The Facade by Judy Corry
Cambrielle
“You’re the worst,you know that?” I said to Mack as we walked down the stairs together toward my family’s dining room. We didn’t have family dinner every night since we were all so busy with school and work and our extracurricular activities, but we did try to have a few nights during the week where we were all together.
Carter’s girlfriend Ava joined us sometimes, and Mack was obviously here tonight, but usually it was just my parents, my brothers, and me. My older brother Ian even joined us occasionally now that he was living in the pool house.
“I am not the worst,” Mack disagreed with my statement. “In fact, I think you like it when I tease you.”
“And what would give you such a deranged opinion?” I asked, not sure how he could ever think I enjoyed constantly being on edge about whether he’d tell everyone about him staying in my room.
Mack shrugged as we made it to the foyer. “Just something about the way you keep coming back for more.” He leaned close to my ear, his warm breath sending chills racing across my neck as he whispered, “And the way your eyes light up every time you see me makes me think all this banter is actually your way of telling me you like me.”
I stumbled. But before he could get an even bigger opinion of himself, I promptly elbowed him in the side and said, “In your dreams.”
“Hey,” he said with a wince as he rubbed the spot where I’d hit him. “Have you been working out or something? Because that actually hurt.”
“Just my usual yoga and horseback riding,” I said. Along with the few dancing sessions I’d snuck in while everyone was away from the house.
But I wouldn’t mention those until I was ready to tell everyone that I was considering taking up ballet again, since things hadn’t exactly gone well the last time I’d been immersed in the dancing world.
We made it to the formal dining room where my dad and mom were seated by each other in front of the huge windows that overlooked the back terrace. My blond-haired, blue-eyed father sat at the head of the table still wearing his suit and tie from work. My brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty-queen mom wearing one of her designer dresses was seated beside him. Nash and Carter were at the other end of the table across from one another, leaving the spot across from my mom and the seat at the other head of the table open for Mack and me.
“Ah dang,” Mack said under his breath. “Looks like I won’t be able to play footsie with you during dinner after all.”
“What?” I looked up at him, my eyes wide.
He bent closer again and spoke in a voice no one else could hear, “I told Carter to put me across from you since I like being close, but apparently he didn’t like that idea very much.”
“Yeah, I imagine not.”
While Nash couldn’t care less about which guys at school may or may not be interested in dating me, Carter on the other hand had always been super overprotective of me when it came to guys—so overprotective that I was pretty sure he scared most guys away from even thinking about asking me out.
Or at least that was what I told myself in order to feel better about the fact that I was a junior in high school and had yet to go on a single date.
Mack had picked up on Carter’s whole protective-older-brother vibe a long time ago and frequently teased my brother about taking me to the falls—AKA “make-out point”—many times in the past. To which Carter would tell him to back off and never lay a finger on me, as if I was some porcelain doll princess who would break if I was ever taken out of the glass box I lived in.
The first time Mack had said he wanted to take me on a date, my heart had skipped a beat, because I’d naively believed that my middle-school fantasy about my brothers’ hot best friend was going to come true—the one where he actually saw me as more than the kid sister he’d never had.
But when it happened over and over and it became clear that the thought of actually being interested in me was only a joke to Mack, I resented their banter more and more.
Like, was the thought of dating me, or having any sort of romantic relationship with me just comical to Mack?
I didn’t know.
He probably never even thought about it that way. Probably only saw it as a fun way to get a rise out of my brother since Carter took things way too seriously sometimes. But since I had wanted him to see me differently at one point—to see me as a girl he would actually want to take on a date—him making a joke out of it stung a little.
Dinner was delicious,as usual. After dinner, my mom and I took our horses out for a ride while all the guys played a round of basketball with my dad.
After brushing down Starlight, my Camarillo White Horse, and chatting with my mom, I headed upstairs to get ready for bed.
When I made it to the top of the stairs, I noticed Mack sitting alone in the lounge area at the end of the hall.
“Where are Carter and Nash?” I asked, stepping into the room.
Mack looked up from his phone. “Carter just got a call from Ava and went to whisper his sweet nothings to her in his room.” Mack made a face like he still wasn’t sure how he felt about my brother and his newly found sister’s relationship. “And I think Nash said something about running lines in his room to prepare for his audition.”
“So why are you still up then?” I looked at the time on my watch. “It’s ten-thirty. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“Yeah, I know I should go to bed.” He sighed and leaned back to stretch with his hands behind his head, the bulge in his biceps accentuated with the movement. “I was just thinking.”
“Thinking?” I asked, curious what might be on his mind. “About what?”
“My mom.” He tossed his phone onto the cushion beside him. “I guess I’m a little conflicted about her going in for treatment tomorrow.”
“You are?” I took a seat on the end of the large sectional opposite him. “What are you conflicted about?”
Mack rarely opened up to me about how things were going with his mom. He liked to put up a good front—put on a happy face for the world. But I knew it couldn’t be easy on him.
He let out a heavy breath, his shoulders drooping. “I guess I’m not sure it’s worth it to keep trying to find something that will keep her here longer.”
“Y-you don’t?” I furrowed my brow.
“Not that I don’t want her to be here for forever,” Mack hurried to say. “I definitely wish we could kick her tumor to the curb and say sayonara. But…” He rubbed his cheek with his palm. “I just don’t know how fair it is to keep putting her through treatments.” He sighed and glanced at his hand resting along the back of the couch. “Her headaches and seizures are only getting worse. She spends most days in bed. She’s not really herself so much of the time and she’s miserable. I guess it feels a little selfish to have her stay here for me and my dad when her quality of life is so low.”
So it was worse than I thought.
“She’s herself sometimes, too. Like today when she left with my dad, she was doing pretty well. She even made a joke about kicking my butt if I didn’t behave while I was here. But…” He shrugged. “It’s just hard to know what to do.”
I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in Mack’s shoes. To know he was only working with maybe a month or two to be with his mom if the new treatments didn’t work.
“Do you think you’re also conflicted because if the treatments don’t work, then it means you’re going to lose two extra weeks with her at home that you could have spent with her?”
He nodded slowly, his dark-brown eyes meeting mine. “I think so.”
“But your dad wouldn’t encourage it, if he didn’t think it would help, right?”
“I’m not sure.” Mack shrugged again. “I’d like to say that my dad is one of the best neurosurgeons in the world and so he should know what’s best for my mom…”
“But you think he might be too close to the issue to be objective?” I guessed.
“I think so.” His jaw muscles flexed. “There’s a reason they don’t recommend doctors treat their own family members.”
I didn’t really know what to say next—this whole conversation was kind of depressing, and I didn’t want to say something that would just make it harder on Mack. I knew he already had a hard enough time sleeping, I didn’t need to say anything that would bring up something to make him sleep even worse.
“Did you at least get better sleep the past month with your parents being at home?” I asked, curious if anything had changed in the last month since he’d stayed here.
“Not really.” He peeked down the hall as if to make sure my brothers were still in their rooms. “I, um, I think the last time I slept through the night was when I was here.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He sighed, running a hand over his hair.
I watched him closely. He had been looking permanently tired the past few weeks. I’d assumed it was his worries over his mom’s condition always being on his mind, but I hadn’t realized his sleep was disrupted so much.
“Have you been sleepwalking, too?”
“Um, yeah. Just a few nights a week.”
“A few times a week?” I said, surprised that it was still happening since he hadn’t done it at all when he’d stayed here.
“But, um, I’m sure I’ll be fine here.” He waved his hand as if his sleepwalking was nothing to worry about. “I’ll just lock Ian’s room and I’m sure it will keep me from wandering around your house in the middle of the night.”
“You think so?” I raised my eyebrows, wondering how a simple door lock would stop him when he’d gotten past his family’s deadbolts before.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, the fabric of his thin black T-shirt stretching over his broad shoulders with the movement. “Maybe I won’t even sleepwalk at all. I mean, I didn’t any of the times I stayed here last month. So…” He held his hands out at his sides. “Maybe the same thing will happen again. Maybe your house has some sort of magical sleeping powers.”
“Do my parents know to be on the lookout for you tonight?” I asked, curious what his parents may have arranged with mine when they’d asked for him to stay here.
“I think so.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his palm. “I think they said they’d have Duchess sleep in the hall so she could bark if I tried to leave in the middle of the night.”
Duchess was my family’s little rat-terrier who was definitely more bark than bite. She usually liked to sneak into my parents’ room at night since she was addicted to my mom, but hopefully she’d stay in her bed by the door to keep watch for Mack.
“I guess we’ll see what happens tonight, won’t we?” Mack said.
I nodded. “I hope you get some sleep.” I drew in a deep breath and sighed. “It sounds like you could use a good night’s rest.”
“I hope so, too.”
After leavingMack in the sitting room, I headed to my en-suite bathroom to wash my face, brush my teeth, and work my long, brown hair into a side braid for the night. I changed into my pink polka-dotted pajamas with the button-up top and silky shorts, and then climbed into my bed, tired after a full day.
I was just dreaming about dancing with Ben at the Halloween dance when a soft tapping sound startled me from my sleep.
Tap tap tap.
I opened my eyes, noting the sound was coming from the door that led out onto the balcony I shared with Ian’s room and not from my bedroom door.
I looked at my watch charging on my nightstand. It was just after midnight.
Tap tap tap.
Was someone on the balcony?
My heart raced at the thought of someone climbing up the tree out there to get to my second story balcony.
What did they want?
Should I check? Or should I ignore the sound and hope it was my imagination or that it would just go away?
Tap tap tap.
Who the heck would be out there?
A thief? A murderer?
But then, would a murderer really knock before entering?
Yeah, probably not.
I peeked over my covers, trying to see through the window beside the door, and my heart jolted when I saw a tall, dark figure.
Should I run and get my dad? Or Carter?
Carter’s room was closer, just across the hall from mine. And he had been lifting weights more, he could probably take care of whoever might be out there.
Tap tap tap.
“Cambrielle.” I jumped when I heard my name, soft and muffled through the door. “Cambrielle.”
Mack?
I frowned as I pushed my covers away and climbed out of bed. I knew Mack had joked about sleeping in my room earlier, but had he been serious?
I turned on my bedside lamp so I could see where I was stepping. I peeked through the window to make sure it was actually Mack and not some psycho coming to kill me in the night. Sure enough, Mack was standing out there in his bare feet, wearing only a pair of gym shorts.
And even though I should probably pretend like I was sleeping through all of this and ignore him, I turned the deadbolt on my balcony door and opened the door to see what he wanted.
“Hey,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, realizing too late that I wasn’t wearing a bra under my thin pajama shirt.
But instead of saying hi or explaining what he was doing outside my room in the middle of the night, Mack just stepped over the threshold, almost bumping into me with a dazed look in his eyes.
That was when I realized that he must be sleepwalking again because the vacant look was all too familiar from the times I’d found him wandering through the woods outside last month.
“Hey Mack,” I said in a soft voice that hopefully wouldn’t startle him. “Let’s get you back to your room, okay?”
But he didn’t hear me because he just kept walking around my bed and started pulling the covers down on the side opposite from where I’d been sleeping a moment ago.
“Oh, no, no, no, you don’t.” I hurried around the bed to stop him from climbing under the covers.
I grabbed his bare arm just below his bicep to tug him away from my bed. But he didn’t budge. Instead, he just kept trying to climb in.
“Mack, you can’t sleep in here,” I whispered. “Just come with me back to your room.”
But as I pulled on his arm with all the strength I had in my barely five-foot-two-inch frame, his feet might as well have been cemented in the ground.
Usually, I didn’t mind being so much shorter than the giants in my life since lots of girls were short, but Mack being over a foot taller and outweighing me by almost a hundred pounds did make it hard to have any sort of physical power over him.
I pulled on his arm one more time, but he straightened his elbow at the exact same moment. Instead of pulling him back, my hands slipped over his long, toned arm and I fell backward with the force, crashing into the wall.
Nothing like a huge thudding sound to alert my whole family to the fact that I had a teenage boy trying to climb into my bed.
My heartbeat thundering in my ears, I hurried to stand back up. Rubbing my elbow where it was tender after hitting the wall, I rushed to my door—the one that led into the hall I shared with my brothers—and put my ear against the small gap between the door and the doorframe to listen for the sound of someone coming to check on what had made the clattering noise.
My heart was beating so fast, my breathing coming in short bursts, that I could barely hear anything over it.
Deep breath in, long breath out.
Deep breath in, long breath out.
My heart rate slowed a little, but I still didn’t hear anything.
That was a good sign, right?
Maybe no one had heard the commotion? Carter was probably the next lightest sleeper in the family after me, so he would be the first person to check on me if he heard anything.
After another ten seconds and still nothing, I turned the knob and opened the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak. The hall was quiet and dark. Not a soul to be seen.
Thank you!I said to no one in particular.
Then, after carefully closing the door and locking it, I turned around to deal with Mack. But he wasn’t standing near my bed anymore. Instead, he had climbed under the covers and was currently fast asleep on his side, with a peaceful expression on his face.
What am I supposed to do now?
I definitely couldn’t carry him to his bed like I would a child. And I’d already learned a few weeks ago that waking Mack from sleep was a noisy thing. The first time I caught him walking off into the woods, he had yelled at me when I’d woken him up.
I sighed as I looked at his sleeping form in the dim lighting of my room. He really did look peaceful. And from what he’d said earlier, I knew he hadn’t been sleeping well lately.
Should I just let him stay?
He was hugging the side of the bed, so it wasn’t like we’d even be touching once I got in on my side.
I chewed on my lip as I considered it.
No one usually came in my room in the mornings. I usually didn’t see anyone until I went downstairs for breakfast.
I glanced over at the door. It was still locked.
It would be okay to let Mack sleep here just one night, wouldn’t it?
Nothing was going to happen.
I sighed.
Was my level of tiredness just making me lazy? The logical part of my brain wasn’t exactly functioning at peak performance after midnight.
I walked over to the balcony door, which was still wide open, and gently swung it shut before locking it.
This would be fine.Mack had slept in my room before and nothing had happened.
Sure, he was in my actual bed this time, instead of sleeping on the trundle bed. But…it was fine.
Right?
My eyes caught on the pile of throw pillows I had tossed to the floor when I’d first climbed in bed. I could create a barrier. It would be almost like sleeping in separate beds.
Deciding that was probably the best way to handle this, I started picking up the white and pink and gold decorative pillows and set them in a nice long line down the center of the mattress.
There. I put my hands on my hips as I studied the small mountain of pillows and decided that it was safe enough. I climbed onto my side of the bed and switched off the lamp.
This was fine.
I totally wouldn’t get into huge trouble for sleeping in the same bed as my brothers’ best friend.
I hoped.
