Troublemaker Read online

  “You heard me,” I tell them. We’re sitting in my dorm room. It’s past curfew and we should all already be asleep, but somehow, none of us have been able to sleep much lately. Maybe it’s because the stress of exams is finally getting to us.

  Or maybe we just all need someone to talk to.

  “You told Harrison he was like his dad? How’d he take it?”

  I shrug and shake my head.

  “I don’t really know. I mean, we didn’t talk about it after. Besides, it was kind of a shitty thing to say, right?”

  I don’t like to think of myself as a bully. Does anyone? Does anybody wake up and go, “Hmm, I hope people think I’m a real prick today”?

  I don’t think so.

  But that’s kind of what I did. I picked on Harrison for no good reason. I just wanted a release, and being bitchy to him felt really, really good. Only now some time has passed, and all I’m thinking about is the hurt look on his face.

  “A little bit,” Karen agrees.

  “I mean, maybe he really admires his father,” Emilia says thoughtfully. “Some people are really close with their parents.”

  Emilia lost her dad a long time ago, so I don’t say anything. I still don’t really know where the lines are in our relationship, and I don’t want to do anything that might accidentally upset her. She really is a sweet girl, and I don’t think she deserves to be hurt or injured because I decide to say or do something callous.

  “Harrison and his dad have never been close, but...”

  “But what?” Karen asks.

  “Tell us,” Emilia urges, and I can see them both looking at me intently.

  They’re not idiots.

  You can’t be stupid and attend Crescent Academy.

  That’s not how it works.

  But I’ve also never confided in either one of them, and I’m not sure that I’m ready to now. Neither one of them knows very much about me or my home life. They definitely don’t know that I was raised by Harrison’s family.

  Would now be a good time to tell them?

  Would they even understand?

  I can’t tell them about the weigh-ins. I can’t tell them about the weird shit that Frank has planned for my life. There’s a part of me that desperately wants to be heard and understood, though.

  Would they get it if I fed them just a little bit of the truth?

  Could it really hurt?

  “Can you keep a secret?” I finally ask, and the room falls silent. Karen and Emilia both grin evilly and rub their hands together. “Okay, you two, stop it,” I say. “I’m kind of expecting you to both start cackling now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karen says. “But we’ve been waiting so long to hear those words fall from your lips.”

  “It’s true,” Emilia agrees. “You’re a pretty private person, Adalee.”

  “Really? I had no idea,” I say drily.

  “You know what we mean,” Emilia says. “Nobody really knows anything about you, and I mean, let’s be honest: we’ve gone to school together for four years. You should probably tell us something about yourself before graduation.”

  “Yeah,” Karen agrees. “What if we graduate and later find out you’re secretly a foreign princess?”

  “Yeah, or a debutante,” Emilia adds.

  “Or a spy.”

  “Or a magical witch.”

  “Okay, okay,” I shake my head laughing. “Enough.”

  They don’t need to speculate any further. I’ll give them something. I can’t promise to give them a lot, and I can’t promise it will be enough, but I can give them something, and that will serve two purposes.

  First, it’ll let them know that I trust them.

  Second, it’ll show that I can be chill.

  The super-secret third reason is that this secret is tearing up my heart and dying to escape. If I don’t let a little bit of the truth out, the rest is going to barrel out of my mouth at the wrong time, and that would be disastrous.

  “Um, so you both know Harrison,” I say.

  “Do you have a crush on him?” Karen asks. “Because I kind of think you have a crush on him.”

  “Nobody talks like that,” Emilia glares at Karen. Then she turns back to me, “But you do, don’t you? You like him. Is that it?”

  I swallow.

  Hard.

  No backing out.

  This is it.

  I set myself up for this, and the only place to go is forward.

  “Yeah,” I whisper, and it’s like a giant weight has lifted from my chest. I didn’t even realize just how much that secret was killing me.

  It hurt.

  A lot.

  And it’s something I can’t tell anyone else.

  I definitely can’t tell Harrison.

  He can never, ever know how I actually feel.

  The biggest problem is that I knew Harrison before all of this. I knew him before his dad’s weird plan. I knew him before he was popular.

  I knew him before he started bullying people who were smaller than him.

  “I fucking knew it,” Karen laughs. “So are you going to ask him out?”

  “Yeah,” Emilia says. “Or are you two already, you know?” She wiggles her eyebrows and I shake my head.

  “Nah,” I whisper, blushing.

  Not that I haven’t thought about it.

  Because oh, I’ve thought about it.

  I know that Harrison isn’t a virgin. I know he’s had sex before: probably with a lot of people. He’s dated enough of them, anyway, and I know he’s been seen around school a lot with Dana. She’s tall and curvy and beautiful. In other words, she’s everything I’m not. Where she has shape and poise, I’ve got...

  I don’t know.

  I’m just flat.

  Straight.

  Plain.

  “So what are you going to do about this?” Karen says. She looks at me thoughtfully as she reaches for one of the cookies that are sitting between us. The three of us have somehow managed to all fit on my bed, and Emilia brought a tin of cookies.

  Chocolate chip.

  I haven’t had any.

  If the girls have noticed my hesitation to eat cookies, they’ve been kind enough not to say anything to me about it.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “What!?” Karen and Emilia shriek in unison.

  “But you never like anyone,” Karen says.

  “And you owe it to yourself to give it a try,” Emilia tells me.

  “Okay, time for secret number two,” I say.

  This one is going to be a little stranger.

  “Two secrets in one night?” Karen looks over at Emilia and shakes her head. “What’s gotten into our sweet Adalee?”

  “I know,” Emilia says. “Usually, she’s so tame and docile.”

  I’m not even upset at how she’s describing me because I know it’s true. Those are all very fancy words to describe me. Another word would be “boring.”

  “I’m only going to say it once,” I tell them. “And you can’t tell anyone.”

  My heart is pounding.

  Aching.

  Hurting.

  They’re silent, waiting for me to open my mouth and spill the beans, and suddenly, my skin goes cold, but I need to get this out before I turn into a huge chicken and flake.

  Again.

  “Harrison and I know each other,” I tell them. “From before Crescent Academy. We go way back. We...we were raised in the same house.”

  Karen and Emilia both look confused, and then Karen starts to look sick.

  “Oh my shit,” she says. “Are you trying to tell me he’s your brother?”

  “What? No!”

  “Stepbrother?” Karen shrieks. “That’s even worse!”

  “No, he’s nothing, and shut the fuck up before someone hears us,” I say, looking over at the door. “And besides, how is that fucking worse?”

  “It’s the same!” Emilia says.

  “He’s not my brother. For fuck’s sake,” I jump up
and run to the door. I hear voices outside, but I don’t think anyone knows exactly which room the shriek came from. If I’m careful, we won’t get caught. The last thing I need right now is another detention.

  Finally satisfied that we’re not going to be hauled off into the night, I return to the bed and sit down.

  “Explain,” Emilia says.

  “We were raised together,” I say. “His mom and dad raised us both. He always thought of me as like, a cousin, or a friend.”

  “Why did his parents raise you?” Karen asks.

  “My mom was...”

  What’s a nice way to put this?

  “My mom was in trouble,” I finally say. I don’t know the whole story. Chances are that I never will. Frank has always been a world-class liar, and anything I can’t remember from my limited time with my mom are things that are just lost for always.

  “And they helped her out?” Karen asks gently.

  “Something like that.”

  Emilia doesn’t buy it, though.

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “Harrison O’Conner might be a bully, but if his dad is anything like any of our classmates’ fathers, then he’s a world-class dick. Guys like that don’t help people out of the goodness of their hearts.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Spill it,” Emilia says. “You’ve already told us half of the information. You might as well tell us the rest so we can be here for you.”

  Karen places her hand on my knee, but she doesn’t try to force me to speak. Instead, my two friends wait.

  Finally, I blurt it out.

  “I think he bought me,” I say.

  It sounds horrible to reveal this information out loud. I’m shocked when neither girl says a word. Neither one of them judges me or laughs at me or tells me I’m crazy.

  Instead, they both reach for me, pulling me into a sort of weird, awkward group hug.

  “Oh honey,” Emilia says.

  “I’m so sorry,” Karen adds.

  Together, they whisper, trying to help me calm down, and it’s only when they start rubbing my back that I realize I really am shaking.

  I’ve never told anyone this before.

  I’ve never shared this information with anyone.

  “I don’t have any proof,” I say, as though that matters.

  “I’m sure he’s covered his tracks,” Karen says.

  “What do you remember?” Emilia asks, and so I tell them.

  “My mom and me...well, it was just us. For a long time. Forever. One day, she said I had to go live with my Uncle Frank, and then he appeared. He and his wife came and got me, and they took me away.”

  “You never saw your mom again,” Emilia says.

  It’s not a question.

  “I never even saw that part of town again,” I say. “I don’t even know how my mom knew Frank and his wife. I don’t know how she owed them money, or if they offered her cash for me, or what went down. I don’t know any of it.”

  “You never will, either,” Karen shakes her head. “Shit like that...that’s the kind of stuff you see on TV or read about in books. Those guys always mess up and reveal their secrets, but those are stories. In real life, you never get answers. You never get closure.”

  “Have you ever tried to find your mom?” Emilia asks, and I nod.

  “Yeah, I...I mean, I’ve seen my birth certificate, so I know her name.”

  Frank tried to keep it hidden from me, but I saw a copy in my school file one time in the office. When the guidance counselor wasn’t looking, I grabbed it and took a mental picture of the document. Later, I tried looking her up online, but I couldn’t find very much: an article about an arrest, a school photo.

  “But you couldn’t?”

  “I...”

  “She’s dead.” Karen says the words blandly, and I nod. My mouth goes dry.

  “Yeah, um, I finally found her obituary. It looks like she died not long after I went to live with Frank.”

  “What happened?” Emilia’s words are gentle and kind, but they don’t take the edge off what happened. They don’t make this hurt less.

  Are her words supposed to make me hurt less?

  They don’t.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. “Do you think she sold me to Frank because she wanted drug money?” I ask.

  The question is one that’s plagued me for years. It’s something that’s kept me up at night. It’s something that’s made me feel sick. I can never ask Frank what happened or where I came from. The few times I asked as a child ended with a sharp slap to the face. Harrison never saw. He never knew that his father hit me, and he certainly never knew why. I learned very quickly not to ask about my mom.

  I don’t know why she gave me up.

  What did he promise her?

  “No,” Karen and Emilia answer at once, and somehow, their fierce loyalty and kindness warms my heart.

  It makes me feel like I’m not totally alone, at least not right now.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Nobody does that in real life,” Karen says. “There’s no way. Look, I don’t talk about my childhood much,” she says. “But I can tell you one thing, and that’s that being poor sucks. A lot. My mom’s a shrink now, but she wasn’t always. She grew up on the streets, and we were poor for a long time when I was little. You make a lot of hard choices when you’re poor. Maybe your mom had a hard choice to make.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean a choice about drugs,” Emilia says kindly. “Maybe she thought that Frank would make sure you got a good education.”

  “Or maybe she just wanted to know you were with a good family,” Karen says.

  “Maybe.”

  “Can you ever ask Frank?” Emilia asks.

  “No. Never.”

  Karen is watching me carefully, and then she asks a question I’ve been dreading.

  It’s a question I was hoping to avoid.

  “Why are you telling us this now?” She asks. “We’ve known you for years and you’ve never opened up about where you came from. Why today?”

  “Because today I had detention with Harrison O’Conner, and for a minute, I thought he was going to hit me or kiss me.”

  He did neither.

  I don’t know what I wanted him to do.

  Nothing, maybe.

  A kiss, perhaps.

  I don’t know, and I can’t be honest with myself enough to express that.

  “Damn,” Karen lets out a long, low breath. “And how did that make you feel?”

  Emilia glares at her.

  “Okay, stop with the therapist stuff,” she says.

  “What?” Karen blinks innocently.

  “Is that how your mom talks to you? Does she treat you like one of her clients?” Emilia shakes her head. “Adalee is obviously conflicted. Right, Adalee? Do you feel conflicted?”

  “Uh, actually, yeah,” I blush.

  “Why? Because Harrison is a dick and you still like him?” Karen looks at me curiously, but not in a judgmental sort of way.

  “That’s part of it.”

  “And why else?” Emilia jumps in. “Because you’ve known him forever?”

  “Kind of, yeah. I just...maybe it would be weird. Maybe he doesn’t feel the same way.”

  “So you’re scared he’s going to reject you,” Karen points out.

  “Yep.”

  “So you’re rejecting him first,” Emilia says.

  “Maybe.”

  Is that what I’m doing?

  Fuck.

  My thoughts feel so muddled and crazy that I don’t really know what they’re supposed to be. I miss the days when things were straightforward and easy. I miss feeling like the world made sense.

  Nothing makes sense anymore.

  Nothing at all.

  “I have to go with him next week,” I say quietly. “Home. We’re going home together and we’re going to be alone at his house for like two whole weeks.”

  “Won’t his dad be there?”

  “
Barely.”

  “Do you want to come to my house for Christmas break?” Karen asks. “I’m sure my mom wouldn’t mind.”

  The thought is so tempting and sweet, but there’s no chance Frank would go for it. He wants me around Harrison as much as possible. He really wants to try to force the relationship between us because he wants Harrison to have a good, safe wife.

  He wants Harrison to marry someone who is under Frank’s thumb, but I don’t quite know why. Does he think I’m going to be able to make an influence on his kid? If he does, then he definitely doesn’t know Harrison as well as he thinks he does.

  Harrison is Frank’s kid through-and-through.

  That means he’s stubborn.

  He’s callous.

  He’s hard.

  Harrison isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to change his mind for a girlfriend or a wife. If he wants to do something, he’ll do it. He doesn’t wait for permission.

  Part of me admires that about him. Part of me is jealous of him. He’s so cool and confident and me?

  Well, I’m sitting on my bed with my two best friends who, until tonight, didn’t even know I was an orphan.

  I’m not doing so hot in the friendship and success at life departments, but I’m trying.

  “That’s really sweet,” I tell Karen. “And yes, I want to go, but I can’t.”

  “Because of Frank,” Emilia says.

  “Because of Frank.”

  “This guy sounds like a piece of shit,” Karen points out the obvious, but I have to love how loyal and sweet she’s being to me.

  “He kind of is,” I say.

  “You deserve better,” Emilia tells me gently. “You deserve to find happiness.”

  She’s happy because she’s found someone who makes her heart sing and while I’m not at all jealous of my friend, there’s still a part of me that hopes I’ll be able to find something like that.

  Someone.

  Anyone.

  Him.

  “You should probably go,” I finally say, climbing off the bed. “It’s late, and we’re going to get our asses kicked if they catch us.”

  “You’re no fun,” Karen grumbles, but she slides off the bed and closes the tin of cookies.

  “Until next time,” Emilia says, and then the two of them hug me.