The Chaos of Stars (17 page)

“No, just not my type. She was pretty enough. Kinda short. Blond. Very . . . orange.”

Tyler finishes her last piece. “Fish-belly white is the new tan. But what
is
your type, if it isn’t short and fake-baked?”

He smiles, not looking at me in a way I swear is so deliberate it feels like he is staring right at me. He turns toward Tyler while he leans in closer to me, his shoulder almost brushing mine. “It’s a very, very specific type. And does not include the color orange.”

Scott brings his paintbrush up to Tyler’s face, tracing it along her jawline. “What’s your type, Tyler?”

“Half-Taiwanese, obnoxious, and soaking wet.” With a roar she grabs Scott under his arms, dragging him toward the pool. He stands and they wrestle back and forth until they both trip over the edge and fall in with a massive splash.

I watch them and laugh, loopy with fatigue and grateful that the tarp is far enough away from the edge that they didn’t get it wet. Tyler and Scott scream, pushing each other under the water. “We’ll have to have a pool party or something when we finish this,” I muse, mostly to myself. I want to buy strings of lanterns to give Deena and Sirus as a thank-you gift. They’d light this area up so pretty at night.

“So, we’re done here, right?” Ry asks.

I nod. “Thanks. You can go home. I’ll call you when we’re ready to paint more.”

“Who said I wanted to go home?”

I notice the twist in his smile too late. With a roar of his own, far deeper than Tyler’s, he throws me over his shoulder, runs, and leaps into the pool. I push him away, surfacing with an angry splutter as my hair funnels streams of water right into my eyes. Ry jumps up next to me, laughing as he shakes his head and sprinkles me more.

“You jackal! Why did you do that?”

He stops laughing and looks at me with utter sincerity. “You looked really hot. I thought this would help. It didn’t.”

“Ha. Ha.” I hook my foot around his ankle, yank it out from under him, and shove his head under. When I finally let him up, Scott jumps on my back, screaming, “Boys against girls!”

Tyler jumps on Scott on my back and we all go under, Scott with a death-grip on my tank top. I finally wriggle away, surfacing for air with a gasp. The last time I was stuck underwater . . . I remember. The dream. But it wasn’t a dream.

Isis had taken me to the banks of the Nile like she did most days. I was playing in the sand while she searched for whatever she needed to collect for our spells. A shadow blocked the sun and I looked up to see tall, tall Anubis.

“Hello,” he said, with his sharp teeth.

“Hi.”

“Do you know how to swim?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well then, time to learn!” He picked me up and threw me straight out into the middle of the river before I could even process what was happening.

I sank. I’d never been in the water without my mother before, and she wasn’t there, and I didn’t know what to do without her. The water was murky and stung my eyes, but I knew if I waited, my mother would come for me.

She had to. She always came for me.

And when my chest hurt so much I wanted to cry and I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, instead of inky blackness claiming me like in the dream, those hands I knew better than any others in the world grabbed me and pulled me straight up into the air.

It was the only time I’d ever seen my mother cry. I was upset and crying and she was, too, screaming at Anubis, who was laughing and telling her to calm down, it was all a joke.

That’s why he was banned from our house! I can’t believe I blocked that out. And I can’t believe that when I next saw him, just before coming here, he genuinely didn’t recognize me, didn’t even remember what he’d done. That’s how unimportant I am.

I wipe my eyes, stuck with so much remembering. Funny how something can trigger a dead memory. I can still taste the water, still remember the grit it left on my skin, still remember just how sure I was as I drowned that my mother would not fail me.

I can’t believe I let that nightmare replace the actual memory. My mother saved me. Of course she saved me. She would never have let something happen to me like that. She may have used me, may be replacing me now, but she took care of me.

I need to call her. I’ll call her tonight, just to see how she’s doing.

Someone laughs behind me, pulling me back into the present. I turn around to see Ry peeling off his shirt.

My traitor heart thuds. I am not thinking about the Nile, or Anubis, or calling my mother anymore. Because Ry isn’t wearing a shirt.

It’s just skin.

It’s just skin.

IT’S JUST SKIN.

I’m so busy not noticing Ry’s torso that Tyler tackles me from behind and I let myself sink to sit on the bottom. It’s quiet down here, aside from the thrashing legs of my wrestling friends. And I can see clearly, though everything is distorted. It’s nothing like the Nile. I can save myself now.

Then Ry sinks down, too, sitting next to me, his hair floating up all around his face as he smiles and winks. I can’t look away from his eyes, blue even through the pool-filtered light.

Thud goes my traitor heart.

Thud goes my brain.

Thud goes Scott, pushed down next to us as Tyler dances on his shoulders, finally breaking the spell of those ridiculous blue eyes. I surface for air.

I feel like I’m drowning again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

Isis still wanted more power. She continually feared for Horus’s safety, and she envied Amun-Re his distance from the worries and strife of the other gods. And so she watched, and waited, and found the perfect method of poison delivery.

One day as Amun-Re walked the earth, a snake bit him. But it was not a snake he had created, and so he could not name it and remove the venom. Amun-Re, god of the sun, was dying.

He called on Isis, possessor of great magic and also renowned for her medicinal skills. Isis was waiting, as she had been since she put the snake in his path. She would heal Amun-Re in exchange for his true name—a name she could call on to use his power.

Amun-Re listed name after name, trying to confuse her, but she would not be deterred. And, knowing Isis, Amun-Re feared that telling her his name would be telling Horus his name as well. And, knowing Isis, Amun-Re did not doubt she would let him die.

In the end, he had no choice.

My mom would have let the sun die before she’d let Horus come to any harm. And yet I got to decorate my own tomb.

“RELAX.” RY LEANS AGAINST THE CHIPPED
Formica counter, the long, lean lines of his body showing the relaxation he’d have me imitate. “We’re ahead of schedule. We can’t install the lights until the paint is completely dry on everything anyway.”

I nod, twisting our receipt between my fingers. It feels weird to be out, getting dinner instead of having Tyler or Scott drop it off for us. But Ry has a point—we
have
to wait. And thanks to his work the last four days, we can afford to.

That, and if I lose any more brain cells to paint fumes, I might not remember my own name.

Tyler had been very excited to get the afternoon off, and even more excited when I gave her Sirus’s tickets to the Padres game to take Scott out to. They deserve a fun evening together, and Scott’s obsessed with baseball, which Tyler inexplicably thinks is adorable. I couldn’t handle the idea of the crowds. A quiet evening with Ry was far more appealing.

Ry hands me a cup filled to the brim with Coke and ice. “You need this.”

“Floods, yes. Thank you.”

“We’re doing great.” He nudges me with his elbow, and I smile into my cup. “You’ve totally earned tonight.”

“But did we have to come here?” I’m not a snob, and Ry has taught me that the best regional food is usually found in the sketchiest-looking places, but this run-down hole-in-the-wall Mexican eatery is not looking promising.

“Trust me. Once you’ve had carne asada fries, you will never go back. It’s like a burrito threw up on a plate of cheap french fries.”

“You do realize that’s the least appealing description of anything, ever.”

“Patience, young grasshopper. Soon you will understand.”

The girl behind the counter leans up to the open window between the cash registers and the kitchen area to grab our food. “That boy is the most beautiful man I have ever seen,” she says in low, sweet Spanish to the girl handing forward the containers.

The girl in the kitchen smiles, her dark eyes flashing. “Should I have messed up his food so he’ll have to come back to the counter?”

“Yes! I want to look at him more. Is it too late?” Her hands hover over the Styrofoam lids, like she doesn’t want to commit to handing us our completed order.

I snort into my drink, choking as the carbonation goes down wrong. If only Ry knew what they were saying. I get hit on, sure, but it’s nothing to what Ry has to deal with on a daily basis. The more I’m around him, the more I realize he wasn’t actually exaggerating.

The counter girl looks at me nervously. “Can I get you anything else?” she asks in English.

I answer in Spanish. “No, thanks, but if you want, we can sit where you can see him better.”

“Your, uh, boyfriend?”

“Oh, no. He’s a friend. But it’s okay to look at friends, right?”

She grins at me and nods. “Come back again soon,” she says, in English, with a lingering look at Ry.

He’s been staring studiously out the front window the whole time. “Hey, I forgot my notebook at the museum. Okay to eat there instead? We can have a picnic.”

“Sure.” I grab utensils and shoot an apologetic smile at the counter girl as we walk out into the warm, ocean-heavy late-afternoon air.

“You speak Spanish?” Ry holds my door open as I climb into his truck, and he hands me the food.

“Oh, yeah. Very well-rounded homeschooling.”

“Hmmm.” He closes my door and gets in on the other side.

I have a rather horrid thought. “Do
you
speak Spanish?”

“I speak Greek, English, Arabic, and a little bit of Girl.”

Relieved, I rest my head against the seat, the food’s heat almost uncomfortable against my thighs. Then I realize he didn’t actually answer my question. “
Hablas español
,” I say, glaring at him.

He grins but says nothing.

“You jerk!” How does he speak so many languages? Apparently the chatter about the American school systems is wrong. They are seriously doing their job.

“Hey, it’s not my fault you all chose to talk about me in a language you assumed I didn’t speak. Which, in this area, is a very unsafe assumption since most everyone speaks at least a little Spanish.”

“But you encouraged the assumption!”

“I didn’t want the cashier to feel awkward. Plus now I know you’re okay with the fact that I really enjoy looking at you.”

“I am—you’re not—that’s
not
what I said.”

“And I quote: ‘But it’s okay to look at friends.’”

I will not blush. I will not blush. I will not blush. “I can engage in a clinical assessment of physical features. It’s possible to recognize attractiveness without being attracted.”

“What is wrong with being attracted to someone? It’s a natural thing.”

“Yes, well, cancer is a natural thing, and we try our best to kill it.”

“You’re comparing love to cancer. I don’t believe it.”

“Actually, we were talking about attraction. And you proved my point about avoiding attraction because you jumped straight from there to love. But yes, love as cancer holds up quite well. Something that grows inside of you against your will and without your consent, slowly taking over more and more vital parts until it kills you. That fits nicely.” I smile, pleased.

“Stop,” Ry says, frowning. A deep crease forms between his eyebrows. “That’s not funny.”

I’m taken aback. I talk a lot of crap to Ry—especially the last few sleep-deprived days working so closely together. Usually he laughs. Oh, no. Oh no. “I’m sorry. Have you lost someone to cancer? That was really insensitive of me.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just—you can’t
really
think that about love. Not really.”

I shrug, an itch growing between my shoulder blades, soul deep. “It makes everything hurt more,” I finally say as we get out of the truck, because it’s the only true thing I can think of to say about love right now, here with Ry. If I hadn’t loved my parents—I mean, come on, I
literally
worshipped them—finding out they were just using me wouldn’t have been so awful.

We stop at my favorite tree beneath the footbridge and Ry climbs under the stairs and into the roots. I follow and we open up our food without a word.

Except . . . oh, idiot gods, why didn’t you choose this area of the world for your sad little reigns? Because carne asada french fries are, beyond a doubt, the most deliciously disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. I shovel them into my mouth, cool sour cream and guacamole, crisp salsa fresca, mushy fries, melted cheese, tender meat. Every bite is like a revelation of what the perfect harmony of ingredients can be.