By Sunday night, my room looks like I lost a fight with my backpack.

There are clothes everywhere. My jeans hang halfway out of the hamper. My cheer shorts are on the floor by the closet. My hairbrush is on my desk on top of my English notebook, and there is a trail of bobby pins across the carpet like I shed them while trying to escape my own head.

I sit on the edge of my bed and press two fingers lightly against the place where Momma slapped me.

It does not hurt as bad now, which is almost worse. A fading bruise is easier for people to turn into nothing. It is easier for Momma to pretend she was correcting me and not hitting me. It is easier for me to pretend I have moved on because the evidence is disappearing.

So I do what people tell girls like me to do when the bad thing is inconvenient.

I look at the positives.

I drove a stick this weekend.

Radley's truck.

I still can't believe it. I stalled it, yes. More than once. Radley laughed, also more than once, and I threatened to leave him for dead out by the bog if he kept smiling at me like that. But then the clutch caught, the truck moved, and for a few seconds, I was driving something too big and too loud and too powerful for anybody to think I belonged inside it.

I loved it.

I loved it so much I keep replaying it in my head. The empty road ahead of us. The steering wheel warm under my palms. My foot shaking on the clutch because I was trying too hard not to mess up. Radley telling me, "Slow, baby. Feel it catch."

And then it did.

The truck rolled forward, and my stomach lifted like I had just gone over the top of a hill.

I think Grandpa Walker would have liked that.

I think he would have been proud of me, not because driving a truck is the most impressive thing in the world, but because I tried something that scared me. Because I did not give up the first time the engine died. Because I laughed. Because I was messy and loud and alive out on an empty road, and no one told me to be quiet.

That thought carries me for a while.

Then I remember I have school tomorrow.

I have an English lit paper due Tuesday. I have thirty-two pages of reading I have not finished, an AP Government quiz on the judicial branch, and a column draft for the school paper that Mr. Evers said I could revise if I wanted it considered for Friday's issue.

I want it considered.

I want that more than I want cotillion. More than I want a dress that makes Momma sigh less. More than I want Mrs. Bofield to look me up and down and decide I know how to stand beside her son.

So I drag myself to my desk and try to become the kind of girl who does her homework after a weekend that feels like it has lived inside her bones.

My desk lamp burns hot over my notebook, turning the little pile of marked-up papers gold at the edges. I sit cross-legged in my chair with my hair twisted up in a knot and a pencil between my teeth, reading the comments Mrs. Cowell left on my Gatsby essay.

Strong point, but you are rushing the evidence.

I underline rushing because she is right, and I hate that she is right.

Good eye for social performance.

I smile at that one.

My paper is supposed to be about illusion and class in The Great Gatsby, but every time I try to write about Daisy Buchanan's voice sounding like money, I end up thinking about Momma standing in the fitting room saying my husband's friends like the title itself is a staircase she climbed. I end up thinking about Mrs. Bofield's pearls and Radley's game-day tie and the way people in Montgomery can turn a last name into a verdict before a person opens their mouth.

Mrs. Cowell circled one paragraph and wrote, This reads more like a column than literary analysis. Not necessarily a weakness. Make the argument earn it.

I run my thumb over the words until the pencil smudges.

Not necessarily a weakness.

Nobody ever says that about the parts of me Momma wants fixed.

Too much opinion. Too much mouth. Too much noticing.

But Mrs. Cowell likes that I notice. Mr. Evers likes it too. He says I ask questions like I am trying to find the loose board in a locked room.

I lean over my essay and rewrite my thesis for the fourth time.

In Fitzgerald's novel, wealth is not merely possessed; it is performed, rehearsed, and enforced by everyone desperate enough to believe proximity can become belonging.

I stare at it.

Then I laugh once under my breath because apparently I am not writing about Gatsby anymore.

I am writing about my mother.

I am writing about winter cotillion.

I am writing about every woman in Montgomery who smiles while measuring the distance between herself and the nearest rich man.

My eyes burn.

I glance at the clock on my nightstand.

11:38.

Too late.

I should brush my teeth. I should wash my face. I should finish the paragraph about Gatsby's shirts.

Instead, I rest my forehead on my folded arms for one second.

Just one.

The paper is warm under my cheek. My pencil rolls against my wrist. Somewhere downstairs, Momma shuts a cabinet, then another. Anthony laughs at something on television, low and distant. The house settles around me, expensive and polished and not mine.

I doze off.

*************

Something taps my window..

I jerk awake so fast my elbow knocks my pencil onto the floor.

For a second, I do not know where I am. My cheek is stuck to my essay. My neck hurts. The desk lamp is still on, and Gatsby is open under my hand like I fell asleep in the middle of interrogating him.

I look at the clock.

1:26.

Another tap hits the glass.

I freeze.

The sound is small. Sharp. Insistent.

Tap.

Another pebble hits the windowpane and drops out of sight.

My heart kicks hard once.

I look toward my bedroom door first, because that is what living in this house has taught me. Check whether anyone heard. Check whether Momma is coming. Check whether I am already in trouble before I even understand what I did.

The hallway stays quiet.

Tap.

"Jesus," I whisper.

I stand, bare feet cold against the floor, and cross to the window. The glass is dark except for my reflection, pale and startled, hair half-fallen from its knot. I push the curtain aside.

Radley stands below in the side yard.

For one second, all I see is his letterman jacket and the white T-shirt underneath it. Then he tilts his face up into the wash of light from my window, and my stomach drops.

There is blood near his eyebrow. The left corner of his mouth is swollen and split, and he has his tongue tucked against his gum like he is trying to hold the pain in place.

I shove the window open.

"What happened?" I whisper.

"Let me in."

"Radley."

"Walk." His voice breaks on my name, quiet enough that nobody but me would hear it. "Please."

I do not ask again.

I move quickly because I have done this before. I turn off my desk lamp, then change my mind and turn it back on low because I need to see his face. I grab the little first-aid box from the bottom drawer of my desk. Gauze. Antibacterial ointment. Butterfly bandages. Medical tape. The things I should not know how to use as well as I do.

By the time I get back to the window, Radley is already climbing the trellis.

He should not be climbing anything with blood on his face and bruises starting under his skin, but telling Radley Bofield what he should not do has never stopped him from doing it. He gets one hand on the sill and hauls himself up, jaw clenched, breath catching once like something in his ribs hurts.

I grab his forearm and help pull him through.

He lands too hard on my bedroom floor.

I wince.

We both go still.

The house stays quiet.

Radley braces one hand against my wall and bows his head. His shoulders rise and fall under his jacket. Up close, he smells like winter air, grass, sweat, and the sharp metallic bite of blood.

"Take your shoes off," I whisper.

He obeys without arguing, which scares me more than the blood.

I lock my door, then turn back to him.

His face is worse in the lamplight. The skin above his brow is split. One cheekbone is already swelling. His lip is purple and bloody.

And still, somehow, I can see him under all of it.

That makes me furious.

Logan can split his mouth and bruise his face, but he cannot quite take the boy out of him. Not yet.

"Sit," I whisper.

Radley sits on the edge of my bed with his elbows on his knees, shoulders rounded forward like he is trying to make himself smaller. I kneel in front of him with the first-aid box between us and force myself to breathe through my nose. If I get angry too fast, my hands will shake. If my hands shake, I will hurt him. If I hurt him, he will apologize, and if he apologizes to me for bleeding on my bedroom floor after his father hit him, I may actually climb down the trellis, walk across Montgomery in my pajamas, and set Logan Bofield's house on fire.

"Here," I say. "Hold still."

I wet the gauze and press it carefully to his brow.

Radley flinches.

Then he goes still automatically, like his body remembers before his mind does.

I hate that too.

"What happened?" I ask.

He shrugs, and the movement pulls at the cut above his brow. He winces before he can stop himself.

"He was just in one of his rages," he says. "I got between him and Momma."

My hand pauses.

"Was he going after her?"

Radley looks at the floor.

The silence answers before he does.

"Rad."

His jaw moves once, like he is biting down on something he will not say.

"Can you just patch me up?" he asks. His voice is rough and tired, stripped of all the easy charm he uses on everyone else. "I'm really tired, Walk. I have film before school and practice after, and I just want to fall asleep next to you, all right?"

My chest hurts.

"Yeah," I say softly. "Sure."

I take out more gauze, then the antibacterial gel, and get to work. I have done this before for him too many times, so my hands know the order. Clean the blood. Check the cut. Hold the skin together. Press the butterfly bandage into place. Watch his face for the little flinches he tries to hide.

Sometimes the cuts have been bad enough that I have begged him to go to the emergency room, but he refuses every time.

Of course he does.

Everyone in Montgomery knows the kind of man Logan Bofield is. They know. They just pretend they do not because men like Logan do not get called monsters in public. They get called complicated. Powerful. Difficult. Traditional.

And boys like Radley get taught to bleed quietly.

"So," Radley says, shifting as I smooth the butterfly bandage over the cut above his brow, "I never got to ask you how your dress fitting went. You haven't mentioned it. Just the slap."

I look at him.

He tries to smile.

It does not work all the way because of the swelling near his eye, but it is enough to make something inside me ache.

"Oh, it was absolutely magical," I say. "I felt just like a fairy fucking princess, and the slap Momma gave me at the end was the real bonus."

He frowns.

"I'll be okay, Rad."

His smile becomes real for half a second. Then he leans in and kisses me.

It lights something in me that I hate and love at the same time, because he is still capable of it right now. After whatever happened in that house. After his father. After his mother crying or not crying or pretending nothing happened because pretending nothing happened is the closest thing that family has to survival.

"Were your tits crooked?" he asks.

I snort.

"Oh, how did you guess?"

"Lucky."

"Momma was right on top of that."

His smile fades at the edges.

"I like your tits," he says. "For what it's worth."

"Radley."

"What?"

"You are bleeding on my pillowcase."

"I'm complimenting you."

"You might be concussed."

"I don't give a shit about some stupid dress," he says.

The words land softer than they should.

I know he does not. That is the thing. Radley does not care if the bodice is crooked or lopsided or lifted or smoothed. Radley has seen me in lake water and sweatshirts and muddy socks. Radley has seen me sunburned and crying and furious and half-asleep in the passenger seat of his truck.

Radley does not want the version of me Momma is trying to tailor into existence.

But the world around him does, and one day that might matter more than either of us wants it to.

"I know you don't," I say.

I lean in and kiss his forehead once I am satisfied the cut will not bleed into his eye.

"You okay?"

He nods.

Then he reaches for me, quick and needy, and catches my mouth with his again.

The kiss is not smooth. It is not the kind he gives me in hallways when he knows people are looking. It is tired and desperate and a little clumsy, like he needs to prove he is here, that I am here, that there is at least one place in the world where nobody is waiting to hit him or judge him or turn him into something useful.

When he pulls back, his eyes stay closed.

"Now I am," he whispers.

I put the supplies away while he toes off his shoes and shrugs out of his letterman jacket. He moves carefully, like every muscle has to ask permission first. I fold the jacket over my desk chair.

His jacket ends up over my marked-up Gatsby essay, his blood on my pillowcase, his father's violence in my room.

"Do you need ice?" I whisper.

"No."

"Radley."

"I don't."

"You're swelling."

"I said no."

His voice sharpens, then breaks off immediately. He looks at me like he is afraid I will punish him for it.

I hate his father so much I can barely breathe around it.

"Okay," I say. "No ice."

His shoulders drop.

I turn off the desk lamp, leaving only the faint glow from the little nightlight near my closet because Radley hates total darkness after nights like this, even though he would never say that out loud.

He climbs into my bed like he belongs there.

Because he does.

He has been sneaking into my room since we were kids, first to watch movies when his parents were fighting, then to sleep on the floor when things got bad, then beside me when we were old enough to know what it meant and too tired to care. By now, his body knows the shape of my mattress. Mine knows the heat of him behind me.

I slide under the covers, and he reaches for me before I am even settled.

His arm locks around my waist. His chest presses against my back. His chin tucks near my shoulder. He holds on too tight, like he needs my body to keep his from breaking apart.

I let him.

Even if Momma walked in, she would not call anyone. She would see his bruised face, see him clinging to me, and choose the match over the truth.

She always does.

His fingers tighten once against my stomach.

"Walk?" he murmurs.

"Yeah?"

"Don't send me the dress picture."

My throat tightens.

I stare at the dark wall across from my bed.

"Okay."

"I want to see it when I pick you up."

I close my eyes.

Because that sounds like love.

Because maybe it is love.

Because with Radley, everything hurts and everything is tender, and sometimes I cannot tell the difference between being held and being claimed.

"Okay," I whisper again.

He exhales against the back of my neck and falls asleep a few minutes later.

I stay awake much longer, listening to him breathe, wondering how a boy can feel like both the safest place I have ever known and the thing I am supposed to survive.