Chapter 16
Kieran's POV
The stairwell of the triple-decker smelled like mildew and decades-old wood rot, the kind of smell that seeped into your clothes and followed you everywhere. I climbed slowly, the CVS bag rustling against my leg with each step, my right arm cradled against my chest where Summer had wrapped it in her careful, meticulous bandaging.
By the time I reached our door, my shoulders were tight with tension and the burn was throbbing with a dull, persistent ache that my damaged nerves translated into something twisted and wrong. I dug out my keys, the metal cold against my palm, and let myself into the apartment.
The smell hit me first—canned tomato soup, acidic and thin, mixed with the stale sweetness of Wonder Bread. Catherine was in the kitchen, if you could call the narrow space with its two burners and chipped linoleum a kitchen, slicing white bread on the scarred cutting board. Lily sat on the secondhand couch, clutching her worn rabbit, her hearing aid sitting on the coffee table to save the battery. The moment she saw me, she scrambled up and ran over, her small hands moving in quick, urgent signs.
Does your hand still hurt? Did the pretty lady come back?
I shook my head, one-handed signing back. I'm fine. She went home.
Catherine turned at the sound of my footsteps, and her face went white when she saw the bandage on my arm. The bread knife clattered onto the counter as she rushed toward me, her hands shaking as they reached for the wrapped gauze.
"Kieran, let me see—"
I stepped back instinctively, my voice coming out colder than I meant it to. "It's already taken care of. Don't worry about it."
But she wasn't looking at my face anymore—she was staring at the CVS bag in my hand, at the logo printed in red and white across the plastic. Her voice dropped to something small and trembling. "Those supplies... where did you get the money for those?"
She knew that pharmacy. Knew exactly how much burn cream and saline and gauze would cost—forty, maybe fifty dollars, money we didn't have, money I shouldn't have spent. I could see the calculation happening behind her eyes, the guilt already settling into the lines around her mouth.
I didn't want to tell her it was Summer. Didn't want her to feel like we owed someone, didn't want her asking questions about the "rich girl from school" and what she wanted, didn't want to admit out loud that I'd accepted what was essentially charity from someone who lived in a world so far removed from ours it might as well be another planet.
"I handled it," I said flatly, meeting her eyes with the kind of blank stare I'd perfected over the years. "It's not a problem."
We stood there in the dim light of the living room, the silence stretching between us like a physical thing. Lily tugged at my sleeve, her small voice uncertain. "Brother didn't lie. I saw the pretty lady... she came back..."
Catherine's face crumpled slightly, like she wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. Lily looked between us, confused and worried. "Is the pretty lady bad?" she asked in her small, uncertain voice.
Nobody answered.
Dinner was canned soup and Wonder Bread at the wobbly folding table, the three of us crowded around it in uncomfortable silence. Lily had put her hearing aid back on—she needed to wear it during meals for speech therapy practice—and she was trying so hard to be cheerful, chattering about her day at school in her careful, over-enunciated words.
"In gym class, we had to run," she said, her eyes bright and determined. "My hearing aid almost fell off, so the teacher made me sit on the side. Some kids asked what the weird thing on my ear was."
She smiled, but her eyes were shiny with unshed tears, and her small fingers were gripping her bread so tightly it was starting to crumble. "I didn't cry! I told them it was a special earphone that lets me hear angels!"
Catherine reached over and smoothed Lily's mushroom-cut hair, her voice thick. "When your brother gets his scholarship money, we'll get you the invisible kind. The tiny ones that people can't see..."
I mechanically chewed the tasteless bread, my mind already calculating. The $20,000 signing fee was gone—medical bills, back rent, keeping us afloat. The USAPhO prize money wouldn't come until March, and that was $30,000 if I placed well. The cochlear implant surgery cost between $25,000 and $30,000, plus another $8,000 a year for rehabilitation therapy. Meanwhile, Summer could pull out $500 without blinking, and one of her necklaces probably cost enough to pay for Lily's entire treatment.
I put down my spoon and touched Lily's head with my left hand, my voice rough. "You'll have it. I promise."