Wendy whips around and smiles. “Hey! Figured I’d let the bacon wake you up.”
“Mission accomplished,” I say, forgetting my shyness and stepping close to the sizzling skillets. “That smells amazing.”
In addition to bacon, I spy pans of eggs, sausage, and hash browns. There are also trays in the oven, and an assortment of pastries on the counter. Wendy’s mom greets us. She’s the same height as Wendy, but has long hair almost down to her waist. It’s tied back in a braid, probably so one of the many burners doesn’t set it on fire, and a hot pink streak threads through it.
She hugs Lincoln and then me. “Please, call me Lisa. So nice to meet you.”
I smile back but have trouble saying anything but, “You too.”
This is all a bit overwhelming, especially since part of my brain is still asleep. Wendy’s dad, white and almost as short as Lisa, also turns from the stove and introduces himself as Sam. Then he says, “Please, please sit down.”
“You sure we can’t help?” Lincoln asks.
Everyone bursts out laughing. “I think not,” Lisa says. “Remember when we let you cook the bacon last time? You ate it all before it made its way to a plate.”
Lincoln has the decency to look a bit sheepish. “I was hungry. Fourteen and growing.”
“Who’s to say you’re not still growing?” Sam asks.
Lincoln already towers over everyone in the kitchen. “Sit, sit!” Sam repeats, ushering us toward the kitchen table.
I settle into one of the wooden chairs. They all have soft seat cushions in different fabrics, like scraps bought from the bargain bin at a craft store. I like the look. It feels homey. Lincoln takes my hand under the table and idly rubs his thumb against my skin. Here I am, half-asleep, in the middle of who knows where, salivating over a strange family’s breakfast, and through all of that, I’m suddenly turned on. Like, what is that even?
I keep my eyes on the action in the kitchen, where the entire family is too busy cooking to pay attention to us, but that does nothing to deter Lincoln. He leans forward and nuzzles his head into the crook of my neck, planting half a dozen soft kisses on the sensitive skin. Middle-of-the-night breath, Middle-of-the-night breath, I chant to myself. But that doesn’t keep me from kissing him, a kiss that lasts half a second but keeps my lips buzzing long after.
“Hungry?” he asks, smiling deviously.
My cheeks flame. “Shut up.” I turn back toward the kitchen and catch Wendy watching us. She winks, then goes back to cooking. I’m embarrassed. I hate PDA. And PDA in someone else’s kitchen while they’re cooking you breakfast is worse than average.
Ten minutes later, we’re all sitting around the kitchen table digging in. This seriously puts yesterday’s diner breakfast to shame. Bacon, turkey bacon, sausage, veggie sausage, eggs (fried, over easy, and scrambled), roasted potatoes, hash browns, veggie casserole, bagels, biscuits, muffins, whole grain toast, scones, and so on.
I pile my plate with a little of everything. My stomach growls loudly since I was barely able to eat yesterday. I let everything combine so that every forkful is a mix of the feast. “Thank you for doing this for us,” I say between bites. “Seriously this is above and beyond.”
Everyone stares at me for a long, silent second—and then they break into laughter. Why does this keep happening to me? “This is like a regular occurrence,” Wendy says. “Since my parents work such weird hours, we try to do a giant breakfast at least once a month. You know. Bonding time and all.”
Lisa leans over and ruffles Wendy’s chopped hair. “Won’t be the same without you next year, sweetie,” she says.
“Next year?” I ask.
“Wendy’s going to school in Miami.”
“Whoa,” I say. “Isn’t that scary to go so far away?”
“Not really. I mean, it’s college, right? Isn’t moving away half the point?” Wendy forks a giant glob of eggs into her mouth.
No. “I guess…”
“You’re a senior this year, right? Where are you applying?” Wendy asks.
I shrug. “Probably just a safety school and USC—University of Santa Cruz. It’s a pretty good school and all.”
The conversation shifts, but despite my deflections, it keeps coming back to me. I know they’re trying to be nice, but it makes me uncomfortable to talk about myself.
“Will your mom be in Santa Cruz?” Sam asks after I tell him about Surf Break. “I know you mentioned your dad is still in Nebraska.”
I pause midbite. Lincoln takes my hand under the table and squeezes it once.
“I don’t know. It’s…complicated,” I say.
“You don’t know?” Lisa asks, concerned.
Lincoln cuts in, “Mr. Miller—Sam—you have to tell me what you put in these eggs. Take pity on me, please.”
Sam smiles and shakes his head. “That’s a trade secret,” he says but then proceeds to launch into a lengthy recipe anyway. I quietly zone out of the conversation. I know I should be better at answering questions about my mom by now, but it’s still so difficult. There’s no easy way to say my mom likes to run away for months, sometimes years at a time, without a word to anyone and then show up on our doorstep like everything is fine.
Once I told someone she was dead because it seemed easier.
Lincoln’s phone beeps. He pulls it out of his pocket. “Crap. That’s the alarm. We should get going soon if we want to make it to Santa Cruz at a decent hour.”
“It’s already six?” I ask.
We spent two hours eating and talking?
“We should get going too,” Lisa says. “We’re already more than an hour late, but you know, special occasion and all.”
Lincoln and I stand and start to clear the table, but Wendy shoos us away. “Guests don’t clean,” she says, “especially guests who are here for less than twelve hours.”
“Speaking of which, where’d you sleep last night?” Lincoln asks.
Wendy smiles covertly, shrugs her shoulders, and mumbles something about pranksters never sleep. I think her parents pretend not to hear her.
Lincoln and I hurry to get ready. There’s only one bathroom, so we skip showers and quickly brush our teeth and wash our faces. I pull out fresh clothes from my tote—athletic shorts, underwear, and a soft V-neck shirt—and put them on. Lincoln changes after me, and when he walks out of the bathroom, I can’t keep my mouth from gaping.
“Umm…no,” I say.
Lincoln grins widely. “Umm…yes.”
He’s wearing his Hawaiian print shirt.
“I’m just trying to get into the California spirit,” he says.
I shake my head, but don’t say anything else. There’s no way I’m going to let him wear that when he meets my friends.
“Man, I wish I could come with you guys,” Wendy says as we walk back outside, the early morning sun already heating the air. Even though I’ve known her less than twelve hours, I wish she could come too. I really like her. Plus, she’d give Lincoln company for part of the drive back to Nebraska.
“Umm…do you want to come?” I ask.
Lincoln and Wendy both look shocked by the invitation.
Maybe I need to make an effort to be nicer.
Okay, I definitely need to make an effort to be nicer.
“There’s plenty of room at my house. You’re totally welcome.”
Wendy lets out a big sigh, actually more of a grunt. “I totally wish that I could, but I’m leaving for Miami in T minus five days, and if you didn’t notice last night, I’m kind of the opposite of packed.” Wendy gives me a tight hug and then does the same to Lincoln, telling him, “You know, it wouldn’t be the worst thing ever if you came and visited me next year in Florida.”
Lincoln laughs. “Considering that drive is about twice as long as this one, I don’t know if that’s going to happen any time soon
.”
“You could always fly.”
Lincoln shifts uncomfortably. I stare at him and then Wendy and then back to him. “Oh my god,” I say. “You’re scared of flying! Lincoln Puk is actually scared of something!”
“Okay, okay. So I’m scared of flying. What’s the big deal? Lots of people are scared of flying.”
“So you’ll fling yourself off of a ten-foot ramp, but you won’t get in an airplane?”
“An airplane goes a lot higher than ten feet.”
“An airplane also crashes infinitely less often than you do.”
“I do not crash often.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Woah, okay you guys,” Wendy says. “Maybe you should continue this conversation on the road. In private. Where I don’t have to listen to it. Because it’s really annoying.”
“You’re right,” Lincoln says. “We really do need to get going.”
“Yeah, time sure is flying by,” I say.
Lincoln shoves me in the arm. I shove him back. And then we grin at each other.
“You guys sicken me,” Wendy says. She gives us hugs again. Lincoln and I climb into the car as Wendy calls after us, “Text me when you get there so I know you’re alive and shit!”
“Will do!” Lincoln says.
As we start to pull away from her house, Wendy stands in the yard, waving. I would have enjoyed staying at her house longer and hanging out. I guess new places aren’t all so bad.
• • •
“Do you want me to drive for a bit?” I ask. We’ve only been on the road an hour, but I’ve spent most of that hour napping. I figure Lincoln deserves some sleep too, and it’d probably be safer for both of us if he didn’t get that sleep behind the wheel.
“Isn’t that…how do I say this…illegal?” Lincoln asks.
“As your dear friend Wendy would say, it’s only illegal if you get caught.”
The car ahead of us keeps slowing down, so Lincoln shifts his grip to the left side of the wheel, bracing his hand against it, while flicking the turn signal with his fingers. I’ve watched him do this dozens of times now, the ease of the movement showing impressive dexterity.
“I’ll tell you what,” Lincoln says. “Instead of driving, why don’t you keep me awake by telling me a story?”
“A story?” I ask. “What about music instead?”
“I like your sunshiny voice better.”
I roll my eyes but smile. “I can’t think of a story. I’m not the creative type. Too bad Parker isn’t here.” Just saying his name makes me miss him. And Nash. And Emery. If they were in the back of this car right now, no one would ever have to worry about falling asleep.
“So read me something,” Lincoln says.
I reach into my tote and pull out one of my Detective Dana novels. It’s the third in the series, my personal favorite. I’ve read it at least five times. “The Zebra Zodiac,” I read the title. Then I pause.
“Keep going,” Lincoln says.
I open the book. The pages are so well-worn that I can fold the spine open from page one. “The call came at five in the morning,” I begin. “Detective Dana rolled over in bed, her left arm sore from sleeping with it tucked under her head, and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello. This is Detective Dana. What did you say? A dead zebra on the subway? Again?’”
I read thirty pages. Thirty slow pages because reading to Lincoln is frustrating. Every page or so he interrupts with a question, and every page or so I remind him that it’s a mystery novel, and the whole point of reading a mystery novel is to have your questions answered at the end.
“But you already know what happens,” Lincoln says. “So why can’t you tell me?”
“Because!” I say. “I’m not going to ruin the book.”
“It won’t ruin the book.”
“How could solving the mystery for you thirty pages in not ruin the book?”
“Because then I get to mock Detective Dana every time she takes a wrong turn.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“You’re pretty.”
“Ugh!”
“Okay,” Lincoln says. “No more reading. Why don’t you tell me about your friends?”
My friends. My friends who I’m about to see in less than a day. My friends who may or may not currently hate me.
My throat feels tight. “I’ve told you about my friends.”
“Not really. You’ve told me their names, but tell me what they’re like.”
I hesitate. Of course I want to tell Lincoln about my friends, but at the same time, thinking about them makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat. I hope I didn’t mess up too much. I missed a few phone calls and texts, but lifelong friendships don’t end over that, right? So I start talking, working through the tightness in my throat and the uneasiness in my stomach until the words slip out like I’m reading them from the pages The Zebra Zodiac.
I begin with Tess, of course. I ramble about our friendship for a solid half hour, from a description of our never-ending sleepovers during the summer between third and fourth grade to that time we ordered one of everything from the Shak, spending two months of allowance each on our meal. Then I dive into describing the rest of my friends—Cassie and her excitement about joining the navy. Spinner and the time we tried to scoop little fish from a shoal and sell them to tourists. Eric and—
Oh. Should I tell Lincoln about Eric? Tell Lincoln there’s this guy who happens to be one of my best friends who I kissed less than twelve hours before leaving for Nebraska? Tell him this guy might be mad at me for ignoring him all summer, which means he might no longer be one of my best friends? Tell him—
“Food?” Lincoln asks.
He saves me from my internal tailspin. I nod in gratitude. We have hours left to drive. I can tell Lincoln about Eric later, once I’ve found the right words. “Definitely food.”
All the talking dried out my throat. The sun is high, and my stomach is grumbling.
We are smack dab in the middle of nowhere without any of those helpful highway signs that tell us which town has what food, so we get off at a random exit and hope for the best. At first, our attempt seems like a fail. We drive past two miles of empty land, minus a storage complex and what looks like a dilapidated airplane hangar, which reminds me of Ashfall. But then, as we’re about to give up and turn to go back to the highway, I shout, “Look there!”
A log cabin style restaurant sits off in the distance. A single white sign with black lettering reads, “Cook House.” A few cars are in the parking lot, the only evidence that the place hasn’t been closed for decades.
Lincoln pulls in, tires bumping over the gravel. The windows of Cook House are old and dusty, so we can’t really see the inside. As we get out of the car, I have second thoughts. What if this is some kind of mafia drop bar like in Detective Dana’s Bloody Money? Or worse, what if it’s just a local restaurant filled with unfriendly locals? We should probably get back on the highway and find something familiar, like a McDonald’s or Subway.
Lincoln looks at me and holds out his hand. I hesitate, then take it. He threads his fingers through mine. He keeps doing that. Like he has an internal alert system that says, Anise is freaking out. Touch her and she’ll feel better. I glance up at him, and he smiles. “Come on,” he says. “I’m level eighty hungry.”
Inside, the first thing that hits me is the sound of three squeaking overhead fans. Otherwise, the restaurant is silent. That’s probably because the handful of customers are all staring at us. I squint in the dim interior. The two small booths by the door are already occupied, and a heavyset woman sits at the front counter.
I want to tug Lincoln by the back of his shirt and hit the highway. Before I can do so, Lincoln swaggers over to the counter like he’s been coming here every day since he was born and plops down onto on
e of the wooden stools. He turns to the woman next to him, extends his hand, and says, “Hey there, I’m Lincoln. What’s good to eat?”
If this were Detective Dana’s Wicked Feast, the lady would grin maliciously, say you, and then proceed to murder and cannibalize us. But this isn’t a novel. This is the middle of nowhere, and the woman smiles and says, “Hi there, Lincoln. I’m Marybeth. Y’all passing through?”
I approach the counter. Clearly Lincoln is here to stay and eat. I sit next to him, grateful that his bulk hides most of me. But then Lincoln pulls out his stool so we’re both sitting more side by side, and I’m very much in view of Marybeth. He wraps an arm around me and pulls me close. “Sure are,” Lincoln says. “On the way to Cal-i-for-nia from good ole Nebraska.”
I have no idea why he’s putting on this ridiculous accent. But it does make this unfamiliar place a little less daunting and a lot more ridiculous.
“Ah, I miss the traveling days myself. Used to be a bit of a vagabond after growing up in the South. Up and down the East Coast, then shot straight out west, dillydallying all over these here states for a decade or so.”
The story reminds me so much of my mom that I bite my lip and look away. I wonder if my mom is also sitting in some diner in the middle of nowhere, telling a pair of teenagers her own wild vagabond tales. I hate that it’s easier to imagine that than imagine her sitting on our own living room couch, telling me about her most recent adventures.
“Really?” Lincoln asks and leans forward in interest. As he does, the waitress, a squat woman wearing what looks like a hand-stitched uniform, enters from the kitchen.
“Know what you want?” she asks.
I’m about to ask for a menu when Marybeth interjects. “They’ll take two Tuesday specials, extra slaw on the side, fizzy lemonade, and a slice of pecan and boysenberry pie.”
I’m curious what the Tuesday special is and why you’re allowed to order it on a Thursday, but my mouth stays shut. “Sounds great,” Lincoln says. “And if you don’t mind putting a bit of a hurry on it, we’d appreciate it. We need to get ourselves to that big ole green state by tonight.”
The waitress nods without interest and moves away. “Why you in a rush?” Marybeth asks. “Wandering the country ain’t fun when you can’t do any wandering.”
Girl Out of Water Page 22
