Kip appeared next to me and held out her hand. There were three pills in it. “Ibuprofen.”
I put them in my mouth and reached for Dixie’s beer cup. She let me take it, still exposing me with her stare while I took a swallow to wash down the pills. I’d never tasted beer or any other alcohol—it was bitter and disgusting, like drinking vomit, but I made myself not show it on my face as I handed the cup back to Dixie.
Then I slid the backpack off and put it at her feet. “You can have it.”
Finally she blinked. She looked down at it, then back up at me. I could see her trying to work out what was going on in my head or maybe in her own head. She tapped it with her blue Doc. “I don’t want to lug your shit around.”
Kip said, “Just put it in the room with all the coats.”
“Let’s go buy a car,” Ryan joked.
“It’s not for you,” I said to him.
Ryan reached for the backpack. “Is there really money in here?”
“What?” Kip asked, confused.
“Don’t touch that,” I said.
Dixie nudged it away from him with her boot. “If by ‘money’ you mean Gem’s dirty laundry, then yeah.” I could hear a slight tremble in her voice that no one but me would catch. She kicked it back toward me. “I don’t want this.”
I swallowed. “Watch it for me. I’m going to go have a smoke.” I turned to Kip. “Do you want one?”
“Gem,” Dixie said, “wait.” She stood and picked up the backpack.
“I’m just going for a walk,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
Ryan pulled her down onto his lap and laced his fingers around her waist. Kip took my arm and we left.
*
“These are the worst cigarettes I’ve ever tasted, by the way,” Kip said after we both got our Haciendas lit. We were halfway down the block, away from the party. This street, like the one Kip said she lived on, had canopies of trees budding with new leaves.
“Oh.” I didn’t know cigarettes tasted any other way but bad. “They were my dad’s.” It felt strange, walking without anything on my back. My body was light, as if I could float up off the ground if I let myself.
“Were?”
“He’s alive and everything. I took them after he moved out, so now they’re mine.”
She flicked hers to the ground after only a few drags. “What’s going on with you and Dixie?” We turned a corner and saw the moon, a slim crescent. “Not that you have to tell me.”
It was a story impossible to tell unless I started at the beginning. And I wasn’t even sure where the beginning was. “It’s complicated” was all I could say. We turned another corner and now we were facing the wind. My Hacienda went out; I tossed it into the gutter.
“She seems like a pain in the ass. And not that bright, either, if she’s hanging all over a guy like Ryan after knowing him for two seconds.”
I stopped walking and put my hands in my pockets, gripping the fabric inside. “She’s not stupid.”
Kip stopped, too, and shrugged. “Okay. Well, you know her better than I do. Those are my first impressions and I only mean—”
“We’ve been through a lot. She does what she has to do. I do what I have to do.”
“I didn’t mean anything,” Kip said, laughing as she gripped my shoulders. “I thought you needed to vent. But if what you want to do is stick up for her, then you don’t need to vent and we can go back to the party and have fun.”
I couldn’t talk. I didn’t want to move, to go back to the party or not go. This was my whole problem, being stuck for one reason or another. I opened my hands in my pockets and tried to draw a deep breath, but I couldn’t.
Her grip on my shoulders loosened into something more gentle. “Are you about to cry?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry if I said something wrong,” Kip said. “I know I don’t really know you. I didn’t want to piss you off or anything. I thought that’s what you wanted, someone to take your side.”
I forced breath in. “You have a big family. Your parents pay attention, right? Like they know when you come and go and where you basically are.” I pointed over my shoulder. “Practically your whole family is at that party.”
Kip nodded.
“Dixie’s all I have. We only have each other. She’s my sister. She’s my little sister.”
“Okay, I get it. I’m sorry,” she repeated.
I stepped back from her and wiped my coat sleeve across my face. “She’s the only one who knows.”
Kip must have thought I meant some specific piece of information, some big secret, because she asked, “Knows what?”
To me, the answer was obvious: “What it’s like to be us.”
24.
WHEN WE got back to the party, Dixie was gone.
Kip and I checked all over the house, and I braced myself in case we walked in on Dixie and Ryan doing something I didn’t want to see. They weren’t in any of the rooms. In the one where people had tossed their stuff, I dug through the coats, checked under the bed and in the closet, looking for the backpack, just in case.
Then one of Kip’s brothers told us Ryan and Dixie had taken off right after we went for our walk. “Where?” Kip said.
“I didn’t know it was my job to ask,” he said, holding his hands up. “I don’t even know who she is.” He had the same nose as Kip and Jessa, small and flat.
I could see Kip about to yell at him. I stopped her and said, “It’s okay. Maybe you could take me back to the motel now.”
People had stopped their conversations to watch us.
“If you want,” Kip said.
Her brother dropped his hands. “Sorry,” he said to me.
We went out to the car, silent. Then, while she was letting the defroster clear the windshield, she said, “I don’t think you need to worry about her. Ryan’s your basic dickhead but he’s not dangerous.”
“I’m not worried about that. She’s always been able to handle herself with guys. That’s not something I’d be able to help her with anyway. Don’t know anything about it.”
“Yeah, me neither. Well, not much.” Impatient with the defroster, Kip swiped her arm across the last bit of fog and drove down the block.
I was thinking about what I’d done, leaving the money with Dixie. If I regretted it. Maybe it was stupid. But maybe there were some things worse than being stupid.
Kip turned onto the main road. “Do you want to go look for her? Do you want to call her?”
“She doesn’t have a phone.” Well, she did. My phone, the burner, was in the backpack. But I didn’t have the number memorized.
“I can probably get Ryan’s number from Jessa.”
“No,” I said. “Could you take me back to the motel?” Dixie would turn up there eventually. Or she wouldn’t, and then I’d decide what to do next.
“Yeah.”
“I’m tired. We . . .” I looked at her. “You probably figured out we left home.”
“Kinda. I thought maybe.”
“Have you ever done that?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Have you wanted to?”