Dark Touch Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About Aimee L. Salter

  Every Ugly Word excerpt

  Copyright

  For Dawn,

  Because I wish this was your story.

  Prologue

  I think it’s because the first time Chris saw me, I wasn’t me. He saw someone who didn’t exist. And by the time he figured that out, he didn’t care anymore.

  He should have cared.

  He cares now.

  In the half-light of my pitiful bulb, everything looks gray. Dust motes hang in the air. My narrow bed is unmade, sheets tangled. The quilt my mom stitched when I was two hangs halfway off the mattress, stretched toward the door as though it, too, would flee this room if it could. The rest is bare—the drawers, the closet door, the walls. Even the clothes strewn across the chair and rug are plain and dirty.

  Somehow it’s never bothered me before. But with Chris here it does.

  His eyes are closed, his burnished lashes quivering because he’s screwed so tight. Everything’s shaking under the pressure. The muscles in his jaw twitch. His hands are white-knuckled. His shoulders . . . oh, Lord, help me, those shoulders that have lifted things I can’t carry and swept me along, too . . . they’re hunched. Knotted. Pressed in on themselves. On him. There’s so much of him that I feel small, yet he’s the place where I can breathe.

  At least, he was.

  My insides are in free fall because I did this to him. I shouldn’t have that power over him. I shouldn’t have that power over anyone. But he gave it to me and refused to take it back.

  “Chris?” I barely whisper, but he flinches as if I screamed. “It wasn’t about—”

  “Don’t.” It’s a hard syllable. A word bitten off. He doesn’t even open his eyes. “I swear, Tully, if you say one word . . .” His fist becomes a hammer.

  I am ugly. I am black inside, rotting and putrid. I have told him this. Many times. But tonight, finally, he believes me. As he turns on his heel and stumbles out the door, I can’t even call after him. Because when he gave me the power to turn him inside out, I gave him mine. And even though I knew this day would come, knew he was wrong about me, somehow he gave me hope.

  As I watch him stagger into the hallway and disappear, that hope begins its death throes. It doesn’t die quietly. It screams and curses and shoves at me. And for the first time ever, I am grateful for my life, for my father, and for this house.

  Because if it’s taught me anything, it’s how to take a blow.

  Two Months Earlier

  Chapter 1

  One day a year, and always on a Sunday, Grandma comes to visit. She calls Dad two weeks before and tells him she’ll arrive Sunday morning at eight-thirty. She does this because she suspects (rightly) that we’re ugly, dirty people. She wants to give us time to scrub off the grime so she can continue to believe there isn’t a rotting vine on the family tree.

  By tacit agreement, when she’s here, we’re a family. I’m not hideous; Dad isn’t a beast. We clean the house. We buy clothes we can’t afford, that we’ll never wear again. And we attend church.

  The United Methodist Church on Cherry Lane is a shiny, stone monument to the self-righteous faithful. With its hundred-year-old steeple and slate stairs, it is the most beautiful building in Riverside. Grandma attended as a child, right up until she and Grandpa were married there. Everyone knows her. Pastor Jonas greets her like a lost sheep come home.

  I always prepare for the entire structure to crumble when Dad and I step over the threshold.

  I used to worry that people would tell Grandma about her son-in-law and granddaughter. But it’s like the entire town understands. As we make our way inside, along the wine-colored carpet and past the pews polished by generations of pious asses, frozen faces turn away. Tight voices whisper. Angry gazes land on our backs, burning. But no one takes Grandma’s arm and murmurs in her ear.

  Instead we make a small procession down the center aisle to Grandma’s favorite seat, three rows from the front. I spend the next two hours examining the woodwork, ignoring the heated looks thrown my way. Grandma listens to Pastor Jonas, the wrinkles in her cheeks making tiny trenches that are a hair deeper every year. She wears a hat, even though no one does that anymore. And she says “Amen!” whenever he makes a passionate point.

  Afterward, when we file out, the crowds make their obeisance and Grandma’s smug superiority is affirmed. It happens every year. Like clockwork. And this year is no different. Until church is over.

  Grandma stands next to Pastor Jonas, accepting homage from everyone over the age of thirty. Behind her, Dad shifts his feet, uncomfortable in his suit and slicked-back hair, unwilling to meet any eyes whose owners might speak eloquently of who he really is.

  I cross the perfectly manicured lawn, head down to a wood-and-iron bench under a blossom tree. I wish with the ache of the dying that I wasn’t here, that I was in the clearing with Nigel. But there are hours yet until Grandma leaves. As I take my seat, a deep voice, rich and sweet like maple syrup, rises from behind me.

  “Are you waiting for the old people to stop talking, too?”

  At first I think the comment is directed at someone else. But then a large, masculine frame moves into view and settles itself on the bench next to me. I can only absorb him in pieces: sandy hair; bright smile softening a chiseled jaw; broad shoulders under a shirt and tie; rolled sleeves revealing golden-brown, toned forearms.

  “I’m Chris,” he says, holding out a hand. “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new?”

  I can’t stop looking at that hand. No one offers me their hand. Everyone in town knows who I am. They speak my name in whispers and follow me with their eyes. I force myself to meet his gaze. Chris is gorgeous. Not that it matters. If he hasn’t heard of me yet, he will.

  “I’m not new,” I say harder than I mean to. “We just don’t come to church very often.” Or ever. Except when Grandma is here.

  His brows rise when I ignore his hand, but he smiles. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Not New.”

  I nod once. “Tully.”

  “Tully?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “Nice. That’s different.”

  If only he knew.

  “Well, I am new,” he says, kicking out his feet in front of him. “I can’t believe school starts tomorrow. Will you be there?
”

  “Yes.” Not that he’ll find me easily. Today I may be the picture-perfect granddaughter. But tomorrow at school I will be Tully again and once he recognizes me he’ll wish we hadn’t spoken.

  Chris leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Well, if you see me around, say hi. I hate being the new guy. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. I mean, we move every year or two. But having to get to know a new place and new people all the time is frustrating. And it seems especially quiet around here.”

  “Quiet? Nah. Just boring.” It’s all the same here, whether you’re fifteen or fifty: You drink. Have sex. Fight. Then drive around to find something else to drink.

  He opens his mouth just as a high voice pipes over the humming crowd. “Chrii-iiis!”

  He gives a small, twisted grin that grabs at my chest. “That’s my mom. I guess I’ll see you around.”

  He offers me his hand again—impeccable manners, apparently.

  “See you,” I say, tucking my hands under my thighs.

  His brow crinkles, but he’s kind in the face of my rudeness. “See you, Tully. Nice to meet you.”

  Then he jogs across the grass until he reaches a tiny woman standing next to a very tall man whose hair is the same color as Chris’s. She’s even shorter than I am and thin as a bird. Her eyes measure me, then cut back to him, basking in him as if he were the sun. The tall man takes her hand and says something that makes Chris laugh. As they turn to go, she stares at me again, her face a tight mask of fear.

  Like maybe she knows who I am.

  Then the three of them walk away together, laughing, a perfect family unit.

  There is an ache in my chest. I wonder how it would be to have parents like that. I can’t wait until I can leave this hellhole of a town and forget it ever existed.

  Eventually, the crowd disperses enough that even Grandma will feel silly if she stays. She shakes the pastor’s hand. Dad glances at me over his shoulder. I get up, and we leave this charade behind.

  Chapter 2

  As usual, Grandma drives us to lunch at the Avenue Diner, a pokey little box in a strip mall just off the main street. Painted vines adorn the walls, along with photographs of the town from a hundred years ago. The chairs are plastic and hard, but the food is good and there’s always a hum of conversation to cover our awkward silences. There are a lot of those—especially from me and Dad.

  “And of course you remember Patricia? Well, she’s had another baby. Gordon had to buy a van just so they could all go to church in the same car!” Grandma chuckles with a throaty huff: She’d never let her family get too big for a sedan. God forbid.

  Dad chews the country-fried steak slowly. “Good for them,” he drawls.

  Grandma’s face straightens. She eyes his wrinkled shirt. His grip on his knife tightens.

  “Why won’t you move, Steve?” she says in a far too casual manner.

  Here we go again. They have this conversation every year.

  Dad takes another bite and swallows it before answering. “We’re happy here,” he says. “Tully’s settled. And Louise is here with us, in spirit. I couldn’t leave the house.”

  What he means is that he couldn’t get drunk all the time if we lived somewhere that family might show up on a whim.

  Grandma makes a dismissive noise in her throat. “Louise is with you no matter where you live. Tully would be much happier with her cousins so close, and you’d have help with—”

  “We aren’t leaving, Edna,” Dad says, a hint of steel creeping into his tone. “If you want to help, you could give us some—”

  “Throwing your life away in this ridiculous town,” Grandma mutters, picking imaginary lint off her lap. “And Tully’s.” Even at her age, there’s a grace in the way she moves. Like a cat—fluid, and with unflinching eyes. “Why do you think I left?”

  Dad keeps eating, so I do the same, forcing the food past the lump in my throat. He and I eat in virtual silence after that, careful with our manners, while Grandma tells us about everyone else in the family that we don’t know and don’t care to—when she isn’t making passive-aggressive comments about the cesspit that is Riverside. I want to say she’s right, that I can’t wait to leave. That this lunch is a bitter pill. That this place is a noose around my throat. Instead I eat my biscuits and gravy and stare at the saltshaker.

  There is only one hiccup in our fake-normal day.

  Before lunch is over, Grandma fixes me with her surprisingly clear, blue-eyed gaze. “You’re getting prettier every year, Tulip.”

  Don’t say that.

  Dad looks at me as if he’s trying to see what she sees. I glance from him to her. She waits, as if she’s given me a gift and I should be grateful.

  “Thank you,” I croak.

  Her lips twist to one side. “How are you feeling about your senior year? Have you applied to any colleges yet? Are you seeing anyone?”

  Dad’s brows pinch, just a hair, and I inwardly plead with her to stop talking.

  “School will be fine,” I lie. It’s a battlefield and I am the walking dead. “I haven’t applied to colleges. I’m thinking about taking a year off.” Or ten. Come June, Nigel and I will take off and keep going until we hit the ocean.

  As if she heard the thought, Grandma tsks. “You’re way too smart to skip college, Tulip.”

  I cringe. I hate my full name. And I hate that she pretends to know anything about me.

  “It’s only a year—”

  “Tulip’s being modest,” Dad cuts in. “She’s been offered a partial scholarship to one of those technical schools. I’m encouraging her to take it.”

  This is a lie of such monstrous proportions that I almost laugh.

  “Is that true, Tulip?” Grandma asks.

  “Sort of.” I loathe myself. Despise my father. Wish my grandmother would give up on us completely because this is getting harder every year. “I haven’t actually qualified yet,” I improvise. “I still have to get As in some of my classes.”

  Grandma pats the table with her bent, wrinkled fingers. “Well, you work hard then. That sounds like a fantastic opportunity.”

  “Yeah.” But inside I want to stand up so fast my chair falls over. I want to scream at Dad to stop lying. I want to tell Grandma never to believe another word out of his mouth—or mine, for that matter. Dad’s eyes flick to me and the heat behind them pins me in place.

  I imagine myself on the highway, driving through the California desert, no sound but the wind clapping as I flee, and it helps me breathe.

  The rest of the lunch continues as planned. Dad makes barely veiled references to needing money. Grandma pretends she doesn’t notice. And I silently impress upon the saltshaker how much I hope I never see it again.

  Then Grandma hobbles out—paying for all of us on the way—and we follow her to her car. She offers us a ride but we turn it down, Dad waxing lyrical about how he and I love to walk together. In truth, it is only a little over a mile, and it means five fewer minutes we have to spend pretending for her.

  After we wave good-bye, we trudge silently home, the façade of normalcy quickly fading, because Grandma is the only one who believes it. I wonder, as Dad shuffles along next to me grumbling about needing a beer, whether he wishes, like I do, that the lies we told were real. Whether he wishes that the life we described was possible.

  It isn’t, of course, and hasn’t been since long before he screwed that lock to my door.

  But whether he wishes it could be or not, I will never know. We walk without touching, barely speaking, and with each step we shed our fake life like a too-small skin, leaving it crumpled on the cracked cement of our driveway.

  Chapter 3

  The day after Grandma visits is always hard.

  I paint over the memory of the pearl-buttoned pretend me with extra eyeliner and the blackest of the jeans I own. I choose a rac
er-back tank that reveals my tattoos, and pair it with my steel-toed boots. This is the armor I wear to tell people I don’t care what they think.

  In the hallway at school everyone flows around me, scared to get too close. It’s as if I’m a boulder in the river. Drift wide, or get sunk. Every time one of my classmates screams senior year! and high-fives everyone within reach—except me—I feel the invisible fence keenly.

  During break I sit in a bathroom stall until it’s almost time for the bell, then head to a double hour of woodshop, the only part of school I actually enjoy. The shop room is a freestanding building across the courtyard from the main school, adjacent to the metal shop and computer lab. I step inside a minute after the first bell and am immediately swallowed by the clack of wood on wood, laughing voices bouncing off the high ceiling, and the hum of machinery poised to work. I inhale deeply, letting the scent of sawdust and pine, varnish and oiled blades sink into my lungs.