Page 25 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“Yeah.Good.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Because God forbid batshit-crazy Boose goes off the rails again.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”
“Do I? Then, whatareyou saying?”
“I’m saying…” She trailed off, looking out at the lake. To my surprise, all the aggression was gone from her face. “It’s just…you’re so far away now, Eliot. I don’t know how to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
She looked back at me. “You’re my little sister.”
“I’mfine.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just…” She scratched behind one ear. “It was scary, you know?”
“When I moved to New York?”
“No, no. I meant…when Mom and Dad first told us about your OCD. It was scary.”
I raised my eyebrows. “It was?”
“Yes. Not because we were scaredofyou,” she said quickly. I understood what she meant. My siblings did this often: switch towewithout saying what they really meant, which waseveryone in the family but you. “It was scary because we had no clue. Truly. None. You were always the calm child. Serious. Mature. Never yelled, never got your feathers ruffled. After…you know…” She swallowed. “After Henry died, you didn’t even cry.”
My fingernails dug into my palms.
“And to find out that, all that time, you were suffering so badly on the inside. It…it nearly broke Mom and Dad. God…it nearly brokeme.”
“Yeah, well,” I said flatly. “Good thing that’s all over now.”
“Is it, though?” Karma asked, taking a step forward. Her face was oddly pleading. “Because you can tell me, you know. If you aren’t as okay as you’re pretending to be. You can tell me.”
“Can I? Or would that just make me lookweak?” I snapped before I could stop myself. “Oh, wait.” I laughed harshly. “I forgot. I already do.”
Shock flashed over my sister’s face.
Before she could respond, I spun around and jogged the rest of the way down to the rolling waves of granite.
“Eliot, wait—”
I ignored her, jogging sideways down the hill. The rocks sloped down a good thirty feet, flattening out to a long pebble beach. When I reached the bottom, the pebbles wobbled and crunched beneath my shoes. At the end of the beach was a secluded entrance to the boardwalk. If I made it there, I’d be home free.
But halfway across the beach, a hand hooked around on my elbow and jerked my body backward.
“Hey!” I said, spinning around. “I told you I—”
I swallowed the rest of the sentence. It wasn’t Karma behind me.
A black hole of a face towered above me, unspeakably handsomefeatures blotted out by the glare of the light shining from Sunny Sunday’s windows.
“Stop avoiding me,” Manuel said. The words floated up from the black pit, flat and steady like a metronome. Light wrapped around his head like a halo.
“I’m not avoiding you.” I tried to yank my arm back, but he held on. “I’m just tired.”
“Right. I’d be tired, too, if I had spent the last three years running away from everyone who loves me.”
“I didn’trun.” (Running was exactly what I did.)
“What did you do, then?”
