Fadeaway by E. Vickers (ebook smartphone TXT) 📗

his eyes at Jake’s weakness and at his words. “Are you kidding me? I’m not sending it from here. What if they trace the signal?”

Jake is confused. “Can they do that?”

The man lets out an impatient breath. “I’d rather not find out. I’ve already had to disable the location encryption on your pictures.” He dangles the phone in front of Jake’s face, taunting him. “So. Your message. What’ll it be? ‘Don’t worry, I’m alive’ or ‘Getting my shit together’? I swear, Foster, I won’t type ‘I love you all.’ You’ve got to give me something better than that.”

Jake thinks it over. Four words, four people. When they get the message and the picture from his phone, they’ll know he’s alive, so “I’m alive” would be a waste of half his words. What is it he wants to say most?

Then he knows. He gives the man the names of the four people he wants the message sent to, and then come the words.

“It’s not your fault.”

The man drives to a lonely hill, covered in sage and bitterbrush that cling to the dry dirt, struggling to survive. He finds the four contacts Jake gave him and sends the four words to each of them.

Because in spite of it all, he is not a monster. He too is only trying to survive.

It’s not your fault.

It’s not your fault.

It’s not your fault.

It’s not your fault.

He tells himself the words are true for him too.

Then he climbs into the truck and gets the hell out of there.

Daphne scrolls the “Find Jake” page, searching for anything that seems even the smallest bit credible or helpful. Nothing ever does.

Kolt stands by the window, spinning a soda-can tab between his thumb and finger. Drops the tab, tells himself it’s nothing.

Luke opens Jake’s nightstand drawer. The little first-aid tin is gone, just like his brother. But nothing in that kit could have fixed much of anything, anyway.

Then four phones light up with the words It’s not your fault and a photo, blurry and washed out, of Jake wearing a pained smile.

They each try to call him then, three shaking hands holding phones to three eager ears, but of course it goes straight to the voicemail message they’ve been hearing since he disappeared.

Daphne, Kolt, and Luke recognize each other’s numbers, but none of them are sure who the fourth number belongs to. When they call it (and they all do), they hear only the automated recording that came with the phone, repeating the number back to them, even though it’s the only piece of information they already know.

Still, none of them call each other.

Each of them sits, alone and wrecked, and reads the words again: It’s not your fault.

Not one of them believes it.

Sometimes I wonder if my defining characteristic is my obsession with drugs.

When I was little, I dreamed of being a doctor. I’d give all my relatives checkups with my plastic kit and boxes of Band-Aids. (When Dad told me I could pick out a treat at the store, I’d pick Band-Aids every time.)

Somewhere along the line, though, I realized it usually wasn’t the doctor who fixed you.

It was the medicine.

Even my seven-year-old self could see that. You go to the doctor, they take your temperature and look down your throat or whatever, and you leave feeling exactly the same. It’s the five milliliters of grape-flavored goodness your dad pours (or your mom, I guess, if she stuck around) that actually make the difference.

Why would you want to be a doctor, I wondered, when you could be a pharmacist? The person who actually delivers the goods?

So when Jake came home after a couple of days in the hospital postsurgery, I put myself in charge of managing his meds. It turned out that was an easy job compared with trying to keep him off his feet. Jake was ready to get back onto the court, and it took all four of us—Kolt, Luke, Jake’s mom, and me—tag-teaming him to keep him occupied enough that he wouldn’t try anything stupid.

Since there’s no off-season for college prep, I tried to figure out things Jake and I could do that were entertaining but still required brain activity, even if it was a stretch. That’s how we ended up playing so many card games and watching entire seasons of Grey’s Anatomy.

“You could be Derek Shepherd someday,” I told him one night as Meredith’s voice-over began against the Seattle skyline. Jake’s injured leg ran the length of the couch behind me, but it was still so comfortable, leaning back against his chest, him resting his chin on top of my head. “You’d be out there saving lives, filling out the scrubs.”

He couldn’t have sat up faster if the couch had caught on fire, launching me to the other end.

“No way,” he said. “I hate doctors and hospitals and blood. I hate all of it.”

I stared at him. “Jake, we’re on season three. You’ve watched fifty episodes of doctors and hospitals and blood in the last week. Why did you sit through fifty episodes of everything you hate?”

He shrugged. “Because I love you.”

He’d never said it before, and I’m still not sure he meant to say it then, but he didn’t backpedal. He just pulled me close and kissed me, maybe partly so I wouldn’t feel any pressure to say it back.

“Speaking of medicine,” I said, even though that was definitely not the last thing we’d been speaking of, “it’s time for your pain meds.” Jake’s mom had thanked me for keeping on top of it, since he’d been known to try to skip a dose or two.

Jake groaned. “They make me all loopy and nauseous.”

“Nauseated,” I corrected him. “ ‘Nauseous’ isn’t incorrect, but it can also mean you’re causing nausea, and I can confirm that’s definitely not the case. I actually feel quite great when I’m around you.”

He nodded. “Right. So calling a grown-ass man ‘McDreamy’ is nauseous because it makes me nauseated. Is that correct?”

I