9. Franny

Dad's gone.

    He's staying late at a bar and won't be back till the morning or late into the night. Most teenagers would be happy to hear that their dad's going out and leaving them alone all night but all I feel is dread.

    What if he doesn't come back? What if he gets too drunk and is lying in a ditch somewhere? Or gets into a fight and ends up bleeding on the ground?

    I should be able to trust my dad, but he's a walking disaster. Any trust I once had for him is gone now. I wander around the empty house and feel as lonely as the building itself. The walls pop from the heating and the floor creaks now and then as I walk along it. But I still feel alone and lost.

    That is until the doorbell rings.

Thinking it's my dad, I rush over and unlock the door, sliding over the latch. I twist the doorknob and open the door wide but the person I see in the doorway is not my dad. The dark-haired boy stands shakily in front of me, his head down and a hand pressed against his side.

    I look at where his hand sits and my eyes widen at the large red patch of liquid that is soaking into his clothes and dripping onto his hand.

    "Jesus," I whisper, "what the hell happened?"

    Tyler's grip tightens on the bag in his other hand and slowly he lifts his head up. His face is contorted in pain, his eye swelling and flaring red. Blood drips from his mouth and his lips are cut.

    "Help me," he says. "Please just . . . "

    I don't waste any time and move backwards, pushing the door open further for him to walk in. He stumbles forward, dropping his bag onto the floor and grabs onto the bannister for support. I quickly shut the door and lock it back up before rushing to Tyler's side.

    He's hunched over, fast, short breaths coming out of his mouth. I place a hand on his back, hesitantly. "You need to lie down so I can help you. Please, you're going to bleed out everywhere."

    I'm panicking on the inside. I don't have any medical knowledge. The most I can do is put a band aid on a paper cut. From the sight of Tyler's shirt, which is drenched in blood, the wound beneath is not a simple paper cut that can be fixed with a wet tissue and a bandage.

    Tyler looks up and sees the dining table a few feet away through the open doorway to the kitchen. He staggers over and I lurch forward, scared he will fall, but he doesn't collapse. He grits his teeth and keeps moving until he's at the table. I look down at the blood dripping after him and my stomach churns.

    What could have happened? Who would have wanted to hurt Tyler this badly?

    Why did he come to me for help?

    Tyler stumbles to the table and collapses against it. I rush over with a flustered urgency that would have panicked me if I was the one wounded. But Tyler doesn't seem irritated or annoyed at the fact that I can't seem to calm down long enough to form a complete sentence.

    "It's okay," he says quietly, turning so that his back is to the table.

    He grits his teeth and pushes himself up until he's sitting on the edge of the table. His face tightens in pain and I bite my lip, unsure of how I can help him. "Just calm down."

    These are the words that I should be telling him. I should be the one with my hand on his shoulder, saying that it will be okay and that he just needs to close his eyes and keep breathing.    

"You afraid of blood?" he asks.

    I shake my head and he gives me a slight smile. "Good. Because you're about to see loads of it."

    I swallow and nod, taking a step forward but he holds his hand up. I can see the sweat trickling down his forehead. He's blinking rapidly and his breathing is fast. He lifts his hand and I narrow in on the red blood that covers it messily as if a paintbrush has been swept across his skin. "My bag. It's by the door. There's a first aid kit."

    I nod stupidly and turn around, rushing over to the large, black sports bag which I see sitting by the door. I pick it up and run back, dumping it on the table beside Tyler's shaking body. His hand is still pressed against the wound and his eyes flutter closed now and then.

    "Stay awake," I say.

    I know at the least that he can't fall asleep. In the movies they never fall asleep, they tell them to stay awake. Maybe my inner Hollywood actress is finally kicking in but I unzip the bag and rummage around until I find a box at the bottom. I lift out the first aid kit and place it on the table.

    Tyler removes his hand from his wound. I wince as I see his shirt stick to his hand from blood until they finally separate. With a pained expression, he shrugs his shirt off. It sticks to his body every now and then until it's finally on the floor at our feet.

    I take a step closer and look down at Tyler's side, just by his hip where I see a mess of blood that has been smeared across his skin from the clothing. But underneath I can see the dark cut that runs along the whole of his hip. It's messy and deep and blood oozes out.

    "Oh my god," I whisper.

    Tyler snaps his fingers. "Franny," he says. "Get the antiseptic. It's the only bottle in there. Get a towel, too."

    His eyes are stern and calm, a complete contrast to the frenzied pain he expresses on his face and body language. I quickly grab the only bottle in the kit and then go to the cupboard in the hallway and come back with a small towel. Tyler holds his hand out for the towel and I pass it to him.

    He folds the towel and presses it to his wound, applying pressure.

    "Do you need stitches?" I ask. "I don't . . . I don't think I can do that . . . "

    Tyler shakes his head. "I don't need stitches. It's not as deep as you think. Just grazed."

    "That's more than a graze," I mutter and look back down at the towel covering his wound. "Why did you come here? How do you even know this is where I live?"

    Tyler uses his free hand and fishes a little piece of paper out of his pocket. He holds it out to me and I take it from his grasp. "Your friend, the ginger, asked me to give you your homework."

    "Tally?" I frown and look down at my address scribbled down on the paper. "Why would she . . .?"

    I stop when I realize exactly why Tally would do that. Her suggestive face in history class was enough to know that she was attempting to set me up. Maybe it's her feeling guilty for kissing me or maybe she just wants to mess with me for her own amusement. But either way, I guess I need to thank her. Otherwise Tyler could still be bleeding somewhere.

    "Do you have my homework?" I ask after a moment of silence.

    Tyler shakes his head. "It's in my truck."

    I nod. "You left your truck?"

    "Well I was sort of bleeding on the ground so driving wasn't really something I was about to try and do."

    "You walked here?" I ask with disbelief. "The closest place is nearly twenty minutes away!"

    Tyler shrugs. "It's fine." He pulls the towel off and the whole thing is soaked in blood. "See? Isn't bleeding anymore. Just a cut."

    "Didn't look like just a cut," I murmur. "How did you get it anyway?"

    Tyler glances at me and then looks away, dropping the bloody towel on the table. He doesn't answer and I take the hint, realizing that the cause of his cut is not something he wants to discuss with someone who's practically a stranger. Unfortunately for him though, when I'm nervous or panicky I ask a lot of questions.

    "Is it the guys who gave you that bruise the other day?" I ask.

    Tyler tenses and then slowly lets out a breath through his nose. "Mind your own business."

    I snort. "You're the one that came walking into my house and started bleeding everywhere."

    Tyler narrows his eyes on me and after a few moments of silence I decide that he isn't going to tell me anything, so I sigh and straighten up, reaching over to grab the towel.

    "Yes," he says.

    "Yes?"

    "Yes, they're the same guys that gave me the bruise. Not the exact same people, but they still have the same intention."

    "And what intention is that?" I ask. "To randomly hurt you?"

    "To ruin me." He speaks softly with a little hint of a smirk on his lips. "To ruin my image. My life. My future. My face." He laughs. "But that's easier said than done."

    I smile a little and straighten back up, throwing the towel into a little basket behind me, reminding myself to remove that and clean it before my dad gets back. I lift up the bottle of antiseptic and raise an eyebrow. "Isn't this going to hurt?"

    "It'll be fine," he says and turns slightly so his hip is pressed against the table and the cut is jutted out towards me. His skin twists with his movement and the tattoos on his body ripple and pulse against him.

    "How much do I put on?" I ask.

    "Enough to cover it and not too much so it drowns." He nods at me.

    I nod back and twist off the bottle cap. I gulp as I lift it towards his body. I look back up at his face but he has his eyes closed, his hands clenched into fists.

    This is going to hurt.

    I bite my lip and decide I need to do this fast, get it over with. I press a hand against the side of the table and lift the bottle over his wound.

    "What the fuck are you waiting—?" He gasps when I pour the antiseptic over his wound and then move the bottle away. He grunts in pain and clenches his teeth together, his fists unclenching and clenching continuously. "Jesus . . . "

    The liquid bubbles over his cut, cleaning it out, and I screw the lid of the bottle back on, placing it back in the first aid kit. I look inside and take out a roll of bandage and hold it out so he can see it.

    He nods. "Give me a sec."

    When he turns and sits back down on the table, I begin bandaging up the cut.

    "Where are your parents?" he asks.

    "My dad's out," I say. "When you came to the front door weren't you worried my dad would answer it? What would you do then?"

    "Say some random bullshit," he mutters. "I was mugged."

    "Wouldn't that get the cops involved?" I ask.

    Tyler shakes his head. "I'd just say I didn't want to press charges. I guessed you were alone anyway."

    "How?" I frown.

    "No car on the driveway, only one light on."

    "Car could have been in the garage," I mutter.

    "You're right." Tyler smiles a little. "So I guess I did just go off luck."

    I finish bandaging him up and tie it off, rolling the excess back up and placing it in his first aid kit. "You don't seem to be getting such good luck lately. Your face looks like crap."

    Tyler lets out a breathy laugh and lifts his hand to press the pads of his fingers against the swelling under his eye. "Fuck . . . " he mutters. "There's no way I'm going to be able to hide this."

    "Who are you hiding it from?" I ask.

    Tyler gives me a dry look. "Who do you think?"

    "Right." I nod. "Your parents."

    "Yeah," Tyler scoffs. "Parents."

    I frown a little but make no comment on the way he speaks about his parents. I don't know what his relationship with them is like, so I can't have any say in the way he treats or talks about them. I close the first aid kit and place it in his bag, zipping the compartment back up.

    "How far away is your car?" I ask.

    "Down by the plaza," he says. "About fifteen minutes. Twenty with my fucked-up hip."

    I look over at the oven and check the time. I ponder for a few moments until I sigh and turn back to Tyler. "It's nearly six . . . just stay."

    "Stay?" Tyler raises an eyebrow but then stops and winces as his face aches from the pain of moving. "Here?"

    "Yes, here," I say. "You don't want to face your parents any more than I want to send a guy off onto the street who was nearly bleeding to death an hour ago."

    "I wasn't bleeding to death," he comments.

    "But you could start bleeding again," I say. "And whoever fucked up your face and cut you could be waiting for you. Do you honestly want to risk that?"

    "What about your dad?"

    "He won't be coming back tonight," I say. "He'll show up about two in the morning. You're fine."

    Tyler doesn't say anything but his entire body slumps against the table, his arm sliding back to keep him up as his other hand holds onto the bandaged hip. I walk over and grab a glass from the cupboard. I fill it with water and pass it to Tyler.

    "Do you want painkillers?" I ask.

    Tyler nods, knocking back the whole glass of water and handing it back. I refill it and take out some ibuprofen and pick two of the tablets out of the bottle. Dropping them into Tyler's hand, I give him the glass again.

    He swallows them dry and I wince until he finishes off the entire glass of water again. He sighs, putting the glass down on the table harder than he thought and the sound cuts through the silence. He lets out a long breath.

    "Thanks. Can I repay you in any way?" Tyler asks, sitting on the edge of the table with his hand pressed to his bandaged side.

I reach forward and gently swat his hand away from the injury. "Don't touch it," I murmur. "And no, I don't need anything. It's okay."

    "What?" he scoffs. "There's nothing that you'd want? Out of anything?"

I shrug. "You were bleeding and if I didn't help then you would have been bleeding on the side of a road in the dirt and not have been found till morning. I'm not that cruel."

    Tyler looks at me, his eyes lighting up in the darkening room. "Aren't you failing history?" he finally asks.

    I shrug again, this time a little defensively. "Maybe. How would you know?

    "You take all the answers from your ginger friend," he comments and I purse my lips.

    "Her name's Tally," I say. "And they don't count for marks so it's fine."

    Tyler just smirks and shakes his head. "It's not, really. So, I'm guessing I'm right about you failing."

    I sigh. "I might be."

    "So then why don't I repay you with answers?" he asks.

    I look at him incredulously. "Answers? You hardly show up to class. You're probably failing as badly as I am."

    Tyler chuckles softly, his face scrunching in pain a little. "I'm not as stupid as you might think."

    Oh, I know you're not stupid. Everyone says you're practically the smartest kid in the whole grade, I think to myself.

    Out loud, I say, "I'll just have to memorize the answers you give me anyway. More work for me."

    Tyler looks at me and shrugs. I try not to let my eyes trail down his chest but finally with the blood out of the way, I can see the skin beneath. Most of it is covered ink but a lot of it is bruised and covered in a faded blue haze. There are fresh red marks that must be the beating he just got.

    A sudden idea occurs to me and I can't help asking, "Was it your parents?" I want to take back the words immediately, realizing how harsh they must sound. "Sorry. That was stupid. I shouldn't have asked that."

    "No," he says. He doesn't sound angry. "It wasn't my parents."

    I nod and pick up his empty glass, walking back to the kitchen to clean it out. When I turn the tap on, Tyler's voice calls out over it. "So, there's really nothing I can do for you?"

I turn off the tap and lean my hip against the counter as I face him from across the room. "Is that how you work? You always have to make sure that both sides of the party gain the same amount? Can't you accept that it's just a kind offer? I don't want anything from it. It would make me uncomfortable."

    Tyler just stares at me from the other side of the room and I feel nervous under his gaze. I fidget and turn around, cleaning up more old dishes to cut through the silence. I look at the clock again, and it's only just turned six. I sigh.

    My dad hopefully won't be back for a while so what am I supposed to do till then? Why did I offer to let him stay? Now this awkward silence is just going to press through. But I can't just let him walk off. He's injured and someone's beaten him up. They could still be out there. I don't want that on my conscience.

    Then again, I don't want his attacker to come to the front door either.

    I shut off the tap and walk back over to Tyler.

    "The person that beat you up," I say. "They're not going to come here, right?"

    Tyler shrugs lightly. "No one followed me."

    It isn't a definite answer and I fight off the little shiver of fright that wants to make its way down my spine. Instead I just say, "Okay . . . you hungry?"

    "You asking me out to dinner?" He smirks.

    I breathe out a light laugh. "No, hotshot. I'm asking if you would like any of the pizza that I'm going to order."

    "What if I don't want pizza?" He smiles a little.

    "Then start walking back to your truck," I say. "Pepperoni okay?"

    He nods and I pick up the phone, going to the other room to place the order.

__________

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(French edition of my book ASK AMY is available in bookstores in France and online retailers outside France)