“Holy shit,” I say, sitting up on the bed. “Did you go home?”
“Yeah,” he says with a grin. “You didn’t even notice. Totally catatonic. It’s like you were asleep but your eyes were open. I tried calling your name, but then I realized I don’t even know what it is. I kinda let you sleep for a couple of hours. Seemed like you needed it. And your clock looks like it gave you until noon tomorrow. I guess mail trucks can’t deliver anything between six at night and six in the morning.”
He hands me a bag, and I eat with the robotic detachment of a stump grinder by the meager glow of the tap light I brought from home. I should be angry at the lost time, but I’m half asleep and numb. I guess it’s a good thing, ending the day early and on a win. Beside me, Matty licks her chops hopefully, and I feed her some fries. Her tail goes berserk against the floor of the truck.
“What did you do while I was asleep?”
“Played my DS. Read a book. Got upset and threw rocks. Stared at you creepily and made dolls of your hair.” My eyes snap to his, and he’s trying not to laugh. “Just kidding. Look, I didn’t know what you wanted to drink, so I got a Coke and a Sprite.”
I take the Sprite and glare at him as he eats half a cheeseburger in one big bite. Jesus, does the boy even chew his food?
“Did you see your brother? Did you tell him?”
His eyebrows go down, and a look I can’t puzzle out passes over his face. He swallows a huge lump of burger and clears his throat.
“I didn’t see him,” he says.
“But you were going to tell him, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Can we just eat, please? I’m starving. Aren’t you starving?”
I shove a nugget in my mouth and chew mechanically. My stomach is growling, so I know I’m hungry, but it might as well be gravel. The sky beyond the dashboard is as black as the inside of a closet, and I don’t see any streetlights outside.
“Where’d you take us?” I ask.
“There’s this part of my neighborhood that they cleared out but didn’t build on.” He wads up the empty wrapper and pulls another burger out of the bag. “Kind of like the one where you were hiding out. Me and Max used to come here to hang out and cool off. Nobody really knows about it but us. Seemed like a good enough place to let you sleep and crash for the night. And then tomorrow morning we can go after . . .”
He stands and walks over to my list, where it hangs from the wall by putty.
“Ken Belcher,” I supply. I memorized the list a long time ago, before I ever met Robert Beard. Or his son.
“What kind of guy do you think Ken Belcher is?” Wyatt tears his new cheeseburger in half. He gives one big chunk to Matty and stuffs the other chunk in his mouth like a snake swallowing a table lamp. I’ve never seen a boy eat like that. Watching Matty gulp down her half of the burger while her butt waggles in joy makes a smile creep up on me of its own volition. But when I consider his question, the smile turns back upside down.
“I don’t care what kind of guy he is.” I burrow back onto my bed and tuck myself into the covers, and put a pillow over my head. “It doesn’t matter. Whether he’s rich or poor or young or old, he’s got two choices, and they both suck.”
Wyatt walks across the truck and towers over me. I peek out from under the pillow. His shadow engulfs me, the red from the dashboard clock outlining him like a Lite-Brite. His band shirt is tucked in just a little in front, with a belt over low-slung jeans. His torso is impossibly long, and I think of him as a megalith, as some sort of powerful boy-god whose next words will drop wisdom on me like melting snow.
“You look like you need a hug,” he says slowly.
And that’s not wise at all.
I snort and burrow my head back under the pillow so he won’t see me laughing. And before I even register that he’s serious, he sits on the bed and just sort of falls over me, drowning me in the scent of Mountain Fresh laundry detergent.
“Oh my God, get off!” I shout from under the pillow.
“Did you say hug harder?”
He drops all his weight on me, and it must take a hundred cheeseburgers a day to fill him up, because he weighs a ton. I’m afraid the cot is going to come unbolted and crash to the floor. It’s as if that big statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Capitol fell on me, and his pointy chin is killing me, pressing into the hollow between my neck and shoulders. Beside us on the floor, Matty’s tail goes berserk. Wyatt’s breath drifts over the back of my neck and I freeze, suddenly realizing how very, very close he is, closer than I’ve ever let anyone get since my best friend broke my heart.
Then his fingers dig into my ribs, and I can’t stop laughing. I laugh until I’m breathless, until my belly aches where it’s squashed against the metal bar under the bed.
“You have to stop,” I say. “You’re smothering me to death. I can’t breathe.”
He sits up, and I turn over and sit up too, because I can’t lie down while he’s this close to me, can’t lie on my back with my heart and my boobs on parade.
“Are you better now?” he asks, a little breathless too.
“No. Hugs and tickles can’t make this sort of thing better.” I pick at the quilt to avoid some charged movie moment where we stare at each other and slowly move closer.
“Yes, they can. Do I have to hug you again?”
He moves closer, just the tiniest shift.
Is he actively seeking a movie moment?
“My name is Patsy,” I blurt.
He cocks his head. “Seriously? I’ve never met a Patsy before.” He holds out his hand. “Hi, Patsy. I’m Wyatt.”
I reach out to shake his hand, but he won’t let go. His wet-brownie-mix eyes go soft, and he moves even closer, and I have to tell him something, can’t go another second without telling him.
“I’m really sorry I killed your dad,” I say in an itsy-bitsy, supertiny voice.
“I know.” His voice breaks just a little. He leans back out of kissing range again and clears his throat. “Things are messed up right now. We’re both victims. I feel like I should feel worse about my dad. I feel guilty for not feeling worse. But he left my mom to sleep with his secretary, and he’s an asshole to Max, and I hate living with him, and he’s a lying sack of shit. He’s already had one heart attack. I just want . . .”
He traces the quilt, too. We start playing a game where we don’t look at each other, don’t touch, just move our hands around the ratty old blanket like it’s a chessboard with no pieces. It’s awkward, but almost a comfortable sort of awkward. His pause stretches out, and I feel his gaze on me. I can’t stop staring at a sesame seed by the corner of his mouth.
“I just don’t want how messed up the world is to mess me up too,” he murmurs.
“Me neither. But how can it not?” I have to clear my throat to get past the lump. “We might be victims, but that doesn’t mean we can just ignore it. This isn’t a case where we can put on headphones and tune out how much grown-ups screw shit up. We’re paying the price for what they did. Kids don’t have debts, but we have to suffer for theirs. It’s not fair.”
His face goes red. “So what? I mean, people used to have kids just to do their farm labor. Or to work in factories. My friend Mikey’s mom ended up having to pay the bank twenty thousand bucks because her mom got dementia and maxed out her credit cards buying crap from the Home Shopping Network because her cats told her to. Our parents are paying the price for what their parents did, too.”
I put a pillow over my face and scream. It’s only half fake. “Kids shouldn’t have to worry about the economy. About debt. We should be allowed to party and be stupid.” I sound like such a puss, but if I can’t say it to Valor, I’ll say it to the only person around. I didn’t even party and act stupid when I had the chance.
He huffs. “‘Should’ is a useless word. There will always be poor people, and their kids will alway
s have to worry about shit. And rich people’s kids will have a different pile of shit to worry about. And then we’ll grow up and get new shit.”
“Shit.”
“Pretty much.”
“My brain hurts,” I say softly. “I don’t want to think about it anymore.”
I drop my head and sneak a look at him through my scraggly bangs. He’s studying me like I’m a puzzle, or maybe a confusing piece of art.
“What?” I say.
“I don’t get you. You’re willing to fight, to do whatever it takes to live, but then afterward, you regret it.” He adjusts his hat, takes it off, and looks at it. “If you foul a guy in lacrosse, you don’t sit around apologizing like a dick. You spend sixty seconds waiting for the chance to get back out on the field and score. You don’t let it stay in your head when it’s already done and can’t be fixed.”
“Yeah, so? This isn’t lacrosse. I didn’t smack some dude’s arm with a stick. I feel fucking terrible for killing people. You think that’s wrong?”
“No. I think it’s a waste of time. You can’t change the past, so you might as well live in the present. And if you don’t like the present, make a different future.”
“I’m pretty sure that my future is going to suck.”
He puts a wide, hot hand on my leg, and I freeze. “So change it.”
“How? How are you so goddamn sure? What makes you the world’s foremost authority on how to live with yourself after you murder innocent people?”
Wyatt just stares at me like I’m an idiot, his lip curled up. I keep forgetting that he killed the guy who was going to rape me in the back of my truck and then throw me to his friends as leftovers. And I need to find a way to thank him for that. This close, I notice that his nails are bitten down, and I get a closer view of the marks on the inside of his muscular arm, some sort of homemade tattoo, unfinished and jagged. I can’t tell what it is, but the skin is pebbled and scarred. Ugly.
“Who do you think I am?” he says finally.
“I don’t know.”
“If you had to guess.”
“Wyatt Beard,” I say. “Ex–rich boy, music geek, lacrosse god, and walking stomach.”
His eyebrows draw down, and his entire body takes on this weird, cagey energy.
“What if you’re wrong?”
I fidget with my hair, the knots on the quilt, anything. There’s something sinister about him, like it’s been lurking underneath the other Wyatt. I think of the way he straddled me, knife to my throat, of how quickly he shot that guy, and it sinks in that I might not be the most dangerous person in the truck.
“Fine. Who do you think you are, Wyatt?”
He snorts. “I’m not even sure. But the thing is . . . I got into some bad shit.” He glares up at me, his eyes half daring me to stop him and half begging me for forgiveness. “I’m not proud of it. Hung out with wannabe thugs, got in fights, got sent to juvie for shoplifting and vandalism. Smashed my bass through a window. But I decided to turn my life around. I went from straight F’s to straight A’s and dropped all my former friends. Even switched schools. Now I’m one of the best lacrosse players in the state and VP of the student council.” His fingers trace the jagged lines on his inner arm. “This was supposed to be the anarchy symbol. My friend Mikey was doing it with pen ink and a hot needle. I have to look at it every day now. It never goes away. So when I tell you that you can change the future, I fucking mean it. You just have to want it bad enough.”
“Oh,” I say dumbly.
“Let me guess. You’ve been a goody-goody your whole life. Probably never even took a sip of beer or smoked a cigarette. This is your first time doing anything really bad, isn’t it?”
It’s hard to wrench the word out of my gut, but I do it anyway.
“Yes.”
“And no offense, but you’re good at it. So why not turn it against them? Why not fight Valor?”
My eyes dart to the front seat, where the bugged shirt is wadded up on the floorboard. It can’t see us, and I hope to God it can’t hear us. If it can, we’re already totally screwed.
“How could I fight . . . them? A huge, rich, faceless corporation?” I snort. “How could anyone?”
“I don’t know. But between the two of us, we could figure out a way. You might have spent your entire life being good, but there’s a rebel somewhere inside you. Your inner yarn bomber says so.”
The food sits heavy as red clay mud in my stomach as we stare at each other. In the dark of the night, we’re nothing but shadows. My feelings and thoughts are as tangled as unraveled yarn, loose ends and knots and bursts of violent color. I don’t think I can fight something so big. But a few short days ago, I didn’t think I could shoot anyone. There’s a hardness to Wyatt’s eyes that I didn’t notice before, a loose confidence in his size and posture. Considering what he’s told me, I feel like I should like him less.
And yet I find that I like him more.
Without thinking too much about it, I run my fingertips up his arm to the place where a few harsh, black lines ripple over his skin. Sure enough, I can feel the raised bits, like his skin was burned and stained at the same time.
“Did it hurt?” I ask softly.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you finish it?”
“Mikey was working on it, and I looked down and saw the twisted needle, the ripped-open pen. And it just hit me, I guess. I wasn’t causing anarchy. I was just . . .”
He trails off.
“Acting out? Punishing your parents?” I poke the black marks. “Being a dick?”
He chuckles. “Yeah. Pick one. But I made him stop. We got in a big fight, and he OD’d right in front of me. I dropped him off at the hospital and never saw him again.”
“And you feel bad about it?”
“Not bad enough to go back.”
I’ve gone from tracing the tattoo to just touching his arm, enjoying the maplike lines of his veins. His skin jumps when my fingertips skim over the inside of his elbow. “It’s kind of funny. You were given everything, and you rebelled. I was given nothing, and I worked my ass off.”
“And now here we are, in the back of a mail truck. Being miserable.”
I have to force myself to look at him. “I’m not actually miserable,” I say.
Wyatt smiles, all soft. “Me neither.”
He pushes up from his slump and turns to face me. Matty moves between our knees, her muzzle wiggling back and forth on the bed and her tail going wild. I sit up straighter as Wyatt leans closer, holding my breath as his eyes close and his lips brush mine.
“Is this okay?” he murmurs against my mouth, and I barely nod my head yes, not really knowing what this is. His lips catch mine again, and his hand finds the back of my head, holding me to him gently but firmly.
Somewhere, deep behind my ribs, in a place I didn’t know existed, my heart opens up like one of those blooming tea bags, the ones that start out tiny and dark and then blossom like a flower. I’ve never let someone kiss me before. I’ve never let myself want to let it happen. It’s as unreal as everything else, but far more welcome.
He shifts, moving closer, his leg lining up with mine. Matty backs up and barks at us like she can’t figure out what’s going on, if we’re trying to eat each other or what. Wyatt’s hand strokes her head, and against my mouth, he whispers, “Shhhh, girl. Shhh.” It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.
My mind floats away, and my body yearns toward his. Misery feels like a long thing, something that eats you, digests you, traps you. I am surely miserable, and misery is a rainstorm. But this moment is an umbrella, a singular thing, a contained thing, a stolen thing, a world infinite in itself. It reminds me of the first time I rode an elevator up a skyscraper downtown and saw how very different things look from above the clouds. As hard as we labor every day, from up above, it’s just bri
ght splotches of movement and color.
Wyatt’s tongue finds mine, and I wrap my arms around his neck and fall back, pulling him on top of me. He holds himself up on his arms as he kisses me, and I miss that wild freedom from earlier, when he was hugging and tickling me. He’s holding something back now, just when I realize I need it most.
“What’s wrong?” I say, pulling out of the kiss to gaze into his eyes, breathless.
There’s a raw tenderness about him as he strokes my face and says, “Nothing. I just don’t want you to regret anything. You already regret too much of what you’ve done lately.”
“It’s just kissing.” But I feel the heat of a blush creeping up my cheeks.
“Is it?”
He runs a hand up my jeans-clad leg, which has somehow twined itself around his hip without my permission or knowledge. His hand is hot and wide, fingers spread, and I tremble when I realize how firmly we’ve wound around each other in just a few moments of heated kissing. I think of him, in his flimsy pajamas, straddling me, and I wish the darkness would devour us completely so I could lose myself and not feel the judgment in his eyes.
“I’m less miserable,” I whisper.
“Me too,” he whispers back.
“Then come here.”
My hands are still behind his neck, so I firmly pull him down to me until his chest presses into mine, his weight pinning me to the bed, to the truck, to the ground of what used to be America and is now some bank-owned corporate monarchy.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next week,” I say into his ear. “But right now I just want to not be alone. I don’t want to feel cold.”
He pulls away violently and lands on his feet beside the bed. His nostrils flare wide, his face screwing up in pain. Before I can ask him what’s the matter, what I did wrong, he wrenches up the back door of the truck and jumps out.
“Then hug your fucking dog,” he says over his shoulder.
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