“It looked like an important book.”
“It is an important book. Lots of lists in there.” I pull out the book, flipping to a page filled through the margins with increasingly tiny words. “This one’s fun. It’s my favorite words that I’m probably never going to use but that I want to hang on to anyway.”
He peeks over at the page.
My Favorite Words I’m Probably Never Going to Use but That I Want to Hang on to Anyway ? Hwyl—a sudden, ecstatic inspiration!
? Balter—to dance without grace, but with joy!
? Swallet—a sinkhole!
? Clamjamfry—rabble; rubbish!
? Olisbos—a dildo!
I can tell when he reads olisbos, because his face goes red all the way up his forehead, right to the roots of his white-blond hair.
“The Greeks, am I right?” I say.
He clears his throat. “Illuminating.”
I grin, shutting my journal. The trees around the trailers are bathed in gentle wind, their fingers twitching at me. “So,” I say, “what do you usually do out here, huh?”
“Homework. Or read.”
“What are you reading?”
He brandishes a thick book at me before dropping it back to the ground. I catch a picture of an astronaut and something about Mars in the title. “Space,” I say.
“Space,” he agrees.
“I’ve got a list of constellations in here somewhere,” I say, flipping through my journal. “I messed up drawing Orion’s Belt, like, three times.”
He doesn’t laugh or even smile. He hasn’t smiled at all yet—his face is perpetually still and serious. “How do you mess up drawing Orion’s Belt?” he says. “It’s three dots.”
I grin. “I mislabeled them.” I find the right page and show him the list. The three-pointed Leo Minor buckles across the bottom right; Delphinus stretches across the top; Orion sprawls across the middle with my crossed-out mistakes above the belt.
“Hmm,” Valentine says dismissively, but his eyes linger on the page. After a second, I close my journal again, and without warning, he grabs it. With a pitiful little nff sound, he pulls hard, trying to wrest the book out of my hand.
“What are you doing?” I say, bemused. Whatever he wants with my journal, he’s never going to get it. I’ve seen celery with more defined muscles than this guy has.
He gives up, scowling. His hair falls over his forehead, and he pushes it back. “I feel like you’re hiding some sort of plan for world domination in there.”
I flip through it. “I do have a plan to buy an island someday. Does that count?” One of the kids at Pinnacle inspired that plan. She had a family island; her grandfather bought it and named it after himself, and he has a statue of himself at the highest point on the island. I can’t decide whether that makes me want to throw up or whether it’s my ultimate life goal.
Valentine gives me a pitying look. “How are you planning on purchasing an island?”
“I’m going to be a banker. And make bank.”
“You’re a math person?”
“Hey, no need to sound so skeptical.”
He shrugs. “That . . . may just be my voice.”
I laugh. “I feel you. According to some people, my voice is ‘scary upbeat.’ So. Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Meh. I’ve been uncomfortable since you decided to invade.”
It’s another shot of honesty, catching me off guard. “What? Why?”
He shrugs, staring out at the track. The sun glares off the numbers 1 through 6 painted on the lanes. After a long silence, he says, “I can’t believe people find this interaction game anything but stressful, though maybe that’s because I don’t like people.”
“But . . . is it that you don’t like people or that they stress you out? Because those are two very different—”
“Spare me the psychoanalysis, please.” I can practically see a shield folding over him.
“Hey, sorry,” I say. “I’m curious, is all.”
“Curious . . . about me,” he says, as if it’s inconceivable.
“Sure.”
“Why would you be curious about—” He sighs. “Forget it.” I can’t read his voice, which is almost impressive—I can get a lock on nine out of ten people I meet within five minutes.
It’s mostly practice. When you move a lot, you get used to people. Faces start to look the same. Their patterns are eerily similar on the surface, and lots of them are eerily similar down deep, too. You start letting go of people as soon as you find them, crossing them off as soon as you write them down. Picking them up like shiny objects and tossing them away like fool’s gold. Eventually, you start detesting yourself for doing that, seeing people that way. Mercenary.
Valentine, though—I get the feeling he’s something other than fool’s gold. He’s a fragment of something different. Topaz, or tiger’s eye, or petrified wood.