Jamie pushed his hands through his hair. “Right. I’ll go next. Spot me if I fall.”
“You should just leave,” I said quietly.
“What?”
I was trying to catch his eye, but he wasn’t paying attention to me. Not really. He was watching the football field, where Mika and David were running around.
The air grew so thick, I struggled to breathe.
Jamie was watching Mika. She was his best friend, and he’d missed her, and now they had a whole year together, stretching out in front of them. It was going to be exactly the way it used to be. Mika and Jamie texting and laughing and keeping secrets. Mika and Jamie in their own little world. I felt myself starting to fade.
“If you get caught, you’ll get kicked out of the T-Cad,” I said.
He scowled, like he wanted me to shut up.
I kept talking. “And if you get caught, Mika will definitely know why you’re back. I won’t be able to protect your secret anymore.”
Jamie appraised me carefully, like he wasn’t sure who he was looking at.
Caroline held out her hands, palms up. “It’s going to rain. This is so not fun anymore.”
Jamie held my gaze, then turned to hook his fingers through the diamond-shaped pattern of the fence. In the dark, he was nothing but a silhouette. He could have been anyone at all.
CHAPTER 11
TUESDAY
“JAMIE COULD SPELL ORANGUTAN when he was five!” Mika took a swig from a can of grapefruit Chu-Hi and held up her other hand. “Five!”
We were in the elementary school playground, Caroline perched on the bottom of the slide, scrolling through her phone, and the rest of us in a séance circle in front of the swings. After the ordeal of getting over the fence, it had become pretty clear pretty quick that there was nothing else to do. We couldn’t even walk around, in case we got caught by the security cameras.
“Yeah,” Jamie said. “And so began the long and winding road to a lifetime of popularity.”
“It impressed the hell out of my mom,” Mika said. “It impressed the hell out of EVERYONE ALIVE!”
Jamie smiled down at his hands.
Mika had gone manic over Jamie, which probably wasn’t good. Mika only got this crazy about something when she was in a bad mood about something else. Like that time her mom said she was wasting her academic potential and she challenged David to a soda-chugging contest and ended up barfing all over Yoyogi-koen.
David started digging around in the bottom of a plastic bag. “Did anyone bring cigarettes?”
“Not me.” I tilted my head back to stare at the ominous sky, filling up with more clouds by the second. I wished I could see the stars. And I really wished I wasn’t leaving so soon. (In four days, thirteen hours, and twenty minutes.) Dad would have told me not to think about that—to focus on what was happening right then because time only exists in the present moment. But it was hard to focus on the present moment when everyone in it was acting so weird. I felt like I was floating. Lost between this second and the next, between all these different versions of myself I’d left scattered across the globe.
“Okay!” Mika put down her can of Chu-Hi and stood up. “Okay! It’s time to listen. Are we all listening?”
“Nope,” David said.
“Everyone has to listen!” Mika shouted. “Does everyone know that Jamie is famous?”
Jamie jumped up and tried to cover Mika’s mouth. “Okay. Mika. Stop.”
She slapped his hand away. “No! Listen. Did you guys ever see A Century Divided?”
David pulled a crushed box of cigarettes from his pocket. He put one in his mouth and held it there like it was a toothpick. “Christ, Mika. We all know this.”
“I don’t care,” Caroline said. She’d dropped her phone into her lap and was leaning forward on the slide. “I totally want to talk about this.”
David and I glanced at each other. Kill me now, he mouthed.
Mika went on. “Everyone has seen A Century Divided because it’s a big famous movie about the South after the Civil War and blah, blah, blah historical stuff. The point is, Jamie is the little boy! The little blond boy whose mom gets killed by her evil, drunk brother when he comes back from the war! That little boy is totally Jamie!”
“I know!” Caroline said. “David told me, and it is only, like, the most exciting thing ever. I’ve seen that movie ten times. And I’ve read the book! Wyatt Foster is my favorite author of all time.”
“Yeah?” Jamie said warily.
“Yeah!” Caroline said. “My dad has a picture with him. He’s such a cute old man. He even wears a bow tie!”
The air snapped and snarled with something that might have been thunder. Jamie obviously didn’t want to talk about this. But Mika would probably bulldoze me if I said something she didn’t like.
“Oh my God!” Mika said. “Yes! That old man! That cute old man is Jamie’s grandfather!”
Jamie crossed his arms and hunched up his shoulders in embarrassment.
“Wait a second,” Caroline said. “Wait a serious, freaking, serious second. Your grandfather is Wyatt. Foster?”
“Um…” Jamie said.
“He totally is!” Mika squealed. “He is totally Jamie’s grandfather!”
Caroline pointed at me and then David. “You guys did not tell me that!”
“Must have slipped my mind,” David said.
Mika hiccuped and giggled, trying to slick her hair back into a Mohawk shape.
“You know—” Caroline moved forward to ogle Jamie’s face. Anxious red splotches appeared on his neck. “You do kind of look like him.”
“Well, I don’t see how that’s possible,” David said languidly. “Considering James is adopted.”
We all turned to David.
Thunder. There was definitely thunder now. And rain splashing on the gravel. Everyone went silent, and I almost didn’t know if it was because of what David had said or because of the cold shock of water against our skin. The sudden release of all that gluey heat from the air.