“Wait.” I gather my trash and stand. “I’ll come with you.”
“No. Stay,” he says. There’s hurt in his eyes. “See how you like it.”
Okay, he’s pissed. I get that.
Just how many different ways does he need to illustrate it?
Since Tuesday’s lunch, I feel like I’m dating Mount Vesuvius. On the surface, everything is fine. In fact, that’s the only word I can get out of him.
“I’m fine.”
“Everything is fine.”
“We’re doing juuuuust fine.”
But deep down, he’s like a slow-boiling pit of lava. His smile is strained. His fingers are twitchy. I can see the outline of his jaw muscle, he’s got it clenched so often. The only thing missing is puffs of steam coming out of his ears. And now it’s Friday night and I’m starting to get pissed that he’s pissed.
What happened to trying? Is this him trying?
Our study session is a waste of time—why did he invite me to the guesthouse anyway? I glare from under my eyelashes. I’m on the bed, but instead of sitting beside me as usual, Dillon’s slouched in the green-striped, tall-backed chair usually reserved for dirty laundry. He’s pretending to read his econ book. At least, I think he’s pretending. The cinnamon candle is flickering on his nightstand. Does he think he’s setting the mood for later? Because if he thinks I’m getting naked with him, he’s going to be very disappointed.
I huff out a breath, forcing my gaze back to my laptop and a Wikipedia entry on Pompeii. I’ve also brought a library book and my assignment for the internship, but I can’t focus. That’s the worst part. I’ve wasted—wasted—two days that I should have been working. Other than the research Jace has done on the coin, I’ve made almost no headway on the ring. I’ve barely even gotten through my regular schoolwork. Fuming over a fuming boyfriend takes waaaaay too much energy.
Or is that his plan?
Frustrated, I huff out another breath.
He flips a page of his book. “You getting a cold or something?” he asks.
Anger bubbles. He’s not the only one with hot lava churning inside him. “Oh, so now you’re talking to me?”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
I close the lid of my laptop. “You said you were going to try.”
He doesn’t even look up. “I am trying.”
“Then you wouldn’t have let what Hannah said get to you like this.”
Another page crackles as he flips it over. “How am I supposed to feel when my friend cares about me more than my girlfriend?”
That deserves another huff, which I deliver loudly. “Hannah doesn’t care about you more, and of course she’d stay. She has no reason to go.”
He looks up, locking his gaze with mine. “Even if she did, she wouldn’t.”
“Is that what you want?” I ask. “Someone who’s going to follow a step behind you for the next fifty years?”
“What I want,” he says, “is you. Not behind me. Not ahead of me. Right fucking beside me.” He slams the book closed.
I flinch but at least we’re finally talking. “Can we discuss this without getting mad?”
“Too late for that—I am mad. I don’t know how to stop being mad.” He throws the book on the ground. It skids open, the pages fluttering. “We had a whole future mapped out—the two of us—and now I’m supposed to sit around and wait to see if I’m a part of it anymore?”
“That’s not what’s happening. You should be happy for me. You should be helping me!”
“You want help?” His eyes narrow. He’s up so suddenly, one second in the chair, the next across from me, his one hundred and eighty pounds feeling more like two thousand as the bed sags beneath his weight. He spins my library book so the title is facing him. “Bodies from the Ash,” he reads. “That’s what you want to leave me for? A city that’s been dead for two thousand years?” His gaze razors up to meet mine. “You want help? I’ll help you with the ashes.”
He takes the sheet of paper with my assignment. Before I realize what he’s doing, he’s got the candle. A small spiral of smoke follows his movement, the flame sputtering in the air as he swings the red pillar in front of himself. He holds the corner of the paper above the flame.
“Dillon, stop it!”
The paper catches fire, flares white, then blackens in a ragged line along the edge of the page.
I push up to my knees and grab his shoulder with one hand as I reach for the paper with the other. I yank it from him, then shove at his shoulder. Fury heats my breath as I blow at the curling edge of flame. It flares before dying out. The smell of smoke sticks in my throat. The bottom quarter of the sheet is burned, the serpent ring mostly gray ash. Thank God I let Jace make a copy.
My heart is pounding and I’m shaking so hard the bed is wobbling. It’s all I can do to hold myself together and not give in to the sobs that threaten. “What is wrong with you?” I cry. “What are you thinking?”
He barks out a laugh that isn’t anything like a laugh. “You were scared, weren’t you? Your precious assignment was burning. You grabbed that paper so fast—you weren’t about to let anything happen to it.” He tilts his head, watching me. “What about me? Would you do the same for me? Would you save me?”
“This is crazy. I’m going.” Breathing hard and fast, I gather up my things.
“Then who’s going to save me?”
I swipe at the edge of one eye and the heel of my palm comes away wet with tears. “What are you talking about?”
He raises the candle again. The flickering light hollows out his face, makes his eyes look dead.
“Dillon—”
Before I can finish whispering his name, he tilts the candle and a pool of deep red wax shifts like a living thing. Then with a tiny flick of his wrist, he tips the candle and a drop of hot wax sizzles on the soft flesh of his inner wrist.
My body freezes and then begins to tremble. “Dillon. For God’s sake, don’t—”
Another flick of his wrist and wax begins to drop like blood. Heavy. Red. Each drop lands beside the next, his skin puckering and blistering from the heat. In the time it takes me to cry out, there’s a trail of red down the line of his vein.
“Stop!” I yell. I grab the candle and he doesn’t fight me. He lets it go. Lets me blow it out and set it, trembling, on the table by my side of the bed. My mouth is dry. Thick bile gathers at the back of my throat. “I’ll get something for your arm.”
I slide off the bed. My body feels too heavy for my legs. The carpet is rough under my bare feet as I steady myself. The lights are all on, and I can see the gleam of Dillon’s weights in the next room, the outline of the bathroom. My purse is sitting on the floor where I dropped it, my sandals next to it. It’s all familiar and all completely foreign. I can’t feel myself in this place. In this moment. I can’t believe I’m here. How did I get here?
In the bathroom, I open the mirrored medicine cabinet. There’s Neosporin and calamine lotion. Pepto-Bismol tablets. A bottle of Advil and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. The top shelf is stacked with boxes of bandages and a roll of medical tape. I think of my mom. What would my mom do back when she was being a mom? Cold water. It comes to me. The press of a cold washcloth on my neck when I tried Lauren’s new curling iron.
I pull a washcloth off the towel rack and turn on the faucet. It’s not ice cold, but I wet the cloth and wring it out. Then I grab another towel, the Neosporin, a box of gauze bandages, and the roll of tape.
When I walk back, Dillon is sitting against the pillows watching me. His arm is resting on his leg, the burned skin an ugly pinkish red.
“I’m sorry.” He sounds tired. I can’t look at him. I sit beside him and he shifts to give me more room. I lay the cool cloth over the burns. I press it down carefully. “Does that hurt?”
He shakes his head.
For a long time, we stay like that. Me pressing the cloth to his wrist even after the coolness of it has faded into the heat of his skin.
&nbs
p; “Remember when I did this for you?” he says. “That first day at the pool?”
A tear leaks from the corner of my eye. I pull back the washcloth and pat his arm dry with the extra towel. The wax has hardened and most of it’s peeled off. I don’t know what to do about the bit that’s sticking to his skin. I don’t do anything. I squeeze Neosporin along the blisters and lay gauze over the top, two pads overlapping to cover all of it. Carefully, I tear strips of tape and smooth them over his skin and the edge of the gauze. When I’m done, I sit back, away from him, numb.
He shifts to his knees and then slides onto his stomach, crawling toward me, his body curling until his head is in my lap. I want to be angry. I want to push him away. But I also want to stroke his hair and whisper that it will be all right.
Because of course I remember.
“Maybe I can ask Mrs. Lyght about a deferral,” I say. The words tug out of me from some deep place.
He turns so that he’s looking up at me. “A deferral?”
“See if there’s any way I could go next year.”
“That would be…perfect. Next year would be perfect.” His smile nearly breaks my heart. “You’ll ask?”
I nod.
“I love you, Emma.”
“I love you, too.”
His breathing deepens. His hands are folded up by his chest but as he relaxes against me, his left arm falls open. The gauze is white against his skin, but I can still picture what’s beneath. A line of red running down his wrist. As if he’s slashed his vein.
“You and I,” he murmurs. “We save each other.”
It’s just after midnight. I want to be asleep—so badly. Instead, I’m staring up at a ceiling I can’t really see in the dark. There’s something awful about lying awake in the dark.
In Pompeii, on its last day, the ash rose so high that it blacked out the sun. Everything, everywhere, was dark. I think of my fresco girl. Anna. How frightening it must have been. The not knowing. The panic when you can’t see what’s right there in front of you. The irony strikes me but it’s not very funny. Here I am thousands of years later. I have a light by my bed. I can turn it on, but I’ll still be in the dark.
I reach for my phone and when the screen lights up, I see a text from Mom. Great.
Saw that WICKED is coming to Gammage next fall and thought of you. Maybe we can go together? Not trying to be pushy, by the way. Just miss you.
As if it’s some kind of Pavlovian response, my eyes fill with tears. I miss my mom. The one who took me to shows, the one I could talk to about anything. The mom I have now, the one living with Henry…I have nothing to say to her. I haven’t talked to her since my blowup at the house, but I promised Dad I’d go over for her birthday next week. It’s amazing how he can worry about her when she doesn’t think twice about him. I read the text again. I don’t know how to reply so I don’t. I clear the screen and pause.
It’s too late to call Marissa now. Guilt climbs my throat as I struggle to swallow. I never called her back this week—I haven’t even told her about Rome. How can I tell her what’s happening now? Instead I dial Lauren. It rings twice and then I hear a tired “Hey.”
Thank God.
“Hey,” I say.
“Everything okay?” I can hear the wariness in her voice.
I hate that she has to ask. I hate that we’ve become the kind of family where things are usually not okay. I hate that things are absolutely not okay right now and I have no idea how to tell her that.
“I just wanted to call.”
“You sound tired.”
“So do you.”
Her breath whooshes over the line. “I’ve got a huge paper due.”
“It’s Friday night.”
“The paper is due Monday and tomorrow is Law Day at the Tucson mall. I’m volunteering from nine to five, don’t ask me why.” I hear a pencil hit the desk. “How’s your project coming for the internship?”
“Oh. Um…”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No, I was just thinking about it and Pompeii.” And I was. Sort of.
“You and disasters. Speaking of which,” she adds, “did you tell Dad?”
When I’m quiet, she says, “Em. He’s making her a birthday present.”
“I know. I’m going to tell him.”
I hear the frustration in her sigh. “Just let me do it.”
“I’m the one who lives with him, Lauren. You agreed.”
“That was a stupid agreement,” she gripes, but I know that she’ll hold to it. “So how is Mr. Perfect?” she asks.
“Don’t call him that.”
There’s quiet on the line. “Em?”
He dripped wax on his arm.
I hear the words in my head but how can I say them? Once I do, I can never unsay them. And Lauren can never unhear them. Two years ago, when Marissa was dating Andy Tamura, they had a huge fight. She was hurt and sad and then so angry she told me he was an ass. He picks his nose and then wipes his snot under his chair. I saw it.
Four days later, they made up, enough to be friends again, but all I could think of whenever I saw Andy was him depositing his snot under chairs. And this…this is so much worse than snot. If I tell Lauren now, she’ll never forget. Even when Dillon and I have forgotten, she won’t.
Will I forget?
I squeeze my eyes shut and force a smile. “He’s great,” I say. “He brought me my favorite donut on Tuesday.” I wince. That sounds so stupid.
“I’ll alert the media,” she says with a yawn.
“I should let you go.”
“You sure everything is good?”
And I can tell by her voice that her mind has already drifted back to her books.
“Yeah, great. Night, Lauren.”
“Night, Emmie.”
I click the phone off and lie back down on my bed. He did bring me a donut, I tell myself. He brought me into his group of friends and made me feel like I belonged. He helped me mop up the mess called my dad without ever saying a word. When I skipped school after an obligatory weekend with Mom and her new family, he found me at the park. When I lashed out, he didn’t run. When I wanted to fall apart, he wouldn’t let me. He saved me, over and over, by loving me more than I thought anyone ever would.
And my first day at the community center, he saved my life.
I probably wouldn’t have died that morning, but facial disfigurement was a real possibility.
It was exactly eight days after I officially moved into the house with Dad. I’d had a teary goodbye with Marissa and come close to begging Lauren not to go back to Tucson but to transfer to ASU, closer to me. I’d boxed up all my clothes and my books and my treasures, and on the morning I left, Mom insisted on helping me load everything in the car. I stood there while she hugged me and managed not to cry until I was on the road. Cleo was in her carrier on the seat beside me and she cried with me for the entire hour it took to drive.
The only good thing I had to look forward to was my job at the community swim center. I’d brought up the topic of summer jobs one Saturday at Cupz and Dillon had told me he might be able to help me find one. The community center where he and Jace worked as lifeguards was always looking for help when summer programs began and kids flocked there to swim, hang out in the game room, and watch movies. He told me to call the center and ask for a woman named Susan Felix. When I called, all I did was mention Dillon’s name and I had an interview.
Susan spent fifteen minutes with me, long enough to determine that I wasn’t a felon, to look at my report card (all As), and to read a reference letter from the guidance counselor at my high school. She slid some papers in front of me, told me to fill them out, and the job was mine.
When I showed up for work at eight o’clock my first morning, Susan walked me to the concession booth and handed me a blue-and-white-striped shirt from under the counter. I buttoned it over the sleeveless eyelet blouse I’d worn with a gray cotton skirt.
She frowned at the pair of can
vas Toms on my feet. “Those might get ruined. After the lunch rush, the floor in here will be a sticky mess.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “They’re old.”
She showed me the drink cooler, the rolling grill for the hot dogs, and the variety of chips, as well as how the register worked. Cash only. I’d just had a lesson in how to operate the slushy machine when the phone on her belt started ringing.
“Now what?” she said in way of answering. She sighed and then gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Emma. I need to take care of this. While I’m gone, would you make up some more slushy mix? The containers and syrups are up there.” She pointed to two wood shelves mounted above the machine. The lower shelf was stacked with bottles of syrup and Tupperware pitchers. “Cherry is always the most popular,” she added. “I’ll be back before the rush to make sure you have the hang of it.”
She didn’t come back.
The slushy machine had three compartments and they were already churning with cherry, grape, and bubble gum. I made up an extra pitcher of grape and bubble gum. Cherry was the problem. There wasn’t any more syrup on the shelf above the machine. Instead, I could see the edge of a new bottle on the highest shelf, wedged in beside large square boxes. Napkins and paper cups, I supposed. A quick look at my watch showed I was running out of time. Tiptoes didn’t work, so I tried jumping. I bumped the underside of the shelf and the bottle wobbled a little. If I could just hit it a little harder…Jumping again, I pushed at the wood, but instead of the bottle wobbling, the shelf did.
“Emma—don’t!” I recognized Dillon’s voice as the back corner caved and the weight of the boxes slowly tipped everything forward. Toward my head.
I threw up my arms but before I could get crushed, two arms were beside mine and Dillon shouldered me out of the way. “I got it,” he said.
My head spun as I stepped back to the far counter. Dillon held up the shelf, his arms spreading to balance the weight, one leg forward, his head dipped between clenched shoulder muscles. It was like Atlas holding the world—if Atlas had been wearing a stretchy white swim shirt and blue swim trunks.
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