You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

Martijn put his arm over her shoulder. She tried to pull away, but he held her close. Then he started walking, but not in the right direction. In the other direction.

Karin stopped. “Where are we going?”

“To the campsite, of course. To the other kids. To Rutger and Riekje. To your mom.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s in the other direction,” she said, looking behind her. “That way. That’s the way I was going.”

“Oh no, Karin,” he said. “You’re just all turned around from your fall. It’s this way.”

“Are you sure?” Karin said. “I really thought it was over there…”

“Come on,” he said, sounding tired, and grabbing her by the arm. “It’s really late. And I’m getting impatient now.”

She pulled her wrist out of his grip, taking her arm back. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll go the way you want to go. Just don’t touch me, okay?”

He looked her over. “Wow,” he said. “Not very appreciative, are we? If I hadn’t come, you’d be lost in the woods by yourself, you know. But look, it’s normal to be a little turned around, especially when you’re scared. You can thank me for this later.”

Thank you? Karin didn’t say it out loud. But that’s what she was thinking. I’m never going to thank you for anything, you vampire.

As they walked, in silence, Karin ahead, with Martijn behind her, like some kind of prison guard, she started to think about all the ways that their life had started to suck once Martijn came into it. Her mom used to be really relaxed and happy when her dad was around, but since she met Martijn, she was nervous, like, all the time. Her whole personality had changed. She got super anxious, and she’d jump on Karin if she did even the smallest thing wrong. She had never been like that before. She used to be really nice, really fun and funny. Even her mom’s body kind of changed; she got weirdly thin, like rail thin, and not in a good way.

It sucked that they’d had to move into his house, with Jasper and Frank, who totally didn’t want them there. They let her know all the time, calling her names and giving her nasty looks. They were pretty much always rude to her mother, but they were constantly torturing Karin, with all kinds of little tricks they thought were funny. Like they put a dead mouse in her closet one time, and another time a hamster in her underwear drawer. And they left things right outside her bedroom door so she’d trip when she walked out. One time they even dropped her toothbrush into the toilet and, when she told her mom, claimed she’d done it herself.

None of that mattered so much. Karin could protect herself. She was just really worried about her mom. Why did she let Martijn treat her like that? What was so great about him that they had to stay with him?

“Listen, Karin,” said Martijn from behind her. “I know it may not be the best time to talk, ’cause it’s late and we’re both tired, but since we’re here together…”

Oh no, thought Karin. Here it comes.

“I know it’s been kind of a hard transition that we’ve had as a family,” he started. “This last year. Your mom and I wanted to be all together, and I know that has been tough for you, because you miss your dad.”

“It’s not ’cause I miss my dad,” Karin snapped.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I just meant, I can imagine that it might be really hard to start over with a new family after losing your dad. Maybe you didn’t really have enough time to mourn before we—”

“Do we have to talk about this?” Karin said. “I don’t need to talk about this.”

“No,” said Martijn. “No, we don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to.” But then he continued anyway. “I’ve just been meaning to try to find some time alone with you. That’s part of the reason I volunteered to do the dropping with you. I know this park was really important to you and your dad. It was kind of your place, right? You spent a lot of time alone together here. Must have been very bonding.”

Karin couldn’t believe this. Was he really going to be jealous of her relationship with her dad? That was so lame. “It’s, like, the middle of the night,” she said. “I’m not really in the mood to talk.”

“That’s true,” he said. “But when else do we have this kind of opportunity?”

“O-M-G, are you serious? What do we have to talk about?”

“Oh, lots of things. Lots of things,” he said. “For example, I want to tell you that I feel really sorry about what happened to your father. He was a good man trying to do something important in the world, and he got killed for the wrong reason. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“You don’t have to say that,” Karin said. “You don’t have to apologize. People don’t have to apologize all the time. It wasn’t your fault, obv.”

He was silent for a moment. “I know you guys spent a weekend together out here, camping together, before he left the last time for Syria. Was that nice? Do you have good memories of that?”

There was something really irritating about the way he wanted to know so much about them, but she had a little voice of her mom in the back of her head saying, “Why can’t you open up to him just a little bit? He’s really trying, Karin. He may be clumsy about it, but he’s trying.”

“Yeah, it was nice,” said Karin, letting the memories of that final trip flood back into her mind again. “He loved this forest so much. He tried to do a lot of nature photography here. We came here a lot. Actually, we just left our spot. The place where we camped that last time. Also other times. That’s where we always saw the mouflons. That’s why I knew where we were just now.