Adeem had always wondered why Reza hadn’t reached out to them after Leyla had left, and now he understood why: Reza felt guilty. Maybe he blamed himself.
Adeem had blamed himself, too. Not for saying the wrong thing, but for saying nothing. No That’s okay, Leyla. No We love you anyway. He’d been in shock. He’d thought of Reza. He’d been angry she hadn’t told him before.
He’d made it about him. Maybe that was why she’d run away—so her life would finally belong to her.
“But she’ll always be Leyla,” Reza went on. “She’ll always be one of my best friends, my family. Priti, too.”
Adeem looked up. “You’re still in touch?” Reza nodded. “Where are they?”
Reza smiled sadly. “For a long time, Leyla told me she didn’t want you guys to know. She thought you would be better off. But under the circumstances . . .”
“I need to see her,” Adeem said. His voice cracked over the words.
Reza nodded, like he understood perfectly. He stood up. “She hasn’t reached out to me in months. Everything I know, it’s because Priti told me; she’s the only one who’s bothered to keep in touch. She’s settled in Las Vegas. Alone.”
So Priti and Leyla were no longer together? Then why hadn’t Priti said anything to him? To his parents? If they’d broken up after all this time and all they’d been through, then something bad must have happened. Priti could have at least given him an update so he’d know his sister was okay. After all, there was no way Leyla could have decided to leave on her own. It just wasn’t like her.
“And Leyla?” Adeem pressed.
Reza ran his hand through his thick crop of hair. “Last I heard, Leyla had just found a job in Roswell. At a counseling center, I think.”
Adeem felt a rush of triumph so strong it almost dizzied him. Roswell. So it was her voice he’d heard on the Roswell radio channel, it had to be. He’d even brought the portable radio, listened to it on the drive here just to try and catch her again. He’d been so afraid he’d hallucinated her voice. He had clung to that radio broadcast like a bird to bread crumbs, a sign where she had, for so long, left none.
The message must have been for him, right?
“But where—” Adeem began to press.
Before Reza could respond, there was a sudden whine of audio feedback. The girl with the nose ring, Hiba, came running into the hallway. Right away, Adeem could tell something was wrong.
“The casino’s on lockdown,” she panted out. “They’re saying there’s an active shooter.”
Instantly, Reza’s face changed. “Get everyone to the basement. We’re on lockdown, too. Go.”
Now a flood of volunteers appeared suddenly, corralling the tense-faced audience members out of the main hall toward the stairwells leading to the basement, waving their hands like air traffic controllers.
Reza seized Adeem’s shoulders. “Inshallah, I hope you find her soon.” He stepped out of the darkened hallway toward the flood of people and stood directly underneath a series of stained-glass windows, his chin lifted toward a sky clouded with incoming rain. For a brief moment, his face was illuminated in the palest ray of green light. “We might not have much time left, after all.”
Reza beckoned him to follow, but Adeem couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. What about Leyla? Roswell? Everything was happening too fast. He begged his rooted legs to move, his knees to bend, but they refused. There was a deafening silence in his head, a sudden emptiness that left him dizzy.
Reza disappeared, swallowed by the crowd, and Adeem ripped his feet from the floor—and forced himself through the doors, into the fading sunlight.
10
Cate
“I don’t remember this being on my bucket list,” said Cate, narrowly missing a pile of what she hoped was spilled food and not vomit on the ornate red-and-gold-carpeted floor.
“Nope,” replied Ivy with a smirk. “That’s because it’s on my bucket list.”
If there was a fire code for maximum occupancy in Atlantis Casino, Cate imagined they had long surpassed it. Despite the colossal, carpeted expanse of the casino floor, bodies crammed every available inch, making the air hot and viscous. With six days left on Alma’s doomsday clock, everyone who’d clutched their money tightly to their chests and kept their pockets full of unused luck probably no longer saw the need. And Atlantis—named after a city that survived its own little apocalypse—was the perfect place to spend it.
The muted ceiling lights brought out the neon glow of hundreds of machines, surrounding her; a fast-paced, atonal scale played from a nearby slot machine before bursting into an excited ringing. It was a miracle this place hadn’t been touched by the power outages.
Around her, she caught snippets of conversation—hints of other lives. A man in a feathered fedora and pin-striped suit grunted a low “Gimme another” to a blank-faced dealer whose concealer did little to cover his black eye. A woman with a still-raw tattoo of a cobra peeking from the front of her glittering red dress squealed drunkenly as she yanked the lever on a machine, while a small man ogled her nearby, the front of his pants stained with what Cate hoped was booze. She cringed as a shirtless boy, probably Cate’s age or even younger, took a swig from a purple drink half-filled with colorful gambling chips; the liquid dribbled down his chin. To avoid the pile of wet chips at his feet, Cate walked into a cloud of cigar smoke, making her head cloudy with its rancid, peppery scent.
A smell of desperation. Of emptiness.
She could barely believe these kinds of people actually existed. Where had they been hiding all this time—had Alma brought them all out?
Or had she been so sheltered, so focused on her mom, she just hadn’t seen them?
After four rounds of blackjack, Ivy lugged her casino chip pail away from the green-felted table, satisfied. It wasn’t exactly full—in fact, far from it—but they’d still made a handful, and that was more than either of them had expected. Now Ivy took in the sights around them, hungrily searching.
“There! Dance floor, starboard!” Ivy exclaimed and grabbed Cate’s arm. “This place is so damn big, I thought we’d never find it.”
“For the love of God, please, no dancing,” said Cate, groaning. They’d been at the casino for only a few hours, but it felt more like days. And she didn’t like the way Ivy kept glancing at her phone only to silence all the incoming calls from her mom. Mrs. Huang must be worried sick. Maybe she’d finally secured a spot in a safe house somewhere, was desperate to have her daughter home so their family could find shelter together. The thought made Cate feel worse.
She yanked her arm from Ivy’s grip and parked herself on an empty stool at the nearby bar. “We shouldn’t even be here.”
Ivy dropped her pail by Cate’s feet and perched on the bar table beside her, ignoring the bartender’s protests. “Aw, come on. You can count this as part of the mission. I mean, this is where your parents met, right? The place where it all began. Think of it as getting to know them better. And who knows?” she said, grinning as she locked eyes with Cate. “You might even have been conceived here. Right. Here.”
Cate gave Ivy a shove. “I should never have told you that.” This was exactly why Cate hated discussing her parents with Ivy. It was bad enough that her parents had met at a casino. Part of Cate had always hoped that their story was more romantic. More fairy-tale-like.
But Ivy only laughed. She beckoned the bartender with her finger. “Gimme a tequila and a club soda, will ya?” She caught Cate’s glare and quickly added, “And some pretzels. Or any other snacks ya got. We’re starving.”
The bartender rolled his eyes, but almost immediately set two glasses on the bar and sloshed some tequila into one of them, bubbly soda in the other. He didn’t ask for her ID. The people at the casino entrance hadn’t even bothered to properly check Cate’s and Ivy’s fake IDs, either, and Cate knew damn well she didn’t pass as twenty-nine-year-old Ethel Wellington. Getting into Atlantis, ordering drinks—it all felt too easy.
Cat
e hadn’t even seen a single police officer or guard patrolling the casino, though after watching officers take Mom, she wasn’t exactly upset about it. Guess they had bigger things to take care of.
Still, Cate felt a stir of unease. No cops. No rules.
No help if something went wrong.
The bartender slid them their drinks, one a sun-yellow liquid, rimmed with salt. Ivy swallowed her club soda in one go.
“Being the designated driver sucks.” She slid the other glass into Cate’s hand, a conspiratorial flicker in her eyes. “I’m living vicariously through you, girl.”
The glass was cold against her fingers. Cate met Ivy’s gaze and felt another stir of unease. “Can I eat first? All I’ve had today was half a granola bar.”
She was well aware Ivy was no stranger to partying hard and getting others to party with her. She had always been that way. If other people worked hard and played hard, Ivy worked her ass off—and played her ass off, too. It was, after all, her tried-and-true method of forgetting about her parents’ issues. But this Ivy was . . . different. It wasn’t like Ivy to push this hard, to constantly egg Cate on, to constantly push her to dance, to drink, to let loose—
It felt off, somehow.
And it wasn’t just that, Cate realized. Ivy had said her dad took her phone after the alien message was translated, but what about before that? She hadn’t checked in with Cate after the party, which wasn’t like her at all. Ivy’s silence in the car as they drove to the casino, and now her determination to do anything but talk—it all pointed to one thing.
Ivy was hiding something.
“No time!” She hopped off the bar abruptly and stretched her arms above her head. “Now, while you’re here contemplating whether or not you’re actually going to live for once, I’m gonna dance.” She grinned wildly. “Start a tab!”
Ivy bounced into the crowd, her hips already swaying in perfect tandem to the beginning of a Drake song.
Cate took a handful of the pretzels the bartender set down. What was it that Ivy had said before? I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, literally.
She had sounded so sincere, so determined, then. But who was following who now?
The more Cate thought about it, the more she felt the familiar angry buzz in her blood. She should have noticed it sooner. That faraway look in Ivy’s eyes, ever since they’d left the apartment complex. It was almost as if Ivy was desperate for something, too, just like the other casino-goers—but for what? Even if she asked, she was sure Ivy wouldn’t answer.
Cate eyed the drink in her hand once more, threw her head back, and downed the shot. The drink burned her throat as it slid down, like a rug burn on her insides. She slapped the empty glass on the bar and ran her tingling fingertips through her hair—half-surprised when her hair suddenly ended. She still hadn’t gotten used to it; the haircut had been another one of Ivy’s brilliant ideas.
They were all Ivy’s ideas. Every single one.
Cate was struck by a sudden memory: Mom sitting on the bed next to Cate, braiding her hair, making Cate’s scalp tingle beneath her gentle movements. She’d tell stories about Dad and his adventures, and Cate would listen. She always heard the longing in her voice, magnetic and warm, and it made Cate miss a man she’d never even met. Cling to memories she’d never had.
But in the end, they were all just silly imaginings and half-baked delusions. Her real dad wasn’t a shape-shifting sky pirate who rescued decrepit towns from disaster. Cate sometimes wondered if her real dad even existed, if maybe he had been just a figment of Mom’s imagination after all. But he had to be someone, didn’t he? Unless Cate herself was imaginary, too, just a quiet figure living in the recesses of Mom’s mind all along. Maybe Cate would wake up one day, look in the bathroom mirror, and find it empty.
She swallowed her thoughts. All that mattered was that her dad had a name now, and that made him real enough for her.
Garrett.
The base of her neck was slick with sweat. From the stress? Or the alcohol? She couldn’t tell anymore.
Ivy reemerged from the crowd wearing sweat like a glistening second skin, the colorful disco lights refracting off the droplets on her body. Even her plum blossom tattoo, peeking from the back of her shirt, seemed alive. “I warmed up the floor for you,” she said, breathless. “Now come.”
The tequila was kicking in, lighting a warm, steady fire inside her. “Ivy. Why are we here?”
“What do you mean, why?” Ivy leaned her head, letting her long hair dangle to the side. “I told you. To have fun, for once. Carpe diem and all that. We didn’t come out all this way for nothing.”
“Exactly,” Cate huffed. She could practically feel the letter throbbing in her purse. “We came to find my dad.”
Ivy wrapped her arms around Cate, half falling on her. She was sticky. “I know, I know. We’ll get down to business soon, my beautiful eager beaver, I promise, but look around! We’re in motherfucking Reno with no supervision. It’s time to cross some things off our bucket lists, babe. I need you to live.”
Cate pulled away. She saw it written all over Ivy’s face again. That look.
And suddenly, she understood. “You’re hoping I’ll just give up, aren’t you?” she said. The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “You were hoping you could just make me forget.”
“Finding your dad in Roswell is going to be like finding a needle in a shitstack—if he’s even still there,” Ivy continued, her shoulders slumped and her words coming as fast and unrelenting as punches. “It’s not worth it. Remember when you finally found your aunt Lily and she said all that shit about your mom? You didn’t want to go out again for weeks. You cried to me, Cate, and you hate crying in front of people.” She took a deep breath. “I want to make sure you never get crushed like that again. Your mom wants you to deliver the letter. But the most important question is, what do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Cate said. Her pulse pounded in her ears over the drumming of the music. “I promised her.”
“And that’s exactly the problem! You don’t care! You don’t care about yourself ever. You only care about your mom. Even when it hurts. I mean, you have no time to study for the SATs because of her, don’t have a social life because of her. You can afford to be a little selfish every once in a while, you know. Do you even know how to live for yourself? Because that’s a thing, Cate. That’s a thing people do. And now is kind of a great time to start.”
“I do live for myself. I went to that party with you, didn’t I?” Cate snapped.
“I practically had to force you to! You talked about your mom all night then, too, and then you ran off after an hour. It’s so hard to get you out, Cate.” Ivy’s voice rose higher and higher. “If you could get away with skipping school, you’d probably never leave your house.”
Cate’s jaw tensed. “I never asked for a last-minute life makeover.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t need it. As your best friend, I’m telling you this whole plan to find your dad is ridiculous. You need to learn to let go.”
“Let go?” Cate’s eyes burned. She blinked rapidly, trying to bring Ivy and everything around her back into focus. But her eyes kept blurring over, and now her throat felt tight, squeezed by an invisible force that made her want to cry even more. “That’s easy for you to say. All you do is let go. But I’m not like you. I don’t have the freedom to live for myself when my mom, in case you’ve forgotten, is sick. I don’t have the luxury of a normal life like you—”
“Right, because my life is so luxurious.” Ivy cut her off. “All I’m saying is, you’ve picked the literal worst possible time to make an impulsive decision. Even I can see that, Cate. But if you don’t, fine. Fine. Go on your wild-goose chase. You’re always running from something, anyway.”
“What?” Cate could barely choke out the word.
Ivy picked up the pail and shoved it toward Cate. “Keep the chips. You’re gonna need them more than I do.” She spun on her
heel and shoved her way into the crowd.
“Ivy!” Cate shouted, but Ivy either didn’t hear or pretended not to. And Cate didn’t have the heart to go after her.
Ivy didn’t understand. Ivy had never understood.
Besides, Cate was used to doing things alone.
The pail was a heavy anchor in her hand. Ivy had covered the chips with a folded piece of notebook paper. Cate lifted the paper, unfolded it.
Her bucket list, the one Ivy had made for her. It was strangely short—Cate was surprised Ivy hadn’t added an entire tome of all the things she wanted her to do before the end. This was the same Ivy who still made weekly, color-coded to-do lists for fun, the same Ivy who kept a shared Notes list on her phone of all the recipes she wanted to make with Cate.
So maybe Ivy had made the bucket list short on purpose. Maybe she’d wanted to leave room for Cate to add goals of her own.
Her heart jostled behind her ribs, rattled by the swirl of conflicting emotions: the cold grip of guilt, the lingering flare of anger, the black void of confusion. The paper suddenly felt heavier than the pail full of chips. But Cate had to focus. There was no time to let anything—or anyone—distract her.
Roswell was an eighteen-hour drive from Reno; she knew that much. With Ivy’s chips, she’d have plenty of money for a bus. With any luck, she could do the trip straight and have three days with her mom.
Mom. She wanted to hear her voice so badly.
Cate still had the number for the inpatient psychiatric unit. Maybe she could call again, talk to Dr. Michel directly to get a better idea of when her mom would be well enough to take visitors. Cate was already pulling up the number when the music cut off with a screech. The lights came up abruptly, leaving everyone on the dance floor awkwardly blinking and embarrassed. The crowd on the dance floor suddenly looked like a crowd of pasty, confused grocery shoppers caught trying to steal something embarrassing. Even the bartender had stopped midpour, and now that the lights were up, Cate could see his yellowed, sleepless eyes and the angry rash crawling all over one side of his face.
I Hope You Get This Message Page 9
