together, suddenly enjoying this control, or rather the fact that she was finally wreaking her vengeance. When my face didn’t soften, she relented.
“No,” Alli admitted. “She never found your phone, because when she told me that, I went in your room and hid it.”
Alli reached across the blanket and past me to her tiny bedside table, sliding the drawer open. Inside and beneath some papers was a small rectangular object that I knew very well. I dove to take it but she snatched it out before I could.
“What was she gonna find if she did?” Alli said, putting the phone behind her back.
“Just give it to me!”
“Why can’t you tell me?” Alli pressed.
“I just can’t.”
“You know I can keep secrets,” she told me.
“This is bigger than a secret,” I said. That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, but it was all I had.
Silence fell over us both again, Alli full of questions and me holding answers that I wished I could tell her. I shouldn’t have even come back. Now Alli was a partner in crime, now she’d have to keep a secret as my mom went on searching, begging for someone to help find me, wondering if I might be dead. Alli would have to watch all that. And I knew she’d go on keeping the secret anyway, no matter how much it tore her up inside.
“Alright,” she gave up, voice breaking. She dumped the cell phone into my lap.
“Now I promise I won’t tell,” she said hoarsely. “But you can’t disappear. I won’t ask questions or try to find out what’s going on, but you can’t disappear.”
I gripped the cell phone tightly, pulling Alli close to me in an embrace—we never did that, but it just felt right. I didn’t want to let her go. But I knew that I couldn’t stay. Every moment that I lingered only brought more danger into that house.
She let me pull away from her. I could see in her eyes that it was far too soon. She looked panicked when my feet touched the floor again.
We didn’t bid each other farewell because to say the words would have held too much finality. When I got to the window, I turned the cell phone on and held it up, waving the colored light over her face like it was a tiny flashlight, then shining it on the floor as I mimicked sweeping my tracks away. She finally grinned back at me. I climbed out the window, and heard the blinds clatter back into place behind me.
I swung myself to the side and out of her window’s view before I allowed my powers to lift me higher, whirling to the rooftop. I waited there, hands clutching the edge until I heard the sound of her window sliding shut. I knew she’d be watching there, hoping to see which direction my shadow would run. She wouldn’t think to look to the sky.
When I was certain she’d finally given up and left the glass, I sat up. Part of me hoped that by the next morning, it’d be like I’d never been there. She’d wake up and doubt herself, thinking that my return had all been a dream. Even if my mom or the police squeezed it out of her, they’d say it was delusions too. I figured I was safe enough.