Page 21 of Riot House
There’s something about Levi’s tone that stops me in my tracks. He sounds…I’m not sure what he sounds like. Something isn’t right, though. “Lee? What’s up? Is everything okay? What’s happened?”
“You’realive?” he whispers. I’ve been friends with Levi for two years now. Not a long time in most people’s books, but we’ve crammed a lot into those seven hundred and thirty odd days. I know him inside and out, and he knows me, too. Every dark, dumb, stupid, embarrassing little secret I’ve ever had. From Sweden, he’s fairly representative of his people. Stoic, serious, ever calm and deeply grounded, he doesn’t really let anything affect him. He keeps his emotions close to his chest. Those words, though…his voice was choked with tears when he said them. My friend is fuckingcrying.
“What are you talking about,I’m alive?Of course I’m alive. I’m in New Hampshire.”
Levi sniffs, making a strangled sound. “I’m—I’m sorry, I just need a…” He stops talking. Draws in a deep breath. He sounds like he’s trying to compose himself. And then he says, “Your father told the dean you were in an accident, Elodie. The entire school’s been in mourning all week.”
I’ve reached the fourth floor landing now. Thankfully I’ve left the stairs behind or I’d probably fall face-first down them. I slap my hand out against the wall, steadying myself as my vision dims around the edges. “Sorry,whatdid you say?”
Levi coughs. I can picture him in his bedroom back at Mary Magdalene’s, in his pajamas, perched on the edge of his bed, his wonderfully brown eyes vacant as he tries to process this news.
I’m alive.
I’m speaking to him on the phone, back from the fucking dead.
The whole thing is too confusing to comprehend. “I’m really struggling here, Lee. Sounds like you are, too. Can you explain what you meant when you said my father told the dean I was dead, though? ‘Cause my brain’s melting out of my ears right now.”
“He came to the school on Monday. Showed up with a full military guard. We thought there was some sort of threat to the school at first. Then Ayala saw him with the dean. She said he talked to him for a second in the hall, that Dean Rogers looked shocked and tried to put his hand on Colonel Stillwater’s shoulder, but he backed away, spoke for another brief second, and then marched off, got back into his car and disappeared. Next thing we know, we’re being pulled into our home rooms and we’re being told that you were in a plane crash over the weekend. They said you didn’t make it.”
“What?” What thefuckis he talking about? Why the hell would my father tell such a vicious, flagrant lie? It makes no sense. “He didn’t do that. He couldn’t. I mean…” I mean, I cantotallyimagine him doing it. On his nicest day, he’s a vile monster who doesn’t give a flying fuck about anyone else but himself and his own precious career. Why would he have saidthat, though? He could have told the staff at Mary Magdalene’s I was being relocated. It happens all the time—students coming and going from these kinds of schools.
“I’m sorry, I know this is crazy. I’m fine, though, Lee. Really, I promise, I’m totally fine. Never been better, in fact. I know you probably have a thousand questions, but I have to go. I need to call my father and find out what the fuck is going on before I have a nervous breakdown.”
“Uhhh…okay,” Lee says, laughing shakily. “All good. Call me back, though, yeah? If you don’t, I’m gonna think I dreamed this up and you’re still dead.”
“Don’t worry. I’m one hundred percent gonna call you back. You have my word.”
I hang up, reeling from the brief conversation. Over the years, my father’s done a shit load of cold, hurtful things to me. He’s done the most heinous things imaginable. He’s never told people that I’m fucking dead, though.Dead. What the fuck is wrong with him? I’m numb all over and dizzy as I hit the call button on the only number my new phone came equipped with when Colonel Stillwater gave it to me: the number to his personal aide.
The phone rings eight times. Nine times. Ten. I think it’s about to go to voicemail, when Officer Emmanuel finally picks up. “Colonel Stillwater’s office. How can I assist you?”
“Carl, it’s Elodie.” Carl’s only been with my father for six months, but that’s three months longer than any of his other military aides have lasted. Usually, the lucky ones are reassigned pretty quickly. The guys who had no strings to pull or favors to call in had to somehow make it through month after month of my father’s explosive, borderline abusive behavior before he finally lost his temper with them and had them demoted to cleaning out latrines.
“Elodie? Great to hear from you. How are things Stateside? Are you enjoying being back home?” I like Carl, and I think Carl likes me. He was always appropriately apologetic whenever he had to pass on a hostile message from my father. It kinda felt like we were co-conspirators who empathized with one another, because we each knew what the other person had to deal with on a daily basis.
“I just got off the phone with one of my friends from Mary Magdalene’s, Carl.”
“Oh. Oh, man…” The chipper pitch in his voice takes a nosedive. “Well. I can imagine you’re pretty pissed right now,” he says.
“I’mconfusedright now. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll be angry soon, though.” A group of girls pass me in the hallway, concerned looks on their faces. I realize what I must look like, hugging the wall, white as a sheet, tension pinching my features into a pained expression; I give them a tight smile to let them know everything’s fine, even though it’s not. “Why the hell did he do that, Carl? Why did my friend just call me in tears, devastated because he thought I wasdead?”
“Urgh. I—I don’t think you’re gonna like the explanation.”
“Spit it out, Carl!”
“Your father had me look into your old school’s tuition rules. It turned out that the only way to get a partial refund for the semester you were already halfway through was if you were...was if you had died. So…”
Oh. My. God. Un-fucking-believable. “So, he told them I’d died. In order to get a partial refund for the remainder of the semester. What does that come to? Four thousand dollars?”
Carl gives up the exact amount reluctantly. “Not quite. Uh…two thousand, eight hundred.”
“He has millions in the bank. MILLIONS!”
“I know…”
“He let my friends believe I’d died for the sake of two grand and change?”
“I did try and explain to him how it might make you feel. I suggested we tell you what was happening so you could let your friends know you were okay, but he—”
