I had heard stories about my family's safe house in Italy. I knew that it was where Mom and Dad had gone after a particularly nasty incident with the Italian Mob when I was seven. It was where Grandpa Joe and Aunt Abby had run to one night when I was ten. It was where my mother had read the last words that Matthew Morgan had ever left behind.
So yeah. I knew of the safe house, but I had never seen it in person. Never once had I been invited, so as we drove up that long, overgrown drive, I felt like I was finally a part of some super secret club where all the cool kids spent their recess.
The door was heavier than expected, but I think that fact had more to do with my own exhaustion than it did with the actual weight of the door. I was right in the middle of that very thought when I was ambushed—not by foe, but rather by friend. Alice was the first one there, tackling me into something that was probably supposed to be a hug. "Thank god," she sighed.
Except that's the thing about Alice—her hugs aren't really hugs. They're some form of unintentional torture. "Alice," I said. "Alice, I can't breathe."
She tore herself off of me, finally realizing her own strength. "Sorry."
There was a single light above us, shining across her curls and drawing my eye to the scab on her forehead. Until that moment, it had felt like an eternity since we'd last seen each other, but that scab was most definitely only thee days old—a long dark gash just beneath her golden hairline. My insides flared. For some reason I thought of Duncan and his unsettling smile, daring to take on Alice Anderson.
Mom and Macey were next. "Any broken bones?" one of them asked. "Any attacks?" said the other.
"I'm fine," I said. "Everything's fine—did we get the journal?"
I honestly don't know what I would have done if she had said no. Cry, definitely. Break, maybe. Thankfully we didn't have an opportunity to find out because Mom smiled, ruffled my hair, and said, "Yes. You did a good job."
And for the first time in three days, I was finally able to breathe.
"We're getting out of here as soon as it's safe to book a flight to Virginia," she went on. "Then we'll hand the journal over to Phineas and then he can relay any necessary information to Ellie."
Scout kicked the door in, stealing my attention. He was helping Matt inside, both of them bickering about whether or not help was even necessary. In the end, Matt lost the argument and ended up on the couch, a mountain of throw pillows beneath his leg—still arguing, even as Scout went to the kitchen for ice.
Luke trailed in behind them, shutting the door and taking special care with each lock. I told myself that he was probably always this cautious on missions. I told myself that I was probably just witnessing a new side to him, but there was something about the way he focused on those locks. He locked and unlocked each of them exactly three times, as if the first two twists had been inadequate. He went in a steady, certain order, starting at the top and working his way down the line. Click, click, click, next. Click, click, click, next—over and over for each of the five locks. Careful. Obsessive.
Scout and Matt were still bickering, tearing my concentration away from the compulsions of Luke Collins. "Well maybe," said Scout, "if you would quit throwing yourself into the face of danger, you wouldn't be stuck on that couch."
"It's not my fault the bank was compromised," Matt called across the room. "I didn't even want to go into that stupid building."
Scout wasn't buying it. "I would bet my right arm that you stepped in front of your sister once you found danger."
"Are you saying that I shouldn't have stepped in from of my sister? Are you actually saying that right now?"
"So you did."
"I had to get the journal, Scout! I don't know what you want from me."
I was just as surprised as everyone else was when I heard myself say, "The journal." The boys stopped their snips, even though it was clear that this argument was far from over. "Can I read it?" I asked. "I mean, obviously we've got to hand it over to Phineas, but can I read it first?"
Luke, who must've decided that he was satisfied with the locks, shoved my shoulder as he passed. "Get in line, Goode," he said.
His steps seemed too slow, too clumsy as he trekked across carpet, shuffling towards the dining room. Through the archway, I watched him reach into his backpack and pull a bright orange bottle from one of the pockets. There was no sign of the sun in the window behind him. He kept the lights off as the pills rattled and shook. I got the impression that he didn't want anyone to see him as he poured one into his palm and popped it into his mouth.
It was my mother who said, "Collins has been reading through it—he should be done soon and then you'll be next up to bat, kiddo."
"I'm about half way," Collins told us, shoving the bottle back into his bag. "I should be done in a few hours, assuming no one bugs me."
He looked right at me as he spoke and I resented it, even if I couldn't deny it. "Alright!" I said. "Fine. Okay. I'll wait my turn."
He gave me a look that suggested he very much doubted that, but he didn't say so. Instead, he flicked on the chandelier, took a seat at the head of the table, and decided that some truths were better left unspoken.
So I got comfy. Unlike our usual safe house, the one in Italy was fully furnished with the finer luxuries available to mankind. Italian leather and silk curtains. A kitchen made up of mahogany and stainless steel. It was the peak of comfort and yet I couldn't relax. Adrenalin sat stagnant in my veins and all I could do was glance back at the dining room.
I could see his eyes as he read, quick and determined and careful. They never wandered, never strayed. He read like a soldier, line after line, adhering to strict rules. Soon enough, he found a routine, plugging each new word into his mind and turning each page with precision. I'd seen him read before, but this was nothing like the newspaper in Romania or the novel in the hospital wing. There was something different about this time. There was something different about him.
He didn't look up as he spoke. "I swear to god, Goode," he said. "If you keep staring at me, I'm going to read this extra slow, just to make sure you have to wait that much longer."
I groaned, cracking under the pressure of time as I pulled myself up from the chaise lounge and started towards the table. "You're already reading extra slow. It's been, like, two hours."
He blinked. "It's been twenty minutes."
"My point still stands," I told him, even though we both knew that my point could have been blown over by a light breeze. "Listen, some of us haven't had a good night's sleep since Rome—"
"Tell me about it."
"—and I was hoping to turn in early tonight."
He turned the page, careful and completely in control. "You haven't turned in early for years," he said. "And you weren't going to start tonight."
Damn him. Damn him and his insane perceptiveness. I slammed my hands atop the table, but he didn't even flinch. He just kept reading. It was infuriating. "Well that doesn't mean that you get to take your own sweet time—"
That was when he looked up and for the first time in my life, I realized what it truly meant for someone's eyes to lock on to me. "Then by all means, Morgan," he hollered. "Pull up a chair! Join me! I really could not care less."
The safe house was quiet, then, stuck on his words as they echoed across hardwood and hard choices. Collins didn't seem to notice the newfound tension or, if he did, he was very good at hiding it. He just buried his nose back into the journal and kept on reading, the argument over.
And I just stood there, hands stuck to the table, wondering why it was so hard for me to accept an invitation to sit beside Luke Collins.
In the end, it came down to the journal. It's up to you whether or not you believe me, but it's the truth. In the end, I was just so desperate to read my mother's words that Luke vanished from the equation altogether. I hardly noticed the way his eyes flickered off the pages as I approached. I hardly noticed how great he smelled as I pulled my chair up to the table. So much of my attention was on that journal that I didn't notice a lot of things about the boy sitting next to me.
But I did notice when he pulled away.
I'd felt a wide variety of different heartbeats in my life, but this was a new one. "Too close?" I asked, already moving back.
"What? Oh, no. No," he said, moving a rigid arm back to the place it had been before my arrival. He tried to keep his voice low with his next words, but apparently he had forgotten who he was sitting next to. "It's not like you haven't been closer."
He read faster than I did, I could tell. His eyes gave him away. When he was done with the page they would wander in a way that they hadn't before and I caught myself wondering, not for the first time, just how much brain was hidden beneath that brawn.
There were a lot of words between those pages, every line filled and every margin stuffed. Paperclips attached maps and pictures to dirty, ragged edges while every fifth page or so had a new coffee stain. Information swelled off the paper, some of it old and some of it new, but there was one word at the top of almost every page that I couldn't decode. One word that didn't belong. "What does the responsible mean?"
His voice was empty when he answered. "It means that your Mom and Dad are responsible for the death or jailing of their parents."
And nothing—absolutely nothing—that Luke Collins had said to me had ever felt more true. I could picture my mother, hopping from hotel room to hotel room, hunched over whatever nondescript desk was in her room, writing down her events from the day. She had written their names, their ages, their last known location—all of it varied, really, except for that place right next to their names, all the way to the right, with a big red line through the center of it. Responsible.
There were a lot of responsibles.
"Mostly jail though, right?" I said, not much louder than a whisper.
He avoided eye contact when he said, "Next page?"
Because Luke Collins doesn't lie. Because some truths are better left unspoken. "Next page," I told him.
It went on like that for a while. In the room next to us, Matt and Scout took on a much more reserved version of their argument from before. Mom and Macey were in the kitchen, throwing together a dinner made up entirely of canned foods. Alice had found a punching bag somewhere. It was, in many ways, just Luke and I, reading the only bit of my mother that the last two years could spare.
Luke is the kind of guy who looks different up close. From a distance, you see his silhouette. You see his defensive stance and you see his fight. But there's something decidedly different about seeing him up close. When you put glass under a microscope, you start to see its cracks. Maybe that was how I saw the fidgeting.
He wasn't a fidgeter. Fidgeters tend to fight like fidgeters and Luke had never once given off the impression that he had aimless energy built up inside of him. Everything he did was purposeful. Calculated. Except he was fidgeting right then. His leg was bouncing up and down, rapid and anxious. His fingers ran through his hair, one stroke after another, and it reminded me of the locks. Something was eating at him.
"You okay?" I asked.
He nodded. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a nod, as quick as the rest of him.
Next page. All at once, the fidgeting stopped. All at once, he wasn't okay.
I'm no stranger to fear. In fact, I would say that my life is just an accumulation of varying degrees of fear. There's the Midterm fears, revolving around papers and tests, bringing with it the crippling possibility of failure and a dull future. Then there's the I've Got a Gun to My Head fears, which spark thoughts of regret and hope and wishes. So many wishes about time that won't come. There's the First Date fears and the Mom's Not Coming Home fears and then there's about a million fears in between, but none of them—I mean, none of them—match the fear of losing yourself. None of them live up to the absolute horror that comes when panic swallows you whole.
The whole table moved when he stood, throwing himself backwards like he just couldn't take the fidgeting anymore. His hands were in his hair—still pulling and tugging, entire fistfuls falling to the ground as he backed himself into a wall. His chest moved too fast, his face flush, and when he said, "I've got to get out of here. I've got to—I've got to—" I knew exactly what was happening.
I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was the same thing that had come over him all those times he had helped me. Whatever it was, it made me stand, and even though he had about a hundred pounds on me, I pinned him against drywall. "Hey—listen to me. You're here. You're safe."
He tried shoving me away, but I blocked him, standing on a foot to immobilize him. This was just another one of our fights, I told myself, except I really, really had to win this one. "Don't you shove me, Luke. Look at me. You're here. You're safe."
The look he gave me. I can't even describe it. It wasn't often that I was on this side of the attacks, but I prayed that I had never given that look to anyone I loved. I hoped that I had never made them feel as useless as I did just then. "I can't—I need to leave," he begged.
Mom and Macey were the first ones in, but I held my hand out to them, telling them that I had this under control. Whether or not that was the truth, I didn't know, but Luke was the one bound to the truth. I could tell all the lies I needed to.
"Maggie," someone said, and Scout was at my back. "The animals. Do the trick with the animals."
There have been many times when I was thankful for Scout's presence in my life. This was probably one of them.
I turned to Luke and looked him straight in those eyes. I could see the tears pooling up, his cheeks splotchy as he tried to catch his breath. "Luke, hey. Luke. Animals, okay? Give me the animals—A is for aardvark."
He shook his head, violent, just like everything else was. "No," he hollered at me. "No, the animals don't work."
There comes a time when memorization overpowers serenity. If a person runs through the same list over and over, they start to get quicker. It starts to become automatic and that is probably the absolute last thing that will help during a panic attack. The lists need to occupy your mind. The lists need to distract you—there was that word again. Distraction. Always distraction.
I didn't know how many times Luke had run through his alphabetical animals, but I did know that he was suffocating and that he needed help and that I needed to do something different. "Colors, then."
I watched his features twist—watched him pull at even more chunks of hair as a steady stream of tears rolled down his cheeks. "They don't work. They don't work. None of it works."
All I wanted to do was break down and hold him until he stopped. Everyone always told me how strong I was. They always said that I was brave for taking on the attacks and I always thought they were right. Except, in that moment, Luke crumbling before me, I knew that the real courage came from the people who had to watch. The real courage came from the people who helped, despite wanting to break down.
So it was with all of the courage I could muster that I said, "Alright smartass," because he didn't need someone to hold him. He needed someone to bring him back down to Earth. "What about Shakespeare characters. You've got that list memorized?"
He shook his head, a single sob rolling off of his lips. He was shaking so much and his hair. God, didn't that hurt? I couldn't stand to watch him pull out any more of it, but when I tried to pin his arms down, he tore them away. This was how he calmed down. This was how he coped.
"Good," I said. "I'll start. A is for Antony."
"That's," he huffed, "an easy one."
"Oh come on," I teased. "The next one's just as easy."
"Benvolio," he said, apparently agreeing.
"Good. C is for Cleopatra—"
"Are you kidding me?"
"D, Luke. Your letter is D."
His fingers twisted and tugged at thick sandy locks as we went burned through Derby, Edgar, and Fortinbras. The sobs weakened after Gertrude, Hamlet, and Iago. His breaths returned to normal somewhere around Scarus or Tybalt and his hands started to leave his scalp around William.
"I can't think of one for X," he said. "I can't—I'm sorry. I can't think of X."
"It's okay," I told him. "It's okay. I don't care about the letter X. What a stupid letter anyways."
"I'm sorry," he said again. "I can't—I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
"Morgan." The way he looked at me then was different. The way he looked at me, you might have thought he was seeing me for the very first time. That he was seeing the world for the very first time. I knew it was the truth when he said, "I'm sorry."
Before I could respond, his head was on my shoulder and he was crying again. It was different than before. He wasn't scared—he was, well. Sorry.
That was when he started to fall, and even if I had the choice, I still would have fallen alongside him, because now it was my turn to be scared. Now it was my turn to be weak as I finally got to hold him. "You're here," I said. "You're safe."