“You’re new, right?” the girl asked.
“Right.” Saskia wiped beer foam off her upper lip. “I am, officially, the new girl.”
“Well, I am officially Adrienne. And this”—Adrienne made a ta-da flourish with her hand—“is what kids in Coventon do on Friday nights. I’m sorry to say it doesn’t get much better.”
“That’s all right. It’s already better than where I’m from.”
“Where’s that?”
“Arizona.”
Adrienne’s squinty eyes widened. “Oh my god, you’re so lucky. I hear Arizona is beautiful.”
“Some of it is. I can’t get used to all the green here. I’m used to the desert.”
A girl in a cheerleading uniform stopped by to peck Adrienne on the cheek and to squeal something in her ear. When she’d gone, Adrienne rolled her eyes. “Ugh. I can’t stand that girl. The cheerleaders didn’t even have a game today. She’s just wearing her uniform so guys will look at her butt. Hey, you’re not a cheerleader, are you?”
Saskia stifled a laugh. “Nope. Just the new girl.”
“What are you into? Any clubs or sports?”
Saskia shrugged. In her old life, she’d been a joiner. She’d been on the student council, played soccer, and written articles for the school newspaper. But she had no idea what she’d do in Coventon, if anything.
“Next fall you should go out for the drama club,” Adrienne said. “Our stage productions are savage. Last year, when this girl Aniyah Buckley graduated, she went straight to Broadway. I don’t blame her. I’d skip college, too, for a part in Hamilton.”
“I’m not much of an actress.”
“Oh, that’s okay. You can work backstage.”
Saskia shrugged again.
Out of the corner of her eye, she suddenly caught sight of Josh. He was standing on the outskirts of the party, slouching against a wall. He seemed to be fiddling with a deck of cards again. A couple of girls were standing nearby, watching.
Groupies, Saskia thought.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe she felt confrontational after his comments on the day of her presentation. Whatever it was, she surprised herself by telling Adrienne she had to go. There was someone she needed to talk to.
“Sure. It was good to meet you!” Adrienne replied with a smile.
“You, too!” Saskia said, slipping away.
Josh was wearing jeans that were ripped at the knee and frayed at the hem. His black T-shirt read: youth in asia. A girly headband, black with hot pink stripes, made his hair stick out around his head like flower petals. On someone else the headband would have been stupid. But it fit Josh to a T.
From several feet away, Saskia watched him do a bunch of tricks: shuffling with one hand, forming a rainbow in the air as he tossed the cards from one hand to the other. He was good. Vegas good. Not that she’d ever been to Vegas.
“Hey, Saskia Brown’s in the house,” he said, not taking his eyes off the cards. She was startled he remembered her name.
Emboldened, she slipped in front of the fangirls. It felt strange to look directly at his face, no more staring at his back. She decided he was more Paul Newman than James Dean. A young Paul Newman in The Long, Hot Summer, more rake than rebel. She took another sip from the cup and noticed that the noises in the room sounded comfortably muffled, all the voices blending into a pleasant thrum.
“Pick one,” he said to her, fanning out the cards. She admired his fingers—long and honey-colored, with square nails. “Look at it, but don’t show it to me.”
Taking another sip, she drew one.
“You know what it is?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t show it to me and slide it back anywhere you like.”
She did, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
He shuffled the deck, making crisp, snapping sounds. When he smiled back at her, she felt herself flush.
“I know the trick. You put my card in your pocket,” she said.
“Nope. You can check.”
Under other circumstances she would have balked. But she’d had enough beer that her hands didn’t hesitate to search each pocket of his jeans, front and back.
“Just some loose change and a box of Tic Tacs,” she said, taking out the latter. “Wintergreen—unusual choice. I’m an orange fan myself.” She put back the Tic Tacs a little more slowly than she needed to and added, “All right—you’re clean.”
“Told you.”
“Can I shuffle the cards? To keep you honest?”
“Go ahead.”
She took the deck, divided it, and clumsily mashed one half into the other. When she was little, she and her father used to play Go Fish and War, but that was about the extent of her experience with cards. She handed back the deck.
“We good?” he asked.
Saskia wasn’t sure. When he looked into her eyes, she worried he was reading her all over again.
He chose a card and held it up. The one she’d picked: the nine of spades.
“Not bad.”
“It’s just a way to kill time. Same as this party.”
“Is that what you think we’re doing—killing time?”
“What do you think?”
“I have no idea,” she said honestly.
Josh grabbed her beer and took a sip. “What do you think of Coventon so far?”
“It’s . . . it’s different.”
“Why do you say that?”
Because no one’s whispering behind my back anymore. Because Ralph is twenty-five hundred miles away. Because you’re the only boy I’ve talked to since being here.
“It’s different than where I’m from.”
“And where’s that, Rikers Island?”
“What?”
“I’m talking ’bout that stolen photo. The one you brought to school.”
She grabbed back the beer. “It’s called a daguerreotype. And you’ve got an active imagination. Overactive.”
“So it’s not stolen?”
“It’s borrowed.”
“Gotcha.”
“Change of subject,” she insisted.
“All right—how about you tell me where you’re from?”
“Guess.”
He rubbed his chin for effect and took a long, hard look at her face. “Kansas,” he said finally.
“Kansas! Really?”
“I was thinking Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and all that. You kind of remind me of her.”
“What?!”
“Something about your voice.”
“Definitely overactive,” she said.
“So were you a juvenile delinquent in Kansas, too?”
“Arizona.”
“Whatever, Arizona.”
“Wishful thinking.”
She went quiet after that, having run out of clever things to say. It wasn’t easy to maintain a conversation when the room was beginning to tilt and spin on an axis.
“So what now?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What do we do? You wanna build a house of cards?”
It came out of nowhere, the question. A total non sequitur. Maybe, like her father, she’d watched too many episodes of Gilmore Girls.
“Seriously?” Josh asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I guess,” he replied. To her surprise, he took her by the elbow and led her through the crowd. One of the fawning girls gave her a dirty look.
“Where are we going?”
“Upstairs. I can’t hear myself think anymore.”
“We can’t go upstairs.”
“Why not?”
“Ethan said.”
“Nah, Ethan’s good. He won’t mind.”
“But he . . .”
“Listen, I’ve known Ethan my whole life. I’ve lived down the street from him for the last three years. Him and his brother will be Windexing the crap out of every room in this house once the party’s over. They’re OCD. Us going upstairs isn’t going to make any difference.”
“All right,” she agreed, though she felt guilty.
He wove through the crowd, tugging her along. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Lila in a while. She should tell her friend what was happening, how she was about to disappear upstairs with a guy. But she didn’t know where Lila was, and there was no way she was going to pull away from Josh’s grip.
Because what if he changes his mind?
From the back his black hair looked ragged and uneven. Rock star hair. She wondered if he’d cut it himself before the party. They proceeded up the stairs. The last person she saw was the tall redhead, Adrienne. Saskia smiled and waved. Adrienne waved back blithely.
A potential friend? Saskia wondered.
Josh knew his way around the house like he’d been there a million times. He led her through a family room, a fancy kitchen with lots of granite and stainless steel, and down a long hall. They ended up in a bedroom, a destination that made her at once petrified and giddy. It wasn’t much of a room, not compared to the rest of the house, just beige walls and basic furniture: a decorative desk in a corner and a couple of charcoal sketches of city street scenes on the walls.
Guest room, she decided.
Josh plopped down on the bed and lay on his back. His shirt rode up a little, revealing a taut stomach and a smeary, amateur-looking tattoo. He fished the cards out of his pocket and placed them beside him.
Saskia stood one foot inside the room, one foot out, wishing she had more experience with boys. What was going through his mind right now? Had he picked a bedroom on purpose? She wanted to think he was going to make a move. Party, bedroom, boy, girl. The equation was complete. Wasn’t kissing next?
But the truth was, Josh looked kind of sleepy. He rubbed his eyes and even stifled a yawn. “We doing this or not?” he asked.
Did he mean making the card house or making out? She didn’t have the courage to ask.
“Guess we should build it on the floor,” he continued, gathering his sprawled-out limbs. “Flat surface and all.” He got down on the ground and sat crisscross-applesauce, like a little kid.
We doing this or not?
They were building the card house, after all. Saskia sat down beside him and propped one card carefully against another. Soon they were taking turns drawing cards from the pile.
“Hey, why’d you think I stole that daguerreotype?” she asked him.
“You just seem like that kind of person. You know, wayward.”
She shook her head. “Wayward?”
“Okay, okay. I was just messing with you.”
“Thanks a lot,” she replied drolly, laying a card against his.
“So did your parents move here for work?”
“Not quite.”
“I assume everyone who comes to Coventon is coming for work.”
“Why?”
“The plant—Arrivo. You know, out on Whallen Avenue.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it. It’s bad news, right?”
Her father had first told her about Arrivo before the move. It was the chemical arm of a big pharmaceutical company. It had been charged with quite a few wastewater discharge violations, which was how her father had found out about it. Google “Coventon,” and at least a dozen news stories about Arrivo popped up. All of them talked about industrial waste spills and pollution lawsuits.
When her father had hunted for a place to live in town, he’d tried to steer clear of Arrivo. Still, they’d ended up closer to it than he would have liked. Real estate prices were simply too high in the better parts of town. On the right side of the tracks. Here.
Josh chuckled. “Everyone in town worries about it, but I’m glad it’s here. My mom’s a quality engineer there. She makes four times what she used to. I work there, too, on the weekends. All I do is shuffle papers, but the money’s great.”
“Don’t you worry? My dad said there are all these chemicals that cause cancer.”
“Maybe they do. But hey, we’re all gonna die sometime, right?”
“That’s a cavalier way to look at it.”
“It’s the truth.”
“But why does Coventon allow the plant to be there when it knows it’s dangerous?”
Josh looked at Saskia like she’d been born yesterday. “For the jobs, obviously. The money.”
She sniffed. “Money’s not everything.”
“Says someone who’s never worried about money.”
“Please!” she cried indignantly. “You don’t know anything about me.”
He paused, card midair, and searched her face. “You’re right, I don’t. Tell me something.”
His voice was disarmingly sincere, and Saskia’s annoyance drained away. Maybe it was the beer coursing through her veins, but she decided to confide in him. “My parents are getting divorced.”
As soon as she said it, she regretted it. She probably sounded pathetic. He probably thought she was a train wreck.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry.”
“It’s why me and my dad moved. We couldn’t stand being there anymore.”
“In the same house as your mom?”
“In the same town. It was so humiliating. My mom got together with a substitute teacher from my school.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish. I mean, if she were going to whore around, couldn’t she have picked another school district?”
Smiling ruefully, Josh took off his headband and raked his fingers through his mussed hair. “That is screwed up.”
“My dad and I—we had to move. He got a job in New Haven, at the hospital. And my mom, she didn’t put up a fight. I think she was relieved when we left.”
“Listen, you get used to it,” he said. “Divorce. It’s not so bad after a while. You get used to splitting your holidays and checking in with two parents all the time. You get used to feeling . . .” He hesitated. “Fractured.”
“So your parents are divorced?”
“Oh yeah, happened when I was younger. They hate each other.”
“And you live with your mother?”
“Yep.”
The revelation that Josh and she were in similar circumstances surprised Saskia. She hadn’t thought they would have much in common, except that he looked possibly mixed-race like she was.
“Which one of your parents is Asian?” she asked, taking a chance.
He looked amused by the question. “My mother. She’s Japanese.”
“Why’d she keep your dad’s last name if she hates him so much?”
“Funny you’d ask. She once said his name’s the only decent thing about him. Plus, her maiden name is Honda. It sucked to be asked about cars all the time.”
He tried, unsuccessfully, to prop up another card. One bad play, and the whole house toppled down. It lay in a sad, flat heap. They stared at it a few seconds, then began rebuilding.
“Do you see your dad much?” she asked.
“Nah, not really. What about you? Plan to see your mom anytime soon?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Word.”
A silence ensued. Normally dead air made Saskia nervous. But this pause felt welcome, even tranquil.
They took their time propping up the cards again. She didn’t know how long it took, but eventually they used the whole deck. With three tilting stories, the house was nothing if not precarious. Saskia tried not to move or breathe very hard.
Josh stretched his gangly arms over his head. She noticed another tattoo on his left bicep. A scaly green dragon, but benign, more Puff than Smaug. He said, “I haven’t
done that since I was a little kid.”
She felt as rickety as the house, her whole life did, and yet she couldn’t hold back. Before she knew it, the words came gushing out. “When do you get used to it—divorce? I mean, how long does it take? Do all the bad feelings really heal, or do they just scab over? Because I’m the kind of person who picks at scabs over and over. So basically that means I’ll never forgive my mom. And if I never forgive her, I’ll be one of those screwed-up adults who’s always in therapy—or worse. I don’t want to be an alcoholic or run a meth lab. I just want to be . . . normal.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, wondering if he’d be able—or willing—to wade through the flood.
Way to play it cool, Saskia.
When she opened them again, she was relieved to see that Josh was looking at her with something like kindness. He scooted over, deftly maneuvering his long legs around the house of cards, and put his arm around her. His touch felt generous.
Her head fell onto his chest. She didn’t want him to see her face. Now, on top of everything else, she was crying.
Could this be any more mortifying?
As she choked on her own sobs, he rubbed her shoulders. She felt grateful that he was being nice to her. Someone like Josh, someone so good-looking, didn’t need to be nice. He didn’t need to be decent. He could get away with anything really, the same way as Paige.
“All the shit you’re feeling—it fades. It really does,” he said softly.
But that word, fades, caused a fresh burst of tears. She couldn’t get her emotions under control. She hadn’t cried much since her parents had broken up, a fact that worried her father, and this was why. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. She hated herself for letting it all out now, in front of Josh, of all people. He must think she was a real piece of work. That she’d moved to Coventon from Crazy Town.
His hands moved from her shoulders to her back. His touch radiated heat, which spread like wildfire through her body. She shuddered. It was a fight or flight moment. She could leave, fleeing the embarrassment she’d brought upon herself. Or she could stay and risk being even more embarrassed.
She lifted her head and looked at him. Somehow, his eyes were intense and aloof at the same time. She liked the way they were dark in the middle, light at the edges, like an eclipse. She liked the Cupid’s bow of his lips. He was almost—but not quite—too beautiful to touch.
Mercury Boys Page 6