What if what he said was true?
She didn’t think she was better than anyone—but did she come off as if she did? With a handful of barbed comments, Brooks had planted the idea in Eureka that the whole planet was against her. And tonight there weren’t even stars, which made everything even murkier.
She picked up her phone, blocked Maya Cayce’s number with a scowling press of three buttons, and texted Cat.
Hey.
Weather sucks, her friend answered instantly.
Yeah, Eureka typed slowly. Do I?
Not that I’ve heard. Why? Is Rhoda being Rhoda?
Eureka could imagine Cat snorting a laugh in her candlelit bedroom, her feet propped on her desk, while she stalked future boyfriends on her laptop. The speed of Cat’s response comforted Eureka. She picked the book up again, opened it in her lap, and ran her finger around the circles of the final illustration, the one she’d thought she’d seen mirrored in Brooks’s wound.
Brooks isn’t being Brooks, she typed back. Huge fight.
A moment later, her phone rang.
“You two bicker like old marrieds,” Cat said as soon as Eureka picked up.
Eureka looked at the dent in her polka-dot wall. She imagined a similar-sized bruise on Brooks’s chest where she’d hit him with the phone.
“This was bad, Cat. He told me I think I’m better than everyone else.”
Cat sighed. “That’s just because he wants to do you.”
“You think everything is about sex.” Eureka didn’t want to admit they’d kissed. She didn’t want to think about that after what Brooks had said. Whatever that kiss meant, it was so far in the past it was a dead language no one knew how to speak anymore, more inaccessible than Diana’s book. “This was bigger than that.”
“Look,” Cat said, chomping on something crunchy, probably Cheetos. “We know Brooks. He’ll apologize. I give him until Monday, first period. In the meantime, I have some good news.”
“Tell me,” Eureka said, though she would rather have pulled the covers over her head until doomsday, or college.
“Rodney wants to meet you.”
“Who’s Rodney?” she groaned.
“My classicist fling, remember? He wants to see your book. I suggested Neptune’s. I know you’re over Neptune’s, but where else is there to go?”
Eureka thought about Brooks wanting to go with her when she got the book translated. That was before he’d exploded like a levee in a flood.
“Please don’t sit around feeling guilty about Brooks.” Cat could be surprisingly telepathic. “Put on something cute. Rodney might bring a friend. I’ll see you at Tune’s in half an hour.”
Neptune’s was a café in a strip mall on the second story, above Ruthie’s Dry Cleaners and a video game store that was slowly going out of business. Eureka put on sneakers and her raincoat. She jogged the mile and a half in the rain to avoid asking Dad or Rhoda if she could borrow one of their cars.
Up the wooden staircase, through the tinted glass door, you knew you would find at least two dozen Evangelinos sprawled out over laptops and doorstop-sized textbooks. The decor was candy apple red and worn, like an aging bachelor’s pad. A sinkhole aroma hung like a cloud over its slanted pool table and its flipperless Creature from the Black Lagoon pinball machine. Neptune’s served food no one ate twice, beer to college kids, and enough coffee, soda, and atmosphere to keep the high school kids hanging out all night.