Free Where You'll Find Me by Erin Fletcher

for an hour or two. One of those ridiculous judge shows comes on, and I don’t change the channel.
    “Come on,” Nate says to the television after the evidence has been presented. “The guy’s obviously innocent, and the girl’s obviously crazy. If she really needed money, then she should have waited to buy the new car, not expected him to foot the bill. She shouldn’t have spent money she didn’t have.”
    “Okay, but he shouldn’t have cheated on her when they were engaged. She thought they were going to get married and share funds, so she bought the car. That’s his fault.”
    Nate rolls those gorgeous blue eyes and pokes me in the side. “You’re such a girl.”
    I’m planning a sarcastic retort and a poke back when a non-TV-like sound catches my attention. I grab the remote and press the power button.
    “Hey, what are you…”
    “Shh! Did you hear that?” I whisper.
    “Hear what?” he asks in a loud, fake whisper.
    Clearly, he thinks I’m crazy. But I can’t be offended because I did hear something. One of the garage doors going up. “Shit.” One of my parents is home. One of my parents is home, and I have a boy in the house. A boy they don’t know. “My parents,” I hiss. “Someone’s home. You have to hide.”
    “Shit,” Nate echoes. He looks around the room. There’s no room to hide behind furniture. No closet. No curtains.
    “Come on.” I grab his hand and pull him upstairs. We’re just past the Third Step Creak and onto the landing when the door to the garage opens. I put my finger to my lips and tiptoe with Nate into my bedroom. I shove clothes and shoes out of the way so I can open the closet door. The plus side to never putting anything away is that more of my belongings are out of the closet than in it. There’s room for Nate. “Get in,” I whisper, kicking a few empty hangers out of the way.
    “Hanley, I’m not going—”
    “If my parents find you here, they’re going to kill someone. Maybe me. Maybe you. Maybe both. Do you want to test that theory, or do you want to get your ass into the closet?”
    The sound of footsteps floats up the stairs. Flat, heavy footsteps, belonging to my dad. Maybe it’s those footsteps that convince Nate to crawl into the closet below a row of clothes. There’s barely enough time for him to sigh and pull his knees up to his chest before I close the closet door. “Ouch,” he says, and I hope whatever I did to him doesn’t make him bleed all over the carpet. Or my clothes. Shit . It’s only then that I realize Nate is sitting in the midst of my clothes. My underwear. Bras. The sock monkey footy pajamas Rosalinda gave me for Christmas as a joke. My face flushes, but I don’t have time to stress about that. I have bigger problems.
    I dash out of my room, closing the door behind me, and run downstairs so fast that I miss a step and almost slide the rest of the way on my ass. At the bottom of the stairs, I take a second to compose myself. My heart is pounding, and I’m breathing like I ran a marathon. Damn being out of shape and nervous.
    I run my fingers through my hair and walk into the kitchen. My dad is standing at the counter, typing away at his Blackberry, jacket and shoes still on.
    “Hey, Dad.”
    “Hello, Hanley,” he says without looking up, thumbs going a mile a minute. His hair is still neat, like he didn’t work long enough to tug at it with frustration or stress. If he notices my forced casual tone, he doesn’t acknowledge it.
    “You’re home early.”
    “Yeah.” He presses one more button before turning his attention to me. “It figures the heat in our building would go out on the coldest day of the year.” He shrugs out of his jacket and walks toward the coat closet. I follow. “It was too cold to stay. Everyone’s working from home for the rest of the day.”
    “Oh. Yeah. Okay.”
    Dad places his shoes in the complicated closet organizing system my mom put in a year or two ago. There’s a place for every