by Lauren Kate
“Air freshener,” Ander said as Eureka breathed in a whiff. “They give them out free at the car wash.”
She settled back in her seat. Ander didn’t even have a bag. In fact, Eureka’s overstuffed purple tote spoiled the tidiness of the truck.
“I’ve never seen a kid with such a spotless car. Don’t you have homework?” she joked. “Books?”
“I can read books,” Ander said curtly.
“Okay, you’re literate. Sorry.”
Ander frowned and turned up the music. He seemed aloof until she noticed his hand trembling as it moved the dial. He sensed her noticing it and clamped the hand back on the steering wheel, but she could tell: the accident had shaken him up, too.
“You like this kind of music?” she asked as a red-tailed hawk swept across the gray sky in front of them, looking for dinner.
“I like old things.” His voice was quiet, uncertain, as he took another fast turn down a gravel road. Eureka glanced at her watch and noted with pleasure that she might actually make it on time. Her body wanted this run; it would help calm her before facing Dad and Rhoda, before she had to break the news about the crumpled heap called Magda. It would make Coach’s month if Eureka raced today. Maybe she could go back—
Her body lurched forward as Ander slammed on the brakes. His arm shot across the cab of the truck to hold Eureka’s body back, the way Diana’s arm used to do, and it was startling: his hand on her.
The car squealed to an abrupt stop and Eureka saw why. Ander had hit the brakes to avoid running over one of the plentiful fox squirrels that threaded through Louisiana trees like sunshine. He seemed to realize his arm was still pinning her against the seat. His fingertips pressed into the skin below her shoulder.
He let his hand drop. He caught his breath.
Eureka’s four-year-old twin siblings had once spent an entire summer trying to catch one of these squirrels in the backyard. Eureka knew how fast the animals were. They dodged cars twenty times a day. She’d never seen anyone slam on the brakes to avoid hitting one.
The animal seemed surprised, too. It froze, peering into the windshield for an instant, as if to offer thanks. Then it darted up the gray trunk of an oak tree and was gone.
“Say, your brakes work after all.” Eureka couldn’t stop herself. “Glad the squirrel escaped with tail intact.”
Ander swallowed and hit the gas again. He stole long glances at her—unabashed, not like the guys at school, who were sneakier with their staring. He seemed to be searching for words.
“Eureka—I’m sorry.”
“Take this left,” she said.
He was already turning left down the narrow road. “No, really, I wish I could—”
“It’s just a car.” She cut him off. They were both on edge. She shouldn’t have teased him about the squirrel. He was trying to be more cautious. “They’ll fix it up at Sweet Pea’s. Anyway, the car’s no big deal to me.” Ander hung on her words and she realized she sounded like a private school brat, which was not her style. “Believe me, I’m grateful to have my own wheels. It’s just, you know, it’s a car, that’s all.”
“No.” Ander turned down the music as they entered town and passed Neptune’s, the horrible café where Evangeline kids hung out after school. She saw some girls from her Latin class, drinking sodas from red paper cups and hanging over the railing, talking to some older guys with Ray-Bans and muscles. She turned away from them to focus on the road. They were two blocks from school. Soon she’d be out of this truck and sprinting toward the locker room, then the woods. She guessed that meant she’d made up her mind.
“Eureka.”
Ander’s voice reached her, interrupting her plans on how to change into her uniform as quickly as possible. She wouldn’t change her socks, just yank her shorts on, toss off her shirt—
“I mean I’m sorry about everything.”
Everything? They had stopped at the back entrance to the school. Outside, past the parking lot, the track was shabby and old. A ring of unlaned, uneven dirt surrounded a sad, brown, disused football field. The cross-country team warmed up here, but their meets took place in the woods beyond the track. Eureka couldn’t imagine anything more boring than running around a track over and over again. Coach was always trying to get her to join the relay team in the spring track season, but what was the point of running in circles, never getting anywhere?
The rest of the team was already dressed out, doing stretches or warming up along the straights of the track. Coach was glaring at her clipboard, certainly wondering why she hadn’t checked Eureka’s name off the roll yet. Cat was yelling at two sophomores who’d drawn something in black Sharpie on the backs of their uniforms—something Cat and Eureka used to get yelled at for doing when they were sophomores themselves.
She unbuckled her seat belt. Ander was sorry, for everything? He meant hitting her car, of course. Nothing more than that. Because how could he know about Diana?
“I gotta go,” she said. “I’m late for my—”
“Cross-country meet. I know.”
“How did you know that? How do you know all these—”
Ander pointed to the Evangeline cross-country emblem stitched into the patch on the side of her bag.
“Oh.”
“Also”—Ander turned off the engine—“I’m on the team at Manor.”
He walked around the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. She slid out, dumbfounded. He handed over her bag.
“Thanks.”
Ander smirked and jogged off toward the side of the field where the Manor High team was gathered. He looked back over his shoulder, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. “You’re going down.”
5
STORMED OUT
Cat Estes had a particular way of arching her left eyebrow and parking one hand on her hip, which Eureka knew meant Dish. Her best friend had a splash of big, dark freckles across her nose, a charming gap between her two front teeth, curves in all sorts of places Eureka didn’t, and highlighted hair braided in thick pigtails.
Cat and Eureka lived in the same neighborhood near campus. Cat’s father was a professor of African American studies at the university. Cat and her younger brother, Barney, were the only two black kids at Evangeline.
When Cat spotted Eureka—head ducked, sprinting away from Ander’s truck in an attempt not to be noticed by Coach—she capped the tirade she’d been directing at the sophomore uniform-violators. Eureka heard her order the girls to do fifty push-ups on their knuckles before she swiveled past them.
“Part the seas, please!” Cat shouted as she plowed through a group of freshman boys staging a lightsaber battle with triangular paper cups. Cat was a sprinter; she caught Eureka’s arm just before Eureka ducked into the locker room. She wasn’t even out of breath.
“You’re back on the team?”
“I told Coach I’d run today,” Eureka said. “I don’t want to make it a big deal.”
“Sure.” Cat nodded. “We have other things to talk about anyway.” The left eyebrow rose to an astonishing height. The hand slid up the hip.
“You want to know about the guy in the truck,” Eureka guessed, swinging open the heavy gray door and pulling her friend inside.
The locker room was empty, but the lingering presence of heat and hormones brought on by so many teenage girls was palpable. Half-open lockers spilled hair dryers, foundation-stained cosmetics cases, and blue sticks of deodorant onto the tan tiled floor. Various items of Evangeline’s lenient dress code lay haphazardly on every surface. Eureka hadn’t been in here yet this year, but she could easily picture how that skirt got flung across that locker door in the midst of a conversation about a horrible religion exam, or how those oxfords had been unlaced while someone whispered to a friend about a game of Spin the Bottle the Saturday before.
Eureka used to love locker-room gossip; it was as elemental to being on the team as running. Today she was relieved to change in an empty locker room, even if it meant she had to hustle.
She dropped her bag and kicked off her shoes.
“Um, yeah, I want to know about the guy in the truck.”
Cat pulled Eureka’s running shorts and polo shirt out of her bag helpfully. “And what happened to your face?” She gestured at the airbag scrapes on Eureka’s cheekbone and nose. “You’d better get your story straight for Coach.”
Eureka flipped her head upside down to gather her long hair into a ponytail. “I already told her I had a doctor’s appointment and might be a little late—”
“A lotta late.” Cat extended her bare legs across the bench and reached for her toes, settling into a deep stretch. “Forget that. What’s the story with Monsieur Stud?”
“He’s a moron,” Eureka lied. Ander wasn’t a moron. He was unusual, hard to read, but not a moron. “He hit me at a stop sign. I’m fine,” she added quickly. “Just these scrapes.” She ran a finger along her tender cheekbone. “But Magda’s totaled. I had to get her towed.”
“Ew, no.” Cat scrunched up her face. “Cory Statutory?” She wasn’t from New Iberia; she’d lived in the same nice house in Lafayette her whole life. But she’d spent enough time in Eureka’s hometown to know the local cast of characters.
Eureka nodded. “He offered to give me a ride, but I wasn’t going to—”
“No way.” Cat understood the impossibility of riding shotgun in Cory’s truck. She shuddered, shaking her head so that her braids whopped her face. “At least Crash—can we call him Crash? Least he gave you a ride.”
Eureka tugged her shirt over her head and tucked it into her shorts. She started lacing up her running shoes. “His name is Ander. And nothing happened.”
“ ‘Crash’ sounds better.” Cat squirted sunscreen into her palm and brushed it lightly across Eureka’s face, careful of her scrapes.
“He goes to Manor, that’s why he drove me here. I’ll be racing against him in a few minutes, and I’ll probably suck because I’m not warmed up.”
“Ooh, it’s sooo race-y.” Suddenly Cat was in her own world, making big hand gestures. “I’m seeing the adrenaline high of the run transforming into burning passion at the finish line. I’m seeing sweat. I’m seeing steam. Love that ‘goes the distance’ ”—
“Cat,” Eureka said. “Enough. What is it with people trying to hook me up today?”
Cat followed Eureka toward the door. “I try to hook you up every day. What’s the point of calendars without dates?”
For such a smart, tough girl—Cat had a blue belt in karate, spoke non-Cajun French with an enviable accent, got a scholarship the previous summer to a molecular biology camp at LSU—Eureka’s best friend was also a horn-dog romantic. Most kids at Evangeline didn’t know how smart she was because her boy-craziness tended to obscure it. She met guys on her way to the bathroom at the movies, didn’t own a bra that wasn’t full-on lace, and really was trying to fix up everyone she knew all the time. Once, in New Orleans, Cat had even tried to put two homeless people together in Jackson Square.
“Wait”—Cat stopped and tilted her head at Eureka—“who else was trying to set you up? That’s my specialty.”
Eureka pressed on the metal bar to open the door and stepped out into the humid late afternoon. Low, green-gray clouds still coated the sky. The air had the smell of aching to be a storm. To the west was an alluring pocket of clearness where Eureka could see the sun sneaking lower, turning the sliver of cloud-bare sky a deep shade of violet.
“My wonderful new shrink thinks I have the hots for Brooks,” Eureka said.
At the far end of the field, Coach’s whistle drew the rest of the team together under the rusted football upright. The visiting team from Manor was gathering in the other end zone. Eureka and Cat would have to pass them, which made Eureka nervous, though she didn’t see Ander yet. The girls jogged toward their team, aiming to slide in unnoticed at the back of the huddle.
“You and Brooks?” Cat feigned amazement. “I’m shocked. I mean, I’m just—well, stunned is what I am.”
“Cat.” Eureka used her serious voice, which made Cat stop jogging. “My mom.”
“I know.” Cat enveloped Eureka and squeezed. She had skinny arms, but her hugs were mighty.
They’d paused at the bleachers, two long rows of rusty benches on either side of the track. Eureka could hear Coach talking about pacing, the regional meet next month, finding the right position at the starting arc. If Eureka were captain, she’d be talking the team through these topics. She knew prerace drill backward in her sleep, but she couldn’t imagine standing up there anymore, saying anything with certainty.
“You’re not ready to think about boys yet,” Cat said into Eureka’s ponytail. “Stupid Cat.”
“Don’t you start crying.” Eureka squeezed Cat harder.
“Okay, okay.” Cat sniffed and pulled away. “I know you hate it when I cry.”
Eureka flinched. “I don’t hate it when you—” She broke off. Her eye caught Ander’s as he was coming out of the visitors’ locker room on the other side of the track. His uniform didn’t quite match the other kids’—his yellow collar looked bleached; his shorts were shorter than those worn by the rest of the team. The uniform seemed dated, like the ones in the fading photographs of cross-country teams of yesteryear that lined the walls of the gym. Maybe it was a hand-me-down from an older brother, but it looked like the kind of thing you picked up at the Salvation Army after some kid graduated and his mom cleaned out his closet so she’d have more room for shoes.
Ander watched Eureka, oblivious to all else around him: his team in the end zone, pregnant clouds pressing closer in the sky, how peculiar it was to stare like that. He didn’t seem to realize it was unusual. Or maybe he didn’t care.
Eureka did. She dropped her eyes, blushing. She started to jog again. She remembered the sensation of that tear gathering in the corner of her eye, the astonishing touch of his finger against the side of her nose. Why had she cried on the road that afternoon when she hadn’t been tempted to cry at her own mother’s funeral? She hadn’t cried when they’d kept her locked up in that asylum for two weeks. She hadn’t cried since … the night Diana had slapped her and moved out of the house.
“Uh-oh,” Cat said.
“Don’t stare back at him,” Eureka muttered, certain Cat was referring to Ander.
“Him who?” Cat whispered. “I’m talking about Sorceress over there. Don’t engage and she might not see us. Don’t look, Eureka, don’t—”
You can’t not look when someone tells you not to, but one swift glance made Eureka regret it.
“Too late,” Cat mumbled.
“Boudreaux.”
Eureka’s last name seemed to shudder like a shock wave across the field.
Maya Cayce had a voice as deep as a teenage boy’s—it could fool you until you caught a glimpse of her face. Some never fully recovered from that first glimpse. Maya Cayce was extraordinary, with thick, dark hair that hung in loose waves all the way down to her waist. She was notorious for her fast clip down the hallways at school, her surprising, slender grace thanks to legs that stretched for decades. Her smooth, bright skin bore ten of the most intricately beautiful tattoos Eureka had ever seen—including a braid of three different feathers running down her forearm, a small cameo-style portrait of her mother on her shoulder, and a peacock inside a peacock feather underneath her collarbone—all of which she’d designed herself and had done at a place called Electric Ladyland in New Orleans. She was a senior, a roller-skater, a rumored Wiccan, a transcender of all cliques, a contralto in the choir, a state-champion equestrian, and she hated Eureka Boudreaux.
“Maya.” Eureka nodded but didn’t slow down.
In her peripheral vision, Eureka sensed Maya Cayce rising from the edge of the bleachers. She saw the black blur of the girl taking long strides to stop in front of her.
Eureka skidded to avoid a collision. “Yes?”
“Where is he?” Maya wore a micro-length, flowy black dress with extra-long, extra-flared bell sleeves,
and no makeup, save for a coat of black mascara. She batted her eyes.
She was looking for Brooks. She was always looking for Brooks. How she could still be hung up on Eureka’s oldest friend after they’d been out but twice last year was one of the galaxy’s most inscrutable mysteries. Brooks was boy-next-door sweet. Maya Cayce was spellbinding. And yet, somehow, she was deranged for the boy.
“I haven’t seen him,” Eureka said. “Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’m on the cross-country team, which is about to begin a race?”
“We can maybe help you stalk him later.” Cat tried to angle past Maya, who was over a foot taller than Cat in her six-inch platform wedges. “Oh, wait, no, I’m busy tonight. Signed up for this webinar. Sorry, Maya, you’re on your own.”
Maya raised her chin, seeming to weigh whether to take this as an insult. If you studied her small, lovely features individually, she actually looked far younger than seventeen.
“I prefer to work alone.” Maya Cayce looked down her nose at Cat. Her perfume smelled like patchouli. “He mentioned he might stop by, and I thought Freak Show here”—she pointed at Eureka—“might have—”
“I haven’t.” Eureka remembered now that Brooks was the one person she’d confided in about her agreement with Coach. He hadn’t told her he’d planned on coming to the meet, but it was a sweet gesture if he was. Sweet until you added Maya Cayce; then things soured.
As Eureka pushed past, something swatted the back of her head, just above her ponytail. Slowly she spun around to see Maya Cayce’s palm retreat. Eureka’s cheeks blazed. Her head stung, but her pride ached. “Is there something you want to say, Maya, maybe to my face?”
“Oh.” Maya Cayce’s husky voice softened, sweetened. “You had a mosquito on your scalp. You know they carry diseases, flock to standing water.”
Cat snorted, grabbing Eureka’s hand and pulling her down the field. She called over her shoulder: “You’re malarious, Maya! Call us when you get a stand-up gig.”