“Fine,” Lainey said, sighing. Even though she pretended she was giving in, she felt a secret thrill of excitement at the prospect at being the subject of one of India’s black-and-white photos, of seeing herself in magazine-photo perfection. “But I want chocolate sprinkles.”
“Deal. But hurry. I want to get there before we lose the light.”
The beach shoot was such a success that, to celebrate, India stopped off at Hunan Palace on the way home for takeout. She urged Lainey to order everything that sounded good, and they ended up leaving with three heavy, steaming bags of food. When they got back to the house, India laid the food out on the coffee table, after giving Otis strict instructions that he was to stay away. He went as far away as his bed, where he lay down, staring intently at the food and drooling conspicuously. Lainey and India sat on the floor, eating right out of the boxes and watching a reality makeover show, where the hosts bullied a frumpy middle-aged woman into throwing out all of her clothes and getting blonde highlights.
“Why did she have to throw out her sweatpants?” India asked indignantly. “What’s she supposed to wear when she’s vegging out at home?”
“She was wearing those sweatpants to work,” Lainey pointed out.
“Still. They could have left her one pair to watch TV in.” India groaned, pushing a carton of kung pao chicken away from her. “I’m stuffed. I can’t eat another bite.”
“I can,” Lainey said, digging into the vegetable fried rice. She tipped the box toward India. “Look at me, I’m voluntarily eating vegetables.”
India giggled and took a sip of red wine. “Good, then I don’t have to nag you for another twelve hours.”
It was the most relaxed Lainey had ever seen India. The tense lines around her eyes were gone, and her smile was genuine.
“What does it feel like?” India asked. “Being pregnant, I mean.”
Lainey considered. “Better now that I don’t feel sick all the time. But it feels a little weird when the baby moves around.” She shrugged and rested a hand on her bump.
“Does it hurt?” India asked.
“No. It’s more like having a little ocean inside of you, with an octopus swimming around inside of it. Most of the time I don’t feel it, but then every once in a while it bumps up against me,” Lainey said. When India laughed, Lainey looked up, suspicious that India was laughing at her. But then she saw that India wasn’t mocking her. She was tickled at the idea.
“I had no idea,” India said. “I never thought to ask my friends when they had babies. I guess I assumed that I’d find out when …” She stopped suddenly, her smile vanishing.
The silence that followed made Lainey feel uneasy. She picked up one of India’s hands and studied the short square nails with a professional eye.
“You should let me do your nails for you,” Lainey said. “I could make them look a lot better.”
India stared ruefully at her nails. “I never take care of them. I’d like to claim it’s easier to work with short nails, but the truth is, I’m just lazy about it.”
“You can keep them short, but they’d look better with polish,” Lainey advised. “I’d probably recommend going with a pinky beige for a natural look. Or you could go the other way, and do a really dark red. That would be hot.”
“I’ve never thought of myself as a red-nail-polish kind of a woman,” India mused.
“Why not try something new?” Lainey said, releasing India’s hand.
India shrugged back. “You’re right, why not?”
They fell silent for a few minutes, both watching the television. It wasn’t awkward, though, Lainey thought. It was an easy silence. Almost like when she hung out with Flaca.
“You said you’ve done other photo shoots at that beach. Do you have any pictures here?” Lainey asked.
India looked up and smiled. “You really want to see them?”
“Sure,” Lainey said.
India stood and walked over to one of a pair of bookshelves that flanked an enormous mirror, and pulled out a large book bound in black leather. It was one of a dozen, lined up neatly on a shelf. India paged through it, then put it back and chose another.
“Here they are,” she said. India brought the book to Lainey and then sat cross-legged on the sofa with her wine.
Lainey began to slowly page through the book. Each page held one black-and-white photograph, all taken at the beach, although the subject matter varied. A wide expanse of ocean with low dark clouds swirling over. A close-up of a starfish covered with white ridges. Ribbons of sand intercut with thousands of broken shells. A little girl with a headful of ringlets throwing a stone into the water. An even smaller boy with serious dark eyes standing barefoot on the beach, holding out a shell to the unseen photographer. A dog, soaking wet from the belly down, romping in white foaming waves.
“Is this Otis?” Lainey asked, holding the book up for India to see.
India nodded. “I took that photo the day Jeremy and I met. In fact, I shot that with my very first Leica. I had to work two jobs to save up for it.”
“What’s a Leica?”
“It’s a very high-quality film camera. Not many photographers use film anymore. I don’t use it much, myself. Everything’s digital these days, so you do all of your editing on the computer. But sometimes you just can’t beat real film.”
Lainey turned the pages of the album slowly. “Where did you learn to do this?”
“College,” India said. “I went to the University of Florida.”
“Did you always know you wanted to be a photographer?” Lainey asked.
India considered this. “Not always, no. When I first started school, I planned to go into graphic design. But I was never very passionate about it. Then, during my second semester freshman year, I took an Intro to Photography course on a lark. And I just fell in love. It was just so freeing, I suppose. It gave me the power to capture a single perfect moment. I was hooked. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.”
“I’ve never heard anyone talk about their job like that before,” Lainey said.
“That’s just it. It’s not just a job to me. I remember when I was little, my dad told me that if I could find a way to make a living doing something I loved, I would have a happy life. And while I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that, there’s a lot of truth in it,” India said. She twirled the stem of her wineglass slowly around in one hand. “My dad was an old hippie—worse than my mom, if you can believe it—but he occasionally made a lot of sense. He passed away when I was in college. But I guess you already knew that—it was in our adoption profile.”
Lainey, who had not read their adoption profile closely, hadn’t known.
“My dad left when I was a kid,” Lainey said. She felt shy sharing this, as though she were a child trying to make friends by breaking a chocolate bar in half and offering up one of the pieces.
“Where is he now?” India asked.
“I don’t know. He’s never stayed in touch. Sometimes he sent me a birthday card, although it was always, like, three months late,” Lainey said with a forced laugh.
India did not laugh along with her. Instead, her eyes opened wide with sympathy. “Are you serious? That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”
Lainey shrugged and looked away, wishing she hadn’t said anything. The back door opened and then thumped shut. Otis—who’d been stretched out on his rectangular cushion, keeping one watchful eye on the cartons of Chinese food, ever hopeful that an egg roll would happen his way—leapt to his feet, stretched, and padded out of the room. A moment later, Jeremy appeared, framed in the doorway, Otis wiggling with happiness at his feet.
“Hi,” India said, looking up. “Where’ve you been? You missed dinner.”
“I was working at the library. I guess I lost track of time,” Jeremy said. He still had his green canvas messenger bag slung over one shoulder.
“Are you hungry?” India asked.
“No, I grabbed a sandwich while I was out.”
“Sit down and join us. I’ll pour you a glass of wine,” India said.
“No, thanks. I’m going to go upstairs and take a shower,” Jeremy said. He gave Lainey a half-smile and then disappeared back into the hall.
Lainey stood. The warm, intimate mood had disappeared. Suddenly, she felt awkward and out of place, as though she didn’t belong there.
“I should probably go,” she said abruptly.
“You don’t have to,” India said. She patted the couch. “Stay and watch TV. I think there’s another makeover show coming on. Maybe this time the hosts will make the lady cry when they tell her all of her clothes are ugly.”
“I’m too tired,” Lainey said, feigning a wide yawn. “I’m about to fall asleep. I’ll do your nails tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure. Okay,” India said, nodding, watching Lainey get to her feet. “See you tomorrow.”
Nine
JEREMY
The thing about B2, is that yeah, okay, so it’s dark and stuff … but that’s also the beauty of it. JH clearly wanted Rogan to come face-to-face with his demons—his mother deserting him when he was a baby, his dad dying in the Dust Wars, the brother that raised him turning out to be a spy for the Ice Race—and come to terms with all of that before he duels Pilot at the end of the book.
I reread HippyChick’s post on the FutureRaceFantatics online message board, before hitting the Reply button. The shorthand of the board had taken a bit of getting used to at first—“B2” meant Book Two of the Future Race series, entitled The Dark Dust, “JH” was me—but now I was an old hand. I drafted my response.
You really nailed that. It was necessary for Rogan to reach his lowest point—which came when he discovered that his girlfriend, Trixie, was having an affair with his traitorous brother, and had been passing on information to the Ice Race about Rogan’s whereabouts—in order for him to shed his skin, and transform into a new man. A harder man, it’s true, but also a much tougher, much deadlier warrior. The warrior who, in fact, is finally able to kill Pilot.
I typed, my fingers flying over the keyboard, and hit the Post Reply button. The page reloaded with my new post at the end, written under my online alias, Magnus. I waited a few minutes, and another reply popped up from HippyChick.
Magnus, you ROCK! You totally get where JH is coming from! Are you totally PSYCHED for B7??? The title of the book hasn’t been announced yet, but I read on JH’s website that it’s going to focus on Griff stepping up to take Rogan’s place, now that he’s dead. I thought up an AMAZING name … THE WARRIOR’S APPRENTICE.
It actually wasn’t a bad title, I thought. Better than anything I’d come up with so far; the working title was currently INSERT KICK-ASS TITLE HERE. I’d been hoping inspiration would strike while I was in the process of writing, but I hadn’t been doing much of that lately. I was only forty-eight pages into the manuscript, stuck at the point where Griff’s teen son, Lorcan, is kidnapped by a band of traveling metal collectors (metal being a rare commodity in the Future Race world). It wasn’t that I worried about Lorcan’s fate—Griff would, of course, save him, but not before Lorcan ended up in the hands of Griff’s nemesis, Tertia, the wily female head of the Bixan clan, thus setting up a sexually-charged-albeit-not-consummated Mrs. Robinson scenario. It was more that I’d run out of steam. And rather than banging my head against my keyboard while I tried to think of a new laser-powered weapon system that could be deployed against Griff and his ragtag group of freedom-loving followers, I found it was far more pleasant to pass my time reading the nice things that HippyChick and the other FutureRaceFanatics had to say about my books.
At first, I’d avoided the temptation of posting on the board. But eventually I found myself drawn in when HippyChick and another regular, BobaFett36, were debating whether Future Race was supposed to be an allegory for World War II, and I had to jump in with my opinion that no, it was definitely not. I hated allegorical storytelling. Of course, I couldn’t admit to being me. For one thing, I’d look like an asshole if I admitted to lurking on a website for fans of my books. And for another, they might not believe that I was me, but just some loser claiming to be me, and run me off. So I created an online alias for myself—Magnus—and posted on the allegory thread.
The problem was that once I had started, I found it hard to stop. Internet message boards were oddly addictive. They allowed you to carry on in-depth conversations without having to go to the trouble of actually talking to anyone. Also, you could contain your conversations to just those areas that you found interesting—you weren’t forced into having to listen to someone bore on about his diet, or the dream he’d had the night before, or how much he hated his boss.
I hit the Reply button and was about to tell HippyChick how much I dug her proposed title, when I heard the metallic clink of our mail slot being opened, and then the thump as the mail fell into a basket India had nailed to the door.
Otis, who’d been sleeping on his bed in the corner of the dining room, jumped to his feet with a startled bark.
“Easy, killer,” I said.
When we’d first moved in, there hadn’t been a basket in place, so the mail would just fall to the floor in a pile. This was how we discovered Otis’s fetish for envelope glue, although not before he’d eaten both the utilities bill and a birthday card to India from my mother, which we later learned—when my mother took me aside after Thanksgiving dinner to complain that India had never thanked her—had also contained a gift certificate to Hickory Farms.
Glad to have a legitimate excuse to take a break from writing, I stood, stretched—was it normal for my back to make that popping sound?—and went to collect the mail. It was the usual assortment of bills, junk mail, glossy catalogues, and requests from our respective alma maters for donations. I pulled out the Visa bill and our mortgage statement, and then headed to the kitchen, where India was readying dinner. I dropped the rest of the mail straight into the recycling bin.
“Anything for me?” India asked, not looking up from the carrot she was dicing with a deadly looking chef’s knife.
“Nothing good,” I said. “Not unless you’re planning on donating a new student union building to the University of Florida.”
“Mmm, not this year,” she said.
Backtracking to the dining room, I first opened the mortgage statement—confirming that yes, we still owed a monstrously large sum that we couldn’t ever hope to repay to the bank—and then the Visa bill, which I expected to contain the usual higher-than-strictly-necessary balance.
And then I read the impossibly high number on the bill.
“What?” I muttered aloud.
I stared down at it, trying to make sense of the numbers I was seeing there. There was no way we’d spent nearly fifteen hundred dollars in a single month. Was there? No, of course not, I thought, relief trickling through me. It must be a mistake. Either that, or we were victims of credit card theft. And if that was it, Visa would refund the money that had been illegally charged.
I looked at the list of charges, expecting to see charges for computer or electronic stores or pornography websites, and suddenly felt like I’d been sucker punched. $424 at Pea in the Pod. $285 at Mimi Maternity. $190 at The Gap. $390 at Coach.
Wait, Coach? I had a vague memory of something to do with Coach. An overheard snippet of conversation between India and Lainey about a handbag. A handbag Lainey was carrying. That’s right, now I remembered! India was complimenting Lainey on the handbag. A Coach handbag.
Realization dawned. Lainey must have stolen our credit card and gone shopping with it!
Oh, God, I thought. India was not going to take this well. She probably wouldn’t even want to report it to the police and risk upsetting Lainey, but without a police report, the credit card company surely wouldn’t cover the loss, would they? Or was it even legal to report it? Did it count as fraud when the perpetrator was your future baby’s birth mother? Knowing India, she’d want us to just swallow the additional debt, to pretend it hadn’t
happened, rather than risk upsetting Lainey. But if we didn’t confront it—confront Lainey—what would stop her from doing it again? Did I really have to sit by and say nothing while this woman torpedoed our credit and drove us even deeper into debt we couldn’t afford?
I fisted my hands on top of the dining table to stop them from shaking. “India, can you come in here for a second?” I called.
I could hear the rhythmic beat of India’s knife slicing through vegetables, readying them for pasta primavera, followed by the muffled clank of a knife being set down on the counter. A moment later, India appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel she’d fashioned into an apron by tucking it into the waist of her jeans.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Is Lainey here?”
“No. She went to the movies with my mom,” India said.
This momentarily distracted me. “With your mom?” I repeated. “Why?”
India laughed. “I know, right? They’re like the new Odd Couple. I don’t really get it, but they seem to love hanging out together.”
I refocused. “Look at this,” I said, pushing the Visa bill across the table to her. Her face went pale and her eyes widened before she’d even picked it up.
“I can explain,” India said quickly.
“You can explain,” I said, confused by her reaction. “You mean you knew about this?”
“Of course I knew. What did you think?”
“I thought Lainey stole our Visa card.”
India frowned. “That’s terrible. I can’t believe you think she’d do something like that.”
“What else was I supposed to think?” I retorted, my voice ringing with frustration. “That you’d be stupid enough to run our Visa bill up to its limit?”
“Excuse me?”
“The fact that you’re not denying it leads me to believe that yes, you really were that stupid.” I was light-headed with anger, but even so, I had a distant feeling that this might be going a bit too far. The fact that India’s blue eyes were flashing—always a danger sign—supported this.
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