He shrugged carelessly, preoccupied with my lips. “Nicholson’s making me go to summer school. Says I’ve got to make up all the classes I’ve missed.” More kisses. “We sort of made a deal.”
“A deal?” I raised an eyebrow and pulled away, leery of any deal Nicholson proposed.
Reece gave my lips another longing glance and sighed. “They expunged the assault and battery charge, but now I’ve got the whole obstruction of justice thing to worry about. I agreed to stay on as a narc. One year in exchange for dropping the charges.”
Summer school, transfers, a whole year apart. He grabbed my chin in his unbound hand and leaned in for one deep lasting kiss. It felt like a good-bye and the pulse monitor beeped erratically.
“Now get some rest,” he ordered, planting a final peck on my head as he left.
Not likely, I thought, still prickling with adrenaline and wondering when I’d see him again. He was halfway out of the room and my insides dropped like I was falling.
“Reece!” I called out. He paused at the door. I hardly noticed the differences in the two sides of him anymore. He was whole and I was complete when I was with him. Somehow, we balanced. “In case I don’t see you, thanks for . . .” The best kiss of my life, defending my honor, making me feel beautiful for one night of my life, giving me a reason to stay and fight. I settled for “. . . everything.”
His wicked smile stretched wide across his face. “Oh, you’ll definitely see me again. That’s the other part of the deal. Nicholson can make me go to summer school—” He bit his lip, giving me a top-down look that made me warm all over. “But I get to pick my tutor.”
Epilogue
The trailer was dark when I woke Friday morning. I took out the photo of my father from under my mattress. I hadn’t yet come to terms with the man my father was, or the lives he’d destroyed. But I accepted that he was part of me, and that he’d loved me once. That neither his name nor his gift would ever define me. I was independent of anything my father might have been or had become. Independent of what my mother expected or wanted me to be. I wasn’t nearly. I was enough.
The window air conditioner droned too loudly in the cramped space, like the static thoughts inside my head. Still numb, from my skin to the deep solitary places inside myself, I slumped into a formless secondhand T-shirt and my frayed sneakers, scraped out a few dollars of Mom’s cookie cash, and headed out into the glare of an otherwise gray day. It would take time before my world felt sunny and whole again. It would take time before I would feel at all.
Jeremy hadn’t called, and I hadn’t seen Anh since the cemetery. I’d been out of the hospital almost a week, and there’d been no sign of Reece. Mom had the decency not to say “I told you so.” But when I left the house that morning, I knew she was thinking it.
It was a poor substitute for Reece, but ironically, there I was, the bells on the door ringing as I crossed the threshold of the Bui Mart, Mom’s tip money clenched in my hand.
I took a deep breath and stepped inside. There was no music, just the hum of the freezers and the churn of the slushie machines. Bao didn’t look up, barely acknowledging me with a dip of his head. The counter was empty.
I could forget it, I thought. Leave without my newspaper and never come back. But more than forgetting, I wanted everything to be like it was. Once the details of the case became widely known, Anh’s family made it clear that I should have gone to the police from the beginning. That maybe, if I had, Anh never would have been abducted in the first place. They blamed me. For the deaths. For Anh’s suffering. For everything. Somehow, even though I had gone to the police after the second clue, even though I’d proven my innocence, she’d won the scholarship, and we’d all managed to survive, I was still the bad guy. I’d learned the hard way that sometimes, when people are hurting, they just need someone to blame.
I paid Bao my usual amount. He looked at the bills like I’d scraped them off the floor at Gentleman Jim’s. I wanted to tell him to keep the change, but he counted it out precise to the penny, setting the coins on the counter instead of in my hand, his eyes cast down. Never on mine.
When I got home, the trailer was quiet. Mom’s breathy snores whispered through the thin walls of her room. I took the newspaper to my bedroom but didn’t lock the door.
I wasn’t sure what I expected when I thumbed to the Missed Connections that morning. I didn’t need to know where my father was, or even if he was thinking of me. I knew there’d be no mysterious ads today, and yet I couldn’t seem to find peace in Reece’s absence, or comfort in the fact that it was all over.
I scanned the ads quickly. One particular ad tugged at me, unexpected, and yet somehow familiar. My heart skipped as I read, and a peculiar feeling fluttered in the pit of my stomach.
Bad element seeks Nearly perfect girl.
I need you. Pick u up at 6.
? ? ?
Acknowledgments