Vagabonds

Chapter Eight: Wrong-Headed

That evening, as dusk began to bleed into night, Eliza was the one waiting for Tori in their tiny box of a dorm room. Her limbs were locked together, legs crossed, arms folded, every muscle taut and shaking with rage. She fought to control it. Lashing out blindly, tempting as that might be, wasn't a good solution.

Eliza should know.

There must be an explanation.

Finally, she heard the scrape of a key in the lock. Eliza popped to her feet.

"What?" Tori snapped as Eliza glared at her.

The door clicked shut, closing them in. 

"I think you know," Eliza said.

Tori tossed her hair, filling the room with the cloying scent of coconut. It would have been a pleasant smell, had it not been ruined by association.

Unshouldering her backpack, Tori waved a dismissive hand. "God, it's like you just won't leave me alone —"

"You're a walking stereotype, you know that?" Eliza spat. "Why did you do it? Why did you spread those lies about me?

Tori met Eliza's eyes with an expression of controlled indifference, shielded and armored and all kinds of cold.

"The school deserved to know who the real Eliza Mason is."

For a moment, Eliza's mouth hung open. Tori brushed past her, settling on her bed as she flipped her phone over and connected it to her Bluetooth speaker with a cheerful beep.

"Tori," Eliza said, half in shock that anyone could be so utterly inhuman. "I wasn't going to tell anyone. Honestly, I didn't even want to deal with it. I don't care what you do with your time."

Tori ignored her. Kanye West began to drone from the speaker, filling the silence with an angry, hypnotic beat. Eliza's eyes prickled as if poked with tiny needles.

"Will you at least talk to me? Treat me like a real person?" The sleepless nights were strangling Eliza's voice, making her feel dizzy with rage and impotence and so many unanswered questions. She didn't ask for this this. She didn't ask for any of it. That familiar itch was swelling, the urge to shout, to break something, to push past the societally established boundaries of conduct until she felt powerful again.

Her fingers ached from clenching them so hard.

"Look, I don't know what your problem is," Eliza said, betrayed by her own voice cracking. "But I don't even want to be here. I miss Atlanta. I miss the heat and the storms and my parents and my goddamn sister. But what do you care about that? What would you know about family?"

Tori, of course, didn't even look up.

Furious tears were making Eliza's vision blur. She grabbed her hoodie, spinning away. She had to get out of there. The memories were bubbling up, slicing her open like so many razors, inescapable and unforgiving as they threatened to drag her back into the sea of grief that she'd only just begun to haul herself out of.

And then, as if by divine providence, Eliza's eyes fell on Tori's bike key.

She stared at it for a moment, weighing her options. Thinking through the outcome as Joe was always pleading for her to do. This would be poking the dragon. It would make things infinitely worse. Tori would be enraged; her friends would lash back with a vengeance. Eliza's life at Meru would become a living hell, for real this time. And that was only if she managed to keep herself from getting kicked out for breaking curfew. On every single level, it was a bad idea.

Her favorite kind.

Screw it.

With a lightning-quick movement, she snatched the keys.

"Hey!" Tori shouted, but Eliza was already out the door and down the hall. She leapt, clearing the front stairs of their dorm building, hitting the ground at a run. Sprinting for the line of bikes, she felt a pang of sadness when she didn't see her own bulky cruiser there among them.

But there was no time to think about those crumpled metallic remains, now rusting in the back of Joe's truck.

She hurried down the looping metal of the rack.

The door crashed open behind her.

"Get back here!" Tori shrieked, but Eliza had already found the fancy road bike that Tori had rolled in the third week of school. It was glossy and spindly, freshly painted a sleek silver with blue trim. Stylishly old-fashioned and retro, perfect for Instagram and terrible for actually going anywhere.

Eliza had it unlocked in seconds.

"Bitch!" Tori howled after her.

Chased by Tori's high-pitched shouts, Eliza wheeled through the puddles of illumination the streetlights threw and onto the shadowy bike path. It was reckless to be out at night, stupid to be riding off on a stolen bike, foolish to have made a true enemy of the most popular girl in school. Eliza could feel the consequences of her reckless choices circling, closing in like vultures. Soon enough, one of them was going to get her. Tear her apart. Force her to reckon with the consequences.

She didn't care.

Peddling like a madwoman, she careened down the dark road like an unleashed demon. The air whistled by her head, autumn-crisp, welcoming her to be rash. Because she was doing something. She was going to get answers. Perhaps those answers could chase away the ghost of her sister, give her some modicum of relief from the constant aching pain of loss. And even if they didn't, at least they'd be a welcome distraction.

Eliza snarled into the darkness, knowing exactly where she was going.

Because the Eckelson mansion was only a few miles away, and the journey was well worth whatever mysteries it might solve.