“It’s crazy this year,” Natalie says, fanning herself with a paper plate. “I’ve never seen it so busy.”
“How much did we make?” Sasha asks.
“Just under five thousand so far. We’ll definitely be able to get new costumes for the spring concert.” Natalie smiles at me. “How’s the food? I haven’t been able to get any yet.”
“Here.” I shove my plate at her. “Have mine. I’m full.”
She glances at Sasha, and I realize she’s asking permission. After a moment Sasha gives an almost imperceptible nod, and Natalie picks at my food.
“How’re you doing, Gabe?” Marjorie asks. “I mean, after the fire and everything?” I see curiosity in her eyes, and something else. Pity. The tiniest glimmer of it. Everyone knows I’m Sasha’s bitch. Everyone knows she’s won.
“Never better, Mags,” I say, summoning up my jauntiest tone. “Turns out chicks love reckless heroics. Right, baby?” I kiss the side of Sasha’s head. If I’m going to put on a show, I’m going to do it right.
Sasha giggles. “Oh, we’re calling it heroic now? I thought you were still wanted for arson or whatever.”
Marjorie’s eyes widen slightly, though I know her surprise is as much an act as my good mood is. Sasha’s made damn sure everyone knows the cops have been sniffing around. Just another way to keep people talking; another way to keep me humiliated.
“Not technically,” I say carelessly, as if it’s all a big joke. “I’m just being investigated. There’s a difference.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I try to ignore it. Sasha hates it when I check my phone around her, even though she spends half her life texting.
“I heard that girl Catherine set the fire herself,” Natalie says, her freckled nose wrinkling slightly. “Someone told me she moved here because she burned her school down in California.”
Someone. How coy.
“You know she was a weed dealer?” Marjorie says, looking at Natalie. “She used to hang out with all the burner kids.”
Me. The burner kids being me. How fun this game of telephone is.
“Guys, that’s all just gossip.” Sasha, being the bigger person. So magnanimous. “The truth is, we don’t know anything about her.” She pats me on the shoulder. “I’m just glad Gabe was passing by and could get her out of there. Someone could have been hurt.”
My phone vibrates again. I can’t stand it anymore. I pull it out and glance surreptitiously down at the screen.
And then I stand up.
Sasha rolls her eyes. “Can’t you go five minutes without looking at that thing?”
“I have to go,” I say. My voice is flat and distant. It gets her attention.
“Where?” she asks, eyes narrowing again.
I don’t answer. I step away from the picnic table and hitch my backpack up my spine.
“Gabe? What the fuck?” she says behind me. Then, louder: “Where do you think you’re going?”
There will be hell to pay later. But right now I don’t care. Right now, all I can think is that I have to move. I have to find Caleb and borrow his jeep. I have to get out of here.
I look down at the screen of my phone one more time. The two messages, sent in short succession, are still there.
dollorous00: Hill Country Motel, room 11
dollorous00: Please hurry
FORTY
Elyse
The air is heavy, even at midnight. I roll out of the bed as gently as I can. On the other side, Aiden shifts in his sleep.
I pull on my jeans and a T-shirt and go into the front room of the spartan little bungalow. We have a thrift store sofa, a few wobbly lamps, a bookshelf where I keep the tattered paperbacks I’ve managed to accumulate over the past year. I thumb through a few of them, trying to distract myself, but I’m restless. So I pick up the car keys from the bowl by the door and slip out the front.
It’s one of the few little rebellions I have left. He usually keeps a close eye on the keys, but I take them every chance I get. He taught me to drive as soon as we got to California; he wanted me to be able to get us out of there quickly if I had to. But he hated doing it. He hated the idea that I could get in the car and leave him if I wanted.
I like imagining it. I like the vision of myself crossing the county line, without bags or baggage, the radio blasting and my hair whipping around the open window.
But where would I go?
Outside, a tongue of lightning flickers across the horizon. I breathe deep. The air smells like rain. It feels good to get out of the cramped little house. It feels good to know he’ll get in the car tomorrow morning and see the odometer—he always notices the odometer—and realize that, once again, I slipped his grasp. Even if it was just for a moment.
The car—a ten-year-old beige Toyota—starts easily. I tune the radio and find a mournful folk-rock ballad that I like. I can’t remember who sang it. It was some time in my old life, back in Portland. It feels like a million years ago.
Thoughts of Portland always bring with them thoughts of my mom, thoughts of Brynn, thoughts of myself as a dumb, na?ve kid. Thoughts of everything I’ve lost. It’s like pressing hard on a bruise—a low-grade ache that suddenly swerves into blinding pain. I quickly change the station and land on an oldies channel, Ronettes crooning in harmony. I pull away from the curb and feel some of the tension leave my shoulders.
I weave slowly through the streets. I don’t know where I’m going; I’m not even sure I know how to get home. The houses slowly change around me, expanding up and out from modest ranch homes to sprawling mansions nestled against the hills. There’s not much traffic this time of night. I tap the steering wheel in time with the music. “Be My Baby.” “Daydream Believer.” “Sixteen Candles.” Sugary, bright-eyed music about love and innocence.
If Aiden wakes up and finds me gone, he’ll freak out. He’s gotten more and more paranoid and possessive; sometimes he scares me. Sometimes, the way he looks at me—I think he’d rather kill me than lose me. I think he’d rather we both go down in flames than admit defeat.
Buddy Holly comes on the radio, voice scornful and mean. “That’ll Be the Day.” I reach up to change the channel again. I don’t want to listen to him gloat. I don’t want to listen to a man singing about a woman who’s afraid to leave.
Just as my hand finds the dial, something thumps against my car.
Everything gets very bright or very dark, the contrast in my vision turned way up, glittering and lurid. I slam the brakes. I put the car in park. I sit there, my hand still outstretched, the Buddy Holly song still swaggering along. There’s a shape on the ground in front of me, dark in my headlights.
Fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh—
The sky opens up, and it starts to rain.
I turn off the car and grab my umbrella. My headlights fade as I step out of the car, my blood roaring as loud as the downpour, pulse screaming that this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening . . . but the shape stays motionless, sprawled on the pavement. Rivulets are already moving around it. This is nothing like Portland rain, that lazy drizzle. This is hard and violent and punishing. And that’s what somehow gets me to move: not the fact that the figure in the street might be dead, but the fact that the rain is falling on it.
On him. I can see that as soon as I take a step closer. He’s a kid—my age, I think, Latino, with dark curls plastered to his forehead from the rain. When I see that he’s breathing I take a shuddering gulp of air myself. I kneel down to get a better look, holding up my umbrella with one hand.
He stares up at the sky with a blank, dazed expression. There’s a raw-looking scrape on one cheek, and his arm is lying at a strange angle to his body. A few yards away is a splintered skateboard, one wheel still spinning.
A rattling groan escapes from his chest. It scares me for a second, until I realize he’s had the wind knocked out of him. He’s trying to find his breath.
“Shhhhh,” I whisper, resting a hand on his cheek. “Don’t move.”