“This is some messed-up Indiana Jones shit!” Leo shouts.
It’s gaining on us. We dodge into an alley between two food trucks. My foot gets tangled in an orange extension cord, and I trip. For a moment, I’m falling, but then I land, still mostly upright, against something soft.
Oh. I’ve got Leo pinned up against the side of the food truck. His chest rises and falls quickly under mine, and we’re both damp with sweat. And instead of focusing on my survival, my stupid brain can’t think anything except: He doesn’t feel anything like a dancer. He’s warmer, broader, softer. When I’m dancing, my body feels like a tool or an instrument, and my partners’ do too. Right now I just feel like Hannah. He just feels like Leo.
I’m about to push myself off him, mortified at being plastered against him from collarbone to knee, but his arms clutch protectively around me, pulling me farther into the gap between the food trucks.
Everything around us goes red. The sound of rubbing nylon gets loud as the bouncy castle presses up against the food trucks. It’s freakish—like it knows where we are.
And then the wind nudges it along, and it billows past, down the main thoroughfare.
Once it’s clear that we’re safe, Leo loosens his arms.
I’m too stunned to move. Leo looks down at me and waggles his eyebrows. “As much as I’m enjoying this, maybe now’s not the best time?”
How can he be cracking jokes at a time like this?
I peel myself off him, embarrassed.
We emerge from between the food trucks and watch as the bouncy castle, now a safe distance away, veers off course and snags on the corner of a Whac-A-Mole booth.
The wind dies as abruptly as it started.
In the lull, we make it to the car, fumbling with the handle on Leo’s side before piling in. I slide across to my seat, and it feels like home base, like safety. Until I realize that the sun is too low.
It’s almost at the horizon. Has time sped up?
At first I think I’m imagining it. I study the sky, and the darkness accelerates. It’s not snap fast this time like the eclipse, but the quick fade is surreal and disorienting.
“Uh, Hannah? You know how I said I was okay after I jumped off the carousel? I’m … not totally sure I am.”
I pull my eyes away from the sky and look at Leo. He twists in his seat and pulls his shirt up.
The skin on his stomach is so smooth it makes me gulp. His muscles flex as he lifts his arms, craning his neck to inspect the damage. There’s so much skin, and just the right amount of hair, and oh god, he has a happy trail. The shadowy line starts at his navel and disappears under the four glinting silver buttons of his inappropriately low-riding jeans.
My cheeks burn. I should look away, or at least lift my gaze higher.
When I do, I see the blood.
The scrape is a nasty red graze over his left rib cage, flecked with dirt and small bits of gravel.
Leo makes a strange noise. I flick my eyes up to his face. He’s pale, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Uh, I’m not great with the sight of blood,” he says. He doesn’t look well at all.
I concentrate on the scrape, fighting the urge to let my eyes drift lower. What is it with him? I see half-naked dancer bodies all the time. The guys I dance with are always peeling off their sweat-soaked tops, and when they’re in costume, that means their lower halves are usually only covered by a skintight layer of Lycra that leaves very little to the imagination. Leo’s black jeans are positively proper in comparison.
Being hypnotized by a bit of exposed skin is another thing I don’t need.
“Okay. I’ll, um—take the gravel out.” Think, think. About bandages, not happy trails. NOT happy trails. “Do you have a first aid kit in here?”
He shakes his head, eyes trained on the roof of the car. “Some napkins in the glove box, maybe.”
I grab them. “I’m going to have to—” I make a weird helpless motion to warn him that I’m about to lean over his lap.
“It’s okay, just get it over with.”
I try not to breathe as I settle my elbow on his thigh. His candle-smoke smell is everywhere, earthy and alive and intoxicating.
I use my thumbnail to carefully pick out the pieces of gravel. One of them is large, embedded deep like an iceberg, and when it comes loose, a thin stream of blood trickles down his stomach. I press the napkins to it before I can think. My hand is so close to—
“What was that?” he asks. “Am I bleeding more?”
“You’ll be fine. There’s a cut underneath one of the pieces of gravel. Nothing a big Band-Aid can’t fix.” I’m lying a little. The cut is deep, maybe deep enough to need stitches, but we’ll have to make do. I’m not a doctor.
Thankfully the bleeding doesn’t last long.
“I can’t keep pressing on this while you drive,” I say.
“There might be some duct tape in the back seat,” he says.
I rummage around and find a roll, taping a fresh wad of fast-food napkins over the wound. When I’m done, Leo blinks his eyes open and lets his shirt fall back over his stomach.
Outside, the wind strikes up again. It batters against the car, rocking it on its wheels. I’d almost forgotten about it. Happy trails will do that to you, apparently.
“I think we better go,” Leo says, studying the skyline, the trees bending in the wind.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” I ask.
“Fit as a fiddle,” he says. He’s still a little gray.
“Stop if you need to and let me take over, okay?”
He nods.
It’s still getting dark too fast. When we pull out of the parking lot, it looks like late evening, and by the time we get on the highway, it’s full-on night.
We drive when there’s no wind, in the silence between the gusts. When it blows, we stop, put Thunderchicken in neutral, and listen to it buffet at the roof and batter the windows and doors. We stay off the open highway, but down here in between buildings, things fly up and hit the windshield, leaving three spidering cracks.
My knuckles are white on the panic handle, and Leo holds the wheel at ten and two. I get the strongest urge to grab his hand, but he needs to focus on driving.
It took us twenty minutes to get to the festival, but it takes us an hour to get back to Grand Willows.
The intervals between the gusts have their own rhythms, and we can predict when we’ll have to brake. I brace for the next one and Leo starts to slow down, but nothing comes.
We drive on through the stillness. A whole minute passes.
The sky is pitch-black now. The streetlights on the highway are bright and white, and we pass under them in stripes. Light, dark, light, dark. The clock on Thunderchicken’s dashboard reads 5:24 p.m. Why is it so dark outside already?
“Do you think that’s the last of the wind?” Leo asks.
“It seems like it.”
There’s a weird silence. We’re both thinking the same thing: What next?
“Do you want me to take you to the bookstore?” he asks.
I swallow. “I guess. My car’s still there.”
What are we supposed to do when we get there? Do I climb into my mom’s SUV and just drive away? Say Hope to see you around sometime and wave in the rearview mirror?
I can’t say goodbye to Leo. It’s not going to happen. Not after today.
We’re the only two people in the city.
He starts to say, “Hannah—” at the same time that I blurt out, “Do you want to come to my house?”
I flush. “I have a spare bedroom,” I add hastily, tripping all over my words. “I’m not— I’ve never asked a guy to come back to my place before. I don’t want to—” Shut up, Hannah.
Leo pries one hand off the wheel and pats my leg.
“Hannah. Going to my house alone does not sound appealing. Your spare bedroom sounds awesome. Tell me where to go.”
Hannah directs me to her house as I guide Thunderchicken through the nei
ghborhood. I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, drumming out a nervous rhythm. The sky is black and the streets are deserted, full of a four a.m. kind of anticipation. That’s the quietest time for a city—the partiers have gone to bed but the suits aren’t up yet for rush hour.
But it’s not four in the morning—it’s six p.m.
Cars are parked on the side of the roads and most houses have their porch lights on, but nothing moves except for us. My spine is almost as straight as Hannah’s as I keep my eyes trained on the shadows at the edges of the sidewalks. I’m checking my rearview mirror like someone on the run.
“Did anything like this happen to you before today?” she asks.
“No. You?”
“No.”
I want to crank up some music, but that’s not going to be enough to distract me now anyway.
“My street’s the next one on the right,” Hannah says.
I turn onto it and slow to a crawl. We go to the same school, so I should have realized we both lived in Grand Willows. How have we been orbiting each other our whole lives and only seen each other a handful of times at school? I don’t remember her from middle school or elementary, but we go to huge Texas public schools and it’s possible I missed her.
I know the streets. I’ve lived in Grand Willows my whole life. It’s a nest of overgrown trees and disintegrating antique shops, a soft, rotten pit in the metallic sprawl of Houston. We have a termite problem, so half the houses in the neighborhood are about to fall apart and the other half already have. There’s always a shiny new build going up somewhere, on the rubble of a razed termite house. I like the variety, though. Other parts of town are all divided up, but Grand Willows is a mix of broke-down and shiny.
“Which house is yours?” I ask.
“That one there,” she says, pointing.
I pull up outside a termite house. It’s short and squat, with an ivy-covered chimney and orange front steps. I bet the screen door screeches. It doesn’t look like Hannah at all.
“Not this one. The next one,” she says.
I take my foot off the brake and let Thunderchicken roll forward.
Okay … this is probably why we never met. Because this house is one of the sell-out new builds. And not just a reasonable, updated version of what was there before—it has columns. It’s an ice palace, regal and white, looming against the darkness of the night sky.
“Wow,” I say. “It’s so … symmetrical.”
She slides down in the seat a fraction of an inch. “I know. It’s ridiculous.”
“I mean … are those Greek columns?”
“Just wait till you see inside,” she mumbles. “Last month my mom came home with actual marble busts for the alcoves in the hallway.”
“No way, seriously? What do your parents do?”
“My dad works in finance,” she says, skirting the question.
“Hey, so does mine! Well, if being a sleazy pawnshop owner counts as finance.”
“Oh. Um. My dad is a little more corporate.”
There’s suddenly something between us that feels sharp and gritty. If we’d known about each other’s dads’ jobs sooner, would all our interactions so far have been different?
“You can park in the driveway if you want,” Hannah adds.
“Oh, you mean this grandiose circular carriageway? I feel like I should have a team of horses and some footmen,” I deadpan.
She elbows me. “All right, that’s enough. It’s not that big.”
She’s right—my house is about the same size. Only mine looks like a crumbling haunted house and hers is a brand-new McMansion.
I pull Thunderchicken up to the front door and give her steering wheel a little pat. It’s okay, T-Chick, you’re beautiful. You deserve to be here.
It’s pretty clear that Hannah and I come from different backgrounds. I mean, I knew she wasn’t poor, her clothes and stuff were proof of that, but this is … more than I expected.
I shake off the annoyance rising in me. Money doesn’t matter when you’re dead, right? Maybe her parents are crappy too. Having money doesn’t automatically mean you have nice parents, just like being poor doesn’t automatically mean you have crappy ones. Too bad I got the short end of the stick with both.
Hannah slides out across the seat after me. I grab the acoustic I stole from the guitar shop, and we walk to her front door in silence. The uplights on the Greek columns cast sinister shadows. Hannah punches a code into an electronic keypad, and then we’re inside.
The foyer is a pristine icebox with stupidly high ceilings. I think of my termite-ridden house with its missing shingles and shitty air-conditioning, about the broken gate that I have to climb over to get into the yard. I feel a little sick. Even if my mom had the desire to keep it in good shape, where would the money come from?
Being indoors makes me feel penned-in and jittery, like a hundred squirrels are running around inside my body. I’ve been out every day, driving around and breaking into places, because holing up in a house means I might have to actually think about what’s going on. Maybe Hannah has some good movies or at least a piano to mess around on. Or—ooh—maybe her corporate dad has some off-limits alcohol locked in a cupboard somewhere.
I spin around in the foyer but stop dead when I see her face. She looks shaky, like she’s about to fall apart.
My first instinct is to look for the nearest exit.
But she asked me before if I was okay, so I think … it’s my turn.
“Do you … need anything?” I ask. The words are hard to get out and feel strange in my mouth. Hopefully she’ll just say no.
“I think—I might just need some tea,” she says.
Tea? Not exactly whiskey, but it’s easier than whatever request I was bracing myself for.
“I usually have chamomile before bed,” she says. Tiredness has scratched her voice low and raw, and it’s gorgeous to listen to. “When I was little, I had a serious nightmare problem—like every night for years—and tea helped a little. Well, that and dancing until I dropped. Do you want some too?”
“Uh, sure,” I say, and it feels like another offering, another small comfort to help me get through this.
She’s … caring for me. It makes my throat feel lumpy and thick.
I follow her to the kitchen in an awkward daze.
It’s spotless, all marble counters, but by the light of one low lamp, it’s kind of cozy. I lean onto the island and try to pluck a grape from a bowl overloaded with fruit, but it’s fake. All of it’s fake. God, rich people are weird.
Watching Hannah as she moves purposefully around the kitchen helps my jitters a little. She heats some water in a kettle that actually whistles and sets two teabags into flower-patterned mugs.
She pours my cup first and hands it to me. My fingers cover hers for a moment, and I can’t help but think of the drinks we’ve passed between each other today. The Dr Pepper, the coffee, the tea. Small comforts that seem to come at the exact right time.
I take a sip of tea, and somehow, it’s better than whiskey. It’s exactly what I needed. It doesn’t seem like anybody ever gets what I need—including me.
The tea tastes like flowers and laundry detergent, but I kind of like it. It warms me up from the inside. The jittering stops, and I suddenly feel really chill and grounded.
The last time I felt like this was when I accidentally moved into Asher’s house for three weeks when we were fifteen. It started out as a sleepover, or whatever you call it when you pass out in your best friend’s bathtub after an epic concert, but I stayed the whole next day. And the next. Asher’s mom made us breakfast every morning when she got home from her night shift, and his dad made us dinner when he got home from his nine-to-five. We ate at the same time every day, and we had to be home by nine on school nights, eleven on weekends. I thought I’d hate it, all that structure, but I didn’t.
Of course I went and screwed it up, but while it lasted, it was great. I kept waiting for Mrs. Rosenberg to tell me it was t
ime to go home. She finally did, one night when Asher and I got stuck at a venue on the other side of town without a ride home. When we snuck into the house at midnight, his mom gave me A Talk. I didn’t catch all of it, but it went something like this:
We can’t support another child
bad influence very fond of you
another mouth to feed
especially if they’re making bad decisions.
She said I could stay until morning, but I left right away. I took my pile of clean, folded laundry home to a kitchen full of dirty dishes. Joe—my little brother who was twelve at the time—was home alone, playing video games and eating ice cream. My mom came home an hour later, her smudged lipstick hiding an impish grin, and my sister, Gemini, who was seventeen then, stumbled in an hour after that. My mom didn’t say anything about curfews, because we didn’t have any. Still don’t.
I lean a hip against Hannah’s marble countertop as we sip our teas in silence. Usually I can’t handle not talking. It’s why I like to be in big groups most of the time. But this silence isn’t tense or weird. I feel … okay. I don’t need to turn on the giant TV in the corner or fire up my playlists. It’s so calm and quiet that I almost feel like humming, “I’m easy like Sunday morning.”
Maybe this is why she’s been hiding at her house. Maybe there’s a better way to cope with this stupid emptiness than wheeling around the city like a maniac.
After a while, I meander over to a shelf with a bunch of framed pictures. I grab a frame studded with red and green jewels. “Oh. My. God. Is that you?”
She sighs and comes to stand beside me. “Yep.”
In the photo, she’s on a wide stage framed by an ornate red curtain. She’s wearing a flouncy lavender dress with about a hundred layers of frilly lace. Her hair is a mass of glossy ringlets, a lighter shade of brown than her hair is now.
The photographer caught her midleap, holding a weird doll high in the air. Her legs are perfectly level like she’s doing a split—only she’s hovering four feet off the ground.
You & Me at the End of the World Page 8
