The number was too specific, his tone had been too certain. I reached for his arm, certain there was more he wasn’t saying. When I touched him, his alarm was a hot spark against the tip of my tongue and he tried to pull away. His emotions were all over the place, fleeting scents I couldn’t quite catch. He was hiding something.
“What aren’t you telling me, Jeremy?”
The sadness in his eyes wasn’t his. It was for me. I felt him make a decision. Tasted it, a crisp bite of resignation.
“You know how you asked me to set up those search engine alerts? I created an alert for each of the names on those driver’s licenses you told me about. Every few weeks, an alert will pop up, but they’ve always been pretty random. Until the last three months, when I started to see some patterns.” Jeremy pulled his arm from mine to reach in his backpack. He set his iPad in his lap and swiped the screen a few times, pulling up a page of search alert results. He scrolled through them, pointing out names that matched the ones on my father’s fake IDs. “But that’s not all. Check out the posts the names were found in.”
I read the headlines. Each of the men had been announced a winner in a high-stakes professional poker tournament. One in Vegas. One in New Jersey. And one in Los Angeles. Winnings totaling two hundred forty-seven thousand dollars. “This can’t be right,” I said, even though something in my gut told me it was. “My father’s a professional gambler?”
“I’m sorry, I never meant to tell you,” Jeremy said quietly, reaching for my hand.
I tucked it under my arm before he could take it, needing time alone in my own heart to process what I’d learned. I pressed my forehead to the glass as the peaks of the roller coasters came into view and the bus became charged with a thrill-ride buzz.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked.
I wanted to be. He’d kept things from me. Important things. But I’d be a hypocrite to be angry with him. Of course Jeremy resented my father. Jeremy’d stolen from his dad to cover our rent. He bought me breakfast and drove me to school. And in five years, I’d never missed a class trip— because Jeremy always paid for my ticket, never asking anything in return.
He was still looking at the empty place where my hands had been. The expression on his face made my chest ache a little. I pulled on my hood and folded back the armrest so I could curl up against his shoulder. He rested his cheek on my head.
“Thanks for today,” I said quietly.
His sad smile said my gratitude was almost but not quite enough.
19
Teddy’s laughter was contagious. He’d nagged me about this “date” on the carousel all semester, and it had loomed like an obligation for the past three months. Just one more expectation to fulfill.
But it ended up being strangely freeing. Everything—the creepy ads, the scholarship, Jeremy’s moods, what I’d learned about my dad, Reece’s fight . . . even Marcia—all just slipped away as I gripped Teddy’s hand, content to be with someone who didn’t expect anything more from me than this moment.
I almost didn’t notice Jeremy’s reflection in the mirrored hub. Almost didn’t see Reece leaning against the metal rails. The weight of their combined stares seemed to drag the ride to a stop.
Teddy swung my hand back and forth as he escorted me down the platform. Jeremy stepped forward to meet us.
“I can take it from here, champ.” He looked at our joined hands and gave Teddy a wan smile.
Part of me wanted to drag Teddy back on the carousel for another round, but the look on Jeremy’s face told me he wasn’t in the mood to wait.
“Thanks for the date, Teddy.” My face hurt from laughing and I squeezed his hand one last time. He darted in and kissed my cheek, blushing hot against it.
“I had a very nice time with you, Leigh.” Teddy spoke with formal precision, as though he’d practiced each word. He let go of my hand, taking his joyfulness with him as he skipped off. His voice rose high over the crowd where his friends waited. “I had a date! With a girl! I had a date!”
I smoothed down my sticky grin, but it popped back in place. I watched him disappear into the crowds, part of me already missing him.
Jeremy glowered and I put my hands in my pockets, returning my attention to his impatient face.
“What’s eating you?”
“I don’t get it,” he said sourly. “You’ll hold hands with someone like Teddy . . . let him kiss you. . . .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The carousel’s organ started again. Jeremy scowled, refusing to say more. Which was probably smart. I didn’t like his implication that there was anything wrong with Teddy. Or the assumption he had any right to decide who I should be kissing.
“Am I interrupting something?” Reece peeled off his sunglasses and assumed a relaxed pose by my side. Jeremy’s face was a flipbook of emotion. He took in Reece’s battered eye and swollen lip, his expression morphing from anger to confusion, then fear.
“No,” I said, my eyes still drilling a hole through Jeremy. “You’re not interrupting anything.”