by Jessica Grey
“Girls,” he said dismissively. “They’re just jealous of you. Not much you can do about that.”
Alex almost tripped over her own feet. Junior high girls were many things, but she doubted any of them were jealous of her.
“The boys though, you could probably put them in their place. I bet it’s mostly fifth grade and up that give you the real problems.”
She nodded.
“Yeah, they can’t really help it. They think you’re hot, and the hormones just make them crazy stupid.”
This time Alex really did trip over her own feet in shock. Luke reached out, grabbing her arm before she could continue her forward momentum face-first into the linoleum, and righted her before dropping her arm and continuing on as if nothing had occurred. “You just have to be firm with them, don’t let them know you’re intimidated. Kind of an ice queen, but you know, without crushing their fragile male egos.”
“‘Fragile male egos?’ This doesn’t sound like the kids I’m talking about,” she protested. Luke was obviously just trying to be nice. No one would for a minute believe her problems with rowdy tour groups was due to adolescent boys finding her attractive.
“Bravado,” he informed her gravely as they came into the front lobby. “Firm without cruelty. Getting put down by a cute high school girl—or college girl I guess now, huh?—it could crush a sixth grade boy for years. Damage him beyond repair. You don’t want that on your conscience.”
Alex glared at Luke as they came to a halt, trying to determine if he was messing with her. The boys that came through the museum in the summer did not appear to be the kind that would be damaged beyond repair if an introverted science geek put them in their place. Not that she’d even know how to do that if she tried.
“I’ll take that into consideration,” she said drily as she turned to survey the lobby. People milled about the lobby in groups of three or four, picking up pamphlets for various displays or looking at the map of the museum. Weekday mornings weren’t the busiest, even in the summer months. “Would you rather I give you the tour, or do you want to cold read it and I’ll guide you in the right direction?” she asked.
“I’d rather hear it through once, if that’s okay.”
“Yeah sure.” Alex pasted a patently fake smile on her face. “Thank you for joining us at GeMMLA. My name is Alexandra Martin and I will be your tour guide today—”
“Hello, Alexandra.” Luke smiled broadly at her and winked.
Alex ignored him. “As you may know, GeMMLA stands for the Gem and Mineral Museum of Los Angeles, and as part of your tour today we will be looking at samples of both gems and minerals. Can anyone name either a gem or a mineral?”
Luke raised his hand.
“What?” Alex asked, exasperated.
He looked to each side, and then in an exaggerated motion behind him. “Oh, me?” He feigned surprise. “I can name a gem—a diamond, they are a girl’s best friend.”
Alex pushed her glasses up and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You don’t actually have to answer the questions. This will take forever if you do.”
“I was just teasing Lex, don’t get stressed.”
She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose harder. “I’m not stressed.”
“Yes, you are. You always do that when—” he broke off with a sigh of his own. “Never mind, I won’t tease you or interrupt your spiel.” He grinned at her as she let her glasses drop back down into place. “Lead on, oh fearless tour guide.”
“Promise?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, then.” She slapped her fake smile back on and continued, “The first stop on our tour is a mineral exhibit, where we will see many fine examples of specimens that can be found right here in California. Please follow me.”
True to his word, Luke was silent throughout the rest of the mock tour, even going so far as to industriously take notes on his tour sheet with a pen he’d fished out of his back jeans pocket. After a few minutes Alex decided that a silent Luke might actually make her more uncomfortable than a goofy, teasing Luke. When he was being silly she could ignore how tall he was or how broad his shoulders were. But standing silently, close enough so he could hear, and make notes about, what she was saying—it made it very hard not to notice.
The large, open rooms of the museum felt strangely claustrophobic by the time she finished running through the tour and deposited him back in front of Maureen’s desk. She mumbled a quick excuse about photocopying she needed to finish and escaped to the safe haven of the copier room. It was kind of cruel to leave Luke in the clutches of Maureen, Becca was right about the older woman flirting with him. In fact, the way she looked at him was downright predatory, but Alex figured he was a big boy and could handle himself.
~
Later that afternoon Alex stepped through the employee’s exit into the warm sunlight and took a deep, relaxing breath. She’d spent the last hour going over paperwork with Nicholas, and starting a new filing system in his office. Being in such close confines with him stretched her nerves to the breaking point. She was always so afraid she was going to do or say something stupid. She could never fully relax.
“Hey, Lex.”
Startled, Alex jumped about half a foot, before whirling around to see Luke Reed leaning casually against the wall. How he managed to look like a magazine ad in eighty-five-degree heat was beyond her.
“You scared me!” she burst out.
“Sorry. Heading home?”
“Yeah. You?” Alex answered, thinking that he didn’t look very sorry. He looked like he always did, just slightly amused by her.
“No, just taking a break. Mind if I walk you to your bus?” he asked, pushing himself off of the wall.
She considered saying no. She hated to be rude. She’d never been deliberately rude to Luke, no matter what she had been feeling about him. She’d always thought it would be a disservice to the memory of their childhood friendship. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t turned down the occasional hallway to avoid running into him, or pretended she hadn’t noticed him walking by or sitting a row away from her. Her eyes flicked up and down the narrow alley. Neither of those was really an option at the moment, so she heard herself saying “sure.”
She started down the alley, and he fell into step beside her. They walked in silence for a few moments, eventually coming out of the alley and onto the walkway that wound around the lawn. Due to its location halfway down the circle of museums, they had to walk half the length of the lawn plus down the main sidewalk to get to Alex’s bus stop. It usually took her about ten minutes of leisurely walking. When Luke didn’t say anything, she began to wonder if they were going to spend the entire ten minutes in silence.
“Mr. Hunt is always having you do a lot of extra stuff,” Luke finally said as they turned onto the main sidewalk.
“Yeah, I guess. I’ve been here a long time, easy to ask me I suppose.”
“You and Becca both volunteer every summer?”
“Yeah, but Nicholas and Becca aren’t always on the best terms, so I usually help him out more with his projects and she spends more time on general stuff.”
“Becca seems like a smart girl,” Luke said.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked, offended, but not sure if she should be more offended for Nicholas or for herself.
“Nothing,” Luke shrugged. “Just that you spend a lot of time here. Don’t you have other stuff to do? Fun stuff, you know like dates?”
Alex was so surprised she laughed. “Um, no.”
He glanced down at her quizzically. “Why is it a funny question?”
“I don’t really date. I’m not really the dateable type.”
Luke stopped walking, and after continuing on a few steps past him down the sidewalk, Alex stopped as well and turned to look at him.
“How are you not the dateable type?” He sounded genuinely curious.
Alex shifted her weight from one foot to the other, extremely uncomfortable and trying not t
o show it. A hot blush was fighting its way onto her face in spite of her mental effort to repress it. “This is a really stupid conversation.”
“Is it? You’re smart and pretty, not sure how that makes you undateable. You are kind of shy, so maybe guys read that as kind of untouchable and are scared to ask.”
“Luke, I get that you are trying to be nice by saying these things, I’m not sure why, but I appreciate it, I guess. I’d just rather you didn’t.”
“I’m not saying anything that’s not true.”
Alex sighed and turned back toward the bus stop. “Debatable,” she muttered under her breath, but Luke must have heard her. He hadn’t moved from his spot on the pavement.
“You know, Lex, it’s like you have these weird blinders on. You can’t see yourself how other people see you—how you really are.”
She puffed out a frustrated breath and turned back around to face him. “What is that even supposed to mean, Luke? I see myself fine. I know who I really am.”
“Do you?” He looked down at her, bemused, and Alex was suddenly unsure of her footing.
“That’s just a stupid thing to say,” she bit off defensively. “I definitely know myself better than you know me, and I certainly don’t need you to tell me about myself, or about anyone else for that matter.”
“Oh god, are you talking about Mr. Hunt?” He ran his hands through his hair. “I actually think maybe you do need me, or someone else, to tell you about him. I know you’ve got a crush on him, but that’s no reason to pretend he’s not a self-absorbed jackass.”
She flushed angrily. “I don’t have a crush on him,” she insisted. “Nor do I think he is a jackass. Maybe you’re just jealous of him.”
Luke muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t quite catch. It sounded uncharacteristically terse. He took a deep breath and then eyed her speculatively. “Why would I be jealous of him?” he asked, his voice once again sounding vaguely amused.
Actually, Alex reflected, she wasn’t sure why Luke would be jealous of Nicholas. It had just sort of popped out. “‘Cause he’s got a graduate degree and a great career and he’s only a few years older than us—”
“Ten,” Luke interrupted.
“Seven,” Alex shot back. “And you’re—you’re—” she stuttered, unsure of what she was trying to say.
“Yes? What am I?” Luke laughed down at her. The late afternoon sun filtering through his hair, bringing out the golden highlights in the slight curls that almost touched his collar.
You’re almost breathtakingly attractive, thought Alex as she blinked up at him. In a really annoying, irritating sort of way.
“Short stuff, I hate to break it to you, but I’m not really concerned that I’m not going to have a career by the time I’m Nicholas’s age. I think somehow I’ll manage.”
“You are so arrogant,” Alex burst out. “So what, you’ll make millions of dollars hitting a ball around a field, and you’ll probably get injured and retire at thirty-two, and then what? Meanwhile, Nicholas has a career that is respected and long-lasting.”
“So you’re in love with him because of his career? Isn’t that a little bit shallow?”
“Firstly, I am not in love with him!” she insisted. “And secondly, no, that’s not the only reason I respect Nicholas, he’s also…” Alex paused for a moment, desperately searching for what else Nicholas was. He was hot, but she could hardly say that to Luke, especially after he’d just accused her of being shallow.
“Yes?” Luke crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her.
He looks like a frustrated parent dealing with a stubborn child. The thought irritated her even further.
“I am not discussing this with you,” she finally said. “There isn’t any reason why I should. Even if I was madly in love with Nicholas,” she paused for a moment, trying to stop the blush that was betraying her words, “which I am not, it’s absolutely no business of yours.”
“That’s true,” he admitted, uncrossing his arms. “Lex, I know we haven’t been on good terms in a long time, but that doesn’t mean I want to see you get hurt.”
“Why does it even matter to you, Luke? Me not getting hurt hasn’t exactly been your top priority before.”
He took a step back, but she was too angry to care about the stung look on his face. “It matters because you are—were,” he corrected himself, “my really good friend, probably my best friend, and I know I hurt you—”
“Yeah, I’d rather not discuss it,” Alex cut him off sharply. She was beginning to feel woozy and desperate for the conversation to resolve itself. She wasn’t sure why it had even started, or why she hadn’t just walked away from it five minutes ago, but now that the thought had finally occurred to her, ending it on her own seemed like a brilliant idea.
Luke must have seen some of her internal thought process, or maybe her nausea was somehow reflected on her face, because he immediately looked contrite. “I’m sorry, Lex, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll shut up.” He took a step toward her, but she held up a hand.
“It’s okay. I think I can make it to the bus stop on my own.”
An odd look flashed across Luke’s face. “Sure, sorry I didn’t—”
Alex cut him off again, “You better get back. Thanks for walking me. See you later.” Before he could even reply she spun back around on her heel and marched determinedly for the bus stop.
“Sure, see you later,” he said from behind her, but she didn’t turn around to acknowledge him.
Alex sat resolutely on the bus stop bench, refusing to even glance back toward the museum to make sure he had indeed gone back. As she boarded her bus a few minutes later she realized it was the first time she’d ever purposefully stopped a conversation with Luke. Up until this point avoidance had always worked fine. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved, sad, or just plain sick to her stomach.
~
The sun was barely peeking over the San Gabriel Mountains to the east when Alex arrived at the museum the next morning. She wasn’t a morning person in general, and the only thing that could have propelled her from her bed before dawn in the middle of summer was a bona fide emergency. According to the slightly incoherent, frantic sounding message that Nicholas Hunt had left on her cell phone the night before, this, whatever it was, qualified as an emergency.
She rubbed her gritty eyes. On top of getting up early, she’d had gone to bed late. The Los Angeles area had been rocked by an earthquake late the night before. Not a huge one, only 4.5 on the Richter scale, but located almost directly under downtown Los Angeles.
Alex and her mom had taken their usual bets on location and size, while they watched the news reports filter in. Alex had five bucks riding on the high desert with a size of around six. Her mom was insistent that it was Northridge and only a 5.5. They were both surprised to hear how close it actually was. In the end all ten dollars ended up being dumped into the vacation fund, which resided in an overly large ceramic piggy bank her mom had picked up in a little Mexican shop. All the excitement, most of which resulted from the betting after the fact and not the actual earthquake, kept her awake past her usual bedtime.
There was no sign of life from the closed museum, and Alex trudged around back to check the parking structure, which was similarly empty. She had tried calling Nicholas back the night before right after she had first heard the disjointed message, and again this morning before she left. She tried once more from outside the museum and he still wasn’t answering his cell phone, so she stowed her cell in her backpack and decided to try her luck at the employee entrance.
She was pleasantly surprised when the automatic lock blinked green when she swiped her key card, she had a vague memory of having been told she only had access between eight am and seven pm—a few hours before and after closing. It was barely six am and yet the key card unlocked the door and she let herself in.
Nicholas must have changed my access hours when he asked me to meet him so early, she thought.
Alex was overly aware of the squeak of her Converse on the linoleum that lined the back hallways as she headed toward the storage and display access areas. Her left shoe was squeaking louder than the right, and in the silence the unbalanced sound annoyed her. She deliberately tried to quiet the squeak of her left shoe by shifting her balance, although in reality she was trying to distract herself from the creepy feeling the empty, too-quiet museum was giving her.
She soon reached a fork in the corridor. To the left lay the storage rooms, or she could go right toward the back ends of the display areas for the front galleries. She hesitated. He’d been extremely excited and unclear in his message, so she wasn’t quite sure where to look for him.
“Nicholas?” Her voice reverberating off of the walls and linoleum floor was the only response.
After another moment of consideration, Alex veered left to check the storage rooms. She figured the only thing that could have made Nicholas so excited as to be basically unintelligible would have to do with the shipment he was expecting from Professor Gagnon in France and the most likely place for any new items would be the storage area.
She checked the first few storage rooms but found nothing more interesting than cardboard boxes and a few old posters highlighting former exhibits. She pulled open the door to storage room B-23 and stuck her head inside.
Set back about halfway into the room was a huge, cobweb-covered four poster bed. Alex started when the door banged shut behind her. She'd been so focused on the bed, she hadn't even realized she'd been moving, walking towards it slowly.
