“Are you going to mock me all night?” I say. “I know this was a totally stupid request and way beneath your pay grade.”
“I’m not mocking, America. Not even close.”
I look at him. His dark eyes are amused, and something else.
“What?” I ask, a little taken aback.
“You. Look. Beautiful.”
“Shut up.”
He laughs.
“How did you get the patch so perfect?” I ask pointing to his wrist. His tattoo’s covered seamlessly, but none of the figural ones abutting it – entwined birds and thorned branches – are covered at all.
“Exacto knife,” he says, shrugging. “And lots of experience with blades.”
It’s a reminder. So I don’t forget who he really is.
“You don’t have a weapon on you, do you?” I ask after a moment.
“It is a matter of sincere regret to me, America, that we live in such different worlds. Yes, of course. Always a weapon. Are there metal detectors at your school?”
“No.”
He nods, looks out the window for a bit, then returns his eyes to me. He must read the question in them because he hikes one pant leg up enough for me to see an ankle holster.
When we get to the high school, he gets out, opens the door for me. “Now, steel in your spine. And tell me, who are we trying to make jealous?”
I laugh weakly. “That obvious?”
“You think I’m even a bit of a fool?”
“No. But you are hot. And he’s already heard me talk about you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Should I take that as encouragement, America?”
I make a rude noise. “Like I’m anything more than a pay stub.”
He looks like he’s going to say something, then changes his mind.
“What?”
“Give me a visual so I know when to dial it up.”
I describe John to him, then turn to the entrance of the school. I must look conflicted, because he seems exasperated when he turns me back to face him.
“You’re never going to make him jealous that way, America.” He pulls me close to kiss me. It’s surprisingly tender.
“Oh,” I say when he lets me go.
“What? You thought this jealousy thing would work without kissing?”
“No. It’s just … it’s not like I imagined.”
“You imagined?” He’s amused again, but also pleased.
“I thought gang guys would kiss harsh and mean.”
“Yeah. Well, I’ll keep that in mind,” he says.
“My real name’s Abbie,” I say when we walk through the doors.
“Don’t,” he warns.
“I’m not scared of you, you know.”
His hand is a distraction on my waist as he nudges me toward the table with the beverages. “I’m not one of your boys, America.”
“If you were, you wouldn’t have poured that for me,” I say as he hands me a cup of lime-green punch.
I wait while he takes a sip, then smirk as he sets the cup down straightaway.
“So, why a hawk on the limo?” I ask.
“Fast. Harsh. Mean. But you knew that about my kind already, right?”
His smile is bitter, like nothing I’ve seen on his face before. And even though I feel a twinge when I see it, his words drive me straight to heated.
“Isn’t that what the ‘not one of yours’ was about? Or the way you talk about guns and knives and us living in different worlds? So I get we’re not ‘the same kind?’” I glare at him. “And what the hell do you mean by it anyway – that we’re different kinds because you’re ink or because you’re gang? No, don’t answer, because either way, it’s shit.”
He doesn’t exactly back down, but he looks away from me momentarily. “Jesus. Are you always this fierce?”
“My dad’s wolf clan,” I say. “And before you tell me that’s too much personal information, I don’t care. Got it?”
“My last name means hawk. That’s why the limo logo,” he says after a moment.
“And I already knew about the wolf thing,” he adds.
“R-i-i-i-ght.”
He spreads his hands out as if pleading for peace. “Start over?”
“I’m keeping the part where you think I look beautiful. But nothing else.”
Except the kiss, I amend mentally, but hell if I’m going to say it.
He doesn’t even ask for a dance, just holds out his hand and gives me this sidelong look that takes the bottom right out of my stomach. Then, as the music turns slow and he takes me in his arms, I see John. He looks unbelievably handsome in a white dinner jacket and Rose is beautiful in a long, floaty dress the same color as her name. They’re across the dance floor from us, just barely moving, glued to each other and swapping spit.
“Hold it together, America,” Toño whispers in my ear. “Half the battle is won with the front you present.”
He dances me closer to them.
“She’s pretty,” he says after a few moments.
“I know.”
“But she’s not you.”
Without any prompting at all I move so close our bodies are breathing in concert. His hand lazily teases the small of my back. The body held against mine is impossible to ignore. Mine sure does funny things in response.
He laughs in my ear when he notices. “You’re delicious, America.”
“Shut up.”
Which makes him laugh harder. “Sorry. I forgot you’re a child.”
“I am not.”
His arms tighten around me. They’re corded, like steel. His whole body is that way. The eyes that meet mine hold challenge.
“Is this part of the jealously ploy?” I ask.
“If you want,” he answers.
“Do you think he’s even noticed?”
“He’s noticed,” Toño says.
“Then why doesn’t he make a move?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you?”
He steps back for a second and looks at me. I can’t hold his gaze and, as my eyes slide away, he pulls me back to him. But not nearly as tight as before. We circle around our space on the dance floor. One song. Two. I almost forget about John. Almost.
“Toño?”
“Don’t you ever stay quiet?” His sigh is for effect, exaggerated. “What?”
“What if he doesn’t care?”
“Then he doesn’t care and you get on with your life, America. Don’t give him the advantage by knowing he’s hurt you, understand?”
“Is that your trick?”
“Anybody who’s ever had to throw down knows it.”
“Just pretend you don’t care that he’s there,” he adds after a moment. “You think you can pull that off?”
“Why would I care when I’m in your arms?” I say lightly.
He stops. “Don’t you dare treat me as if I’m less than him.”
“It’s so not like that,” I say. I have to pull him back to me.
I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes. There’s something about the set of his shoulders and the way he holds himself that makes me want to get under his skin and seal up whatever pinpricks I’ve added to the whole bleeding mess he holds inside.
I slide my hand from his shoulder to his chest and down his shirtfront. I let myself imagine what it might be like to be with him. It’s perilous, I know. He carries a trace of scent – cinnamon or ginger, maybe – sweet and biting. It makes me want to taste his mouth again.
I feel a shiver run down my body.
“Cold?” He rubs my back to warm it.
When I look up, what’s in his eyes is so complicated I can’t begin to decipher it.
“It’s not that,” I say. “I’m just an idiot. And … confused.”
“About what?”
“Me. You.”
It’s still tender when he kisses me this time, but different. As if he’s holding back a volcano. The heat gets through anyway, and I finally get why moths f
lock to light. I don’t care if I burn as long as I don’t have to step away.
Which means when John taps me on the shoulder, I come away more than a little disoriented.
“John, Rose, this is Toño,” I hear myself introducing them as if I were outside my body. Having stepped away from Toño, I feel lightheaded. Maybe I wobble because he puts his arm around my waist to move me back close. His hand comes to rest lightly on the skin just above the rhinestone buttons, then starts to trace a trail up my back.
For a second I wonder if he knows what effect this has on me, but then I remember I’m paying him for this, and for the way John’s jaw tightens when he notices.
“Cut in?” he says. He’s not really asking.
Toño moves away immediately and offers his hand to a scowling Rose.
John pulls me to him. “What game are you playing, Abs?”
“No game,” I say as we start to move to the music.
“You bring that gangster to the prom,” he says, “and then you tongue wrestle with him in front of everyone? I know you’re doing it just to mess with me.”
“I like him,” I say. More than like him. Stupid body. Stupid imagination. Stupid me.
“He’s not like us, Abs.”
I look into the eyes of the boy I’ve loved most of my life. “And how’s that?”
“For one thing, we’re not thugs,” he says. “And we don’t prey on people’s weaknesses or take advantage of them or lie to them.”
“Really? Didn’t we do all that in order to break certain friends of ours out of the inkatorium?”
“That’s different.”
“All right, how about telling one girl you love her while secretly doing another? Lying by omission is still a lie.”
He hitches his shoulders. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” I say, surprised that I mean it.
“If you wanted to show me how much I still want you, you got it. So, what now?”
“I don’t know.”
He kisses me.
It’s so much like it was I’m thrown back in time. John’s arms feel like home. When his hands slide down to my butt to move me tighter to him, it would be the easiest thing in the world to follow. But I step back instead.
I look away from him. Both Rose and Toño are watching us. Rose seems like she’s on the verge of tears and, before he turns his face back to say something to her, Toño wears the expression my mother does when she talks about the moment she knew she’d never go on to med school.
I want, very badly right then, to reach out and touch the corded arm under its fine, dark fabric cover. But it dances out of reach, deliberately moving away from me.
“I’ve always loved you, Abbie,” John says, drawing my attention back to him.
“But not so much that you’d wait for me,” I say.
“Going with Rose was just my way to respect that ridiculous agreement of yours. A way to bide my time until you can be with me,” he says, then smiles that smile that he knows melts me. “Isn’t that proof of love? Most girls would get that.”
“I’ve never been most girls.”
When the song ends, I return him to Rose.
“Let’s go,” I say to Toño.
“Revenge isn’t all that sweet, is it?” he says when he opens the door of the limo for me.
“No.”
Once the car gets going, I look out the window at the passing landscape, at once familiar and so unfamiliar I can’t make sense of it.
“He’s just a boy, America,” he says after a while. “Maybe you should cut him a break. We’re all idiots at that age.”
“I’m his age,” I say.
“So maybe you’re an idiot too.”
I snort, then stay quiet for a long while.
I look over at Toño. He looks back at me.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Twenty-five.”
“Do you remember being 18?”
He grins. “It’s only seven years.”
“You remember the way your heart tells you crazy things?”
“Sure.”
“You remember the way your head isn’t clear enough to sort out the mess of thoughts that run through it?”
“Yeah, that too.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you asked me to be.”
“Because I paid you to be, you mean.”
“The deal was sealed before you asked me,” he says. “You knew you weren’t paying and I wasn’t buying. I don’t buy or sell human beings, America. Not even for a night.”
After I turn away, he goes silent for a while.
“Show me your favorite place here.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s your favorite place.” When I look at him his eyes are steady on mine.
“Okay.” I lean forward and tap on the dark glass between our seats and the driver’s. When it rolls down, I give him directions.
It’s weird walking over the crunchy concrete shards in high heels. I have to grab Toño for balance a couple of times then, irritated, I kick the shoes away and take off at a run toward the chute. I don’t stop until I’m at the very top, out of breath, with my face tipped up to the stars. A few minutes later he’s standing there beside me, also looking up.
“I don’t remember the sky having so many stars,” he says.
“They’re always there, just in some places it’s harder to see them because all of the reflected light from houses and streetlights and cars.”
“Sad that real light would be eclipsed by imitation,” he says.
He glances at me, then back up at the sky. “So why did your boy choose the lesser light? Explain it to me, America.”
“I made a vow,” I say. “To my mom. That I wouldn’t be with anyone until I was at least 19. Older than she was when she married, got pregnant and gave up on her dream of med school. And the thing is, I don’t break my promises. Not the real ones anyway. John knows that. He just didn’t want to wait.”
“Or whatever,” I add after a moment. “He ended up getting what he wanted anyway.”
“No, he ended up with an imitation of what he wanted. You know it, he knows it. And after tonight, we all know it.”
I look at him.
“I feel sorry for the girl,” he says.
“Don’t. She’s as mean as she is pretty.”
“She was hurt when she saw you kissing.”
I want to ask him how he felt, but I don’t dare. After a while I ask, “So, can you guess why this is my favorite place?”
“You can imagine yourself flying right off the chute into tomorrow,” he says.
“You are so your last name. Not everyone dreams of air and wings, you know.”
“Okay, then. You like flirting with danger.” I see him smile a little after he says it.
“Yeah, well. But that’s not the reason either.”
“So, tell me,” he says.
“The stars give without any expectation of return. Unconditionally. They shed light on us all the time, no matter what we do or how badly we mess up. Which makes them a whole lot kinder than human beings.”
“Nearly everything’s kinder than humans.”
It just hangs there for a while.
“Toño? Have you ever killed anyone?”
He looks up at the stars again. “Yes.”
“I’ve been arrested, you know. I understand how things don’t always end where they start.”
“You making excuses for me, America?” When he turns his face back to mine, it’s hard and sealed up. “Don’t. I’d do it again in an instant. There isn’t anything that’s going to prevent me from protecting what’s mine.”
We walk down the chute without talking. He detours to retrieve my shoes while I pick my way to the walkway near the concrete factory building. Funny how when you’re going fast you hardly notice what pierces you, but slow down and it becomes intolerable. My feet are throbbing.
He catches up to me, then lo
oks over his shoulder. “Somebody with a flashlight is coming up behind us. At a clip.”
“Shit,” I say. “Security. If I get caught trespassing here again I’m going to end up in jail.”
“You’re not,” he says as he steers me up the pathway, “going to get caught.” When he sees a doorway, he pushes me into its shadow. “Stay out of the light.”
“It’s too shallow. He’s going to see there’s someone.”
“Someone. But not you,” he says.
He thrusts me against the door as his hands find their way behind me to the ponytail he pulls free.”Hide your face with your hair, against my shoulder, so he can’t see it,” he says. Quiet, almost a whisper.
Then his hands are on the small of my back. I feel the fabric rustling as he hikes my dress up. A hand slides under my thigh to lift my leg to his waist. Then he presses against me.
“Hey! Enough of that now!” I hear Ravenswood – the security guard who busted me before – from somewhere behind Toño’s shoulder. “This isn’t a bedroom. Take it elsewhere.”
I feel Toño shielding me from sight even as he turns to the voice. I press my forehead into the taut trapezoid muscle under his shoulder blade and let my hair swing forward to obscure the sides of my face.
“Cut us a break, man. We weren’t hurting anything,” I hear him say.
I see the spill of flashlight filtering through my hair. Ravenswood is taking a good look at what he can see of me judging from the duration of silence that accompanies the light.
“You can’t be here.”
“All right. But you know how it is when you’ve got something this fine at hand.” Toño’s snicker has one of those sleazy-guy undertones that raises my hackles.
Ravenswood’s answering one is even worse. “If you need a place there’s an abandoned motel just past the edge of town where most of us go when the girls are underage. No one’s going to stop you there.”
“Hey, thanks, man. Just let me get it together and we’ll be off,” he says to Ravenswood.
“Hurry it up.”
“A little privacy?”
“Didn’t seem to bother you before.” But Ravenswood must comply because I hear the crunch of gravel. I keep my face behind the fall of hair as Toño takes his jacket off and drops it around my shoulders. He turns me straight into him so my face is hidden in his chest and his arms around me form a sort of visual barrier. I hear Ravenswood take a couple of steps toward us.
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