When Mal wasn’t looking, he “lost” his glass behind a fake ficus.
“Hey, Mal the gal!” boomed a voice. Hayden Jornet swaggered out of the crowd, waving a highball glass as though it was his scepter. “Well, look at you,” he said. His green eyes started where her skirt met her thighs and moved upward. They never reached her face. Scan complete, he said, “Glad you made it. Let me give you the tour.”
Mal eagerly accepted Hayden’s offer with instructions for him to lead on, but not before she ordered a second drink from the bar. Who is this girl tonight?
I spotted Aslyn and Vega in the crowd at the exact same moment they spotted Adam. Immediately they made a beeline for him, and Adam tipped his head toward the back of the loft. I nodded, and together we threaded our way through the throng and ducked into a secluded corner. Two girls had already taken up residence and were heavily into a make-out session. Adam stared at them, analyzing the scene as if he were Jane Goodall and they a pair of chimpanzees.
“Hey, freakazoid, buy a ticket,” swore the one with braces.
“Verba tua intellegere non possum,” Adam replied. “Filone ferreo maxillae tuae iunctae sunt?”
“Ignore him,” I told the girls. “He’s not from around here.” I directed him toward the emergency exit door. He leaned up against it, arms folded and looking rather pleased with himself.
“What did you say to those girls?”
“I said, ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying. Are your jaws wired together?’”
I laughed. “I thought you called her mother a . . . Oh, never mind.” For an instant, I forgot I was supposed to be angry at him. But it had done the trick. Maybe if Adam could lighten up, I could, too.
A tall guy dressed all in black and with shoulder-length brown hair to match stumbled into Adam. “Mind your space,” Adam warned.
“Who yous talkin’ to?” his assailant slurred.
That voice was worse than nails on a chalkboard. It was deeper now, but it was still the same voice that had plagued me for most of my life. It belonged to Shep Bramstead, the jerk who made a sport out of tormenting me on the playground, ridiculing me in class, and leading the pack that chased me into the orchard on my way home from school.
Adam held his ground. No pithy Latin phrases this time—only clenched hands itching to hit something. If Adam knew any better, he’d back down. Shep was a bully, a brawler, and a bassist, with mad skills in all three. Adam would be a smear on the floor if he started anything here.
“Ignore him, Adam,” I warned.
There was no need. Shep was already so wrecked that when he reached for the edge of a nearby table to steady himself, he missed. Two people rushed in to right him. One said something about him being so wasted that he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between his axe and his ass. A guy who could have been his double lugged him away for the band’s sound check and the promise of another cold one. His brother, Grant, I assumed.
It took a long time for the fury in Adam’s eyes to fade, longer than I would have expected, but he eventually settled. I told him he was free to mingle, but I couldn’t make it sound convincing, so we made a game of people watching. He totally sucked at what I dubbed Name That Expression.
Adam tried for, like, the fourth time. “Depressed?” he said, indicating a redhead with a scrunched-up face.
“More like pissed,” I corrected. “How ’bout the guy looking at that girl’s backside?”
“Awed,” he answered rather proudly, sure that this time, he had it right.
Maybe he did, but I refused to concede the point. “More like horn-gry.”
We were so wrapped up in our little game that I almost forgot about Mallory. Last time I saw her, she was hanging on Hayden like a superhero cape. If she thought that was going to make Evan jealous, she was delusional. He was too oblivious to notice. I scanned the room but didn’t see her anywhere. “I need some air,” I said, pushing open the emergency exit door.
“Me too,” admitted Adam. We emerged into a narrow alley lined with dumpsters, a stained mattress, and innumerable piles of boxes and pallets. Adam pulled up a couple crates for us to sit on beneath a fire escape, and I couldn’t take my shoes off fast enough. Free of them at last, I leaned back against the crumbling brick building and took in the starless strip of heaven wedged between the rooflines.
“So what do you think of your first party?” I asked.
“Too . . . everything.”
“Yeah, same. I had to get out of there. Escape, you know.”
But we’d escaped nothing. From an open window above us we heard a girl scream.
“Let go of me! I said stop!”
Mallory.
RULE #16
HANDLE ALL FLUIDS WITH CARE.
Adam leaped for the bottom rung of the fire escape. He scaled the ladder, swung over the railing, bounded up the stairs two at a time, and slipped through the open window. I heard shouts. A voice cut off sharply.
The fire escape was too high for me to reach, and the emergency door was locked from the inside. Snatching my bag but leaving my shoes behind, I tore through the alley to the back entrance of the building.
The bouncer refused to let me in, but someone flung open the back door and shouted, “Fight!” The bouncer dropped his clipboard and charged inside with me hot on his heels as he cut a wide swath through the crowd. He had no idea where to go, but I did, and once inside, I barefooted it to the stairwell.
Exiting on the second floor, I followed the sounds of grunts and muffled threats. Something or someone slammed into a nearby wall. I opened the door to find Mallory tangled in a pile of sheets on the floor beside a bed, shrieking, “Stop! You’re killing him! You have to stop!”
Adam’s hands were clamped around Hayden’s neck like an iron collar. Hayden flailed his legs and arms as his face turned from crimson to a sickly shade of purple.
“Let him go, Adam,” I cried. “You have to let him go!”
Somehow my voice filtered through, and Adam’s hands relaxed, letting Hayden fall back against a nightstand in a gasping, wheezing heap.
“Get out, Adam,” ordered Mallory. “I’ll handle this.”
Before Adam could respond, two guys built like linebackers burst through the bedroom door. Hayden wiped spittle from the corner of his mouth and leveled a condemning finger at Adam. “That animal tried to kill me.”
The two bruisers lunged for Adam, pinning him to the floor. One dug a sharp knee into his back while the other twisted his arms up and behind. Adam broke free, but a sharp punch to the ribs knocked him back, and then they were on him once again, like stray dogs on a scrap of meat.
“Damn, he’s strong,” complained one of Hayden’s henchmen, giving Adam’s arm a sharp twist. “Where’s Bramstead?”
On cue, Shep’s brother, Grant, appeared at the door, a guitar pick clamped between his teeth and looking seriously sober. Faces crowded behind him, some curious, others out for blood. At their encouragement—as if he needed any—Grant dove into the fray. It took the three of them to force Adam into submission.
Hayden found his legs and pulled himself up. He cracked his neck from side to side and brushed lint from his jeans. It was a warm-up for his swift kick to Adam’s ribs, which was followed by a cheer from Grant. Adam didn’t flinch.
Hayden prepared to give him a second punt but noted the crowd of witnesses pressed to the door and reconsidered. “Grant, see to it that he’s escorted outside, will you?”
“My pleasure.” Together, the three men pushed Adam out of Hayden’s bedroom. He threw one last elbow to free himself. It caught Bramstead square in the jaw. His repayment was a slug to the kidneys.
“Adam, don’t fight,” I begged. He surrendered and let them drag him away. The bedroom emptied, and a moment later, I was unraveling Mallory from the jumbled sheets. “What happened? Are you all right? If he hurt you, we need to—”
“We need to nothing. I’m okay—physically, at least. One thing led to another, but
then I realized where we were headed and it wasn’t what I wanted. He wasn’t what I wanted. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. If Adam . . .” Mallory wiped an eye, then shook her head and forced a faint smile.
“I know. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” I helped adjust her torn blouse, then took her hand and pulled her along, gently guiding her down the stairs and out the emergency exit. How appropriately named, I thought.
We found Adam sitting on a delivery platform in the alley, and although modesty was not generally a word in Adam’s vocabulary, he assumed it was part of Mal’s and averted his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“Stop trying to take all the blame,” I said, realizing she’d nearly joined one of those statistics parents cite from the evening news. “Seems to me Hayden deserves his fair share.”
“Yeah, well, my little scheme sort of backfired. I don’t think he even noticed I was gone.”
I didn’t bother asking who she meant. Evan.
“Well, Hayden’s still a giant sleaze.” Adam was rubbing his side. “You took quite a beating back there. Maybe I should check for broken ribs. Lift your shirt.”
He shifted away from me. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded.
“Then keep an eye on her for me, will you? I’m going to find that idiot stepbrother of mine.”
It took the better part of an hour to locate him. He was too busy schmoozing with the Jaded Corpses’ lead vocalist in a back room to notice that his sister, her best friend, and their second-string escort had left the party. I dragged him outside, where he took one look at Mallory and said, “What happened to you? You been fighting again?” Like it was all some kind of joke.
Not wanting any more trouble, I answered, “No. She got a little carried away on the dance floor, that’s all.”
“Yeah, you missed it,” said Mallory with a withered smile. “I was spinning on my head and bumpin’ booty.”
“There’s a picture I didn’t need,” said Evan, blinking like there was something in his eyes. But, to his credit, on the long walk to the car he apologized for not keeping better tabs on her.
“Not your job,” she said, then thanked Adam and me for coming to her rescue.
“What are best friends for?” I replied.
She threw her arms around my shoulders and squeezed. I stiffened, and she released me. Mal, my childhood friend—my only friend—still needed me, and as much as I hated to admit it, maybe sometimes I needed her, too. Counting on someone like that? Total rule breaker.
Lagging behind with head down and hands jammed into his front pockets, Adam shuffled his feet along the littered sidewalk. I should have insisted he stay home, but I’d been selfish. I wanted him to come with us tonight, not to keep tabs on him but because I craved his company. I knew I was walking a shaky tightrope.
I dropped back and padded barefoot beside him, my shoes long gone along with a charm bracelet Nana Jo had given me on my first day of school. “That was a noble thing you did for her.”
“Not so noble. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have strangled him.”
“But you didn’t,” I said, and wondered if what he said was true. I kicked a wad of newspaper that was lodged in a gap between two buildings, freeing it. “Do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“No more rescuing.”
The corner of his mouth curled the tiniest bit, but it was still far from the smile I longed to see. “Even if you fall out of another tree?”
I slowed, trying to reconcile the bundle of conflicted emotions I was packing. How much could I trust this guy? If I wasn’t careful, I could set myself up for the biggest fall of my life. “I’ll think about it.”
We walked a couple blocks before he hit me with another confession. “I have a history of losing control. It was so bad at first that Neil had to restrain me.”
I stopped. “At first?”
He looked away. “You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“After . . . my accident. While I was recovering.”
“The one where you lost your memory.” Could that have been what all those shackles and chains were about?
“Like I said before, I don’t remember any of it. All I know is that my father told me there was an erraum. A malfunction in the laboratory.”
The condition of the copper capsule was certainly hard evidence of that, and I’d read once that head injuries could cause extreme reactions and mood swings. But his accident took place years ago. What happened in the loft tonight was different. He was different. The Adam I used to know was also very protective, but he used his wits, not his fists.
We resumed walking, the trailing laces of his right shoe slapping out with each footfall. Annoyed, he stopped under a lamplight to retie them, and I realized that no matter who he was, beneath all that awkwardness and pent-up anger and bitterness was someone as equally out of step with the world as I.
We caught up to Evan and Mal a few feet away from where we’d parked the hearse. Of course it had been towed. The moment begged for a big, fat “I told you so,” but I didn’t have the stomach for it.
It was a ten-block hike on blistered feet to the police station, where the clerk at the front desk explained that impound had already closed for the night. My parents would have to come on Monday morning to pay the fine before the hearse could be released. In the end we scrounged up enough bills and loose change between us to cover the cost of a ride home and took a seat on the curb to wait.
I was pinning Mal’s blouse back together with a safety pin I’d dredged up from the depths of my bag when two headlights on high beam whipped around the corner, blinding us. We all stood, assuming it was our Lyft. Not until it pulled even with us did we realize it was a small pickup truck. A stream of four-letter words bearing Shep’s earmark poured from the open passenger window. A cup flew toward us, hit the asphalt, and exploded, showering Adam’s new shoes with what smelled like piss.
I threw up my arms. “For real?!”
Adam was more willing to accept this as his due for coming close to murdering a guy. He whipped off his Vans and flung them over an adjacent wall. “They pinched anyway.”
Yeah, tonight sucked big-time for all of us, but especially for Adam. In the time since Adam had come to live with us, he learned that he’d lost not only his father but also his home. I’d threatened to expose him when he clearly had no better understanding of the situation than I did. And if that weren’t enough, he now had to live with the fact that he almost throttled Hayden Jornet to death while defending Mal’s virtue, a virtue she was nearly ready to throw away to make Evan jealous.
None of that meant I was willing to surrender my suspicions about him, but considering he’d put himself on the line for a friend . . . maybe I could at least give him the benefit of the doubt. But until I had proof of his identity, one way or the other, I vowed to temper any feelings for him. That would be the real challenge. If this small bit of leniency made me a raging fool, then at least I was a generous one.
I sacrificed my best handkerchief to wipe the piss from his hands, balled it into a wad, and sent it over the wall to join his shoes.
The rideshare finally arrived, and by time we dropped off Mal and made it to the house, it was close to midnight. Evan headed in, leaving Adam and me alone on the front porch, both of us still too keyed up to call it a night.
I sat on the bottom step and ran my bare, bruised feet over the soft tufts of weeds poking up through the crumbling walkway. The step was so narrow that when Adam dropped down beside me, our shoulders nearly brushed. He raked his fingers through his hair, but there was no taming it, so he tipped his head back and searched the heavens. For what, I don’t know. An explanation? A cosmic apology?
“You miss your old life?”
“A little,” he said. “You probably find that hard to believe. I do.”
“You seem awfully willing
to forgive your father, that’s all. I’m not sure I could.”
“He had his reasons for doing what he did.”
“That’s what all parents say.”
“I know he loved me in his own way, sometimes too much. He was so afraid to allow me any freedoms. I told him I wanted to be like other people my age—not that I knew what that meant. You know what he said to me?”
I shook my head, aware that this all sounded a bit too familiar.
“He told me I wasn’t ready for the world and that the world wasn’t ready for me. After tonight I think he may have been right. I never should have gone to that party.”
“No, Adam, he was wrong. No one can hide from the world. Not really. One way or another, the world always finds you.”
“Like you found me?” He dropped his gaze from the heavens and turned to look at me, our faces unexpectedly close.
“S-something like that,” I stuttered, hypocrite that I was. I made a career out of dodging life. I put my heart on a diet so strict that it was starving. If Adam tried to kiss me right then, I would abandon every ounce of resolve and hungrily kiss him back until my heart was full to bursting.
But he didn’t. So I didn’t. I knew what was stopping me, but what was stopping him?
“If, as you say, the world always finds you,” he said, still wrestling with the ways of the universe, “then do you think the trick is to go out and find the world first?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Then again, maybe the trick is to do a better job of hiding.”
I tucked my hands between my knees, looked up, and sighed. A single dark cloud had drifted in to cloak the stars.
RULE #17
KEEP THE DEAD’S SECRETS, AND THEY’LL KEEP YOURS.
I sat at my computer, Adam leaning over my shoulder. “See? Click, drag, drop. Don’t overthink it,” I told him, referring as much to the computer program as to the other night. I was wasting my breath.
Dad arrived with the day’s mail. “Looks like you got another parking ticket,” he said, tossing an envelope onto Evan’s desk. Evan shoved it into a drawer and went back to flicking a folded paper football over an imaginary goal post. “And here’s something for you, Lily.” Dad handed over an envelope and dumped the rest into his inbox, grouching, “Bills, bills, and more bills.”
Mortal Remains Page 12
