“That’s not what I was thinking when I brought you out here. I just wanted you to be safe.”
His mouth slackened. “I know.”
We righted our clothes, and I draped the red leather over my forearm. I even smoothed the fake fall of black on top of my head. Lingering adrenaline ignited aftershocks through my bones. The threat was over, but I couldn’t outthink the last few minutes. I couldn’t escape them. They beat inside me like a second heart.
Here, I wasn’t the storybook maiden of my bedroom library, graced with glass slippers, true love kisses, and midnight clocks. For the first time in seventeen years, I was the villain in a black wig, body painted with deceit and red leather. Not a castle, a dirty alley shrouded in plummy-dark night. A stealthy thief, pressed against another girl’s boy.
No, not the princess. The evil queen.
Fifteen
The Other Boy Who Could Fly
“‘Come,’ he cried imperiously, and soared out at once into the night...”
—J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
I was glad to have something to hold on to, even if it was only a taco.
After the police questioned witnesses at the center and hauled Jeff Andrews away, Asher had insisted on showing his appreciation. Plus, it was dinnertime, and Roberto’s Taco Shop was just a few short blocks from Mid-City Legal.
Asher plucked fallen carne asada from his paper plate and tossed it in his mouth. “Was I right about the grub here?”
“Best I’ve had next to Marisol’s mom’s.” I took a bird-sized bite of corn tortilla, snaring only a few chunks of cheese and carnitas. The food at Roberto’s was better than decent. But my stomach still buzzed with nerves, like it was more beehive than digestive organ. Puking all over the brown table was not in the plan, so I was playing it safe, coaxing my body back into food.
“Glad you approve.” Asher swallowed another mouthful, then said, “A diversion like you pulled off deserves a better reward than Starbucks.”
Not real. Just pretend. A diversion.
Canned Mariachi music underscored my thoughts as I tried to reason with myself. Just like the Peter Pan mystery writer inside my tote, I could make lists. My mind titled the one I was currently composing: Things Our Dinner Is Not.
(1) A date
(2) A major life event
(3) Anything to puke over
“Now that we have something in our stomachs, I’ll tell you why I think Jeff wigged.” Asher motioned toward the window, North Park bustling outside. He arched one eyebrow. “And you can tell me about your wig.”
I let out a wobbly laugh. Marisol’s red jacket hung over my seat back, and the vampy lipstick had faded, but I was still black-ponytail girl. “Extreme dress-up time at Tops.” Then I told him all the rest—how I’d forgotten the time and run out in the silly getup, his uncle’s book, and my escape into the construction zone after Jeff stormed the Mid-City waiting room.
Asher shook his head. “Talk about timing.”
“Do you think Jeff’s episode was about you walking Olivia’s mom to her car sometimes?”
Asher sipped lemon water, then nodded. “For a start. He’s super possessive, so he spies on her. Goes ballistic when stuff doesn’t add up for him.”
I attempted a bite of rice. So far, so good. “I got that part pretty clearly.”
“Olivia asked me about you yesterday. She was wondering when the tall story girl was coming back.”
I grinned. “Maybe she’ll visit me at the bookstore.”
“Poor kid’s had it rough. Those picture books I bought for my cousins were still on Hannah’s desk. You said Olivia looked like a girl who needed a story, so I decided to give her one. I thought she’d like the book about the dog who goes to camp to learn to be a wolf.”
Right then, in a stuffy taco shop, with Tess’s wig on my head, and London’s boyfriend across from me, my heart squeezed. So tight, I had to turn from the image. From him. I followed streams of headlights out the window.
“Darcy?”
“Sorry. Right.” I forced a smile. “We sell a lot of copies of that dog book. Really cute.”
“She loved it. And when I walked them to their car last night, her mom hugged me, just in thanks for the gift. Olivia did, too.”
“And her dad must’ve seen and figured you’re more to them than just a guy working at the center.”
Asher was down to one taco. He picked it up and tipped it at me. “Bingo. Uncle Brian was on-site yesterday and James has been working with me almost every day. Before you came in, they’d gone to the truck for supplies.”
Now it made sense, how the two men had appeared to help wrangle Jeff before the cops arrived. “Good thing they showed up, or...”
Our eyes met. “I’m trying not to think about the or part,” he said.
That made two of us. Only, I was trying not to think of what we’d done in the alley to avoid that or part.
“Before last May, I would’ve gone after Andrews myself.” His mouth quirked in a quick sigh of frustration.
“You’ll get back, right?” I instinctively reached out to touch his hand, but caught myself. I grabbed my cup instead. “You’re still recovering.”
“Strength and mobility, yeah.” He shrugged. “But other things, I’ll never get back.”
“Annapolis?”
His face dimmed, like he’d swallowed a bit of autumn night sky from beyond the window glass. “My Marine pilot dad reminds me of that every chance he gets.”
I lobbed a quizzical look at him.
“The accident wasn’t my fault on the road.” He tapped his forehead scar, his leg. “But the injuries are still my fault. Everything I’ve lost is really because of one person. Me.”
“That can’t be true.”
“I wish it wasn’t.” He finished the last bites of his taco, then gulped icy lemon water. “You sure you want the gory details?”
I nodded without even thinking. Wasn’t my own life just another kind of gory?
“That night, my grandma was driving from Los Angeles to visit, and my parents went to a military ball. Dad told me to stay home and wait for Grandma. But about an hour before she was supposed to arrive, Jase called about this huge event in Del Mar. Like an album release party. Food, music, beach house.”
“So you went,” I said quietly, knowing he never made it to the party.
“I figured, what the hell? It was Friday night. I called Grandma from the road and told her I had to run out and left a key under the mat. She was cool.”
“Do you remember the accident itself?”
He pushed his plate aside, clasping both hands on the tabletop. “Pieces. My last clear memory is exiting I-5 onto Del Mar Heights Road. The rest I only know because of witnesses. Police reports, paramedics.”
God.
“The man who hit me wasn’t drunk or anything. Sixty-three years old. He had a seizure while driving down one of the hilly roads crossing Del Mar Heights.”
I gasped.
“He ran the red, straight through at what they figured was about sixty miles per hour. His minivan hit my truck, driver’s side. He survived with minor injuries.” Asher gestured toward his left knee again. “I flipped and rolled three times. The air bag deployed, but my head struck the window on the rollover. Hence the concussion and the scars.”
And the Post-Concussive Syndrome he still suffered.
Asher’s phone lit up with a text message. He glanced at the screen, then typed a series of responses. “London. She just finished play rehearsal.”
Clearly my exit cue. I scooted my chair back, but stopped when he held out his palm.
“I told her I’m not going over. She has a poetry paper to finish for Monday. She hasn’t even started, and I’d just get in the way.”
I hid my smile behind my napkin. A tiny part of me wanted to analyze why he was really choosing to stay at Roberto’s, but thoughts like that often led to more vulnerability than I could afford. I cleared my throat. “London and I have the sa
me English teacher. The paper’s on T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’”
Asher ran one finger around the rim of his plastic cup. “I remember from last year. I’m guessing you’ve made a good start on yours, or you wouldn’t have let Tess take the time to wig out your hair.” His chin tilted. “And you wouldn’t still be sitting here with me and grease bomb tacos and accident sob stories.”
Wouldn’t I? I hooked my wandering mind on to something I knew. Something I could always count on. “I finished my paper at Yellow Feather between customers.” When he nodded appreciatively, I said softly, “Asher, your story is just...awful. But...at least you’re alive.”
“I tell myself that every morning when I’m forced to swim instead of run, or when I’m popping tablets like popcorn.” Eyes flitted outside, then right at me. “And trying not to notice every plane flying over my house. Or every officer in Marine green I run into.”
I looked down at my plate, realizing I’d actually been eating. Only a few scraps remained. “Even though Annapolis is out, you can still enter the military another way, can’t you? Or fly for an airline one day?”
“Not with all the hardware in my body. Plus one of the drugs I’m on is a serious narcotic and banned for commercial pilots. At least my doctor finally got the combo and dosage right, the balance. So I’ve been feeling more like Me Before May,” he added in a radio announcer voice.
I considered that information for a moment. Maybe that’s why he’d seemed less moody lately. Less Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. “But what about when you can get off the medication?”
“I get migraines. The PCS will hopefully go away, and then I can ditch most of the drugs, but the migraines might be mine for life. Basically, it’s unlikely I’ll be fit to fly for money or carry passengers for a living. Ever.”
“You’ll never fly again?” The words stung rising from my throat.
“I can fly for recreation. But aviation guidelines want me to be migraine-free for one week before I hit the runway again. No dizzy spells, either. Seven days straight. So far, my record is only five without either one of them.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Roberto’s was rapidly filling up with short-order diners, and there weren’t enough tables, so we traded ours for the sidewalk. I followed Asher’s measured pace as we headed toward my car.
Asher crossed his arms. “My earliest memories are of me in my dad’s old Piper Warrior single prop. He took me up as soon as I could sit in the seat by myself.” He looked over at me. “Dad was deployed a lot when I was little. Flying was something we did together when he was home. He let me first hold the stick at six years old, just for a few moments. He used to fly fighter jets and now works in a command position at Miramar. There was no question whether or not I would fly, too. It’s always been part of me, like I was born with wings as much as arms. Reminds me of you and your books.”
I smiled. “That bad, huh?”
He laughed, a smooth baritone sound. “Inbred. Dad taught me himself. I did my flight hours, passed all the tests, got my license, and was flying Jase and my other friends around before I could vote.”
Before I thought better, I was asking, “Does London like flying with you?”
“You mean did she like it. I haven’t flown since May, remember. But no, it wasn’t really her deal. She always joked that she’d fly with me if she was sitting in first class and I was up in front wearing gold wings and shoulder stripes.” We stopped at a crosswalk. “So I guess she never will.”
“You must miss it so much.”
“More than anything. A couple years ago, my parents used some inheritance money from my grandmother and bought a preowned Piper Meridian. Amazing turboprop.” Asher dug out his phone and flipped to his photos. He slowed even more to show me a picture of a white aircraft with a black base, black wings, and matte silver propeller. “I took this baby up every chance I got.”
“It’s beautiful. Your dad let you fly whenever?”
Asher nodded. “For Dad and me, flying is kind of our thing. There are three brothers on his side, but only my dad took after my grandfather and got the aviation gene. Dad’s teaching James to fly right now. But my uncles made sure to leave their mark, too. All the Fleet cousins know how to shoot a gun in self-defense, land a single prop plane in an emergency, work a few power tools, and debate ourselves out of any mess.”
I laughed, but the sound quickly flew away under my own thoughts. What skills had my mother taught me? How to fall apart, but still look presentable? How to pretend and lie to survive, or shop your bank account dry? I’d learned more about life from books than my own mom. Even the poems and scribblings in my new-old Peter Pan had gotten me through more emotional tight spots than her words ever had.
And then there was my newly resurrected dad. Instead of asking myself about him, I questioned Asher about his own father as my blue Honda loomed a few yards away.
“Dad blames me for that night,” he answered quietly. “For the way I am now.”
I halted at my car door, staring at him in shock. “But you almost died!”
“And he thanks God every day that I didn’t,” Asher acknowledged. “But he curses the part of me who should’ve been home waiting for my grandmother instead of out on the road at all.” His expression darkened. “I lived, but my future died on Del Mar Heights Road.”
Sixteen
Winged
“Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.” I wish this could be me. To have only one thing to feel for the whole day. And that the one thing would be anything but him.
—J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, and Peter Pan Mystery Scribbler
I may have broken Marisol. Two minutes into my run-through of last night’s events, I thought she was going to topple off our mosaic table bench. By the time I’d gotten to street tacos and Asher’s accident story, I’d shocked her completely into Spanish.
“¿Mientras que yo estaba a la escuela, tú estabas besando a Asher?” She fanned herself. I’d conveniently left out the part about her jacket being lodged against Asher’s back and a brick wall. Besides, she was too preoccupied with me lodged against Asher lodged against a brick wall.
“For the tenth time, I was not kissing him. I was pretending to kiss him. Big difference. Like, all the differences.” Not real. Make-believe.
She sipped the blueberry smoothie she’d brought, our Saturday morning tradition when I didn’t have work. “You’ve changed everything, though. Won’t it be weird now?” Marisol said, back to English.
I pressed my fingers against both temples. “There was nothing between us to change in the first place. Our alley antics were just me, remembering stuff I’d read and thinking fast. No big deal.”
Every big deal. His mouth resting against my neck. His—
“He probably thought about it all night, Darcy.”
“He didn’t, and I didn’t, either.” Only from midnight to four-thirty.
“He bought you dinner.”
“Because I saved his ass. And...and, he has a girlfriend. Whom you dressed in finery and just watched prance around the Jefferson stage.”
Marisol grinned that grin, and I knew it was gonna get bad. “You mentioned he has a girlfriend like it matters.”
“Look, he’s just a Jefferson graduate who happens to speed-read his way through his breaks at my workplace. Nothing more in my world.” I drank my mango smoothie, stopping just short of brain freeze.
Except it won’t stop feeling like something more.
But I couldn’t, couldn’t tell anyone—not even her, my shorter, curvier other half. My North Park fairy tale could never have any language of its own, whether Spanish or English, or anything out loud.
Behind us, a door slammed; a trio of tiny black birds fluttered from one of the courtyard olive trees, zooming past our heads. We both turned to see Thomas, manager of the year, cross the patio toward the staircase.
“Where does he buy his jeans? SaggyFrump.com?” Marisol whispered.
I closed my quivering lips around my straw as he stopped short of the stairs and turned to us.
“Ahh, Darcy. I was just heading up to see your mother about the bathroom fixtures.”
I tensed. “Sorry, what fixtures?”
“You didn’t get my flyer? About the rising cost of water in San Diego?” He tapped his chin. “They were in all the mailboxes a few days ago.”
“We must’ve missed that one.” Or I’d been too preoccupied with surprise letters and wigs and boys who didn’t matter.
Thomas pushed a wave of overgelled black hair away from his face. “I thought so. Your mother didn’t make her finish choice or confirm an installation date, so I figured I’d pay her a visit.” He held up a checklist.
“Installation date?” I asked. As in, someone going inside.
“All of this information was in the flyer, but...well.” Then a shrug. “We’re replacing all bathroom showerheads with low-flow options and installing low-flow aerators on sink faucets over the next month. The owner wanted to let each tenant choose a finish to match their existing bathroom fixtures. We’ve contracted with a handyman service for the installations. I promise we won’t take too much of your time.”
A shiver crept up my back. “Um, I...my mother’s still sleeping.”
“I need to place the order with West Coast Hardware by Monday.”
“Let me see that brochure, please.” This from Marisol, who’d jumped up and swung around the table, coming nose-to-nose with Thomas.
The manager reluctantly handed Marisol the glossy trifold booklet.
Marisol grinned, tracking pictures with one bloodred fingernail. “Darcy and her mother would like the antique pewter finish, please.”
Thomas snatched the brochure back. “I’m afraid I’ll have to hear from Ms. Wells herself.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m their designer.”
I gaped in her direction as Thomas laughed. “Their designer?”
Marisol nodded once. “I’m going to design school in the fall. And I’ve made plenty of selections for Ms. Wells already. Her entire bathroom suite—towel bars and drawer pulls—are antique pewter.”
The Library of Lost Things Page 14
