The Spanish instructor, a slender woman named Ms. Shaw who had what Zoe and Val agreed was by far the best teacher hair, rapped her wedding ring on the Smart Board to get the class’s attention. Zoe raised her hand four times in the first eight minutes, so she could spend the rest of the period staring out at the mountains and thinking about X without being called on.
She tried to imagine where he was now. Had he found Stan or was he still hunting him down? All she could picture was the model of the Lowlands that he’d built with Jonah, so she imagined him talking to a Revolutionary War soldier while an orc from Lord of the Rings waved a club nearby. Zoe was terrified for X, but she told herself that she would see him again. She would. Meeting X had convinced her that things were possible. She didn’t even know what things, but it didn’t matter. Things!
She’d take him swimming in Tally Lake—not just at the dinky, roped-off pebble beach, but in the big blue bowl of the water. She’d go huckleberry picking with him. She’d take him hiking on the Highline in Glacier National Park. She’d tell him all the names of the wildflowers. She’d ask what his tattoos meant. She’d ask if he had ever kissed anyone but her. She was pretty sure he hadn’t—his lips had trembled just the slightest bit.
His lips were so warm. Had hers been too cold? Had he noticed? Was he disappointed?
Okay, she was seriously losing it. When she surfaced from her daydream, Val and Dallas were making bug eyes at her and motioning toward her desk. Zoe looked down, and saw a quiz she was supposed to be taking.
As soon as the bell rang, Val rushed up to her, but Zoe floated past her and spent the rest of the day in a daze.
In the Struggle Buggy after school, Val started up again.
“Okay, what were you high on in Spanish? You know that quiz counts, right?”
“Counts how?” said Zoe. “Counts toward what? My total life score? Esta quiz no es me importa para mi!”
“Yeah, see, even that was terrible Spanish,” said Val.
Zoe laughed.
“Sí, usted eres razón,” she said.
“Ugh, just stop,” said Val. “You’re mauling a beautiful language.”
They were crossing farmland on a long roller coaster of a road. The car shook and rattled. The windshield had a spiderweb crack—there was still a rock, about the size of a blueberry, wedged into the center—and the floorboard on the passenger side had rusted through so that, if you moved the rubber mat, you could actually see the ground fly by underneath.
By the time the Buggy sputtered up the driveway, Zoe had told Val as much as she could about X, though she substituted “aspiring musician” for “supernatural bounty hunter.” It was what she’d told Rufus when he’d shown up unannounced that day. And it seemed plausible, if nobody pressed too hard about why an aspiring musician was on a frozen lake in the middle of a blizzard—and how he’d fought off a murderer.
Zoe had never withheld anything from Val before. She told herself she wasn’t lying about anything significant. Where X was from and what he was didn’t matter as much as who he was—how he’d woken her whole life up and helped her set aside some of her pain. All this from a guy who had never been given anything ever.
She pulled up to the house, and turned off the ignition. The Buggy bucked and chortled even after she and Val slammed the doors and walked away.
Before they could make it up the steps, Rufus stepped outside. He looked weirdly serious. Was something wrong with Jonah? Zoe had to fight an impulse to push past Rufus and run into the house.
“Just wanted to give you a heads-up,” Rufus said. “Oh, hey, Val, what’s shakin’?”
“Hey,” said Val.
“Talk, Rufus,” said Zoe. “You’re scaring me.”
“No, no, no, it’s all good, it’s all good,” he said. “I mean, it’s mostly good. I mean, honestly, it’s not great. The little guy’s just super-super-bummed. Like in shock, almost. I couldn’t get him out of the house at all. Not even a step. He just froze up. He’s in real bad shape.”
Zoe groaned.
“He wouldn’t go outside after our dad died,” she said. “I’m not going through that again. I’ll give him some tough love.”
“Actually,” said Rufus, “I think that might just make things worse.”
Zoe ignored him. She liked Rufus, but didn’t need him telling her what was best for her own brother.
“It’s okay, I can fix this,” she said. “Jonah just got really tight with that guy X I introduced you to.”
Val couldn’t help but interrupt: “Rufus got to meet X, but I didn’t? What kind of hot garbage is that?”
“The musician dude?” said Rufus. “Supercool guy. Epic hair. And I don’t blame him for not wanting to talk about his musical inspirations, or whatever. I’m an artist, too. I get it. You gotta blaze your own trail.”
Rufus scratched at his bushy reddish beard, which he allowed to go wild in the winter. It was currently edging perilously close to his eyes.
“But, see, this isn’t about X anymore, I don’t think,” he said.
“It is,” said Zoe impatiently. “I know my brother.”