by Rix, Dan
Usually, I had no problem sprawling out on Jace’s couch and kicking my feet up on Malcolm’s lap.
Why was this so much harder?
Why was I so nervous?
I tried, and failed, to focus on the movie.
I felt his eyes on me in my periphery, and my cheeks flushed.
Did he want me to move?
But when I looked up shyly, my breath caught in my throat.
He was just . . . staring at me, his eyes all brooding intensity.
And I was caught in that stare, hypnotized.
His head moved forward.
Automatically, my mouth rose to meet his, and our lips met.
We kissed, to the crazy drumroll of my pulse.
His hand cupped my cheek, and my hand clasped his forearm, and then we were really kissing, our tongues teasing each other’s, our bodies angling closer. Tentatively, I climbed on top of him, straddled him. Breathing faster, Malcolm sat up underneath me, gripped my hips, his fingers sliding under my tank top and claiming my exposed skin.
I turned molten at his touch, a shaky breath rising in my throat, and kissed him harder . . . because I had waited sooooo long for this, and now I knew he liked me too!
The laptop slid off, forgotten.
Malcolm’s kissing me.
Holy crap, he’s kissing me!
Gripping me harder, he moved his hands up my legs, his fingers digging into my thighs, reeling me in deeper and deeper while I could feel his muscles trembling from an effort to restrain himself, which I so wanted him to break—
My cell phone rang.
I paused, one of his lips between my teeth, and whispered against his mouth, “Are you fucking serious?”
“No worries, I got you.” Smirking, he reached around me and—while I blushed at his hand on my butt—pulled my phone from the back pocket of my shorts. “It’s Zoe.”
“Don’t answer—”
“Zo, what’s up? Remi’s right here.” To my horror, he put the call on speaker, and I found myself on speaker phone with my best friend while straddling Malcolm, as if my position wasn’t compromising enough.
“Zoe, hi,” I said in a too-high, flustered voice as I scrambled to get off him, but he passed the phone around to his other hand, his arms caging me in, clearly enjoying making me squirm.
“Remi?” Zoe said uncertainly.
“Hi—yeah—I’m here.” Glaring at him, I finally managed to disentangle myself, my cheeks burning.
“What are you guys doing?” she asked suspiciously. “You sound out of breath.”
“Nothing,” I blurted out. “Just watching a movie.”
“Oh. So you guys are just, like, hanging out? Is Jace with you guys?”
“Uh . . . no,” I said guiltily. “Why, what’s up?”
Despite her hurt tone, all I felt was butterflies. I risked a peek at Malcolm, biting my lip, only to find him staring at me with a heated look that said, This isn’t over.
My heart did happy cartwheels.
Ohmigod he liked me! He actually liked me!
“Okay, so there was that bright flash, and it kind of zapped the car, right?” she said, launching right into a story while Malcolm and I eyefucked each other. “But what if the flash did something to us, too? See, I’ve been feeling weird all day. Like, really weird.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, not paying attention.
Could we go right back to kissing after this? Or did we have to act all bashful and pretend nothing happened?
Did I now have permission to kiss him whenever I wanted?
That would be weird. To kiss him in front of Jace, or Zoe.
Yeah . . . no.
How was this supposed to work, anyway? We were friends.
We were friends.
And we’d just hooked up. That was exactly what you weren’t supposed to do with friends. It ruined friendships. We would be weird around each other. It would change the dynamic. It would change everything. Like what if we started dating? What if he dumped me? I’d never be able to show my face in the group again.
One paranoid thought after another chased itself around my brain until my happy little buzz twisted to panic in my gut.
Oh no, what had I done?
“Like right now, reality feels sort of shallow, like it’s only a surface layer.” Zoe took another breath, still trying to explain whatever she was talking about. “Okay, you know when you’re dreaming, and you kind of know you’re dreaming but not really, but you feel like if you think really hard, you might be able to change something? Well, it feels like that for me.”
Malcolm frowned and leaned forward. “You mean lucid dreaming?”
“Yeah, exactly,” Zoe said. “So I tried it.”
Now she had my attention, too. “Tried what?”
“I tried to change something. Just by thinking.”
Malcolm and I shared a bewildered look.
“And?” I said.
“Can you guys come over?” she said. “Because . . . I think I’m telekinetic.”
“I have to set it up just right.”
While Malcolm and I watched, Zoe perched a Chapstick tube on the edge of her bureau, so half of it hung over. It kept tipping into her palm, but finally, she had it balanced perfectly and slowly backed away.
“Now watch.”
“Tell me it falling off isn’t the trick,” Malcolm said. “Because it’s going to fall off without you doing jack.”
“No, of course that’s not the trick—I mean, that might be this trick—but I can do much more than that, too, so just—shut up and watch, okay?”
Flustered, she took up position across the room, and stared intently at the Chapstick tube.
I sat stiffly on her bed, exactly one foot away from Malcolm, unable to focus on anything but him as the kiss replayed itself in my brain.
I could still taste him, still smell his cologne all over me.
My body felt buoyant, like I was filled with helium, even as my mind fixated on every aspect of his body language that indicated something was off—his deathly silence on the drive over, the way he edged away from me now, refused to look at me, pretended I didn’t exist.
Did he think it was a mistake?
Because I didn’t.
Oh God, I was really, really into him.
Like, way more into him than I’d thought. I’d been in denial, but kissing him had broken the dam.
And like I feared, things were now awkward between us.
Correction: more awkward.
They’d always been awkward.
Ugh, Zoe had interrupted at the absolute worst time.
Because of her, we hadn’t gotten the chance to talk about our feelings and figure out where we stood and where to go from here. Instead our kiss dangled between us like an awkward joke with no punchline.
I would try to catch his eye, or scoot closer, but I didn’t want him to think I was clingy.
The Chapstick tube didn’t budge.
“Well?” Malcolm said.
“Shush, I need to concentrate.” Zoe screwed up her eyes, looking constipated.
Nothing happened.
Then, trying to be inconspicuous, she nudged the wall with her hip, and the Chapstick tube clattered on the floor.
“See!” she cried. “I moved it with my mind.”
“I’m going home,” Malcolm muttered, climbing to his feet.
“Zoe, you obviously bumped the wall,” I said.
“No, no, I didn’t! I willed it to move. I’m serious. Look, I’ll do it again.” She set it up again and ran back across the room, but it fell off before she even got there. “No, wait, I swear it worked before.”
“Zoe, why would you think you were telekinetic?” I asked.
She collapsed on the bed and buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know,” she moaned. “I just . . . I keep feeling like something’s wrong . . . wrong with the world, wrong with our memories, wrong with us, wrong with my body . . . and it would be nice if some good came out of i
t.”
“Like a superpower?” I said.
“It doesn’t feel real,” she said. “None of this feels real. It feels like I should be able to just reach out and change it.”
“Remi, let’s go.” Malcolm nodded to the door.
My heart leapt.
We were still leaving together?
He still wanted me to stay at his house?
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Zo.” I jumped to my feet, ready to follow him out.
“I feel sick,” Zoe grumbled.
I felt a twinge of guilt at leaving her, but then, she had lied about being telekinetic.
“Feel better, okay?”
She sat bolt upright, her eyes bulging. “No, I feel—I think I’m going to—oh God—”
She scrambled past me and dashed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, rattling the door knob.
A split second later came the sound of her vomiting.
“Zoe!” I ran to the door, but she’d locked it. “Zoe, you okay?”
She groaned, then upchucked again.
Malcolm and I exchanged worried looks.
“Food poisoning?” I whispered.
They’d gone to the Big Pine Brewery for dinner.
He shook his head with a baffled look. “We split the same burger.”
After the toilet flushed, and the sink ran for a minute, she poked her head out, her face pale.
“Guys,” she said weakly, “is it bad if your vomit is black?”
“The doctor said I was fine. Honestly, I’m fine,” Zoe reassured me for the tenth time the next day. “I just have an ulcer, Remi—I’m not going to die. Probably because I’m stressed out from the crash. Anyway, I’m on medication now. So I’m fine.”
We were all hanging out at that barbecue spot we’d discovered right on the edge of the river. Having no leads, the four of us had come back here to poke around, downriver from where we’d crashed.
Farther up the road, Ridgeview Drive was still barricaded.
“You better be okay,” I said. “Because you’re my best friend.”
She looked up, startled. “I thought Vincent was.”
“Well, yeah, but I think of him more as a younger brother.” I smiled. “You’re totally my BFF, Zoe.”
“Duh, that’s right,” she said, perking up.
Last night, I’d gone in with her and her mom to urgent care, and I’d stayed with her the whole night—yeah, Malcolm’s and my sleepover never happened, which was probably for the best.
Her black vomit, it turned out, was from gastrointestinal bleeding.
Why she had gastrointestinal bleeding, they had no idea, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it had something to do with the crash.
I sensed she wasn’t quite telling me everything they found wrong with her, probably downplaying whatever she had out of embarrassment.
She was putting on a brave face.
My gaze drifted across the lawn to Malcolm, who was raising his pistol toward a distant tree, on which he’d spray-painted the Glipper’s shadow.
“Cover your ears,” I said, just in time.
He fired four shots into its head—bark and slivers of green wood exploded—then dropped his aim, and emptied the rest of the clip into its torso.
He missed only once.
When I lowered my hands, the shots were still echoing around the valley.
“I made all those bullets hit,” Zoe said, lowering her hands from her ears. “And I made that one miss . . . with my mind.”
“Oh, shut up.” I gave her a playful shove, and she smiled weakly.
“Come on, let me fire one shot . . . one shot,” Jace begged, hovering behind Malcolm.
“No, I don’t trust you.” Malcolm ejected his ammo clip and slapped in another, did that slide racking thingy, and took aim at the tree again.
“Dude, I won’t aim it at you, I swear.”
“You’re sloppy.” Squinting behind the gun, Malcolm lined up the sights.
“Sloppy? Oh, come on!”
Malcolm lowered the weapon and glared back. “No, Jace, and back the fuck up, unless you want to die.”
“I freaking love Malcolm,” I said, giggling at the argument, before I realized what I’d said and clamped my mouth shut.
Zoe definitely noticed, but didn’t say anything.
I felt myself go pink.
Malcolm raised the gun again, and we both covered our ears as he emptied another magazine.
“So, uh,”—she scratched the boulder with a twig—“you and Malcolm, huh?”
Zoe could read me too well.
I should just tell her.
Blushing furiously, I said, “Yeah, we kind of, like . . . kissed last night.”
The corner of her lips nudged upward. “Well? Aren’t you going to give me the details?”
I smiled guiltily, biting my lip, and shrugged. “I don’t know. It was nice.”
“Nice?” She stared at me. “That’s it? It was nice?”
“Fine, it was hot. You happy?”
“That’s what I thought,” she said in a self-satisfied tone, pressing her lips together. “So are you guys, like, a thing now? Is that why you’ve been ignoring each other all morning?”
And there was my insecurity.
I cradled my face in my hands and groaned, “I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re a thing or not, because I can’t even talk to him—it’s Malcolm.”
“Do you want to be?”
The question startled me.
That I would even have a choice in the matter. I blinked and looked up at her.
“Um . . . maybe?” I said, cringing a little. “Is that bad? I mean—wait, no, what am I saying, of course I don’t want anything serious. He’s going to Annapolis in two weeks and I’m going to UCLA. And we need to find Vincent.”
But when I looked over at Malcolm, and saw the grim resolve in his eyes as he reloaded and took aim at the shadow, I got butterflies all over again.
He was all things good, all things honorable, and I trusted him to protect us. To protect Vincent.
Next to me, Zoe jolted forward and craned her neck toward the river. “Hey, I think—I think there’s something in the water over there.”
I followed her gaze toward the slivers of gently gurgling water between the trees, the reeds swaying in the shallows, but saw nothing.
“What’d you see?” I said.
“I don’t know, it looked like—never mind, it was probably nothing.”
But she continued to stare at the river.
“Remi!” Malcolm called.
I flinched and looked up, my heart beating stupidly fast all of a sudden. “Yeah?”
He waved me over to him, and I came obediently.
“I want to show you how to fire a gun.”
I froze in place. “Oh, no, that’s . . . that’s okay.”
He locked eyes with me, and I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Remi, you’re more than capable of defending yourself,” he said, like he’d read my mind a second ago. “I want you to know how to shoot one.”
I swallowed and nodded, my palms suddenly slick with sweat.
“Are you kidding me?” Jace sneered. “You’re letting a girl shoot?”
“I’m letting someone responsible shoot,” Malcolm growled. “You know what, Jace, I’m sick of your bad attitude. I want you over there.” He thrust his finger toward the boulder where Zoe was still sitting, now leaning out over the water to see around the bend.
“Whatever. Screw you.” Jace stormed off in a huff.
“I’m really not that responsible,” I backpedaled. “Maybe I should just watch.”
“Your judgment,” he said, “I would trust over Jace’s any day. Here, you need protection.” From his gun case, he pulled out an extra pair of safety glasses and seated them on my head, brushing away stray hairs.
My breath faltered at his touch.
His eyes lingered on mine an extra second, and I wondered if he was t
hinking about kissing me again.
But he didn’t.
Next he pulled out silicone earplugs, which he rolled between his thumb and forefinger and inserted into my ears. Having no clue about proper safety precautions, I was completely at his mercy.
The silicone foam expanded in my ear canal, gradually muting the rustling sound of the forest until all I heard was my own thumping heart and my whooshing breath, the sensation vaguely uncomfortable.
I looked to him for reassurance.
“How we doing?” he said, his voice sounding faint and faraway.
“Good.” I gave him a thumbs up, even though I was nervous as heck.
I was noticing a theme here.
I was always nervous around Malcolm.
Finally, he put the gun in my hands, closing my palms around the handle like he’d shown me yesterday, and oriented me toward the target—the eight-foot tall Glipper he’d made with black spray paint, the trunk now pockmarked with holes.
The gun felt heavy in my hands, and part of that weight was psychological.
Guns killed.
They’d always seemed like a foreign concept to me. Something you saw in movies and on TV but not in real life.
In real life, the weight of a gun in my hands and the sight of all that black, glinting metal, was terrifying.
It was only Malcolm’s presence that kept me determined.
He stepped back, leaving me standing there trembling, my body rigid, afraid the gun would go off any second if I so much as twitched.
“Now squeeze the trigger,” he said. “Slowly. Increase the pressure until it fires.”
My heart leapt out of my rib cage and started pounding at the base my throat.
This was it.
With an effortful swallow, I took a deep breath and gave the trigger a light tap, then winced and squeezed my eyes shut in anticipation.
Nothing happened.
“Eyes open,” he said. “Never close your eyes.”
I forced my eyes back open, hyperventilated a few more breaths, then tried again.
“Do it slowly,” he said. “You’ll feel the trigger start to move . . . then push it straight back.”
The trigger depressed under my finger, and I knew I was doing it.
I was doing it!