Beth knew she shouldn’t take it; she should never have allowed herself to lean on Reed, even for an afternoon. But she let him hand it to her, and she let herself smile when their fingers touched.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“What?”
“Being so . . . nice.”
“Because you—” He stopped in the middle of a word, closed his mouth, and looked beyond her for a moment, out to the dark horizon beyond Guido s pizza shack. She wondered if he was thinking about that day on the side of the highway—and she wondered if letting him believe in it, and believe in her, counted as a lie. “Because you look like you could use it.”
She couldn’t stand it anymore. “Reed, I should tell you—”
“I gotta go.” He gave her an awkward wave before sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Wait—”
But before she could say anything more, he shut the door and drove away.
“A little to the left, farther, no, now to the right, faster, faster, okay . . . not there—now! That’s it! Yes!”
“Awesome!” Miranda cried, tossing down the controller and shooting her fists in the air. “I rock!”
“You really do,” Adam marveled. He threw himself back on the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. “Who knew?”
“High score!” Miranda cheered, pointing at the screen. “See that? I got the high score.”
“Mmph,” Adam grunted.
“Oh, don’t get cranky just because you got beat by a girl.” Miranda tapped her thumb against the buttons until her initials were correctly entered in as a testament to her glory. “Where has this game been all my life?” She glanced over at Adam, giving him a playful grin. “Think I could convince the phys ed department to give me some sort of credit for playing Wild Taxi?”
“Crazy Taxi “Adam corrected her. “You’ve really never played before?”
Miranda shook her head. “My cousin gave me his old PlayStation, but that was, like, when I was a kid. And it broke after a couple days. This is much cooler.”
“Okay, so what’s next? Resident Evil or Tony Hawk?”
Miranda checked her watch and her eyes bugged out. “Adam, we’ve been playing for two hours.” She hadn’t even noticed the time passing, which was pretty much a miracle since the first ten minutes in Adam’s living room had dragged on forever. Without Harper around, the two had nothing to say to each other; all the more reason to consider Sega Dreamcast a gift from the gods.
“Yeah? So?” Adam hopped off the couch. “Hungry? I could order a pizza, and I think we’ve got some chips or something—”
“Adam, we haven’t even started looking at math,” she pointed out. “What about your test?”
“What about your high score?” he countered. “You really gonna leave it undefended and let me kick your ass?” He plopped down on the floor beside her, lifting a controller and restarting the game.
“But . . .” Miranda stopped. If he didn’t want to work, it was his funeral, right, she told herself. And after all, just one more game wouldn’t hurt. . . .
They spent another hour glued to the screen, switching from Crazy Taxi to Tony Hawk to NBA 2K1 before they were interrupted again.
“No fair!” she yelled as he sank yet another three-pointer. “You’re captain of the basketball team and I’m barely five feet tall—how am I supposed to block your shots?”
“Miranda, it’s a video game,” he reminded her. “Your guy’s about seven feet tall and he was last year’s MVP. I think it’s a pretty fair matchup.”
She was about to confess that she didn’t actually understand the rules of basketball—a fatal weakness no matter how many all-stars her cyber-team was fielding—when her phone rang. She paused the game and checked the caller ID. Harper.
Adam caught the name on the screen and gave her a pained nod. “You take it. I’ll practice my free throws.”
Miranda flipped open the phone. “Hey, what’s up?” she asked, pretending it was no big deal that Harper had called, though Harper never called, not anymore.
“Nothing. I just . . . can you talk?”
“Of course.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing much. Just hanging out.” It wasn’t really a lie, Miranda told herself. And it was for a good cause—if she admitted she was busy, Harper would probably just use it as an excuse to hang up again. And if she admitted she was at Adams house, fraternizing with the enemy ... she’d have to explain what she was doing there, and Adam had asked her to keep that quiet and, all in all, it was easier just to be vague. “How about you?” “Thinking.”
“You?” Miranda asked, automatically slipping into sarcasm before she remembered that the old days were over.
But Harper laughed. “Crazy, I know. I need to ask you something. Do you think—”
“Woo hoo! High score, baby!”
Miranda winced as Adam’s shouts echoed through the empty house.
“What was that?” Harper asked.
“What?” Miranda said. “I didn’t say anything.”
“The champion returns!”
“Is that Adam?” Harper asked, continuing on before Miranda had a chance to answer. “It is. What’s Adam doing there?”
Miranda sighed. It would have been easier to ignore the whole thing, but she wasn’t about to lie now, no matter what Adam had asked of her. It’s not like he had anything to be embarrassed about—it was just Harper. “Actually, I’m at his house,” she admitted.
Harper didn’t say anything, and for a moment Miranda worried that the line had gone dead.
“Hello? Harper?”
“You’re next door,” she finally said in a low monotone. She didn’t ask why.
Miranda laughed nervously. “It’s not like we’re hanging out, like we’re friends or something. I have to be here—I mean, I don’t have to, like it’s some horrible ordeal. Actually, when you called, he was teaching me how to play some video game, which actually turned out to be fun—crazy, huh?”
“Wild.”
She was babbling, the words spilling out before she had time to think better of it. Which was ridiculous, because there was no need to be nervous—it’s not like she had snuck over here behind Harper’s back. Yes, she’d walked thirty minutes instead of driving over, but not because she didn’t want Harper to spot her car, she reasoned. It was just a beautiful day, and she needed the exercise, and . . . it’s not like everything she did had to do with Harper, she insisted silently.
It’s not like Harper had any right to care.
“But, really, we’re supposed to be studying,” she tried again. “See, Adam—”
“Miranda.”
She stopped talking abruptly, as if Harper had flipped a switch.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Harper continued. “What do I care if the two of you want to hang out?”
“But we’re not hanging out, I’m—”
“I don’t want to bother you,” Harper said loudly, talking over her. “Sorry I called. Talk to you later.”
“Score!” Adam cried from the living room, just as the phone went dead. Miranda flipped it shut and pressed it against her forehead. However irrational it may have been, she felt like that was her one chance to fix things—and she’d blown it.
Reed hadn’t set out with a destination in mind; he’d just wanted to take the edge off his strangely unsettled mood. He felt like he’d forgotten something important, but his thoughts were too jumbled to pin down what it was. So he decided to ignore it and take a drive. He wasn’t too surprised to see where he’d ended up. He made a sharp right and pulled off onto the small access road that led straight to the glass monstrosity. He’d always hated this house, with its jutting corners and its smooth, shiny facade. It looked like a machine, some gruesome futuristic gadget blown up to unnatural size and dropped into the middle of the desert. It looked wrong, its sleek silver lines out of place in the rolling beiges of the desert landscape.
Ka
ia had always complained about the scenery—or, as she was quick to point out, lack thereof. They’d stood on her deck and looked out at the deserted space surrounding her house and she’d seen nothing but an ocean of beige. She’d called it a wasteland, but only because she didn’t see that what was sparse and clean could also be beautiful, precisely because it had nothing to hide. He hadn’t had the words to explain it to her, however, so he’d just shrugged, and then kissed her.
She hated the house, too, but for different reasons. It was her outpost of civilization, true, but it was also her prison, and she resented its cream-colored walls and architecturally avant-garde floor plan, and even its size. She’d explained to him that her mother’s penthouse apartment back home could fit into one wing of her father’s mansion, and that the giant empty house swallowed her up and made her feel small and alone. It was the same way Reed felt about the desert, except he liked it.
Now the house really was empty. The windows had been dark and the driveway empty for weeks, until one day, Reed arrived to discover that the windows had been boarded up and a large FOR SALE sign planted in the absurdly well-manicured front lawn. But Reed kept coming back. He didn’t have anything left of Kaia except his swiftly fading memories. He dreaded the day he forgot how her pale cheeks reddened when she laughed, or the hoarse sound in her voice when she’d just woken up; the house helped him remember.
“Don’t I get some?” Kaia asks, grabbing his hand before he can bring the joint to his lips.
“You don’t smoke,” Reed reminds her.
“I know,” she says, snatching it away and tossing it to the ground. “And neither should you. It makes you sound like an idiot. “
“Doesn’t take much,” he mutters.
“Shut up.”
“What?”
“Clueless smile?” She grazes her fingers across his lips. “Hot. Self deprecation? Not. “
They are lying on a blanket in front of the old Grace mines. It has become “their place,” a phrase neither of them will say out loud because, as Kaia often points out, this is not 1951 and they are not teenyboppers in love. But nonetheless, it is their place; ever since Reed brought her here for the first time, he has been unable to think of it as anything else. He has been coming here since he was a kid, biking out along the deserted stretch of highway long before he had his driver’s license, enjoying the sense of freedom and power that came from getting away from the safe and the familiar and getting by on his own. But now when he comes on his own, as he still does, something feels off. The cavernous warehouses, the decaying machinery, and the welcome darkness of the mines themselves are no longer enough. He misses Kaia; it has been only a couple weeks since they toppled to the happier side of the love-hate fence, but already he has gotten used to having her around.
Today they skipped school and drove out here instead. They lay next to each other, staring up at the sky, swapping the occasional insult and listening to each other breathe. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with her—rich, stuck-up, spoiled, beautiful. And she’s made it clear that she doesn’t know what she’s doing with him. Neither of them care.
“Don’t try to reform me,” he warns her. “It won’t take.”
She rolls over onto her side, propping herself up to look at him. Her fingers toy with the curls falling over his forehead, and a smile plays at the corners of her lip. “Don’t worry,” she assures him. “You’re good just the way you are.”
“And how’s that?”
“Hmmm . . . dirty. “ She rubs his chest, where a long, dark grease stain stretches across his shirt. “Smelly. “ She buries her face in his neck and breathes in deeply. “Grungy. “ She pulls his hands toward her face and kisses the tips of his fingers, ignoring the dirt lodged under each nail. “Mine. “
He grabs her around the waist and rolls her over on top of him, lifting his head up to meet her lips. They kiss with their eyes open, and he can see himself reflected in her pupils. Her weight flattens him against the ground and he lets his head fall back as she spreads his arms out and entwines her fingers in his.
They stop kissing after only a few minutes, but she continues to lie on him, resting her head on his chest.
“Happy?” he asks, because he knows she never is.
“Shhh. I’m listening. “
“To what?”
“Your heartbeat,” she whispers. They are both still. Then she laughs. “Did I just say that? What the hell are you doing to me?” She sighs and tries to roll off of him, but he wraps his arms around her and holds her in place.
“Turning you into a sap,” he teases. “I like it. “
“Don’t try to reform me,” she tells him. “It won’t take.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, echoing her words as she echoed his. “You’re good just the way you are.”
Too late, he forgets how she hates compliments from him, even in jest.
“It’s getting cold,” she says, and he can feel her muscles tense. “I’m getting out of here. “
“Don’t,” he tells her. “Stay.”
She breathes deeply, and as her chest expands, it pushes against his, forcing their breathing to fall into the same rhythm. “I don’t know what we’re doing here,” she says, touching the side of his face.
“Who cares?” he asks, laying his hand over hers. “Don’t go.”
She kisses him, hard, her tongue prying his lips open and slipping in, her hands gathering the light cotton blanket into tight fists. This time she closes her eyes, but he keeps his open. He can’t stop watching her, as if part of him harbors the childlike belief that if he closes his eyes, she might actually disappear.
He looked up at the sound of a siren—it blipped once, like a horn blast, as if to alert him that he was totally screwed, without waking the neighbors. (Not that there were any.) The flashing lights of the approaching car cast a yellowish-orange tinge over everything as Reed scrambled to stow his pot deep in the glove compartment and popped a breath mint, not that it would be of much help. Everything about him reeked of stoner, and even though he’d had his last joint an hour or two ago and was as alert as he ever got these days, if the cops wanted to bust him, they would. It’s not like they hadn’t done it before.
The car pulled onto the shoulder just behind his, and a figure stepped out. As he approached, Reed was surprised to note that it wasn’t Sal or Eddie, the two beat cops who loved nothing more than handing out parking tickets and hassling “street punks,” aka anyone under the age of eighteen who didn’t dress like they were auditioning for an Abercrombie ad. Sal and Eddie had, until recently, been actual street punks—or, as close as Grace got to urban blight—until their shoplifting had gotten them banned from pretty much every store on Main Street and a number of drunken brawls had had the same effect on their barhopping days. They’d joined the police force for the thrill of running red lights; the guns were just a bonus.
This cop, an overweight guy in his mid-forties with a mustache and an eye-twitch, tapped on Reed’s window. “Whatever you’re up to, forget about it,” he snapped, once Reed had rolled the window down. “Just get out of here.”
That wasn’t a cop uniform, Reed suddenly realized. It was gray, not navy blue, and a narrow label above the shirt pocket read CAPSTONE SECURITY. “What’s it to you?” he asked. Sucking up to authority figures was bad enough; sucking up to a paunchy rent-a-cop who probably had a stash of his own hidden in the cruiser next to his mail-ordered Taser gun? Not gonna happen.
“Gimme a break, kid.” The guy leaned against the truck, casually letting his jacket fall open to reveal the holster strapped underneath. It wasn’t holding a Taser gun. “You think I’m out here in Crapville, USA, for my health? They pay plenty to run punks like you off the property— so I’m telling you. Get.”
“No one lives here anymore,” Reed pointed out.
“Don’t mean no one owns it.” He glanced up at the deserted mansion and scowled. “And the guy who does is plenty pissed off. There’ve been some break-i
ns—but I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, eh?”
Reed just stared blankly at him.
“Yeah. Of course not. But now I’m here, and I’ve got my instructions.”
“Yeah?”
“No lurkers. No prowlers. No squatters. No punks.” He squinted into the truck and stared pointedly at a glass pipe that had rolled onto the floor. “I don’t care which one you are. Just get going and don’t come back.”
“Or what?” Reed asked, something in him spoiling for a fight. “You’ll call in the real cops?”
“Don’t need ‘em,” the guy said, ambling away from the window. But he didn’t head back to his car—instead, he circled the front of the truck and, looking up to give Reed a jaunty grin, smashed in the front headlight.
“Dude! What the hell are you doing?”
“Take my advice, kid. Just get out of here,” the guy yelled, waving with his arm still and his fingers glued together in the universal sign for buh-bye. “Just drive away and don’t look back.”
“Harper, can you come down here for a second?” Her mother’s normally lilting voice had a steely undertone that suggested her options were limited.
“Great, more family together time,” Harper muttered, burned out on bonding after a night that had already included ice-cream sundaes and four rounds of Boggle. Ever since the accident her parents had gone into maximum overdrive on the TLC front—failing to realize that, to Harper, tender loving care involved a few drinks, a sugar high, and plenty of uninterrupted alone time. Tonight the plan had been simple: barricade herself in her room, blast some Belle and Sebastian, bury her head under a pillow, and try to plan out her next step. She’d been a master strategist, once, and though it seemed like too long ago to remember, she was certain the skills had just gone into hibernation, waiting for a more hospitable climate before they re-emerged to save her. Family fun time didn’t fit into her schedule.
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