COREY: YESTERDAY

(The Past)

Nowheresville, Ohio

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TAP! TAP! TAP!

I rolled across my bed and groaned, holding a pillow over my ears. Another round of summer storms was swirling through Ohio, and the wind was beating against my broken window.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

The wind shook my window even harder, so I got out of bed to grab my headphones. I looked around for a roll of duct tape—hoping to steady the bottom of the glass, but when I looked out my window, I realized the taps weren’t coming from the wind at all. They were from my foster brother’s younger sister, Hayley.

I rushed over to the window and pushed it up grabbing her hands and pulling her inside. “What the hell are you doing out there in this storm, Hales?”

She didn’t answer. She just stood in the middle of my floor and shivered.

I snatched the blanket off my bed and covered her with it, motioning for her to sit on Jonathan’s bed. I slipped out of my room and went to the kitchen, making her a cup of hot chocolate and grabbing what was left of the strawberries. 

I was used to Hayley showing up in the middle of the night just to talk to Jonathan, but he wasn’t here anymore. He’d said his final goodbye hours after our high school graduation, and he’d run away—telling me he was done with foster care. He was halfway across the state by now, and I couldn’t blame him for getting the hell away.

My parents had treated him like shit the moment he came to live with us a few years ago. Completely unsympathetic to him losing his parents to prison, they took pride in collecting the child welfare checks, but they only gave him the bare minimum that the state required. And from what I could tell, the numerous families that Hayley had been forced to live with were even worse. Her clothes were always too big or too small, and she was always hungry.

When I returned to my room, she was going through the dresser drawers. “Did I wake your parents?”

“They’re still out at the casino.”

“Cool. Can I borrow a dry T-shirt and some pants?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I helped her find a small grey shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Then I turned around so she could dress in private.

When she finished, she cleared her throat, and I handed her the hot chocolate. This was the first time she'd been here with just me, so I wasn't sure what to say.

We were only three years apart, but I was five grades ahead, so I doubted there would be much for us to talk about.

“I was hoping to catch Jonathan before he left, but Mr. Hammond grounded me this week,” she said, finally. “He barely let me talk to him at the graduation today.  I take it I’m too late?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “He left a few hours ago. He said he’d email me whenever he got somewhere safe.”

"I figured." She sighed. "You think he'll keep his promise and fight for legal custody of me when he gets established?"

"Has he ever broken a promise to you?"

“No.” She smiled. “Never. He’s quite veracious.”

“Veracious?” I rolled my eyes. She was always using big words for no reason. “You can’t even spell that, Hales.”

“V-E-R-A-C-I-O-U-S.” She crossed her arms. “Veracious. I can spell butthole if you’d like since that’s what I’ve always thought you were.”

“Then I guess we’re even since that’s what I’ve always thought you were, too.”

“How mature.” She huffed and sipped her hot chocolate. “You know, I’m starting to think you cheated your way through those state exams. That’s why you got to skip all those grades because I don’t think you’re that smart. You should still be in high school.”

“Jealousy is ugly, Hayley.”

“So are you.”

I laughed. “You want me to walk you back when you’re done with the hot chocolate? Tonight’s storm will probably pass in an hour or so.”

She didn’t answer that. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

“Yeah.” I pulled it from under my bed and handed it to her.

She pulled out a few Band-Aids and cotton balls, and I glanced down at her arm. There were five thin red lines, and they were still bleeding.

“Did you cut yourself on my window?” I asked.

“No,” she said, looking down. “I did these myself...”

I glanced at her other arm and noticed three similar lines had healed.

“Wait.” I took the cotton balls from her hand. “That’s not the right way to fix these.”

I took out the antiseptic spray and aloe-vera cream. Then I motioned for her to give me her hand.

She obliged, and I took my time addressing each of her cuts, holding myself back from asking why she was doing this to herself.

When I finished, I put the kit away and noticed the rain was slowing to a drizzle. "Do you want me to walk you back when it completely stops?"

“It’s too dark to walk back.”

“It’s only four blocks over.”

“Can I just stay in Jonathan’s bed tonight?” she asked, getting into his bed before I was able to answer. “I have nightmares the more I sleep at my foster house anyway.”

“Nightmares about what?”

She shook her head and slipped under the covers. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay, then.” I tossed her a pillow, confused as to how she’d gone from looking for Jonathan to wanting to spend the night.

"I can't call the foster agency again, Corey," she said, several minutes later. "This is my sixth family, so even though Jonathan isn't here anymore and I hate this family the most, I'm going to try not to leave the house at night so much."

She said the words as if she meant them, but it took me three days to realize that she didn’t. She came over almost every night—throwing rocks at my window, burying herself under a pile of blankets on Jonathan’s bed, and making false promises that she wouldn’t do it the next day.

I teased her sometimes and told her she was a "big ass baby," made her cry once or twice by making her wait for a little too long outside, but I never admitted that I enjoyed her company. That I enjoyed our lengthy Scrabble matches and arguments about who was smarter. (Me, always.)

And I definitely never revealed that even though her brother and I had promised to combine our talents in tech someday and “take over the world,” Hayley was the one who became my first true best friend. Not Jonathan.