No one moves for a moment. Mom stares across the room, trembling. The two cops seem to be communicating silently with each other. I’m the one who finally gets up and goes to see who it is.
A slender brunette girl stands next to Vivi, holding her hand. Rowdy lingers next to Vivi’s shins, tail low and anxious.
Vivi has a towering ice cream cone she’s licking evenly around each side, like I taught her. Her face is dirty and one pigtail sags low, but she beams up at me.
I look again at the brunette, and I realize with a jolt that it’s Sasha. Smiling.
The color doesn’t suit her. She looks sallow, like spoiled milk. She wears cut-off shorts, a snug plaid shirt, more casual than she usually dresses. For just a sliver of a second her eyes glitter with malice.
Then she turns a thousand-watt smile past me, toward my mom.
“Hey, guys, we’re . . .” She trails off as her eyes fall to the cops. “Oh my God, has something happened? What’s going on?”
Rowdy low-crawls across the room and disappears into his crate. Mom jumps up and grabs Vivi, squeezing her so tightly the ice cream wobbles dangerously.
The numb, detached feeling that’s had hold of me lets go. The world constricts to a tiny, blood-red point with Sasha at its center. She looks up at me with wide-eyed confusion, not a trace of menace in her expression.
“What’s going on?” she asks. “Why are the cops here?”
Officer Larson stands up and steps toward her. “And who are you, miss?”
“I’m Sasha Daley.” She looks around from person to person. “I’m Gabe’s girlfriend. Or . . . I mean, I was.” She gives a soft, melancholy laugh. “Now we’re just friends.”
Larson scribbles something in his notebook. “Did you take this little girl from her school this afternoon?”
Her expression is so earnest, so ingénue-perfect that, for a split second, I actually wonder if this really is just some big misunderstanding—if she really is as confused as she looks. “Yeah, I did. Why? Did I . . . did I do something wrong?”
Larson glances at his partner, then back at Sasha. “Well, no one seemed to know where she was. Did you talk to her mother about this?”
She shakes her head. “No. I . . . I thought it was all worked out.” She looks at me, almost beseechingly. “Gabe said he was busy and asked me to pick her up and watch her for the afternoon.”
My mouth drops open, but for a second nothing comes out. All I can do is shake my head. Everyone’s looking at me now.
“Gabe?” asks my mother. I can’t look at her. I can’t see anything in the room but Sasha. Sasha, whose brow is crumpled now like she’s about to cry.
“She’s lying,” I say. I fight to keep my voice controlled. It feels like my muscles are filled with something molten. I’ve never wanted to hit anything so badly in my life. “We broke up. Almost a month ago. Why would I ask her to get my sister? I don’t want her anywhere near my family.”
Real tears spring to Sasha’s eyes now. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Because you’re lying!” It comes out as a shout. Larson shifts his weight a little, but I can’t help it. My fists are knotted at my sides. “I never told you to pick her up!”
“We were at your locker, right before sixth period!” She looks at my mom. “Mrs. Jiménez, I’m so sorry. He asked me to watch her all afternoon or I would have brought her back sooner. I didn’t know you’d be so scared.”
Vivi hasn’t stopped licking her ice cream, but she looks up at the sound of Sasha’s anguish. A worried expression works its way onto her face. She breaks away from Mom and staggers back to Sasha, putting her arms around her waist.
“Don’t cry, Sash,” she croons. “It okay.”
Larson looks around the room in exasperation. “Okay, so it seems to me we have a miscommunication . . .”
“It’s not a miscommunication,” I insist. “I never told her she could take my sister. This is kidnapping.” My jaw is so tight I can feel my teeth screeching against each other. I stand for a moment, trying to breathe deep. Trying to calm down.
“Stay away from my family.” I look right at Sasha. Daring her to smirk, to show the slightest bit of pleasure in this. Daring her to give me the slightest sign that this is part of her game.
Tears brim at the edge of her eyes. She wipes them away with the back of her hand.
Officer Huntington moves gently between us. “Ms. Daley, why don’t you step out to the front porch with me. I’ll need a statement before you go, but then I think you can head home. Everyone here’s had a really long and difficult day.”
“Okay.” Sasha gives Vivi one last squeeze. “Bye, kiddo.”
Vivi smiles and lays her head against Sasha’s hip for a moment before being let go. She lets our mother scoop her back up and waves with her ice cream cone, a ribbon of chocolate winding down her fist. “Bye, Sash!”
Sasha pauses in the doorway, the cop just behind her. She looks at Vivi, but I know her words are meant for me.
“It was fun,” she says. “I’ll see you again soon.”
TWENTY
Elyse
I stand at the edge of the ocean, the wind whipping through my hair. The frigid water sweeps around my feet and pulls the sand out from under my toes. It’s a strange sensation, having the earth wrested out from under me. Feeling the tide’s gentle but inexorable power.
I hug my jacket tighter around my shoulders and glance over at Aiden. He stands a few feet away, hands in his pocket.
He’s quiet today. When he picked me up a few blocks from my apartment, we didn’t kiss—not in the middle of Portland, in broad daylight—but his hand reached across the console to hold mine. He held it most of the way to Cannon Beach. I relished the contact. His fingers were warm, calloused in some places and soft in others. But I also wasn’t sure what to say. The kiss changed everything. Or at least, it feels like it did. What did he expect from me? What did he want?
Now, on the beach, he notices me looking, and smiles. I feel suddenly shy; I look down at my legs, at the sea foam swirling around my ankles. The air is chill and foggy, the water the gray-green of patina. But then he’s stepping close to me, tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear, and I look up. It feels brazen, ostentatious. The line his fingertips etch across my cheek burns.
“Are you warm enough?” he asks.
It’s a simple question, a practical one. But I know what he’s really asking. Are you okay? Are you scared? Are you happy? Are you still on board with this?
“Yes,” I say, resting my hand on his broad chest.
* * *
? ? ?
We walk up and down the beach, looking at seashells and driftwood tangled with kelp. Haystack Rock looms across the sand, a barnacled hunchback wheeling with gulls. I trace our names in the sand with a stick and watch the water wear them away. It feels daring, putting our two names so close together, even if it’s so easily erased.
Afterward, we get lunch in a bistro, plates of pasta and fresh, hot bread. We walk slowly through the little town, peeking into shop windows. There aren’t many people on the street, and a lot of stores are boarded up for the winter.
“I’ve never been here before,” I say. He does a double take.
“Really? It’s so close!”
“Yeah, but my mom . . .” I shrug. “We don’t take a lot of road trips.”
“Right.” He shakes his head. “I bet there are places all over the state you haven’t seen. Crater Lake? Opal Creek? Boardman State Park? Please tell me you’ve at least been to the Gorge.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I went to Multnomah Falls with my class in junior high.”
He just shakes his head. “There’s so much more than just Multnomah Falls.” He looks down at me for a long moment, then covers my hand with his and takes it to his mouth, kissing the palm. “I’ll show you.”
“Show me everything,” I say.
He smiles, tucks an arm around my waist. I lean in against him.
Then he jerks away so suddenly I almost fall over.
Before I can say anything, he’s dodged into the bookstore just behind us. I freeze in surprise, the chill of the air sharp where a moment ago his arm kept me warm. I’m about to follow him when I see what he must have seen.