Scare Crow (11 page)

“Can you take over for me, dear?” she hissed and ran away before I could even an
swer.

I gave the boy over the counter my most comforting smile. “Can I help
you?”

“I was just telling the other lady that my name isn’t appearing on any of the class
rosters. Some of the professors won’t even let me come into their class until they
see that I really did sig
n up.”

“Hm,” I said, pushing my eyebrows together. “That’s very weird.” There was nothing
weird about it. I had given his account a quick once-over, and he hadn’t paid last
year’s tuition. Based on the red lettering at the top, he wasn’t even a student anymore,
and the length of his dirty dreadlocks told me that he probably wouldn’t be paying
the establishment for this year’s tuition ei
ther.

I winked at the boy in the dreadlocks. “Let’s see what we ca
n do.”

I was already out of his account. And while I clicked away furiously, he stood by
and watched with an expectant grin. As if we were both about to screw the establishment
toge
ther.

As I typed
Cameron James Hillard
and saw it appear on the screen, I bit my lip, and my hands quieted over the keyb
oard.

“Everything okay?” Dreadlocks inqu
ired.

“A bit dizzy,” I managed to mumble back as I pressed e
nter.

“It’s the air in here. They’re trying to poison us with this recycled crap they call
air. They want to keep us down. Sub
dued.”

While he carried on about the government machine, I was staring at Cameron’s file.
He had been enrolled as a part-time student this year and last. His tuition had, of
course, been paid in
full.

He had been enrolled in two classes last year and would have been enrolled in two
more classes this semester. I recognized those classes—all ones I had taken and was
currently taking. The classes he had picked were the ones that were being held in
the biggest auditoriums, where he could have easily gotten lost in the c
rowd.

I didn’t know which was worse: the fact that he would have been sitting in class with
me now, or the fact that he had been there the whole time and I had been completely
oblivious to
this.

I hadn’t realized that I’d stopped typing and held on to my stomach. The boy was too
engrossed in his discussion of political immorality to notice. But a hand fell upon
my shoulder, and I turned to see B
etty.

“You’re ill too,” she said to me with concern on her motherly face. “It must be the
flu. I’ll finish up here. You go home and get some
rest.”

I used my body to hide the screen from her and took my time getting off her seat,
enough time to click my way back into Dreadlocks’ file and cover my tracks. And enough
time to memorize an add
ress.

I left without saying good-bye to Betty. Now that I had gotten what I needed, I would
probably never speak to her again. People were just that disposable to me
now.

I did go home as Betty ordered, but as soon as I got there, I grabbed Meatball and
got in my
car.

I hadn’t known what I was going to find in Cameron’s file, but when I saw the address,
I had immediately recognized it. It was in the other slummy part of Callister, where,
with a little more money, you could rent a place that looked like a box of cereal,
with a door and two windows. I suppose the people who lived in this part probably
thought of themselves as better off than the folks in my neighborhood. At least they
had a front
yard.

I turned into the row-housing district and eventually found the right street, where
Cameron’s mother lived. I had thought about coming here many times, but I knew that,
unless I went door-to-door, there was no way I would ever find the right place among
these concrete multi
ples.

There were kids everywhere, like the neighborhood was overrun with them. Most of them
were just walking the streets, goofing around. Kids pushing babies and toddlers around
in rickety strollers. Kids sitting on the sidewalk, smoking cigare
ttes.

It was hard for me to imagine Cameron here, walking these streets. And yet, this was
the world that he had come from. This was part of who he had
been.

I vividly remembered coming here with Cameron. I remembered how embarrassed he had
been. I remembered Cameron calling me his girlfriend. And I remembered how devastated
his mother had been after hearing of Rocco’s d
eath.

I was there to do the same—tell Cameron’s mother that she had lost another son. I
assumed that Spider and Carly, the only other people who would have known about Cameron’s
mother, wouldn’t have come running to tell her that they had murdered her son. But
I wasn’t doing this for his mom; I was doing this for him. Because he deserved to
be missed. I wanted his mother to miss him, mourn him like she had Rocco. I wanted
Cameron to have the love of his mother, even if it was only in the
end.

When I stopped in front of number 65, Meatball simply sat back and growled, letting
the hairs on his back spike up. There was a group of men in the yard next to number
65. They were loitering, beers in hand. But this seemed to bother the hell out of
Meatball, so I left him in the car. I didn’t want him running away on me a
gain.

I knocked on Cameron’s mother’s front door and could hear Meatball barking at me.
Surely he would pay me back for this l
ater.

As was the case when Cameron and I had last been there, no one answered the door.
I tested the handle and let myself in. Not much had changed since I had last been
there. The smell of wet clothes and cigarettes was still first to greet you at the
door. The television was still on in the living room, and Cameron’s three half siblings
were still sitting there sockless, staring blankly at the televi
sion.

I cleared my throat to announce my arrival. Only one of them, the boy, glanced my
way. I would have recognized those eyes anywhere. Dark brown, almost black. Cameron’s
eyes. I temporarily lost my breath in the smoke-filled
room.

“Hi, um, do you remember me?” I asked the
kid.

But Cameron’s stepbrother had already lost interest and was back to watching televi
sion.

I walked in and made my way to the kitchen—the last place I had seen her. The kitchen
was still a disaster, with the lipsticked cigarettes still overflowing in the ashtray
on the table. Cameron’s mother, however, wasn’t t
here.

But when I heard thumps coming from upstairs and then tandem cackles, I figured out
where she was and that she wasn’t a
lone.

Slightly grossed out, I went back to the living room and decided to wait for the grown-ups
to be done. There were boxes and bags everywhere, as though someone had just moved
in. My guess was that Cameron’s mom had a new boyfriend a
gain.

I found a box and pushed a few bags of clothing aside and
sat.

In any other place, it would have been weird for a strange girl to invite herself
in, sit, and stare at the kids. But I couldn’t help myself. I found a little bit of
Cameron and Rocco in all of them. The crazy brown hair. The slight curl in the right
ear. And these kids already had that blank expression, that look of defeat that Cameron
had when he had decided to end it, en
d us.

I had to look away and find something else to keep my mind
busy.

I noticed the overturned pop bottles and ripped bags of chips. It was like raccoons
had been through looking for any last morsel of food, however small. This family,
these kids, depended on the money that Cameron would give to his mother. With him
gone, there was no one to look after all of them. What would happen to
them?

All of a sudden, the noise upstairs ceased and the house went quiet, with the only
noise coming from the television. And I realized that I did not want to face Cameron’s
mother. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened to Cameron. Not now. Not after …
what she had just been d
oing.

I grabbed at my jacket and pulled the money that I had cashed from my first paycheck.
I separated the money into roughly three piles and went up to the kids. I had their
full attention
now.

“Don’t tell your mother,” I told them in a
rush.

Without a word, they grabbed the money and ran out the
door.

I hurried behind them, running to the car before Cameron’s mother foun
d me.

On the way home, I couldn’t get their faces out of my head. And it wasn’t just because
they reminded me so much of Cameron and R
occo.

The only mistake they had ever made was being born to that woman, being born into
poverty, being born at all. I wanted to judge Cameron’s mother. I desperately wanted
to hate her. Yet I couldn’t. Because I wasn’t that different from
her.

I had just given away all my rent and grocery money. The kids needed it, but so did
I, so did the child I was carrying. Like Cameron’s mother, I was bringing into this
world a child that I wouldn’t be able to take care of. I would love this child. But
love wouldn’t put food in its stomach, wouldn’t protect it from the world that wanted
it
dead.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen Griff, and as I parked my car in the
back, I realized how much I wanted him to be there. And this scare
d me.

I had spent a lifetime shutting people out, telling myself that I was better off on
my own. And when I had met Cameron, I hadn’t just let my guard down; I had given him
my trust and my heart … despite knowing so little about him. I still hadn’t figured
out how this could have happened. Why had I let myself fall so utterly in love with
a man I hardly knew when, in the end, this man had ended it all and taken my heart
and the rest of me with
him?

Now I had Griff. I needed his friendship and his support so badly that just the thought
of losing him again would have been enough to put me over the
edge.

But I hardly knew
him.

All I knew was that he had shown up on my doorstep with a bag of cash and a note with
my name and address written on it. Deep down, I thought I could trust him. But deep
down, I had also once thought that Cameron would never hurt me. And he had found a
way to hurt me so badly that I had been turned inside out, like a beach washed away
in a hurri
cane.

Obviously, my judgment was lac
king.

There were things that I needed to do before the baby came, things that I would need
Griff’s help with. But at what expense? It wasn’t just about me getting hurt anymore.
I had two people to worry about
now.

Griff had been sent to me for a reason, and whether or not he knew that reason, I
needed to put my guard up—and keep it t
here.

****

It seemed like the whole city was in our house when Meatball and I came through the
door. I’d forgotten it was Friday, which meant that the house was party central. The
last thing I needed was more people around. Maybe moving out with Griff wasn’t such
a bad idea after
all.

I found myself having to weave through a crowd as I went looking for Griff. The smell
of beer, the loud music, the strangers trying to make small talk with me as I walked
by, Meatball baring his teeth at anyone who tried to get too close, and still no Griff.
It was just too much. Three people offered me a drink, one guy actually put a drink
to my lips, and a girl spilled her drink on the bottom of my p
ants.

I was about to go hide in my bedroom when some guy accosted me in the upstairs hallway.
I’d never seen him before, but he seemed to know who I
was.

He practically shoved a piece of red rubber in my face, which made an already jumpy
Meatball ready to pounce. I grabbed his collar before he could jump on the
kid.

“Your dog ate one of my boxing gloves,” the guy barked. I sighed as I realized that
he was one of the new roommates and that the piece of rubber he had shoved in my face
was the remainder of his boxing glove. Perfect. Great way to start the school
year.

I glared at Meatball, who had gone very quiet all of a sudden. A
whole
boxing glove? Really, Meat
ball?

I could feel myself flush. “I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a new
one.”

But the guy wasn’t done. “He ate my brother’s bike helmet
too.”

A boy who looked like his duplicate, but wearing a different shirt, came up behind,
carrying a black half-chewed strap, which I surmised was all that was left of the
he
lmet.

So the new roommates were twins—identical twins—and apparently, I needed to feed Meatball
more than four times a
day.

“I got it for my birthday,” the new twin whined. “What am I supposed to wear on my
head in the mean
time?”

By this point, everyone upstairs had stopped chattering and had started staring at
us. Even Cassie was standing in her doorway, staring with the rest of them. Meatball
cowered into my room, leaving me to fend off the accusers. I was mortified. I was
tired. I was afraid they were going to make me get rid of Meatball. So many emotions
were whirling through me that I just couldn’t handle this. I shook my head and started
pacing back toward my
room.

Hunter came out of his room with a girl, oblivious to what was happening in the
hall.