Breathless Page 16

  * * *

  Later that evening, I was sprawled on my bed in my room working on the French assignment I couldn’t get done earlier. Someone knocked on my door.

  “Come in,” I called.

  Jason came into my room. He sat down on the bed next to me. Startled, I sat up straight. He was very close to me, and my eyes settled on different areas of his body. His shoulders were broad. His forearms were covered in downy dark hair. His fingers were thick and powerful. I shook myself. Forced myself to look at his face. “Hi.”

  “Azazel, you have to help me get out of here,” he said.

  “What?” I said. “No.” After all of that, after I’d just gotten him back, there was no way I was helping him leave again. I wanted him as close as possible. I couldn’t handle the worry.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s not safe for me to be here. If anything happened to you—to your family—I wouldn’t ever be able to forgive myself.”

  I hadn’t had any time to talk to Jason. Dinner had been a boisterous affair, full of the regular noise my large family made. Somehow, the subject of Jason’s escape had been avoided over mounds of spaghetti and meatballs. We hadn’t talked about my leaving school early to come see him either. Instead, my mother had dominated the conversation, asking the guys all about their schoolwork. Since that was the last thing they actually wanted to talk about, they’d tried to change the subject often, without much success. My mom was persistent. After dinner, I’d gone back to my room to work on the huge pile of homework I had. Now I had Jason to myself. “What happened, Jason?” I asked. “Did you run away? Did that man take you away?”

  “I left,” he said. “I haven’t seen Hallam since last night.”

  “Hallam?”

  “That’s his name,” said Jason.

  I nodded.

  “Sheriff Damon says that no one else has seen him since yesterday either, but that doesn’t mean anything,” said Jason. “He’s out there. And he’s not going to give up until he finds me. That’s why you have to help me get out of here.”

  “I’m not helping you run off so that man—Hallam—can get you,” I said. “If I did that, and something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”

  He sighed. “I can look after myself,” he said. “I’d be fine. But here... I’m like a trapped rat.”

  It was true. Jason was practically on house arrest. He could go to school and come home. That was it. “Even if I wanted to,” I said, “I couldn’t.” I gestured to Jason’s ankle, where he wore an ankle monitor.

  Jason glowered at the little black device. “Sheriff Damon was excited about putting this on me,” he said. “Apparently, the department never gets to use it.”

  If Jason went anywhere besides school, the ankle monitor would send a signal to the police. It also transmitted his location, so that they could track him down.

  “How would you get around the monitor?” I asked.

  “I’d have to get it off,” he said. “If I could do that, would you help me?”

  “How would you get it off?”

  “It’s not indestructible. Of course, after I took it off, they’d know and come for me immediately.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s hopeless.”

  Another thought occurred to me. “Do you want to leave?” Maybe Jason didn’t like it here.

  He turned to me. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to. I wish I could stay here forever.”

  So did I. “So, stay,” I said.

  “But Hallam—”

  “Let the police deal with Hallam.”

  “They’d be no match for him,” said Jason, shaking his head.

  Really? I believed Jason when he said that Hallam was dangerous, but the idea of one guy overtaking numerous police officers? It seemed unreal. I caught Jason’s eyes with my own. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  Jason gazed into my eyes. His lips parted slowly. Our faces were so close. I looked at his lips. I thought about—

  And then I tore my gaze away from Jason. What was wrong with me? Frantically, I looked around the room for something else to talk about.

  “We finished 1984 today in English,” I said. “You missed it.” I still didn’t look at him.

  “That’s too bad,” said Jason. “I really like that book. Orwell is brilliant.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He really is.”

  We were quiet. I still wasn’t looking at Jason.

  “Should I go?” Jason asked.

  I swung my eyes back to him violently. “No! I don’t want you to leave. I don’t know how to make that clearer to you!”

  “I meant your room,” said Jason.

  “Oh.” I felt stupid. “No, you can stay. It’s fine.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  And then we didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “Um ...” I floundered. “Do you read stuff like Orwell for fun?”

  “Sure,” said Jason. “I guess. It’s been a while since I read anything for fun. What about you?”

  “I like Dan Brown,” I said. “I think stuff like that—like secret societies and the Illuminati—is interesting.”

  “If you like the Illuminati, you should read Robert Anton Wilson,” said Jason.

  Book recommendations, huh? I liked Jason. There were so many layers to him. I just wanted to unpeel them all. He was so enigmatic, like a puzzle. I wanted to solve him. Understand him.

  Jason looked serious again. “I can’t stay, Azazel,” he said.

  “In my room? Sure you can. I mean, I do eventually have to get back to my French homework, but—”

  “I mean here. I mean in your house. I can’t be here.”

  “You have to,” I said. “How are you going to leave?”

  He made a face. “I know,” he said. “And all of that is just strange. I’m not allowed to leave.” He pointed at the ankle monitor. “This is overkill, don’t you think?”

  It did seem like everyone was trying very, very hard to keep Jason from going anywhere. I was grateful, but I did think they only gave ankle monitors to criminals.

  Jason stood up. Faced me. “When Sheriff Damon found me hitchhiking, he handcuffed me and threw me in the back of his car.”

  “Well,” I said. “You are my parents’ foster child, legally. They have a responsibility to you. Technically, you’re legally bound to be here.”

  “I guess,” said Jason. “But there was a search party, and everyone was on red alert to find me. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Sure it did. We’d all been worried about Jason’s safety. Well, I’d been worried about Jason’s safety. I guess everyone else had too. Was he right? Was it too much? “Maybe you’re just not used to what it’s like for people to care about you,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Jason. “But I don’t think so. Something weird is going on in this town.”