by Joy Preble
Paris slides up and off the red vinyl bench, and I start to do the same, except then she says, “Wallet?” and I realize that I left it in the car because she was rushing me. Paris is the driver’s-license-in-her-pocket-let-someone-else-figure-out-how-to-pay type.
More than once she challenged us to spend an entire Saturday with only our spare change and any money we found on the ground. In Vegas, I learned that tourists toss loose change into every fountain they see. We went to the movies, paying with our plastic sack of coins. It was an old game of hers, that.
We’d done it back in Santa Monica, too, at places like this funky old theater called Beach Cinema—partly because we were frequently broke and partly because I think we both secretly worried that maybe things would get worse in our lives and at least we’d be ahead of the game. We went to the movies there a lot in any case. This guy, Oscar, who ran the upstairs lobby bar, would put extra cherries in our Cokes and sometimes we’d stay and watch the movie twice, emerging finally in the late-afternoon sunlight, squinting like moles.
“Gimme the keys,” I say, but she scrunches her face and says she’ll go, then narrows her eyes at Max and adds, “And don’t even offer to pay for our pie. We’re not that type of girl.”
Actually, sometimes we are, but Max doesn’t need to know that.
She sashays off, ponytail bouncing under the flower clip. “Carry on,” she calls over her thin shoulder.
Max and I look at each other. The AC is pumping and the vinyl of the booth seat feels cold and sticky against my bare legs. Maybe, I think now, the ninjas vs. zombies T-shirt is not my strongest look.
“So, Max,” I say, then stop. There is really no point in engaging him in further conversation, is there?
But he looks at me expectantly and out of my mouth pops, “So physics?” because he’s still holding the book.
“It’s my job,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Physics is your job?”
“Explaining atom-splitting and nuclear fission to patrons of the medium-famous Atomic Testing Museum.”
Is he kidding? I eye him more closely. I have made some mistakes in my life—including those two dates with thin-lipped Buddy Lathrop—but I know when something sounds too perfect to be true.
“The one by the Hard Rock?” We’ve driven by it like a million times but never gone in.
“The very same.” He does not seem surprised that I know this.
“Seriously?”
“Like a heart attack,” Max says. “Or like the Bikini Atoll explosion. Take your pick.”
He’s been standing this whole time, but now he slides into the booth across from me, glancing at his phone and then stuffing it in his pocket. He smiles happily, like talking about atomic bombs jazzes him. “Usually people aren’t this excited. They’re more like, ‘So is it a casino, too? Is there a buffet? Are there slot machines?’”
“It’s Vegas,” I say, looking at my hands and then not. “I think that’s required.”
It’s a part-time job, he tells me enthusiastically, like he’s trying to sell me on the concept. He’s taking this year off from college and traveling. Nothing permanent. He leans across the table as he talks, close enough that I can smell his cologne—something lemony and clean. Some guys—they smell good from a distance, but up close the scent is heavy like they’re trying to drown you in it.
Max smells nice.
“Vegas isn’t permanent for anyone,” I say. “Even if it is,” I add, thinking about our house and Tommy Davis, who shouldn’t be anybody’s idea of permanent, only our mother married him anyway.
It was a small wedding—just Mom and Tommy and me and Paris and the justice of the peace who married them. I made Mom’s bouquet from wildflowers and tiny burnt-orange tea roses tied with antique lacy white ribbon. Paris loaned her earrings she’d made—dangly ones with blue stones. Tommy wore a brown suit. The week before the ceremony, he tattooed our mother’s name, Callie, in script along the inside of his wrist.
Mom and Tommy kissed when it was over, and Paris and I applauded and then we all went out for lunch.
A few days later, Tommy quit his sales job at Best Buy, we packed up everything into a rented U-Haul and drove through the desert to Vegas.
Sometimes I think people do things only because they’re afraid of not doing them.
“You want coffee or something?” Max asks. He has just finished telling me about how the gift shop at the museum sells Albert Einstein action figures. Bobbleheads, too.
Which is when I realize Paris has been gone a really long time. How long does it take to go get my money?
I tell Max no about the coffee and then there’s an awkward silence and my skin prickles—just a little.
“Excuse me,” I say, pulse knocking—more than a little. “I, uh, need to see what Paris is up to.”
“No worries,” Max says, voice cheery. He flicks his thumbnail over a rough spot on the table. Max Sullivan is the happy type, I guess. Except for those gray eyes. They look more serious.
I ease from the booth, feeling silly. Paris is just spacing out by the car. Or Tobias called her while she was outside. Maybe she’s getting back with him. Maybe they’re fighting over the phone. But my heart is beating faster. I don’t have time for this. I really don’t. And not just because it has occurred to me that I like talking to Max Sullivan.
I walk past Waitress Maureen, trying to look casual—she gives me a “what’s up” look, but I keep walking—out the door and into the wall of desert heat, hot as a blast furnace. Behind me, Elvis booms “Jailhouse Rock” on the PA.
I expect to see my sister as I hit the parking lot.
But I don’t.
Plus, where’s our car? We’d parked in the first row, closest to the door. The row that is now empty. What?
I sprint around the parking lot, sweat beading on the back of my neck. Did I forget where we parked? Not likely. Also, three in the morning is late even for a city that doesn’t sleep. There aren’t many cars left.
Another lap and I’m sure of it.
Our Mazda is gone.
My stomach knots.
I’ve been ditched.
Shit. My pulse beats in my ears. Now? Now she does this? I knew there was something. . . . Why?
I reach in my pocket for my phone. And remember it’s in my car. With my wallet.
Paris has left me at the Heartbreak Hotel Diner in the middle of the night, five miles from home, with approximately thirty cents and a ball of dryer lint in my shorts pocket.
My heart rate rockets to somewhere between pissed off and panic.
I storm back to the diner. Maureen is over by the kitchen, but Max glances up, eyebrows arching.
“I need to use a phone.” I force myself to add, “Please?” because even to my ears it sounds like I’m about to bite his head off.
I wait for him to question this or tell me to try Maureen or ask me why, but Max hands over his cell and doesn’t say a word.
I cannot believe she did this to me.
I press in the numbers—my hand is shaking from adrenaline and it takes me two tries before I get it right. The phone rings. And rings. And rings. Her voice mail picks up.
I try it again. A third time.
I text her.
No answer.
I dial again and leave a message.
I think of calling my mother, but I don’t. She never answers when she’s at work. If she did, she couldn’t leave anyway.
We don’t have a landline. Can’t remember the last time we did. If ever.
I don’t call Tommy’s cell, either.
“You okay?” Max asks. “Where’s your sister?”
“Don’t know,” I say, and figure that covers it.
If the mysterious ex-boyfriend Toby has a phone, I don’t know how to reach it.
“What is it, dollie?” Maureen has plodded over and she pats my shoulder with a thick-fingered hand.
“I don’t know,” I say, breath sticking, hands clammy. This is
totally like her. I shouldn’t be surprised. But my heart clatters anyway.
“Where’s Paris?” Maureen’s lips purse into an O, her red lipstick flaking like old paint in the lines. The dangly red-stone earrings Paris made for her bobble against the top of her jaw.
“Gone.” I try to say it like it’s no big deal. It comes out sounding panicked. Maureen glances over her shoulder at the kitchen, like maybe my sister is going to pop out with a tray of pancakes or something.
She’s still looking at the kitchen when she says, “Your sister’s a good girl,” as though answering a question I haven’t asked.
“Yeah,” I say. “She’s the best.”
Maureen frowns, like she’s not sure if I’m being sarcastic.
“It’ll be all right, Leo,” Maureen says in that way people do when they don’t want to deal with you.
“You need a ride?” Max hands Maureen a twenty-dollar bill and tells her that this should cover both checks and that she should keep the change.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, shoving my hand in my pocket as though money will miraculously materialize. Probably, I realize, Maureen would comp us the pie anyway. But he’s already done it.
I don’t thank him—I mean, it’s not like I asked for it—just push past him.
“Leo.” Maureen rests a hand on my shoulder. I shrug it away, stepping back, but she follows me.
“Is he bothering you?” she asks with a narrow-eyed look at Max. Her breath smells like coffee and something fried. “Just say the word and he’s out of here.”
She’d do it, too. I know she would. Another thing my sister likes about Maureen. She is not the tolerating type.
“It’s fine,” I say, even though it’s not.
She scowls at me. “I see things working this job,” she says, as though this explains everything. “I know how people are.” She doesn’t elaborate.
I feel silly and confused. Max is probably just trying to help. People do that sometimes, right?
I gawk at Maureen for a few beats, then wheel out of reach, head toward the door. Max is still standing there, clutching his textbook.
I have no idea what I plan on doing. I have no money for a taxi. Walk home, I guess. There’s a spare key hidden in the bottom of our falling-apart grill on the back patio so that’s not a problem. Vegas Mike’s is about three miles in the opposite direction. I could go there, too, and wait for Mom.
No big deal. Not the worst thing, I remind myself. Except that when I flip-flop outside, Mr. Physics follows me.
He’s just a boy. But my face heats and my heart is hammering and the fact that he’s following me makes it hammer faster.
But it’s not like I know him. Or that I want him to know that there really is no one else I can call. Even if I had my phone. My brain runs the short list of people I could call. Marisol from physics, who I studied with before tests. Keesha from Academic Bowl, who Natalie and I had lunch with all of last year. We used to play practice games while we ate our sandwiches. But it’s not like they’re my friends. It’s been me and Paris for so long, the two of us as we moved from place to place to place. Even if I wanted someone else, we were gone too soon. Natalie seemed enough. Until she moved.
Possibly I need to rethink my personal friendship policy.
“Nothing to see here,” I say to Max over my shoulder, walking. “Go on. Shoo. I know Krav Maga.” This comes out of my mouth sounding not at all like Israeli martial arts—which, in any case, I do not know.
I wince—Stupid, Leo. My squinty eye catches a flash of silver on Elvis’s leg that wasn’t there before.
“I’m not a crazy stalker,” Max calls from behind me. “Do crazy stalkers tell physics jokes?” Max Sullivan is clearly the persistent type.
I do not have time for persistent types. My attention is on Elvis’s leg.
Written in silver Sharpie on Elvis’s chipping white pants leg in familiar, tiny print are these words: For Your Eyes Only!
There’s a note taped to the leg with a Hello Kitty Band-Aid. It’s folded tight and tiny in this intricate pattern my sister likes to use. Like those paper fortune-teller things Paris used to make for us where when you’d open a piece it would tell you things like “He loves you” or “Try again.”
My heart is pounding faster than it seems good for a heart to do.
I peel off the Hello Kitty Band-Aid. The note drops into my palm. I unfold it, fingers shaking. I tell myself not to be silly.
In my sister’s precise silver script, I see:
Stay calm, Leo. This is the only way. He’s making me. You have to find me.
xParis 0 00 1 36
My heart beats its way into my esophagus and lodges there.
“Whoa,” says Max. I’d forgotten he was even there.
Our elbows bump as we both bend to read the leg again, and the note—like maybe this time it will say something different. Or nothing at all.
Did she write this because of Tobias? Is she in trouble? Has she run away? My brain fires all the possibilities. None of them stick.
My sister has flaked out on me and left a crazy note telling me to find her. I wheel around again. No Paris. Still.
“What’s with the note?” Max is watching me in a way that needs interpretation: Sorry for me, maybe? Or confused? Or just wowed by my personal crisis. I do not have time for analysis.
“She do this a lot?” he asks.
“No. Yes. I— It’s Paris,” I say, the panic shifting into something darker and more pissed off. “This is the kind of thing she does.”
Which it is, sort of. My sister likes to make the world more interesting.
He nods, but I know this is different. Not like last year at a party at her friend Margo’s when she decided we should tell everyone we were witches just to see what they would do. (No one cared.)
This feels like something else. But what?
Is she really in trouble? I have to find her.
“You need a ride?” Max asks again. He’s staring, head tilted, arms crossed, physics book tucked under his elbow, some strands of slightly-too-long hair curled at the bottom of his neck. I smell the cotton of his shirt, and sweat—just a little—and the vague traces of that lemony cologne.
I do not take rides from boys I do not know. I do not ask for help, period.
But my options are limited. I have no car. No phone. No wallet. It’s a long walk in the dark.
Things happen like this, I know. One minute you’re whistling along and the next, life has gone off-kilter. The trick is to shift with it, like a computer resetting after an error.
I size up Max Sullivan and decide that he is not Hannibal Lecter.
And when he asks a third time about needing the ride, I acknowledge that maybe I do.
FIVE
MAX SWEEPS ASIDE EMPTY GUM WRAPPERS AND CRUMPLED SACKS from a wide variety of fast-food establishments and tosses a scattered pile of books into the back, chucking the physics book on top. He turns the key in the ignition and the truck—a black Ford Ranger—coughs to life, idling noisily.
“Need a tune-up,” Max announces. He chews his lip briefly but looks otherwise unperturbed.
I reach under my ass and extract a laminated name tag on a blue lanyard. Max Sullivan. Atomic Testing Museum. Las Vegas, Nevada. In the picture, he’s looking off to the side rather than at the camera.
“Here,” I say, holding it between two fingers. Max Sullivan is a slob.
He loops the lanyard over the rearview mirror. It swings back and forth in the updraft from the AC.
I can still go back to the Heartbreak and call a cab. When we get to my house, I’ll tell him I have to go inside to get cash. Maybe I should do that.
My hip hugs the door—just in case. If time travel existed, I could go back an hour or two and know enough to follow Paris outside. Or go forward and already be home, knowing what was going to happen. Of course in sci-fi stories it never works like that. Someone screws up the future by changing the past and the apes end up i
n charge or everyone gets stuck in some causality loop—repeating an event over and over but never getting what they want because that’s not how it works.
Yes, this is what crosses my mind.
We’re still idling in the parking lot.
“Lemme see,” Max says, gesturing to the note, and I hand it to him, keeping space between us. There are crumbs of something gummy on the seat. Possibly I will need a tetanus shot after riding in this truck.
He squints at the tiny print.
“She’s probably home,” I say, as much to myself as Max. “The sooner I get there, the sooner she can yell ‘ha ha’ and you can get back to your life.”
And I will get back to mine.
It’s pitch-black out but you wouldn’t know it from the neon Heartbreak sign, flashing on and off in the night. With each flash, I wonder where Paris has gone.
“Hey.” Max peers at the scrap of paper again, still not shifting. “Oh. I get it. Clever.”
“What?” I lean in. I can see the sharp creases where she’d folded the note over and over—a tiny origami triangle.
Max points to Paris’s signature. “Look,” he says. “The numbers.”
I read them over again. 0 00 1 36. So? Max Sullivan has known my sister for like what? Thirty minutes and half a piece of pie? Not even that much since she’s been missing through most of it.
Max waggles the paper as though this will help.
0 00 1 36.
“C’mon,” Max says. “Think.” His tone reminds me of Mr. Lippman, when he’d put a physics equation on the board.
And then I see it in my head: the wheel, red and white and black.
Of course I know this. My mother works in a damn casino.
0 00 1 36. The numbers on a roulette wheel.
“It can’t be,” I say. But I know it is.
“Your sister plays roulette?” He scowls when I snort.
“Um, no. But our mom deals blackjack. At Vegas Mike’s.” I frown. “Even if that’s it, what would she be trying to tell me? To place a bet?”
“Well,” Max begins, and I cut him off with a wave of my hand. This is not physics class. Max is cute, but I have to find my sister.
“You know what?” I say, and I know he hears the prissy in my voice. “There is no explanation. She’s not hurt. She’s not missing. She’s just being—well, I don’t know what she’s being. But I bet she’s being it at home.” The words fly out, but I don’t know if I mean them. What if something has really happened?
