“Probably for all eternity.” Makani steeled herself as she exited the car. “Hey, Grandma—”
“I thought you’d been brought home by the police!” Grandma Young hustled down the rest of the stairs to meet her. “Nearly frightened me to death when I looked out the kitchen window and saw you sitting there.”
“Oh, it’s not—”
“But it’s not a cop car, is it? It doesn’t have any decals. Unless it’s undercover!” Her panic bubbled back to a boil. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m fine, Grandma. Everything is fine. A friend drove me home, that’s all.”
“That’s not Darby’s car.”
“A new friend.”
Grandma Young wrapped Makani into a constricting hug. She seemed enraged but on the verge of tears. “I thought something had happened to you. Something like what happened to that poor Haley Whitehall.”
An unexpected lump rose in Makani’s throat. Her grandmother’s first thought was that she had been attacked—not that she’d done something wrong. Makani fought to keep her voice steady. “Well. Clearly nothing happened, because I’m standing right here.”
Ollie’s door opened, and his feet crunched into the gravel driveway.
Grandma Young’s death grip loosened. And then her arms fell away completely. As Makani turned around, she realized with a flush of horror what her grandmother was seeing: a skeleton-like boy dressed in all black.
With hot-pink hair.
And a lip ring.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Young,” the skeleton boy said. “We didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Makani’s friend, Oliver Larsson. Ollie.” He stepped forward to shake her hand.
Grandma Young gingerly accepted the outstretched hand as she examined every square inch of his appearance. Makani was glad when Ollie didn’t flinch or look away, which her grandmother might have deemed weak. He only smiled, which helped to soften his sharper features. “You’re the young man who works in the produce department at Greeley’s,” she said, finally letting go of him.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been working there for almost four years.”
“How old are you?”
Makani’s stomach warped, but Ollie replied with ease. “I just turned eighteen.”
Grandma Young nodded toward his car. “That’s some ride you’ve got there.”
Ride, Makani thought. Ohmygod no stop stop stop.
Ollie held the smile. “It gets me where I need to go.”
Grandma Young considered him for another excruciating moment. And then she scolded her granddaughter. “Don’t just stand there. Show him inside.”
Mortification followed Makani into her grandmother’s original, unironic, midcentury-modern kitchen. At least it was clean.
“Would you like anything to drink?” Grandma Young asked Ollie.
“No, thank you,” he said.
“We have water, skim milk, iced tea, Sprite—well, it’s not Sprite, it’s the off-brand Sprite—orange juice, cranberry juice, tomato juice—well, it’s the low-sodium kind, so it doesn’t taste as good, but it’s healthier—”
“Water would be great, thanks,” Ollie said.
“Tap water? Or we have a jug in the fridge. It keeps it cooler.”
Makani dug her nails into her palms. “We all know how refrigerators work.”
“Tap is fine,” Ollie said.
“Ice?” Grandma Young asked.
“Yes, please.”
“The square kind from a tray or the round kind from a bag?”
“Oh my God, Grandma. You are literally killing me.”
“Either is fine,” Ollie said. “Whichever’s easier.”
Grandma Young opened the freezer and reached into a clear bag of ice. “Oliver, I apologize for my granddaughter. For her rudeness, but also for her misuse of the word literally. I’ve corrected her at least a dozen times.”
Makani made a choking motion with her hands. Ollie shared a secret smile with her as Grandma Young turned back around. Without breaking a beat, she placed the ice-filled glass between Makani’s clenched fingers. Ollie and her grandmother laughed.
But the atmosphere remained unnaturally formal in the living room as Grandma Young inquired about Ollie, and he inquired about her. Makani sat with her grandmother on the sofa. Ollie sat in the easy chair. The grandfather clock beside the staircase ticked and ticked the agonizing seconds. After a conversation about Grandma Young’s church dwindled to an end, Ollie pointed at the coffee table. The edge of the jigsaw puzzle had been completed along with sections of the pumpkin patch.
“My mom liked those, too. Sometimes during the holidays, she’d pull one out from the back of the linen closet, and we’d work on it together. My dad and my brother couldn’t stand it. They thought puzzles were boring. But I’ve always thought they were satisfying, you know? Each piece having its exact place.”
Makani was stunned. Excluding their phone call last night and the badgering from Alex this morning, she’d never heard Ollie speak so many sentences in a row. He tended to use the minimal amount of words possible to express himself.
Grandma Young gestured at her with an ice-free glass of off-brand Sprite. “This one thinks they’re boring, too.”
Ollie shook his head at Makani. “You’re missing out.”
“Isaac, my husband, he didn’t care much for them, either,” Grandma Young said. “But they calm me down. Keep my mind occupied.”
There was a pause as something like an acknowledgment of sorrow passed between Ollie and her grandmother. Unable to bear it any longer, Makani glanced at her phone and jumped up from the sofa. “Sorry! We need to get going.”
Grandma Young set down her drink on an L.L. Bean catalog. “Oh?”
“Ollie has a late shift tonight, so we wanted to hang out a little before then.”
“I was gonna take her to Sonic for slushes.” As Ollie stood up from the easy chair, its springs gave a muffled squeak. “Last ones of the season, before it gets too cold.”
“I like their limeade.” Grandma Young’s ankles cracked as she rose to her feet. “It was nice meeting you. And feel free to join me anytime.” She nodded at the puzzle.
Ollie tucked his fingertips into the pockets of his jeans. “Thanks.”
Makani marched him to the back door in the kitchen, leading them toward freedom and calling over her shoulder, “I’ll be home before dinner!”
When they were tucked safely inside his car, they exchanged the same sly grin. “You’re good at that,” Makani said. “At lying.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” She laughed in an attempt to hide her embarrassment. “I promise I won’t make you come back and do a jigsaw puzzle with my grandmother.”
His grin held. “Who says I don’t want to?”
Makani laughed again. “Okay, weirdo.” She was relieved that he’d gotten along with her grandmother and spoken to her like a normal human being. But the companion emotion was that same inescapable shame. No matter how many times she’d stuck up for him with her friends, she couldn’t stop underestimating him herself.
“Just promise me Sonic was a lie,” she said.
“God, yes,” Ollie said. The Sonic Drive-In was the only name-brand restaurant in town. It was where the football crowd hung out. “I’m taking you to the ocean.”