“—and you ruined a priceless carpet with your squirt gun fight—”
“Ruined is kind of a subjective term, if you think about it.”
“—and you gave each other tetanus trying to build a fort—”
“That nail only went into his hand, like, a quarter inch.”
“—and don’t think I don’t know about that time the two of you ‘cruised the boardwalk’ playing that awful music so loud that Bobby had to give you an official reprimand.”
“Well, the deputies are legally required to call it a warning, not a reprimand, so—”
“Dashiell!”
“I know, Indira. I mean, I’m not an idiot. A month ago, it was like we were—” Actually saying the wordbrotherswould have hurt too much, so I settled for “—really close, but now everything I do is wrong. And that makes me feel bad, because I thought—well, I guess I thought a lot of things were different. But they’re not.” I struggled for a moment to keep my voice level. “And that’s just what it is, and I don’t want to keep making things worse. So, I think you should go.”
Brushing back that lock of witchy-white hair, Indira watched me for what felt like a long time. My face was hot. My chest prickled. I was having a hard time meeting her eyes, so I was surprised, when she spoke again, to hear how her voice had softened.
“Sometimes, Dash, when people are hurting, they—”
“They lash out. I know.”
She didn’t say anything. And I had the strangest feeling that I’d been wrong, that whatever she’d been about to say, it hadbeen something different. But she didn’t correct me. She didn’t say anything.
“I just—I know this isn’t what you want to hear,” I said. “But trust me: it’s pretty clear what Keme’s trying to tell me.”
The wind rose again, wrapping itself around the house, jarring the shutters, howling at the windows. The sky still looked like I could reach out and tap it, and it would shatter, and the moon spilled a long, white avenue of light on the restless lines of the ocean.
“He’s not trying to tell you something,” Indira finally said. “He’s trying to ask you something.”
Chapter 16
Riding in Fox’s van—which was literally a 1989 Toyota Van, perhaps the least creative name in the history of automotives—was like the responsible adult version of an acid trip. Tonight, for example, there was a large pirate’s chest (I couldn’t think of any other way to describe it) in the back. It was wrapped in heavy chains, and although I know it was probably only my imagination (it was almost Halloween, after all), I swear I heard something thump inside it. There was also a mobile made out of tennis skirts hanging from the exact center of the van’s roof, which rendered the rearview mirror totally useless (and which I think would have made Bobby whip out his little black book of ticket-writing). There was a purse on the floor with Jackie O’s face silkscreened onto it; someone had come along after the fact and given her googly eyes. The rest of the space was taken up with trash bags full of enough fake (and multicolored) fur to outfit an entire squadron of pimps.
(Are we still allowed to say pimps? Should I saynight entrepreneurs?)
It was easier to focus on the bewildering contents of the van than to think about—well, everything else. Keme. And Indira. And whatever Indira had meant by that final, cryptic comment. Keme wanted to ask me a question? Sure, great. What question? But Indira had refused to say anything else. Wouldn’t do anything, in fact, except bundle me off with Fox. Sending me to my (impending, gruesome) death, which would happen as soon as Keme caught sight of me.
You will doubtless be unsurprised to learn that Hastings Rock, our picturesque little town, didn’t have a Greyhoundstation. It didn’t have any bus stations, as a matter of fact, although there was a regional commuter bus that did pickups and drop-offs in front of the town visitors’ center. Instead—as I had learned tonight—we had a busstop.Singular. As in, one place in town where the Greyhounds stopped. And it happened to be at the Starlite Cinema.
So, as Bobby had suggested, Fox and I drove north through Hastings Rock. I’d been to the Starlite plenty of times to catch movies with the Last Picks. (Memorably, the month before, Keme hadforcedme to go seeThe Nunwith him, and he’d had to hold my hand the entire second half of the movie so I didn’t run out of the theater screaming. I had nightmares for a week, by the way, and I’m pretty sure Bobby had The Talk with Keme—The Talk being: no more scary movies for Dash.)
The theater was part of a relatively newer development in Hastings Rock, and because it wasn’t in the quaint, touristy downtown, it looked a lot like any other strip-mall movie theater. It was a big, windowless building with movie posters in display cases. A marquee with flashing lights projected out above the doors. This week, you could seeVenom(already seen it three times),A Star is Born(yep, date night with Bobby, and yes, I cried), and yet another entry in the seemingly interminable series ofHalloweenmovies (not yet, especially after The Talk, but before all the craziness of the last few days, Keme and I had agreed it was probably safe to sit through the first half hour and then decide if it was too scary for me). Unlike the touristy sections of Hastings Rock, it had plenty of parking (perfect for the van, which made an ominous grinding noise as Fox maneuvered the old battleship into the lot), as well as a quasi-outlet-mall array of retail—an Eddie Bauer store, a Pendleton store, a Cold Stone. I was hopping out of the van when I decided that Cold Stone would be the perfect place to stake out the busstop, since a) there was ice cream, and b) it was warm, and c) ideally, Keme wouldn’t see me and therefore murder me.
As I opened my mouth to explain this plan to Fox, they shouted, “He’s getting away!”
And then they hit the gas, and the van lurched forward, and my door clicked shut.
So, like a certified genius, I stood there and watched as the van trundled off after a dark-haired boy on a bike, who was rapidly disappearing down a cross street.
I had my doubts about the boy being Keme. I was also suddenly aware that shouting things likeHe’s getting awayand then chasing down teenagers in a mysterious van that smelled like a Dragon Musk air freshener and then forcing teenagers into said van was probably not agreatplan.
I turned around to wait for Fox in the Cold Stone—or, more likely, to wait for the deputies who would inevitably come to arrest us—and saw Keme.
He stood on the grassy verge under a streetlight, near a small sign I’d never noticed before—red, white, and blue, with a leaping greyhound pictured on it. His long dark hair was hidden under a beanie, and he wore a familiar-looking canvas jacket that, last time I’d seen it, had been in my closet. The boy who wore frayed shorts and cracked slides all winter was now dressed in jeans and dark footwear—boots, I thought, but it was hard to tell in the dark. The light dusted the top of his head and his shoulders, but it left his face in shadow. It didn’t matter. I knew it was him.
He twisted at the waist, hiking up the backpack he was wearing, and saw me.
I knew he saw me because he froze mid-twist, his whole body locking up in an instant. He stayed like that for a moment. Then he squared his shoulders and came toward me.
