Taken While I Slept by My Stepbrother and His Friends novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Positive

Dwight took the microphone back out of my hand very gently.

"Oh, sweetheart," he said into it.

A hundred people heard him say it.

"This is what I mean, folks. This is the disease. It lies." He put his arm around my shoulders.

"We love you, Laine. We're not giving up on you."

The clapping started again, softer this time, the kind people do at funerals.

Under it he leaned close to my ear and spoke so only I could hear.

"Smile, sweetheart. You're on TV."

I stepped out from under his arm.

My mother was standing at the edge of the deck with both hands over her mouth.

"Mom," I said. "Where did you get the lemonade?"

"I made it," she whispered. "The pitcher's on the bar. The bartender poured it. Baby, what did you take?"

She believed it.

That was the worst part.

She'd handed me the glass with love, and now she believed it.

Gage put my sparkling water in my free hand and took the lemonade out of the other.

"Walk," he said quietly. "Now. Before it hits."

Zane came up on my left.

Kipp came up on my right.

Torin came out of his corner with the plate of shrimp still in one hand, and set it on the quartet's chair as he passed.

The four of them walked me through the middle of my father's backyard.

A hundred people moved out of our way.

Nobody said a word.

At the gate, I turned around.

Dwight was back at the lectern, his hand over his heart.

"I'm coming back for my house," I said.

I didn't say it loud, but the people closest to the gate heard it, and they looked at him.

By the time we reached Torin's shop, my tongue felt thick.

Gage helped me up the metal stairs into the apartment over the garage.

It was one long room with a concrete floor.

A kitchen at one end, a bed at the other, and a huge gray couch in the middle.

"I'm going under," I said. "Twenty minutes, maybe."

"I know." Gage crouched in front of me. "Can I check your breathing while you sleep? It's half a glass."

"You'll be fine. But I want to count it."

I looked at all four of them.

They waited.

"You can count it from the chair," I said. "Nobody touches me."

"Nobody touches you," Gage said.

I fell asleep on Torin's couch at eight with my shoes still on.

When I woke at ten the next morning, Gage was in the armchair across from me, exactly where he'd been, his eyes red.

He'd counted all night.

Nobody had touched me.

I cried about that more than about the lemonade.

The four of them spent the whole of Sunday on that couch with me.

Kipp ordered enough Thai food for nine people and narrated the delivery driver's journey.

Zane fell asleep sitting up, still in his outage-night work shirt, and snored.

Torin pulled up the local news site and turned the laptop toward us.

CANDIDATE'S BRAVE HONESTY ABOUT DAUGHTER'S ADDICTION.

Two hundred thousand views.

My mother texted me four times.

Come home, baby. We'll get you help. Dwight found a wonderful place.

Gage took my phone out of my hand and put it face down under a pillow.

"Not today," he said.

"Torin's camera's still at the house," Kipp said with his mouth full. "Under the bar tent."

"I'll get it," Gage said. "It's my dad's house. I've got boxes there. Nobody looks twice at me walking in."

"We're coming," Zane said, waking up all at once.

"Tonight," Torin said. "When it's dark and the staff are gone."

At nine, the three of them went down the metal stairs.

Gage stopped at the door and looked back at Torin.

"Don't let her drink anything you didn't open," he said.

"I never do," Torin said.

Then it was just the two of us.

The room was quiet.

The monitors over his desk glowed blue in the corner.

I walked over and turned every one of them off.

Torin watched me do it.

"It's been a whole day," I said. "I'm clear. I've had food and water you opened. And I'm not scared right now."

He took off his glasses.

He folded them and set them on the desk beside the dark monitors.

"You said, when I kiss you again, you want it to be because I want you," I said. "Not because you can make this stop."

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