Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (20 page)

I shut my eyes to the Irish sky and opened them to the inky blackness floating above northern Illinois.

“Like I said,” I told the others, “I'll think about it.”

Boston started to push, but York urged him to drop it.

“Police shouldn't be so scary,” Boston said. “Maybe instead of becoming a judge, I should go into law enforcement.”

York chuckled. “You want to be a police officer now?”

“Not an officer. A chief. Or a commissioner. Or a sheriff ! I could weed out all the crooked cops.”

“I could never be a cop,” I said. “It would be too hard to bust people like Ma—like my mom.”

“Plus, the uniforms are really unflattering,” Andi added. “No flair.”

“You could be a flamenco dancer,” I suggested. “They have flair.”

Andi laughed. “What about you?”

Me
? All I'd ever wanted to be when I grew up was somewhere else.

“I just want to travel.”

“Travel where?” York asked.

“Everywhere.”

“That's not really a job, though,” Boston pointed out.

Party pooper.

I pictured my corkboard at home, a menagerie of exotic sunsets and towering mountains, a postcard of Hong Kong's neon lights overlapping a full-page spread on Bora-Bora torn from a magazine. The article was written by a self-proclaimed Gypsy traveler who spent every last penny he had on a one-way plane ticket, then begged his way into a job cleaning toilets at some resort. He'd seen half the world that way, staying in one place just long enough to save up the money he needed to get to the next place.

I told the others about the Gypsy, but they weren't as enchanted by the idea.

“So you're saying he's homeless,” Boston said.

“Well, when you put it that way
 
. . .”

“You could teach English overseas,” he said. “Our cousin does that.”

“Or join the Peace Corps,” York offered. “They travel.”

I had actually looked into that one. But the Corps usually required a college education, and Boston's admission statistics had given me new doubts about whether any school would even take me. I vowed in that moment to spend more time studying this year and less time wandering around downtown.

As I thought about it, the familiar scene of downtown River City unfolded in my mind, its storefronts lit up with neon, the shelves of Pete's Pawn packed to the rafters with junk. Well, what if it wasn't junk?

“Maybe I could open a store,” I said. “You know those guys in Iowa who go all over the country buying cheap antiques at flea markets, then sell the stuff for a bazillion dollars?”

“You want to sell antiques?” Boston asked.

“Not antiques,” I said, the vision coming together even as I spoke. “More like exotic imports. I could travel the world buying hand-printed fabrics or statues carved from bone or spices you can't find in any grocery store. And then I could open up a little store somewhere.”

“I'd shop there,” Andi said.

“Great,” I deadpanned. “So I'll need to install some surveillance cameras.”

She laughed. “I promise to pay for anything I take from your store. But you have to give me the friends-and-family discount.

Friends and family.

I smiled up at the clouds. “Deal.”

“Nice.” York squeezed my hand. “You've already got your first customer.”

“What about you?” I asked him, a teasing note in my voice. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

York let go of my hand and said pointedly, “Apparently not an architect, right, B?”

Oh yeah.
I'd forgotten about that little spat.

“Oh fine!” Boston sighed dramatically. “You can be an architect!”

“Gee, thanks.” York stretched, and I found myself wishing he would reach for my hand again, but he didn't. “I don't care what I do for a living, as long as I'm not doing something lame when the apocalypse hits.”

“The apoca-what now?” Andi asked.

“The apocalypse,” York said. “The end of the world. The big ka-boom! I don't want to be, y'know, caught with my pants down when it happens.”

“I heard you got caught with your pants down in the girls' bathroom once.” Andi snickered, and I felt a twinge of irritation when York didn't deny it.

“Yeah, and what if it had all gone to shit right then and there? Or worse! What if I'd been taking a dump?”

“Dude,” Boston said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Think about it,” York insisted. “How many people are sitting on toilets right this minute?”

“Thousands?” I suggested.

“No,” Andi said. “Probably hundreds of thousands.”

“More like millions,” Boston said.

York waved his hands in the air over our heads. “It was a theoretical question.”

“A rhetorical question,” Boston corrected.

“Whatever.” York sighed, losing patience. “The point is, if there was some sort of apocalypse right now, not everybody is going to be standing in the street watching it all go down like in the movies. Somebody—probably a lot of somebodies—are going to be squatting on porcelain.” I felt his shoulder shrug into mine. “I just don't want to be that guy sitting on a toilet at the end of the world.”

 

26

A COOL BREEZE started to blow in off the lake, chasing us inside. The cabin didn't have a washer and dryer, but the boys pointed Andi and me to a bathroom with a hairdryer to help get the damp out of our underwear. Andi was disgusted to find bits of dirt and twigs clinging to hers.

“Forget it,” she said, tossing the black thong into a trash can. “I'm going commando.”

She focused instead on fixing her eyeliner while I diligently dried my own gray undies and pulled on the rest of my clothes.

“What about your hair?” she asked.

I peeked in the mirror and instantly wished I hadn't. Where my hair wasn't flat against my scalp, exposing the scars on my forehead, orange curls were starting to sprout in places as they dried. “It will just frizz,” I said, frowning at my reflection.

“What do you use?”

“For the frizz? Hats.”

“No, for the color. It's crazy cool—kind of orange and pink at the same time.”

When I didn't say anything, Andi's eyes opened wide. “Is it natural?”

“It is now. I used to be blond.”

Andi tipped her head—a question—but I didn't elaborate.

“Blond is boring,” she said, breezing past my silence. “This is better. And I can help with the frizz.”

She reached toward my head to run her fingers through my hair, but hesitated when she felt the lumps underneath, letting out a little breath of surprise. “Oh!”

“Yeah, they're everywhere,” I said.

“Do they—”

“They don't hurt.”

“Okay.”

Her fingers moved again, gingerly at first, then faster when she could see in my face that it truly didn't hurt. She picked through the knots and separated what curls she could, but it was no use. I was looking more Little Orphan Annie by the minute.

Finally, she settled back against the bathroom sink and crossed her arms. “It's hopeless.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I'm just saying, you need product and tools for that mop.”

“You don't have anything in your bag?”

Andi tugged one of her dreadlocks. “I have wax for these babies. That's all I need.” She stretched a hand out and scrunched a few of my curls. “You've got great hair for dreads, actually.
I could help you do them, if you ever get tired of trying to make this mess work.”

Leave it to Andi to offer to help me and then insult me in the next breath.

“I'm good with hats, thanks.”

I plucked my muddy mess of a newsboy cap off the back of the toilet, where it was drying out. Somehow it had been stomped into the ground, though everyone had denied doing it. It was still half-damp and caked with dirt both inside and out.

“That's disgusting,” Andi said. “You can't put that back on your head.”

“I know.” I sighed and dropped the cap in the trash on top of Andi's underwear. My eyes flicked to the horror show in the mirror again. “I can't go out there like this.”

“Here, I have something.” Andi picked up her messenger bag from where she'd dropped it on the floor and rooted around. Finally, her hand emerged holding a bright-green knit hat.

I took it gratefully and tugged it down over my head. A quick mirror check confirmed it was a huge improvement.

“Thank you,” I said to the Andi next to me in the mirror.

Her reflection smiled back at me. “It even matches your eyes. Bonus!”

I nodded down at her messenger bag. “You've got everything in there.”

“Yeah, I'm a regular Mary Poppins.” She slung the strap across her chest and let the bag settle at her hip. “You ready?”

I checked the mirror one last time.

“You look fine,” Andi said. “Trust me, he'll like it.”

I took an involuntary step away from her. “He who?”

“The yeti.”

I sniffed. “Yetis aren't my type.”

“Whatever you say,” she laughed, and swept past me out of the bathroom.

We found the boys in the great room, stringing a line of rope between the fireplace and a heavy floor lamp. They appeared to be back to their bickering, with York complaining about the wet towels in his arms getting heavy and Boston insisting that the lamp would tip over from the weight of those towels.

“Fine; tie it up somewhere else, then,” York said.

Boston unwound the rope from the lamp and crossed the room, looking for a new anchor, but he and York moved at the same time, and the rope caught York in the neck. He made a choking sound and dropped the load of towels.

“Oops,” Boston said.

York grabbed the line with both fists and yanked on it so that Boston stumbled. “
Oops?
You almost castrated me!”

Andi snorted. “I think he'd have to aim a little lower for that.”

Boston dropped his end of the line and inspected his palms for rope burns. “He means decapitated.”

“I can speak for myself,” York snapped. There was a sneer on his face, but I saw more behind it. He knew he'd said something embarrassing, but he wasn't sure exactly what. “I meant you almost took my head off.”

“Yeah,” Andi said. “That's decapitation.”

York looked pained. “Okay, fine. So what's the other one?”

“Castration?” Andi laughed. “Google it.”

York caught Boston's eye, seeking help, but Boston only grumbled, “Thought you could speak for yourself.”

I cleared my throat. “It means to cut off your—”

“Never mind,” York interrupted with a wave of his hand. “I knew what I meant.”

I busied myself with collecting my purse and the violin and setting them together on the couch, so no one would see how much that stung. This boy with the scowling face and clenched fists was not the same boy who had held my hand in the dark.

Boston abandoned the rope and collapsed on the other end of the couch, yawning.

“We need music,” he said. “Or I'm going to fall asleep.”

I wasn't sure when we'd collectively decided to pull an all-nighter, but it definitely felt like we'd silently agreed somehow. All of us or none of us.

“I want to hear some of Sam's mom's music,” Andi said.

York stepped over the mound of towels on the floor and perched on the coffee table. “Yeah, you got any?”

I didn't meet his eye. “I have a few songs on my phone,” I said. I pulled my cell from my purse and looked around for permission to turn it on.

“It's fine,” Andi said.

But Boston hesitated. “Just for a second.”

“A song takes more than a second, stupid,” York said.

I was suddenly afraid of what might happen if I turned the phone on—not just because there could be messages from Mama,
or, worse, the police, to drag me back into the real world, but also because
 
. . .
 
what if they didn't like Mama's music? After what I'd already told them about her, I didn't think I could stand to hear them put her down.

“Maybe we shouldn't risk it,” I said.

I started to slide the phone back into my purse, but Andi moved like a cat and swiped it from my hand. She was powering it up before I could protest. I couldn't see the screen from this angle, but I knew it was on when it started vibrating and dinging in Andi's hand.

“Hey, Sam,” Andi said. “Your mama called.”

She held the phone out for everyone to see, and my cheeks pinked to see “Mama” stretched across the screen over and over again.

York laughed and imitated a mechanical doll's voice. “Ma-Ma. Ma-Ma.”

“Shut up,” I said. I wanted to wipe off the hand I'd let him hold, to scrub it free of the lie that he might be a nice guy—or at least anything above an asshole. Instead, I used that hand to snatch my phone back from Andi.

“Aw, hey, Hat Girl. I was just kidding.” He sounded sincere, but I didn't care.

I scrolled through the calls until I lost count. It looked like Mama had started trying to reach me sometime after one in the morning. Why had she waited so long? And what was she doing right this minute? My thumb hovered over the missed calls, an impulse away from pressing the screen to call her back, but what could I say that would make this any easier on her?

Hey, don't worry, I'm not missing! I know right where I am—running from crooked cops who may or may not be selling the garbage that ruined your life and hiding from the good police because I was accidentally involved in running down an officer.

I backed my thumb away from the screen and moved it to the power button instead, shutting the phone back down.