“Hmm.” They were upset about drugs? That made no sense.
My parents’ attitude toward illegal substances was that nothing should be illegal. To say they were progressive would be an understatement. They’d always done a variety of drugs, even when we were little, making no secret of partaking in what they called “creativity enhancers,” like ecstasy, marijuana, and mushrooms. They’d even talked about it openly in interviews.
That said, my dad had “the drug talk” with me and Lisa when we were eight. The message had been: wait until your brain is fully developed, and then consider them like a rich dessert: fine on birthdays, bat mitzvahs, Christmas, and when you want a rare treat, but avoid more than one serving at a time.
I’d never touched anything—not cigarettes, not alcohol, not marijuana—mostly because any curiosity I might’ve experienced ended after I took a series of MIT OpenCourseWare classes on the brain and cognitive sciences, including neurochemistry. I’d subsequently decided that if I was going to put chemicals in my body, then they better be pharmaceutical grade, produced in a lab overseen by the FDA, and prescribed by a medical professional.
While I was still pondering the puzzle of his response, Abram added, “I guess they didn’t want their baby girl selling cocaine to sixteen-year-olds at concerts.” And that’s when I choked on air. Hard.
What. The. HELL?
LISA!
Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man. Cocaine? To SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS?
I had to stop walking or risk falling over. Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, I was coughing so hard, tears formed in the corners of my eyes and I wheezed when I inhaled.
Cocaine was right up there with opiates as the most addictive, life destroying substances. When I saw her next, she would give me answers. All the answers. I would settle for nothing less. And if what Abram said was true, if she’d been peddling to kids, I was going to blow the lid off this deception. I was going to—
“Are you okay?”
Abruptly, I became aware that we were stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Abram was still there, once again standing close enough for me to feel the heat of his body even though it must’ve been eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Interestingly and confoundedly, his hand was also rubbing circles on my back and I hadn’t noticed.
But as soon as I became aware of his touch, I stepped away. Sucking in a raspy breath and holding it, I let my eyelids fall. I tried to swallow. My throat felt gravelly and raw.
No wonder my parents had freaked. If this got out to the papers, their pedestals might not survive.
“I guess it’s not true?” His words were halting, like he was speaking his thoughts as they occurred to him.
What could I say? One of my anytime-situation phrases popped in my head (And thus, I die), but I quickly pushed it away. Opening my eyes, I glared at my reflection in his aviators and said nothing. I didn’t know what she’d done to land behind bars. I had no idea!
“Where’s this guitar shop?” I asked, glancing up and down the sidewalk, my voice extremely rough.
Abram hooked his thumbs in his jeans’ pockets. “We’re about a block away.”
Clearing my throat, I motioned for him to proceed. Irritatingly, his initial footfalls were slow, which made it awkward for me to follow without walking next to him. I didn’t want to walk next to him. I wanted to quietly fume and make plans for how I might uncover the truth as soon as possible.
But I couldn’t do either because he was talking again. “So, the Tyler stuff is true, but the drugs stuff is not.” He nodded at his own statement. “Good to know.”
Staring forward, I erased my face of expression. The drug stuff better not be true. . . OR ELSE!
“But—” He scratched his cheek, seemed to hesitate before finishing his thought, “But you and Tyler are split? For good?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve broken up before though, right?”
I nodded, only half paying attention. If Lisa was selling cocaine to teenagers, I will go to a nerd-con and, posing as her, I would make out with a B-list celebrity and ensure we were photographed. She would be horrified and might never recover. I felt certain of this in my bones.
“What’s different this time with Tyler?”
Preoccupied by my perdition plans, I tried to remember my sister’s response to this question when I’d asked two nights ago. “Never again. I’m done with that floating trash island of whale excrement.”
Whale excrement? Where had that come from? Once again, I blamed Moby Dick.
Abram’s chuckle was a burst of air, like my answer had caught him totally off guard.
“‘Floating trash island of whale excrement, ’” he quoted, sounding contemplative, drawing my eyes to his profile.
Since I was walking on his left, I caught the flash of his dimple and it—paired with his super handsome profile—was enough to distract me from my thoughts of revenge. “That’s right.”
“That’s an interesting description.” Abram’s steps slowed, stopped, and he reached for the door of a shop, holding it open for me. “You have a way with words. You should write song lyrics.”
I grunted, scanning the front of the building. The window facing the sidewalk showcased a two-by-ten array of guitars, all held aloft by a heavy-duty black wire cage display. Through the wire and guitars, the interior of the shop was scarcely visible. But, no matter. Clearly this was our destination.
“Why whale excrement?”
Abram’s question drew my attention away from the guitars. He’d taken off his sunglasses and was folding them with one hand, holding the door open with the other. His gaze felt different. Oddly piercing.
“Because it’s got to be the biggest piece of poop. Right? Whale poop should be massive.”
He seemed to be fighting another smile and he opened his mouth as though to respond, but a voice called from the interior of the shop, “Are you coming inside? You’re letting all the AC out the door!”
“Whoops!” I hurried past Abram and quickly found the owner of the voice. Giving him a little wave and conciliatory smile, I said, “Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The man didn’t look up from where he stood in the far corner, one foot on an amp, the other on the floor, a Martin D-45 Fire & Ice Dreadnought in his hands. Based on his level of preoccupation, he seemed to be tuning the acoustic guitar.
“It’s expensive.”
I turned to Abram, giving him a questioning look as the door shut at his back. “You mean the guitar he’s tuning? The Martin D-45? Yes. It is. My mom has one and she never let us touch it.”
His rich brown eyes seemed to glitter. “No. I mean”—he shook his head, now fully smiling—“Yes, the Martin D-45 Fire & Ice is expensive, but I was referring to whale excrement.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “What?”
“Have you heard of ambergris? It’s found in the digestive tract of sperm whales.”
“Pardon?”
“Yeah. They use it to make perfume—real perfume, not the fake stuff—it’s expensive,” he said conversationally, like this was true.
Crossing my arms, I waited for the punchline. Based on interactions with my brother, I was sure the joke’s end had to do with both poop and sperm.
But when he continued to stare at me steadily with a small smile on his lips and those intense brown eyes while leaning a few centimeters closer, butterflies re-awoke in my stomach.
I was flustered again. Stupid, distracting pretty man parts.
Shaking my head, I lifted my chin and hid behind a frown. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
He leaned even closer, splitting his attention between my eyes and my mouth. “It makes scent, perfume, last longer. And some people believe it allows a person’s pheromones to comingle with the perfume, increasing the intensity of both.”