And then he started to cry.
Where was Bobby, I wanted to know. And how long could it take for Indira to find some g-d concealer?
But since I was fresh out of handsome, earnest, and emotionally intelligent deputies, I slithered off the bed and hugged Keme. At first, he cried harder. I rubbed his back. And somehow, I got him to sit down on the bed with me, but then he seemed to fall apart completely, sobbing into my shoulder. It made sense, in a way. He’d been holding himself together by sheer willpower for the last few days. He’d been through somuch. And even though he was a boy who’d learned how to handle himself young, he was still only a boy, and sometimes, you just needed someone to tell you everything was going to be okay.
We sat like that for a while. My arm around him. His face nestled in the crook of my shoulder. A quiet rhythm between us that settled into the larger rhythm of the ocean. I had read somewhere that the ocean has its own music, made up of incredibly low frequencies—too low for humans to hear. But I thought, maybe, sometimes we could feel it. Right then, I thought I could feel it, whatever it was that was moving between us, the slow flood and ebb of this moment.
I shifted so I could look him in the eye. He only lasted a second before he cut his eyes away, so I waited until they came back. And, because this was Keme we were talking about, when they did, they held a hint of defiance—a kind of de facto combativeness.
“I wish a lot of things had been different about your life, Keme. Because I love you, and because I can’t imagine anyone not loving you, and wanting to take care of you, and making sure you had the best life they could give you. And I know nothing I say can change the past, or make up for it, or give you what you should have had. But I do want you to know that you have a family now. And we love you. All of us. And we’re here for you. And if you need anything—”
“I need two hundred bucks for the dance tickets,” he said, wiping his eyes—which now looked remarkably alert. Even predatory. “And another hundred to take Millie somewhere for dinner.”
“Uh, I meant more in an emotional—”
“And I want to drive the Pilot because Millie has a girl’s car.”
He considered me for a moment, as though trying to decide if he had any more demands, and then—to my complete and utterand total and all-encompassing surprise—he hugged me. And then he kissed me on the cheek.
“Everything all right?” Bobby asked from the doorway.
“Yeah,” Keme said, bouncing up from the bed. “He’s just being a donkey.”
Bobby made a noise that suggested this was not outside the realm of possibility.
I might have been, as Pippi would have put it in one of her books, a little misty-eyed, but I managed to say, “He just extorted three hundred dollars out of me.”
Laughing, Bobby set to work with the concealer.
“Yuk it up,” I told him. “He wants to borrow the Pilot too.”
The best word for Bobby’s expression wasstartled.
For an honorary straight guy, Bobby had a surprisingly deft hand at concealer, and Keme looked good to go in a few minutes. His eyes weren’t even red, which was totally unfair since I wasstillintermittently misty-eyed.
We headed downstairs. Voices from the vestibule drifted out to meet us.
“What if he’s a wig thief?” Fox was saying. “But he specializes in dusty wigs that he attaches to his, uh, rump?”
“If you’re talking about my costume,” I said, “I’m not listening, and I’m not going to respond. And Bobby’s going to beat you up.”
Bobby, though, did not look like he was going to beat anyone up—especially not in that Marty McFly getup (have I mentioned the vest?). In fact, at that moment Bobby was whispering something in Keme’s ear that I suspected was some sort of blend of fatherly wisdom, brotherly advice, and a deputy’s reminder that he could and would find you if you decided to horse around in his SUV. Keme’s expression was caught somewhere between annoyed embarrassment and an extreme eagerness to reassure.
“Oh!” Fox said. “Or what if he’s a nightmare—you know, like the mythological beast? Only he’s old and decrepit, and that’s why his tail looks so dusty—”
“For Pete’s sake,” I snapped as we reached them. “My costume isnotthat hard!”
To judge by the mountain of Almond Joy wrappers, Fox had chosen not to leave any for the rest of us. Indira was reading a book called XKREKHS: MY ALIEN GRUMP – A SCI-FI ABDUCTION ROMANCE FATED MATES SWAP (which featured an incredibly well-developed blue torso on it). Last week, it had been Calvino.
“Of course not,” Fox said. “It’s obvious you’re—what do you call that bristly thing you use to clean—”
“He’s a dust bunny,” Keme said absently. He was checking himself in the window, using the faint reflection there to fiddle with his bow tie.
The stunned silence that followed wasn’t exactly polite. But when I recovered, I held out a hand toward Keme in athere you goslashfinallygesture. I also made a strangled noise that suggested, in general, how frustrating everyone had been.
“You look very cute,” Bobby murmured as he scruffed my bunny ears.
There probably would have been more, except at that moment, the front door opened, and Millie stepped into view.
