“No, asshole. All of this. Us staying in this piece of shit place, Dad not having money for our tuitions, our house being gone. Is that all real?”
For a minute, Grace still expected the answer to be no. She looked for a flicker in Andrew’s face, a hidden smile, a creased eye, something that would congratulate her for stumbling on the secret. And then a hail of balloons would fall out of nowhere and all her friends would run out from behind the Dumpsters and the whole place would erupt like an episode of My Super Sweet 16, but instead of giving her a car, her father would give her a giant check and tell her that no one ever expected her to pass all the tests as quickly as she did.
“Grace—”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, gently. “What did you think it was?”
She curled up her toes, scratching them against the concrete, breathing in the throat-searing chlorine, closing her eyes to the harsh fluorescents that cut through the hazy moonlight. She licked her lips. They were salty with sweat. How could she have been so completely, utterly, nonsensically, next-level idiotic? Of course it wasn’t like The Game. Her father would never have gone to so much trouble for something that wouldn’t make money. Her stepmother would never have agreed to drive with all of them to Saina’s house just to teach her some sort of lesson. Grace looked down at her brother’s face. Open. Concerned. Andrew was so fucking sweet. He would have done it. He would always do anything for her.
“What did you think it was?” he asked again. So worried.
“Nothing,” she said, dully. And then she kicked him in the chest, hard, her bare foot leaving a wet imprint in the middle of his T-shirt, and took off, running back towards the room.
Behind her, she could hear his oof and then a scrabble on the concrete as he struggled up after her.
He reached the door a step behind her and waved the beige key card in her face.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said. “Are you just upset about things?”
“Don’t talk to me.” She snatched at the key. He pulled it away. She reached again and he did the same thing. This dance. She hated it. “Don’t make me do this now, Andrew. Please.”
Andrew relented and slid the card into the door. The adults lay huddled in one bed, two soft lumps, breathing too lightly to really be asleep. He headed towards the empty bed, tired now, and slipped in without bothering to change clothes or brush his teeth.
Andrew closed his eyes. He could hear Grace unzipping her suitcase, banging the lid against wall, storming into the bathroom and turning up the water. It was freezing in the room, the air conditioner anchored next to the door fanned gusts of cold air back and forth. Andrew burrowed himself into the pillows and pulled the scratchy coverlet up to his neck. He was just starting to drift off into sleep when Grace swiped a pillow out from the pile and tossed it onto the foot of the bed. She yanked the sheets out from under the mattress and got in, kicking her feet towards Andrew’s face.
He was disappointed. Andrew realized that he’d been looking forward to the familiar comfort of sharing physical space with someone who wasn’t going to drive him crazy with repressed desire, but Grace made it into a war instead. Her dirty feet were tucked under his pillow now, one grimy heel, blackened by running up to the room barefoot, inches away from his nose. He could smell them. They didn’t smell bad, really, just like a sweaty T-shirt left too long in the backseat of a car. Sharing a bed should have been like watching movies with his sisters when they were kids, before Saina left, before Grace was sent away, when they would all just pile together like puppies, Grace’s legs kicked across his lap, his head resting on Saina’s shoulder, Saina doling out snacks from their father’s stash: roasted melon seeds, walnut-studded date cakes wrapped in edible rice paper, little rolls of coin-shaped haw flakes, sticks of dried squid sandwiching a thin layer of black sesame. Andrew reached over and squeezed one of Grace’s toes, trying to be friendly. She thrashed out at the touch. Fine then. Andrew turned and pushed himself all the way to the very edge of the bed, pulling the sheets with him, making an empty tent between their two bodies.
二十二
I-10 East