“How is it that you have friends, Noah?”
“I ask myself that daily.” He chomped down on the plastic straw.
“Seriously. Inquiring minds want to know.”
Noah’s brow creased, but he stared straight ahead. “I guess I don’t.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“That wouldn’t be difficult.”
That stung. “Go to hell,” I said quietly.
“Already there,” Noah said calmly, pulling out the straw from his mouth and chucking it on the floor.
“So why are you doing this?” I asked, careful to keep my voice even, but an unpleasant image of myself at a prom night soiree covered in pig’s blood crept into my mind.
“I want to show you something.”
I turned away and looked out the window. I never knew which Noah to expect from day to day. Or hell, minute to minute.
Tangled overpasses wove around and above us, the hulking concrete monstrosities the only scenery on this part of I-95. We were heading south, and Noah and I didn’t speak most of the way.
At some point, the urban landscape gave way to ocean on both sides of the highway. It narrowed from four lanes to two and a steep, high bridge loomed in front of us.
Very steep. Very high.
We climbed behind the swarm of brake lights that crawled up the overpass in front of us. My throat closed. I gripped the center console with my bandaged hand, the pain screaming under my skin as I tried not to look straight ahead or to either side, where the turquoise water and the Miami skyline receded into smallness.
Noah placed his hand on mine. Just slightly. Barely touching.
But I felt it.
I tilted my head to look at his face, and he half-smiled while staring straight ahead. It was contagious. I smiled back. In response, Noah laced his fingers in between my bandaged ones, still resting on the plastic. I was too preoccupied by his hand on mine to feel any pain.
“Are you afraid of anything?” I asked.
His smile evaporated. He nodded his head once.
“Well?” I prodded. “I showed you mine …”
“I’m afraid of forgeries.”
I turned away. He couldn’t even reciprocate. Neither of us spoke for about a minute. But then.
“I’m afraid of being fake. Empty,” Noah said tonelessly. He released my fingers and the palm of his hand rested on the back of mine for a moment. My entire hand would fit almost completely into his. I flipped mine over and laced our fingers together before I realized what I was doing.
Then I realized what I was doing. My heart skipped a beat. I watched Noah’s face for something. A sign, maybe. I honestly didn’t quite know what.
But there was nothing there. His expresion was smooth, his forehead uncreased. Blank. And our fingers were still entwined. I didn’t know if mine were holding his in place by force and if his were just resting or— “There’s nothing I want. There’s nothing I can’t do. I don’t care about anything. No matter what, I’m an impostor. An actor in my own life.”
His sudden candor floored me. I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing.
He extracted his hand from mine and pointed to an enormous gold dome across the water. “That’s the Miami Seaquarium.”
Still nothing.
Noah’s free hand searched in his pocket. He tapped out a cigarette and lit it, exhaling the smoke through his nose. “We ought to go.”
He wanted to take me back home. And to my surprise, I didn’t want that. “Noah, I—”
“To the Seaquarium. They have a killer whale there.”
“Okay …”
“Her name’s Lolita.”
“That’s …”
“Twisted?”
“Yeah.”
“I know.”
And let the awkward silence ensue. We turned off the highway, in an opposite direction from the Seaquarium, and the street curved into a busy neighborhood filled with peach, yellow, orange, and pink stucco boxes—houses—with bars on the windows. Everything was in Spanish; every sign, every storefront. But even as I looked, I felt Noah sitting next to me, inches away, waiting for me to say something. So I did.
“So, uh, have you seen—Lolita?” I asked. I wanted to punch myself in the face.
“God, no.”
“Then how’d you hear about her?”
He ran his fingers through his hair and a few strands fell into his eyes, catching the mid-morning sunlight. “My mother’s somewhat of an animal rights activist.”
“Right, the vet thing.”
“No, from before that. She became a vet because of the animal business. And it’s more than that, anyway.”
I knit my eyebrows together. “I don’t think it’s possible to be any more vague.”
“Well, I don’t know how to describe it, honestly.”
“Like animal rescue and stuff?” I wondered if Noah’s mother had pulled any dog theft capers like mine with Mabel.
“Kind of, but not what you’re thinking.”
Ha. “So, what then?”
“Ever hear of the Animal Liberation Front?”
“Aren’t they the ones that let all of those lab monkeys out of their cages and they spread this virus that turns people into zombies …?”
“I think that’s a movie.”