by S. L. Naeole
Lola’s hot-pink lip curled up, revealing the small fangs beneath, a sign that she was hungry for more than just pancakes. “I heard.”
She took a quick glance around the small restaurant, looking at the faces that filled up the chairs inside. “They all smell like coconut oil and deodorant,” she whispered. “It’s just as bad as if they were sitting there with their throats cut open.”
I could smell it, too. Humans were very good at trying to mask their smell. They thought they were hiding their scent, but it made them more obvious to us. “Don’t talk like that here,” I reminded her.
“Yeah-yeah-yeah. I’m not stupid, Liam. Oh, hey, Audrey’s little trog friend is sitting over there by the fan. You gonna go and say hi?”
I looked behind me and frowned. Fallon had her nose in what looked like some kind of manual. She had a cup of coffee next to her elbow and a plate of half-eaten cranberry pancakes in front of her. “How long has she been here?” I asked as I watched her turn a page, her hand blindly reaching for her fork and lifting it, full of food, to her mouth.
“About twenty minutes. She came in, asked for a seat, ordered a number one, and then started reading that book.”
“That’s not a book.”
“What?”
I turned around and looked at her, confused. “Huh?”
“You said ‘that’s not a book’. It looks like a book to me.”
“It’s not a book,” I said with a half-shrug as I tried to figure out why I even cared enough to correct her. “It’s a repair manual.”
“It looks just like a book to me.”
Of course it would. Lola was gonna be voted least likely to read a book this year; I’d bet money on that.
“Hey, where’s my food?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about Fallon’s book or manual. I just wanted to get my food and go say hi to my sister. I turned around again and saw Fallon bite down on the tip of the fork that she had partially dangling from her mouth.
Lola answered behind me. “It’s coming. We’re slammed right now; hello! Look around you! Your order will be up when it’s done, okay? God. Maybe you should’ve stopped to see Brenda before you came here. Or maybe you’re looking for something a little bit…different.”
I ignored her last comment. Lola liked to cause trouble more than she hated to read, and I’d spent more than enough time trying to talk Brenda out of a rage after Lola had told her some stupid lie or another; I wasn’t going to say anything that would give her ammunition to start another fight.
Fallon put down the fork and replaced it with a pen as she alternated between chewing the end of the cap and writing notes in the margins of the manual. I spat out a curse when I realized that I was mimicking her mouth each time she brought the pen to her lips.
“Hey, Lola, can you ring up the check for the trog in the corner? She had the number one with coffee, black, extra syrup and butter on the side. I’ve gotta take a leak.”
Lola’s older sister Eileen tossed a narrow pad on the table, the scribbling showing the order between a list of others. Lola grabbed the pad and punched some numbers in the old cash register. A strip of paper curled out of the top of the register, the total price printed on it in black ink. She tore the slip of paper off and clipped it to a piece of the same cardboard that was used for all of the bills at Kimble’s.
I caught it as she tossed it onto the counter for her sister.
“What are you doing?” she asked, looking at the bill and then at me.
“I’m gonna pay the tab.”
Lola’s jaw fell. “Are you serious?” When I nodded, her jaw fell even lower. “Why?”
I grunted as I tossed down a few bucks. “Because my sister asked me to be nice.”
CHAPTER NINE
FALLON
Three dollars doesn’t normally feel like anything when it’s in your pocket, unless it’s in change. But the three dollars that was folded in my wallet felt like they weighed a hundred pounds. I’d left the little pancake place that Mom and Dad had their first date in confused and still carrying the money with no real idea why.
The waitress said that my bill had been paid for, but she wouldn’t tell me who had paid it. I looked around the small restaurant but I didn’t recognize anyone, and I don’t care where you are, no stranger’s gonna pay your bill and then leave without at least letting you know what they’ve done.
I walked out of the restaurant, my bike sitting outside in an adjacent alley. Everywhere I looked, there were tourists walking, their skin greasy with sunscreen. It had been difficult to eat my food and actually taste it while I sat inside of Kimble’s because of that heavy, coconut scent that followed the tourists everywhere. It was strange, really. Even in California, the smell of sunscreen was never this strong.
Holding my breath, I took my backpack off and unzipped the small pocket. Inside was a small bottle of body spray. I pressed the pump a few times, spritzing me with the cool, red liquid and inhaling. It smelled like fresh apples, clean and crisp, and not like that syrupy sweet coconut. I looked at the bottle and sighed, seeing that it was more than half-empty. “Good thing I’ve got another bottle at home,” I said to myself out loud before stuffing it away, pulling the bag back onto my shoulders, and climbing onto the bike.
I pulled on my helmet, started the bike, and pulled out slowly from the alley, peeking to make sure that there weren’t tourists on the road; I’d nearly ran over a couple of them already. With the way clear, I sped down the main road, the rush of air in my face a welcome change.
It wasn’t long before the buildings in town faded away and the tall grass that lined the lonely road made their appearance. Mom said there’d been some storms before we arrived, and the yellow grass was starting to turn green again. It made the ride home a bit more interesting, especially since the road was almost always empty and I still couldn’t remember how to find the maze.
Today didn’t look like it was going to be any different until I saw the truck’s hazard lights blinking about a dozen yards ahead of me. The license plate was missing, and faded stickers covered the rusted chrome bumper. I’d seen the truck before, but it had been empty then. Now, though, someone was sitting in the passenger seat.
I rolled the bike up to the driver’s side window and stopped. “Audrey?” I said, surprised. “What are you doing out here?”
She turned to look at me, a plastic fork in her hand, her cheeks puffed up and stuffed with food. “Momygoff! Fawwon! Owtwuffwonfart!”
I laughed. It was impossible not to.
She quickly swallowed her food and laughed along with me, wiping her mouth and taking a sip from a cup she had perched on the truck’s dashboard. “I’m sorry! Our truck won’t start!”
I leaned back a bit and saw a body dangling out beneath the raised hood. I didn’t need to get a better look to know who it was working on the engine. “Do you know what happened?” I asked loudly.
“The truck won’t start. Liam pulled over and turned it off because he said he had to take a leak and-”
“Audrey!”
Liam stood in front of me, his eyes narrowed, his nostrils flaring as he glared at me and his sister. I looked away and saw that a shirt was dangling from the driver’s side mirror. Immediately my mouth breathed, “don’t do it”, but my brain didn’t listen and my eyes moved, returning to Liam and seeing what his shirt had been hiding.
His tan skin, browner than mine by at least three summers of sun, was riddled with scars of various sizes and shapes. His shoulders were wide, the cords of muscle on his neck standing out as his biceps flexed and twitched, his annoyance clear. But I couldn’t look away. His chest was spattered with sweat while a slow, thin line of moisture moved down over the ridges of muscle and scars that made up his belly before disappearing in a tuft of black hair that peeked out at the top of his jeans.
I swallowed and then cursed myself because I didn’t want to be ogling, yet I was. I was looking at him like some guy would look at a topless girl, and he knew it. And
when I finally had the courage to look into his eyes, the reaction was the same as any guy would have received. His hazel eyes had turned to a dark, brownish green, the pupils now tiny dots as his anger moved from his clenched muscles to the dark twists of hair above his eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be going home?” he said stiffly.
“I…” I stopped myself, looked down, and then returned my gaze back to his, determined to speak without showing any sign that he had affected me somehow. “I might be able to help you out. I kinda know a bit about engines so-”
“We don’t need your help,” Liam ground out before grabbing his shirt and pulling it on. He moved past me, his shoulder brushing against mine, and I almost fell over at how hot his skin felt. I looked at Audrey and she shrugged.
I heard the sound of the truck’s tailgate fall and took the opportunity to climb off my bike and head to the front of the truck, peering into the engine to see if the problem was something obvious. I snorted at what I saw and then hurried to Audrey’s side of the truck.
“Hey, what do you have in that cup,” I asked.
“A coke,” she answered quickly.
“Does it have ice in it?”
She shook her head and I asked her if I could have it. She handed it to me, curious but not asking why I needed it. I placed the cup of soda on the engine and then reached into my pocket to pull out the pocket tool that Mom had bought me for Christmas. I unfolded the metal hinge so that a pair of pliers appeared and began to loosen the bolts on the battery cables.
The terminals were so corroded it looked like some kind of alien had taken a dump on the battery and then decided to play with it. Using my pliers, I loosened the bolts on the battery cables, putting them to the side. I grabbed the cup of soda and removed the lid. Carefully, I began to pour the soda over the battery terminals, watching as the green corrosion mixed with the brown soda and turned into a nasty, mold-colored foam.
I peeked around to see if Liam was coming, but he was too busy grunting and banging things at the back of the truck to notice anything that I was doing. I poured more of the soda on the battery, watching the bubbling carefully. I counted, second by second, until I knew it was time to rinse the foam away.
I grabbed the bottle of water in my backpack and emptied it over the battery, smiling at the result. The terminals weren’t spotless or sparkling, but they were recognizable again. I put my backpack on the ground and took off one of my tank tops, the second one refusing to budge already due to the sweat that was slicking off my skin and soaking it, gluing it to my body. I used the first one as a rag to wipe the battery down, almost jealous that it was cooler than I was.
In my back pocket was a stick of lip balm. I pulled it out and removed the cap before twisting the bottom until half the stick was exposed. I broke it off and then rubbed it on the battery terminals before reattaching the cables and tightening the bolts.
“Hey, Audrey,” I shouted, wiping my hands on my dirty shirt.
“Yeah?”
“Try and start the truck.”
Liam heard me and slammed the tailgate shut so forcefully that the front bumper caught me in the shins. He was stomping toward me when the truck coughed weakly to life. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded to know as he shoved me aside with his shoulder to look at the engine himself.
“Fixing your truck,” I answered plainly as I rubbed my arm. “It sounds like you have a slight vacuum leak, too. Oh, and you might want to tighten the screws on the carburetor flange; they look loose. The whole thing might need replacing soon, too. If you want-”
“I don’t need you or want you to tell me what’s wrong with my truck,” he snarled.
“I’m sorry,” I said honestly. I knew that car advice from a girl would almost always rub a guy the wrong way; Mom had warned me on that way too many times for me to forget but for some reason, I had.
Liam didn’t seem to hear my apology – or maybe he ignored it – and instead swiped the cup of soda onto the ground and then slammed the truck’s hood down. He climbed into the truck, and I jumped out of the way as he put the truck into gear and drove off. I could see Audrey looking back at me, her face saying clearly that she was sorry, too.
I wanted to follow them. Instead, I headed home. His pride might have been bruised by my simple solution to his problem, but I wasn’t gonna give him a fair shot at bruising mine just to even up the score.
CHAPTER TEN
LIAM
She took off her shirt.
For a good five minutes, that’s all that I could think about.
My eyes didn’t need to look at her long to see that she had been wearing two tank tops, but the second one had been thinner, and I could see…
“Hey, are you gonna talk to me or are we just going to sit here like crabs?”
Audrey had her feet in the sand and her hands were busy covering her legs, scooping out handfuls of sand at a time.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“What’s wrong? Are you mad at Fallon for fixing the truck?”
My shoulders slumped at her question in embarrassment and denial. “No.”
“Liar.”
“Oh, so now I’m the liar?”
She sprinkled some sand on my legs and nodded. I took some sand in my hand and returned the favor. “I’m not lying, Aud. I’m just...confused.”
“And horny.”
“What?” I yelled, surprised. “What the hell do you know about being horny? You’re fifteen, dammit!”
“And? You and Brenda started boning when you were fifteen! And I know you got a stiffy when you saw Fallon take off her shirt.”
This time I wasn’t gonna just sit there and pour sand on her leg. I knocked her arm out from beside her and sent her falling onto her side. “You sound like a jerk when you talk like that.”
“And you sound like a guy who doesn’t want to admit he’s got a thing for a human.”
I ignored her and walked toward the water. It was cold, but it helped to stop certain things from happening when I pictured Fallon in that thin shirt again. I dove down, closing my eyes and seeing her behind my lids.
She wasn’t thin, like Brenda. I’d known that from the first time I saw her with Audrey. But this was the first time I’d actually looked at her. She was thicker in the waist but not softer; I could tell that just from the way the shirt was sticking to her skin. There were lines running down the sides of her belly, but there was also a roundness there where Brenda’s would have normally dipped in.
She had on a bikini top beneath the shirt, something gray and purple with black straps tied around her neck. I roared beneath the water when I realized that I was curious about what those stripes were hiding.
And I know you got a stiffy when you saw Fallon take off her shirt.
Damn you, Audrey. It’s what happens when a guy looks at a girl. It’s what happens when a guy’s gone without sex for a week. It’s what happens when…a girl looks at him like he’s got something she wants.
And Fallon did look. I’d bet my tail on it. She was looking and the way her face had turned pink, she liked what she saw. I came up for air and pushed my hair back, the salt water stinging my eyes and burning the scrapes I had on my skin. The pain felt good because it gave me something else to think about besides Fallon Timmons.
“You think drowning yourself is gonna make it go away?” Audrey shouted from the sand.
“I think my little sister needs to learn to shut up,” I shouted back.
“Admit it, you think she’s pretty.”
“I’ll admit she’s pretty damn annoying.”
Her laugh was clear and crisp as I splashed in the chilly water. “That’s a new one. How do you get a chubby from being annoyed?”
For a split second, I couldn’t do anything but stare at her. Who was this person, and what the hell was coming out of her mouth? And then I stormed out of the water, stopping at her feet and crouching down to look at her, shocked. “How the hell do you know what those wo
rds mean? I’ve never talked like that around you. And I know sure as hell that Jameson wouldn’t say something like that to you.”
“Brenda,” she said casually, her cheeks turning a bright pink as she saw how uncomfortable I was.
“Brenda?”
I should have known. Girls talked, too.
“Yeah, Brenda. Come on, what else do you think we talk about when you’re gone? We don’t like the same things; she likes tanning and make-up; I like food and art. The only thing we can talk about is boys, and she’s got a lot more experience with them than I do.”
My mouth curved up, my laughter short and bitter. “The only experience Brenda has with boys is with me. And what she knows about me…you don’t want to know anyway.”
Audrey was drawing in the sand with her finger, the corner of her own mouth lifting in quiet amusement. “What we both know about you wouldn’t even come close to what you keep secret, big brother. But it doesn’t matter. Brenda doesn’t talk about you; she knows that would just gross me out. I think it would gross her out, too.
“What she talks about, what she tells me is what it’s like to be someone’s girlfriend, what it’s like to go on a date, kiss someone – even if it is you – and what it’s like to know that she can make someone want her. She knows that I’ll probably never have that, so she doesn’t mind talking to me about it.”
It was hard, looking at her and knowing what she said was true. It was hard enough as a human to have someone look at you twice if you were in a wheelchair and not either feel sorry for you or grossed out. When you were one of us, it was almost impossible. Audrey had friends here besides me, Jameson, and Brenda, but we all knew – especially after Jameson – that none of them would ever look at her the way that a guy should look at a girl.
And that made me angry.
Audrey was beautiful. Next to her, everyone looked boring and plain. She should have been the one everyone wanted to love and be with. Instead, she was the one everyone wanted to take care of, and she hated that. I hated that. My sister deserved better than – no, she deserved more than that.