“Clear,” he says.
I have to get out of this guy’s force field.
“Thanks for the ice cream.” Licking bits of chocolate sandwich off my front teeth with my tongue. Backing away. “I have to go to work.”
“Thanks for the water.”
My mouth is cold sugar, but the rest of me is burning. My tee is clinging to my skin like a layer of moist shrink-wrap.
He says, “What do you do?”
I have to go. I know it.
But he sacrificed his shirt. He doesn’t deserve a hot mess bitch. “Aide for an old lady. Very glam. I cook a lot of soup.”
Soup-cooker for a demented person. She doesn’t remember who I am when I get back from peeing. The perfect job. I got it from a tiny want ad posted by her son, who lives in New Mexico. Who’s not responsible enough to hire a legit aide for her.
“Could I walk you?” he asks. Undeterred by the obvious fact that I’m backing away. Slowly, with a beauty queen hand wave, a slight swivel at the wrist. I’m fast, but it would look weird if I shot out of the park like bears were chasing me.
Left him to eat my dust.
And the whole time I’m speed-walking away, I’m forcing myself not to look back over my shoulder. Sliding into Dunkin’ Donuts in the middle of a bunch of girls who don’t even know I’m with them. Cursing the alarm on the back door.
Asking myself how I ended up in the park with a guy, 50 percent afraid he’d catch me and 50 percent disappointed he didn’t.
Why does every impulse of mine have to be dangerous?
29
Jack
If I’d been paying more attention to the end game—avoiding the Nevada sun rising over a pile of Manx corpses—I wouldn’t be running after Nicolette Holland like a bunglng ass in flip-flops. It’s like getting a penalty called on the touchdown you thought won you the game you bet your life on.
I blew the details, and I feel the failure. I should have had THINK, JACK tattooed down my arm in block print, not this Maori armband thing. (It was the night I turned eighteen. I was drunk off my ass. I’m lucky I didn’t wake up with Donald Duck on my face.) If I’d thought to wear decent shoes, I could have pivoted on a dime. If I’d thought to wear gym shorts, I could have run in her wake and not looked like a guy sprinting away after mugging someone.
When she came out of Dunkin’ Donuts, I should have been closer. When she slunk into the alley, I should have figured out a way to stick to her. There has to be a way to follow someone down an otherwise deserted alley in broad daylight without being spotted. But I gave up. I crossed the street and circled to the place where the alley meets the sidewalk around two corners.
I’m standing in the shade in the Food 4 Less parking lot, back turned to the mouth of the alley, acting like I’m texting. All I had to do is stay on her until I figured it out—it’s not climbing Mount Everest—and I’m still standing here.
I’m so pissed off at myself, I answer Don’s call. I’ve screwed up so badly, why not make it worse?
“Have you got her?” This is what he’s taken to saying instead of hello.
“I spotted her.”
“Where is she? Is it over?”
“This isn’t Yucca Valley Correctional. I can’t walk up to her in the shower and shank her.”
“You were that close?”
“Figure of speech.”
“Figure of speech—straight-A student. You lost her, didn’t you?”
I toy with the idea that I lost her on purpose, that I unconsciously engineered this because I couldn’t decide how much of a virus spore I was. If so, it was poor engineering because when I look up, she’s walking out of the alley and right toward me.
“Shit! Gotta go!”
“Oh no you don’t!”
For a second, I’m more scared of her than of Don. It’s one short, cold blast to the gut. It’s dead Connie Marino and the reminder that this girl isn’t who she seems to be. But despite knowing who she is and the blast to the gut that reasonable people know not to ignore, I’m grinning at her. I’m happy to see her. I’m still suppressing the big, silenced Don’t!—the syllable that’s struggling to get out and get out loudly while I hold my jaw so rigid, it might crack. I’m still freaking turned on.
I shove the phone into my pocket as she crosses the street, step forward to meet her. I say, “Are you following me?” It’s playing with fire, but it’s all I can think of.
“You wish!” she says. But it isn’t nasty, it’s kind of sweet. “How do I know it’s not you stalking me?”
“I do wish.” Then I patiently explain how stalking works, and how I’m not, and miraculously, she buys it. “Are you sure you don’t want me to?”
She twists up her mouth on the left side, like a cartoon character that’s deep in thought. “I’m pretty sure.”
Even with the baggy clothes and what she’s done to herself, this girl is meant to be on the receiving end of following—and not just by twisted stalkers.