I never, never, ever should have called her.
“Nick! Come on. ‘Hello, I’ve been kidnapped by aliens, but I can’t talk about it, bye.’ Where are you? Did you run away from rehab?”
I might not have told her one or two things before, but never in my life have I lied to Olivia. Not when she got breasts before anyone else and she wanted to know what people said (only she’ll never know the worst bits—vow of silence). Not when we both liked Zak Myer, and she held his hand, and I wanted to slap her. Never.
Until now.
“All right. I ran away, but if Steve finds me, he’ll drag me back there. They made me sleep on a cement floor when I wasn’t cooperative.”
This could happen. If someone stuck me in rehab, I wouldn’t cooperate.
“Do you need me to send you money? You’re not, like, living under a bridge, right?”
Hearing her voice, it’s like there’s the possibility I could sit next to her in history again, close enough to pass her notes, and hang out with my friends by my locker. I’m not sure if the actual impossibility makes it better or worse.
“Can you delete this number?”
She says, “Why can’t I call you back?”
“Liv! I can’t be found!”
She clucks. “I’ll tell Steve on you. I have so much on you. You and the creepazoid in that Camaro burning rubber out on Bayside Road.”
“Liv!”
“You know I wouldn’t! I’ll smash my cell at the landfill in Kerwin if you say to. Just don’t disappear. Please. When are you coming back?”
I let her pretend that we’re still girlfriends like before.
I pretend to myself that I’m going along with her because I’m afraid she’ll break down and spill to Steve or the police or the Pastors if I don’t. When she says she’s buying herself a burner, too, I pretend I don’t stop her because I’m afraid she’ll get upset and tell someone.
But I know that isn’t why.
16
Jack
Thursday.
I grab the phone out of my mom’s hands before she can say hello.
I carry the phone into the dining room and shut the door. “Fuck you, Don.” I have to tell him yes, save him and my mom, get Yeager off my back, and become a monster in a single syllable: Yes. But my mouth tastes like puke, and I can’t stop picturing my mother’s hair in flames. “We had a fire.”
Nothing.
“Did you consider at least giving me a warning about . . . fire prevention?”
Don snorts, as if I’m amusing him. “Do you think I knew?” he says. “Am I God? Can I read minds?”
“What’s wrong with you? What kind of moron gets in bed with people who’d do this?”
He ignores this.
“I told you everything you needed to know about fire prevention,” he says. “Just do what I told you and . . . you know, Jack . . . find yourself a girl.”
Then he chuckles as if this were a real conversation, big brother encouraging me to get a prom date on Tinder. It’s like he thinks if I set the range at four thousand miles and swipe fifty million times, Nicolette Holland will turn up, mine for the taking in her cheerleader skirt. It’s amazing how reasonable he sounds if you don’t know what he’s actually saying.
“Think about the fire,” Don says. “Life is short. Anything can happen.”
I picture myself pounding the punching bag in the garage, bare-knuckled, running at the bag and kicking, bruising the outer edges of my feet.
“Threatening me isn’t going to help me find a girlfriend.”
“Are you listening? Do this for me. Like we’re one guy in two bodies.”
“Don’t fucking say that to me!”
“Be cool!” Don says. “Find the girl.” There are more chuckles, as if he’s morphing from a lowlife thug to a drooling psycho with phone skills.
“I’m doing it! I get the point. I’m hitting the road. I hope all your friends with an interest in my social life know that. But”—I go for menacing without a hope in hell of success—“you’d better make sure there aren’t more fires. Or anything like a fire. That would distract me. I can’t look for a girlfriend if I’m distracted.”
Don goes, “Mmmmmmmm,” smooth and ambiguous.
By this point, I’m yelling at him. “What does ‘mmmm’ mean? Did you hear what I said?”
“Like I said, I’m not God.” There’s a new tone, raw and even scarier maybe because he sounds scared himself. “I don’t control natural disasters.”
“So you didn’t have anything to do with—”
“Moron! Shut up! You need to get this done. Because someone controls lightning—but it isn’t me.”
Part 2
17
Jack
I slide the gun into the trunk of Don’s shitmobile, between the rucksack and the cooler.