by Joy Preble
My brain scrambles, trying to focus. He’s legitimately helping me. At least he seems to want to. This does not happen in my world. Ever.
I toss the empty wine bottle in the trash under the sink, where it lands with a thud. “She wouldn’t. She doesn’t gamble.”
“Leo.” Max leans toward me, gaze solid on mine. I focus on the scar, the freckle, his eyes. My insides feel hollow and restless. I do not know what to do with a nice boy.
For a crazy second I think he’s going to kiss me, and my heart sprints into my throat because for an even crazier second I think I’m going to let him. My armpits go damp, then my palms. I start to step back. Then the water pipes clank—hard—and I hear the shower in my mother’s bathroom, and the moment evaporates and my brain reminds me about how nothing in this house ever feels private enough.
Like the other day when Paris thought it was Tommy in the hall bathroom even though it was only me. My sister banged on the door. “Get the hell out. I gotta pee.”
I’d been shaving my legs at the sink. She knocked so hard I dropped the razor. I peeked my head out.
Paris stormed in and flopped on the toilet. My sister had no issues about stuff like that.
My towel, wrapped around me, slipped as I went back to shaving.
Paris stopped and gave me a curious look.
“What?”
“You’re wearing your underwear with a towel,” she said.
I rewrapped the towel around me, tighter. “Don’t forget to flush,” I said.
“You still want me to help you find her?” Max asks, bringing me back. “’Cause I’m in if you do.” His gray eyes hold my gaze, and even though it’s been a crazy night, I find myself smiling.
Maybe there really are nice boys. Maybe Max Sullivan is one of them. That’s possible, right?
But my stomach seizes anyway. What if this really is my sister’s elaborate game to avoid saying good-bye? What will I do then? I tell myself not to worry. The thought feels like a lie.
Everything seems strange and right and wrong all at once. Like the world is on the edge and I’m on the edge with it, toes slipping over the line.
So I make my choice.
“I guess,” I say. “Yeah. If that’s okay?”
A smile tilts his lips a little, and then full-out. “You and me, Leo, we’re a team. Like carbon and hydrogen.”
I stare at him like he’s crazy, which possibly he is.
Or maybe I am, to trust him.
“We’re bonded,” he finishes.
SEVEN
IN THE RANGER AGAIN, MAX CRANKS THE ENGINE, KEYS JANGLING, AND asks where Paris and I go when we drive around. Maybe we should start there, he says, and I list them for him: Fremont Street. The Strip. The all-night coffee place. Devil Doughnuts that opens at 4:00 a.m. But which one?
“Just drive,” I say. “Let me think.” I tap my fingers on the door handle, trying to give my adrenaline somewhere to go, then clutch my hands together to stop them from shaking.
Max arches that scarred brow, then adjusts the rearview mirror—which ends up still cockeyed—and we back out of our driveway and head down the block. He snaps on the radio, roaming until he finds some old Keith Urban song.
I flash him a look, but he grins that grin and says, “He’s a genius on the guitar. Also I’m from Texas. Country music is a requirement.”
“Like they test you? Or deport you for hip-hop?” I say, trying for clever and ending this side of geeky.
“Yup.” He drawls the word, and for the first time I hear just a hint of southern in his voice.
“You guys all drive trucks, too, right?”
“That would be y’all. And yes. But only when we’re not riding our horses.”
This time I’m the one grinning. Something like butterflies tickles inside my chest.
“You from here?”
I shake my head. “California.”
Another smile. “Surfer girl, right?”
I roll my eyes.
Max hands me his phone. “Try your sister again.”
I call Paris’s number. This time her voice mail picks up on the first ring. “This is Paris. You know what to do.”
It’s just a recording, but my pulse leaps at the sound of her voice.
“Call me back at this number, damn it,” I say. “Paris. Enough. It’s not funny.”
On the radio, Keith Urban shifts into Kacey Musgraves, who tells me to “follow your arrow.” This feels overly optimistic right now. Paris likes that song of hers about the waitress blowing smoke.
“Was your sister unhappy?” Max asks out of the blue, eyes on the road.
I glance at him sharply. “No. Why?”
“Was she happy?” His voice sounds serious and curious and something else I can’t quite name. If he’s trying to figure her out, he’ll be working the problem for a long time.
“No.” I unclasp my hands to rub the back of my neck, fingers tracing the spiky edges of my hair. “She was in that middle place. Not unhappy. Not happy. You know.”
He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.” He doesn’t elaborate.
“I have to work at eleven,” I say, because if he’s a rational human being, any second now he’s going to say, Hey, Leo. This has been fun and all, but your sister is your business and I’ll see you around. Come on by the museum, maybe.
I watch his hands on the wheel, thumbs splayed, and realize that I’m wondering what they would feel like against my cheek.
For the next few blocks, I remind myself that Max Sullivan has a limited shelf life.
I wish I didn’t like looking at the tiny scar above his left eyebrow. I wish I’d never brought him the coconut cream pie. Him helping me is complicating things and things are already complicated enough.
We reach the edge of our neighborhood, stopping with a quick jolt at the intersection. I need to make up my mind about where we’re going.
“I have to ask,” Max says, voice serious again.
“What?” I look at him. His face looks serious, too.
“Are you team zombie or team ninja?” He points at my shirt.
A beat passes as I flush red to the tips of my ears. Nothing like a T-shirt that proclaims my absolute nerdom.
“Ninjas,” I say, trying and failing to sound cleverly ironic. “It’s the stealth factor. Plus they eat pie.”
But Max laughs—this happy burst of sound that ricochets around the truck. So happy that I start giggling, just a little, and then we’re both cracking up the way people do at four in the morning over stupid stuff.
Only we’re still sitting at the stop sign.
“Well,” he says after a bit. “Where to?”
I shrug, then slip Paris’s note from my pocket. She can’t seriously think I’m going to go visit every casino in Vegas looking at their roulette wheels. There has to be something else.
I go over the words sentence by sentence, like I do with a math problem. What does it say? What does it mean?
Stay calm, Leo. Well, that’s clear. But the “he’s making me” part? Is that real? Or just Paris bullshit? My sister doesn’t let boys, or anyone, tell her what to do. Is “this”—whatever this is—the “only way”? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a game? My sister making the boring, ordinary world more palatable.
Max watches me, waiting.
“I don’t know,” I tell him, because clearly he expects me to tell him something. “Shit. Maybe you should just take me home. This is ridiculous. I . . .”
My gaze drops to the note again.
And then the whole thing makes sense in the sudden way things do when I’m trying to remember something for a test and I know I’ve seen it or heard it but it’s dangling just out of reach. Until it isn’t.
“There!” I jab my finger against my sister’s signature. “Look!” xParis 0 00 1 36. Of course. How did I not see it?
“Slow down there, Sparky,” he says, southern boy drawling. “You figure it out?”
“I’m an idiot,” I announce cheer
fully. I feel buoyant, a helium balloon set free. “It’s been there all along. I just didn’t—it’s her name and the roulette numbers.”
“Well, yeah.” He wrinkles his forehead.
“Max!” He is seriously the worst detective ever. “She’s not just signing her name, see. She’s telling us where the roulette wheel is.”
His forehead is still pinched, the tiny scar scrunching in this way that I totally shouldn’t care about right now. And then his eyes go wide and bright.
“Paris?”
“Exactly. I hope, anyway.” I feel a brief twinge of nerves.
“Only one way to find out.”
My heart is hopping. Is she going to bet money so she can leave? Con someone over twenty-one to put it all on red for her, spin the wheel, hoping for the best?
That would be Paris. Not crazy enough for an inside bet, but believing in the odds anyway.
Is that the plan? Does it include coming back for me?
Max punches the gas, and we fly through the intersection, the Ranger bouncing hard, hang a right, and head to the Strip for the second time tonight.
“Paris Hotel, mademoiselle?” Max asks in a cheesy French accent.
“Oui,” I say, going with it.
In the truck bed, a half-squashed Big Gulp cup bounces out, escaping.
“If you help me find her,” I say, “I’m going to get this truck detailed for you.”
“Ooh la la,” says Max Sullivan.
EIGHT
THE SUN IS PUSHING AT THE HORIZON BY THE TIME WE HIT LAS VEGAS Boulevard, rising into the neon haze. But the air is cooler now, and Max has rolled down the windows. The Strip is emptying out. Even hard-core gamblers take a break at some point. A guy in a sleeveless shirt and cargo shorts weaves along the sidewalk clutching a tall glass of what looks like strawberry daiquiri. A thick-sized middle-aged couple stands near the street, leaning in to each other, yelling.
“You bet it all,” the woman hollers. She’s wearing white capris and a shapeless light-blue T-shirt that says I Love My Doberman. “I can’t believe that you bet everything on the goddamned craps table.”
“Babe,” he screams, arms out, cupping his hands like maybe he’s waiting for poker chips to fall from the sky. “I felt lucky.”
The air smells like desert and money. I should be tired, but I’m wide-awake.
We’re going to the Paris Casino. Gotcha, Paris Hollings. This scavenger hunt is about to be over.
Classical music fills the air from the Bellagio Fountains across the street, even though the fountains aren’t running. It crescendos loudly as though to punctuate capri lady’s shouting. Rachmaninoff, maybe? I’m not sure. A memory surfaces briefly of my fifth-grade orchestra teacher telling us that Sibelius put Finland on the map. I make a mental note to review composers when this is all over.
We park the truck and hike to the front of the hotel. It’s a long walk. Everything in Vegas is like that—this illusion of intimacy when really it’s distant and far away. I use Max’s phone again and try Paris’s cell. Still voice mail. I call my mother, who also doesn’t answer, but I leave a message, telling her to call this number if Paris comes home.
It’s well after four now and in less than seven hours I have to be at Yogiberry for another eight-hour shift, wearing a stupid black-and-pink-striped shirt and recommending the mochi topping because Kyle the manager needs us to get rid of it before it goes stale. It’s a hard sell. Mochi tastes like pencil eraser. Only chewier.
But the more I work, the more money I make. The more money I make, the more I’ll have for a contingency plan if Stanford doesn’t give me as much aid as I hope. So I need to be there. And this makes my stomach twist. Because what if it’s time to go to work and we still haven’t found her?
As if he read my mind, Max says, “I’m scheduled to do two private tours today, starting at noon. There’s a day camp coming to the museum and then some physics summer school class.”
I scrunch my nose. “You show the Bikini Atoll exploding to impressionable little day campers?”
He looks at me deadpan. “You betcha. Blows ’em out of their seats. Literally. I always get there early to crank up the air machine for the big groups.”
“You ever think that maybe you shouldn’t be so happy about that?”
“Excuse me for loving my job.”
He has me there. I am not in love with the frozen yogurt industry.
Or with tourists who drop stuff on the sidewalk, like the crumpled Fatburger bag I half trip over now because I’m looking up at the hotel.
“Careful,” Max says, and his hand goes to the small of my back.
“Don’t,” I say, stepping out of reach. “I’m fine.”
He shoots me a glance.
The Paris Hotel and Casino looms in front of us, its fifty-story replica of the Eiffel Tower lifting into the night sky. Some of the legs actually poke through the roof into the casino. A huge hot-air balloon, hovering over a fake version of the Arc de Triomphe, serves as a light-up marquee.
At the Arc Bar, you can buy a souvenir beverage in a plastic glass shaped like the Eiffel Tower. And there’s this touristy restaurant where Tommy took us to lunch the first day we moved here. He and Mom shared a ridiculously large plum-colored drink called Purple Passion that they slurped with straws. After that, we all went shopping at the Miracle Mile, and then to the movies, where Tommy bought us the extra-large tub of popcorn—the one we never got because it cost too much. “He’s nice,” I whispered to Mom, my mouth full of greasy popcorn.
A sign announces that you can pay to ride to the top of the tower—Most Romantic View of Las Vegas, it says—although I’ve never done it. Tourists do all sorts of things that people who live in places never do. Like I bet people born in New York City live their whole lives and never go to the top of the Empire State Building.
Of course, at this hour, the top is closed. And even if it were open, I’d still have a problem, not that I tell this to Max. But the truth is, I’m afraid of heights. It’s not like I’m totally phobic. Just that my heart rate is more normal when my feet are on the ground and I don’t think I’m going to vom or faint because my head feels all light and fuzzy.
The red awning over the front door reads Le Casino, which only someone from Iowa or North Dakota who hasn’t gotten out much would think is authentic to France.
“Let’s go,” I say, feeling antsy. The sooner we’re in, the sooner we find my sister.
I half expect to see her as we walk in the door. But we don’t. Not even when we race over to the roulette wheel—empty except for the dealer. My stomach sinks so quick it surprises me.
“Scavenger hunt!” Max says, suddenly too loud and enthusiastic, like maybe this is all getting old. My stomach dips again. I pretend it didn’t.
We backtrack. We poke around the huge fake French lobby, our feet sliding on slick marble tile.
My sister is not in Le Reception. She is not in front of Le Central Lobby Bar. She is not at Le Theater or Les Toilettes. She is not lined up on the fake French cobblestones under the fake French streetlamp waiting to beat the breakfast rush at Le Buffet, observing the fake night sky that’s painted on the fake French ceiling.
“Where the fuck are you?” I mean to keep this in my head, not shout it out, but that’s exactly what I do.
One of the guys at Le Reception leans over the counter and asks if we need something.
“Looking for my sister,” I say, trying to keeping my voice even while my pulse zips race-car fast. I describe her to him.
“What’s her name?” he asks. Actually, what he says is “What eez her name, mademoiselle?” which I think eez taking zee whole thing too far.
“Paris,” I say, and he gives a fake French body shrug—probably because I’m looking for a girl named Paris at the Paris Hotel—and helpfully informs us that the Eiffel Tower will be open after nine.
My pulse zooms faster. Maybe I was wrong about the roulette wheel and the signature. I’m about to give up when
Max—who’s been looking at his phone and not even paying attention to me or the concierge—says, “Let’s walk the casino again,” and I agree even though this makes me edgy. Paris and I have done our share of underage casino wandering these past few months, but it never pays to push things.
I know they watch from cameras in the ceiling—even at Vegas Mike’s security is pretty stiff, although nothing like the big hotels, at least according to Mom, who last week had to Taser some huge drugged-up guy who kept grabbing this woman’s boobs at Mom’s blackjack table. The lone security guard on duty held him down and tossed Mom the Taser, hollering, “Just press the damn thing, Callie. Now.” Which somehow I doubt is actual casino safety policy.
I start another round of the casino, racewalking now, almost running.
“Slow down, Leo,” Max says. “Wouldn’t want to lose you, too.” This seems an odd thing to say, but it’s been an odd night.
“Look for notes,” I tell him as we wander past a trio of old ladies with fanny packs and home-permed gray hair all playing one of those loud multiline slots that whoosh out 3-D images of animals when you hit it big. I’m trying to think like my sister, which is not easy since we do not think at all alike. “And silver Sharpie,” I shout over the din. “Or Hello Kitty Band-Aids.”
“Okay,” Max says, but he pauses at a Double Diamond machine and, taking his time about it, methodically drops in three quarters. One. Two. Three. My shoulders tense. I don’t have time for this.
I hover at his elbow, tapping my foot on the carpet, while he glances away from the machine, looking around leisurely like he’s a tourist with no particular agenda. Then he presses Play 3. He hasn’t even sat down on the stool.
Should I say something? He’s the one driving.
The bar rolls. One double diamond. Two double diamonds. Three double diamonds. Click. Click. Click.
The slot machine starts ringing like a fire engine.
Max has hit le jackpot.
Ring! Ding! Ring! Clang!
Seriously?
One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.