But I couldn’t let myself think about that.
Ren laughed at something that happened on-screen and turned to me, and I feigned a smile. She shifted, pulling her legs up under her and ending up with her arm resting just barely against my elbow. Neither of us moved, and that stopped my brain in its tracks. For a little while.
I should call Nicholas. It was the right thing to do. He was the one person I’d been honest with, and we were slowly starting to become . . . not friends, but something. Something real. If I kept this from him, that was over.
The question was, what did I really want?
If I was honest with myself, I knew.
Ren turned her head and smiled at me. “Hey.”
I smiled back. “Hey.”
I didn’t call Nicholas.
? ? ?
“. . . want me to come stay with them for the summer, but I don’t—Danny?”
“Huh?” I said.
Her expression turned soft and she leaned closer to me. “Where are you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. After the movie had ended we’d gone to sit out on the patio, and my mind kept wandering.
“It’s okay,” she said. “What are you thinking about? Is it the bike?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Want to talk about it?” she asked. “Or should I keep trying to distract you? Maybe I could do a little dance for you? I used to take tap.”
I laughed. Somehow she managed to make me feel better without making light of things, and I didn’t know how she did it. “I find that hard to imagine.”
“Why?” she asked in mock outrage. “I was very good, I’ll have you know! I probably could have gone pro.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“The demands of fifth grade were just too much,” she said. “I decided to focus on my education. Oh, you’ve got an eyelash.”
She leaned toward me and brushed my cheek with her fingers, and it felt like my heart constricted in my chest, became small and dense and hot under my skin.
God, I wanted to kiss her. Kiss her and hold her close and show her all the worst parts of me and have her tell me it was okay, she liked me anyway.
But I couldn’t, because she wouldn’t.
“Here,” she said, holding the tip of one finger in front of my eyes so I could see the eyelash stuck there. “Make a wish.”
Maybe I couldn’t tell her all of my secrets, but I could kiss her. She was so close, and the look in her eyes was so warm. But then I remembered the way she had brushed me off the last time, and I knew I couldn’t risk it.
“Go on,” she said, and I closed my eyes and blew.
? ? ?
Do I even need to tell you what my wish was? Or whether it came true?
? ? ?
The next morning Jessica stumbled downstairs for a cup of coffee while the rest of us were eating breakfast. She kissed the top of Mia’s head when Mia threw her arms around her, and when Nicholas asked how she’d slept, she said fine.
Then her eyes met mine and darted away again, and I couldn’t tell if it was just because that’s how she usually looked at me—in fleeting, furtive glances—or because she remembered what had happened the night before.
The media circus around the school had dispersed, so I was able to go back with no issues. I sat with Ren at lunch, and we talked about Miranda’s recent bout of amnesia. I think I smiled the entire time, even though there was a sharp ache growing inside of me with each passing moment because I knew this couldn’t last. One way or another, no matter what I did to delay it, I was going to have to leave this place and these people. The only question was whether I’d be leaving them to go on the run or to prison.
After the final bell rang, I met Nicholas at the student parking lot as usual. When I was opening the passenger’s door of his car, he said, “We’re going to Patrick’s.”
I stopped. “What?”
“It’s time to look for those files,” he said.
Finding the file on Patrick from Robert’s filing cabinet was the last concrete item on Nicholas’s to-do list. He was hoping to find out what kind of trouble Patrick had been in as a teenager, in case it could be connected to what happened to Danny. But I knew it wasn’t, and what would Nicholas do when the last straw he had to grasp at was gone? How long would I last?
“Are you sure you want to do that today?” I asked over the roof of the car.
“I’m sure.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait until tomorrow?” I said. “Ditch school and go in the morning when it’s less likely that Patrick will catch us?”
“No, I want to get this done,” Nicholas said.
“But traffic—”
“Patrick always works late on Wednesdays. Even after traffic we’ll have a solid hour or two to look around his apartment. That’s plenty of time. I already texted Lex that we’re going to the library.”
I looked back at the school. “Then I should get one of my textbooks so it looks like we were studying. I left them in my locker—”
“Just get in the car,” he said, 100 percent not buying my bullshit.
I had no choice. I got in the car, and Nicholas turned east out of the parking lot, away from Hidden Hills and toward Los Angeles.
Patrick’s apartment was in a brand-new building downtown. Nicholas admitted as we rode up in the elevator that he’d never been there before.
“He always comes to see us,” he said with a shrug. “He’s weird about his privacy.”
We found Patrick’s apartment on the top floor, at the end of the hall. Nicholas knocked first just to make sure he wasn’t home and then opened the door with the spare key he’d swiped from Lex’s key ring that morning. We crept inside like criminals, although this was pretty much the least criminal thing I’d done so far.
The apartment was nice. It was open and expensively finished, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the L.A. skyline and thoughtful touches to the decor that suggested someone with an eye for nice things had helped him put the place together. But it felt neglected and cold. There were a used bowl and spoon in the sink and a pile of mail and other bits and pieces scattered around that stood as evidence that Patrick did, in fact, live here, but somehow it felt empty and devoid of life.
“Brr,” Nicholas said. Whatever it was, he felt it too.
We started opening doors, looking for a likely place for Patrick to keep his files, and quickly found the home office. I looked through the drawers in the desk while Nicholas rummaged in the filing cabinet in the corner.
“There’s nothing here,” I said after a few minutes. “Just office supplies and work stuff.”
Nicholas slid closed the door of the filing cabinet. “Same here.” He opened the doors to the closet. “Oh, bingo.”
I joined him and looked down at the safe on the floor of the closet.
“Don’t suppose you know how to crack a safe?” he asked.
“Can’t say that’s in my skill set, no.”
“Well.” He sat down cross-legged in front of the safe. “I’ll just have to guess, then.”
Nicholas started entering numbers, and I went back to the desk.