Between the Sheets by Molly O'Keefe Page A

hanging from the rafters.
    “You barely see them up there.”
    “That’s all right.”
    “But if you bought it—”
    “I didn’t buy it. Someone just dropped it off. People leave stuff out here all the time. Stuff they don’t want.”
    “You use it all?”
    “I try to. Rugs. Butcher paper. Chandeliers. I have a piano back there.” She pointed into the shadows over his shoulder. “And couches over there.”
    Over her shoulder next to the wall of flowers were two couches.
    “That’s cool,” he said.
    “I think so, too.” She put the crystal she’d been polishing in a row with a few other ones. He put his down next to hers.
    There were ten of them all lined up, shooting rainbows around the barn.
    A long time ago, his mom had these earrings some guy gave to her and they were a lot like these crystal things. Shiny and sparkly. Fancy. She used to put her hair up in a ponytail and wear those earrings. When she would lean over and kiss him good night, they were so long they brushed his cheek. One night she came home messed up with a split lip and only one of those earrings. Pissed off, she threw the other one in the garbage under the sink.
    When she’d passed out on the couch, he grabbed it from under the sink and hid it on his bookshelf. But a few nights later, she woke him up in the middle of the night, shoved all his clothes in a garbage bag, and skipped out on rent.
    The earring had been left behind.
    “Have you seen the dogs?” he asked.
    “The strays?” She pursed her lips. “People drop their dogs out here. I try to call the shelter in Masonville, but it seems like there are more every day.”
    “We’ve got this stray that eats our garbage.”
    “You should tell your dad to call the shelter. They can be dangerous.”
    Casey was never going to tell Ty to call the shelter. Ever.
    “Casey,” she said with a little laugh, as if she’d read his mind. “Some of those dogs are really sick with rabies, or they’ve been trained to fight. You shouldn’t try to make friends with them.”
    “I won’t.” She narrowed her eyes at him as though she knew he was lying and he laughed. “I promise. I won’t.”
    “Do you like Mrs. Jordal?” she asked, after they both went back to polishing crystals.
    “Yep,” he said. “She’s nice.”
    “Nice?” She laughed. “I don’t think she’s ever been called nice.”
    “She’s nice to me,” he said with some pride. Because Mrs. Jordal wasn’t nice to everyone; that was totally obvious.
    “Then how come you’re in so much trouble all the time?” She watched him out of the corner of her eyes.
    He shrugged. He got in trouble on the playground and in the lunchroom, and sometimes in the computer lab. But never in Mrs. Jordal’s class.
    The crystal was hard under his fingers; he could feel its sharp edges even through the cloth and he wondered if he could break it. And as soon as he thought it, he wanted to break it. That’s how his brain worked sometimes. As soon as a bad idea got in there, he wanted to see it done. He wanted to see what would happen.
    Carefully, he set the crystal down.
    He didn’t want to talk about why he got in trouble. He didn’t want to talk about why he was so angry and how sometimes he couldn’t control it and how sometimes when the world seemed so unfair and like it just wanted him to die, all he could do was fight back.
    He hated talking about that.
    One of his counselors told him that when things got bad, he had to pull up all the bridges around himself. That he couldn’t let the things he saw, or the stuff Mom did, or the way that they lived get inside his head. He had to pull up the bridges, close his eyes, and be an island.
    Sometimes he was amazing at that. Sometimes he was the best island in the world—nothing got to him. But sometimes he was too late with those bridges and he was totally swamped by not just bad stuff but good stuff, too. And what was weird was that the good stuff was worse than the bad stuff.
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