The third thing I noticed was that even the mid-rankers ate in the basement kitchen. It
seemed that when Cameron was around, guards stayed away and all meals were eaten as a family. I
loved this.
I briefly saw Griff a few times, rushing in and out of the wet weather for his meals. He’d
glance at me, but ignored me otherwise, as if I weren’t there at all. I felt guilty, like I had
abandoned him. He was obviously upset … I couldn’t confront him without making Cameron wary or
Spider unnecessarily suspicious. Although Spider had somewhat started to relax around me, which
seemed to please Cameron and Carly, I didn’t want to give Spider any ammunition to speak
against me anymore.
The last thing I noticed was that I slept—dreamlessly and peacefully. Every night, I dreaded
leaving Cameron to get some shut-eye; he would practically have to drag me off the couch. As
soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out. Not even Meatball’s snoring could wake me. Maybe it
was the soothing way the rain pelted against the tin roof, like drops hitting a champagne glass.
Maybe it was something else.
One evening, Rocco had fallen asleep on the couch with the remote control tightly clenched in
his hand and the channel stuck on the weather. Cameron had disappeared. I was considering
resuming the stalking when he reappeared, soaking wet.
“Holy cow! What happened to you?”
“I had to run to my car,” he told me breathlessly. “I have a surprise for you.”
My heart dropped. The last time he had a surprise for me, it ended up costing him, or me, three
hundred thousand dollars. The Maserati was still stuck in the mud.
“Don’t worry,” he encouraged. “You can’t crash this one.”
Although Cameron had told me that he couldn’t read thoughts, I had started to wonder if that
was the whole truth.
He pulled a box out and handed it to me. “Coppola,” he said, like this would mean something to
me.
I looked down, then up. “They made a movie about Rumble Fish?”
“Now you can finally find out how the story goes.”
Cameron had put his finger to his lips and led me out of the living room.
Hanging out with Rocco was great, but finding time alone had become an art.
“Don’t get too excited,” he warned as we walked upstairs to his room and he read my mind
again. “The kid at the video store said it’s pretty old and filmed entirely in black and
white.”
The thudding in my chest had nothing to do with the movie.
We sat down after Cameron stuck the disc in the player, throwing our feet on the coffee table.
When the opening credits rolled, Cameron did something that I hadn’t been prepared for. His
hand crawled over to mine. His fingers slipped between mine. He squeezed in. I looked straight
ahead, feeling the demolition crane pounding against my chest.
I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, which was what he had been waiting for.
“Is this okay?” he asked shyly, lightly lifting our intertwined hands.
I imagined that my face was a bright crimson. My tongue was out of order. I conceded to a daft
nod of my head and a fresh flow of blood to my face.
Holding Cameron’s hand was much more nerve-racking when he was awake to witness it.
Then my eyes were drawn to a movement over Cameron’s shoulder. Beyond the wall of windows, I
saw Carly and Spider by the pool outside. They were walking together very closely but never
actually touching—something else that I had noticed them do. They closed the door to the pool
house behind them.
“Do you think that Carly and Spider are dating now?” I wondered aloud while I tried to
persuade my heart to lighten the thrusts of blood so that my head and hand would stop pulsating
like jungle fever.
“I know they are,” he said chuckling. “They try to hide it, but everyone around here knows,
we just let them think that we don’t notice.”
I couldn’t understand why Spider would go through so much trouble trying to hide something that
he had waited his whole life for. I knew I couldn’t. “Why do they try to hide it?”
“They don’t want the fact that they’re … together to be held against them.”
“I don’t understand,” I confessed, as I often did around him.
He took a long, ragged breath. “In our line of business, if someone sees that you care for
someone else, it’s a weakness—something that people will use against you, or try to control
you with.”
“How?” I asked him.
I looked earnestly at Cameron while he fidgeted in his seat.
“Well, think about it. What if somebody threatened to hurt someone you cared about … like your
parents or your brother for example? What would you do to keep them safe or prevent them from
getting hurt?”
“Anything,” I whispered with concentration. I had often lain in bed at night, asking myself
what I would have done differently if I had had a second chance at saving my big brother’s
life. The answer was always the same—anything and everything.
“Right,” he agreed reluctantly. “So somebody who knows that—”
“Somebody like who?” I interrupted.
His face hardened. “A bad person.”
“How bad?”