Authors: Amy Garvey
But I’m not going to think about that now. I still have pictures to take and print and mount, and an actual boyfriend to face later when he gets off work. My plan is to meet him outside the shop when he gets off, all casual “surprise!” But every time I think about him, the memory of last night pushes through, hot and urgent. I have no idea what will happen the next time we’re kissing, and I still don’t understand what happened last night.
For once, “playing with fire” doesn’t sound like a lame cliché.
The next stop is going to be Bliss, where I am craving a latte as big as my head. I definitely don’t want Gabriel to see me if he’s in the front of the bookstore, so I decide to cut through the alley to come around from behind it. But the minute I look across the street at the café, I freeze.
The girl and the boy from the diner last night are just coming out, holding tall paper cups with the Bliss logo on them. The girl turns her head and spots me just as I’m about to back up into the alley, and her mouth stretches into a dangerous grin. This time the boy stares.
I feel like prey.
But I can’t just stand there like a space case, and I can’t turn and run again, either. I have too much pride for that. No matter what, they’re just kids. Who would they even tell?
My feet start moving before I actually decide to take another step, but by then they’re only five feet away.
“I was hoping I’d see you again, tiny barista,” the girl says, and it clicks.
She comes into Bliss, usually in the evenings, and she always orders a triple espresso that she doctors with loads of sugar.
“I’m not tiny,” is the first thing that comes out of my mouth, even though each of them has a good couple inches on me.
The boy tilts his head, smiling, and laughs. “You’re totally wee. But it suits you.”
He’s decked out in the long wool coat again, with a Harry Potter–striped scarf wound loose around his neck. I want to ask him how the hell he thinks he knows anything about me, but as I open my mouth the girl reaches out to flick the collar of my jacket. Her nails are a deep, shimmery royal blue, like disco Disney, and longer than most girls wear them anymore.
“Don’t mind him,” she says, stepping between us and lowering the wattage of her grin to a more comfortable glow. “He was born with foot-in-mouth disease. It’s tragic.”
I stare at her, because it’s hard not to. She looks like she just landed on Earth from another world, somewhere part Wonderland and part space opera. Her cloud of hair is so platinum it’s colorless, but her eyes are a bright Christmas green, and her mouth is a blaring fire-engine red.
“I’m Fiona,” she says, and holds her hand out. “I don’t think I’ve ever properly blah blah yadda.”
I blink, and my hand is reaching up to take hers without any conscious direction from my brain. “I’m . . . Wren.”
The sound she makes isn’t quite a laugh, but it’s delighted. Behind her, the boy sticks his hand up, a half-mast wave. “I’m Bay.”
“Bay?”
“Joseph Arthur Bayliss,” Fiona stage-whispers. “His initials spell ‘jab.’”
“Bay,” he repeats, but he doesn’t really sound pissed off. “What’s up, Wren? I heard about you.”
This is it. The moment, the one I’ve been dreading ever since Fiona saw me in that tunnel. I wonder what happened to the boy she was with that day. He knows about me, too, or at least whatever Fiona thinks she’s figured out about me and thought was interesting enough to tell Bay.
“We should talk,” she says, and her voice sounds like silk in the frigid air.
“I don’t have anything to say,” I manage, and take a step around her instead of back. I head down the sidewalk, even though I know I can’t stop at Bliss now and keep walking past it through the alley on Elm, which will cut through to Main. I can hear them following. “I don’t even know you.”
“But I know something about you.” It’s light, singsong, as she follows behind me, Bay right beside her.
I stop next to a parked truck behind the delivery doors to the dry cleaner’s. Bay is staring at me, head still tilted to one side. I don’t look away when I say, “Maybe you think you do.” My voice doesn’t even shake.
“Sweetie, you were a good eight inches off the ground.” Fiona is suddenly much closer, her breath warm in the cold air. “You
know
I know, and it’s cool! It’s
awesome
, is what it is. We love a new playmate.”
Bay hasn’t even blinked, and I can’t drag my gaze away. His eyes are so dark, they’re as colorless as her hair, and I wonder if they’re contacts. He’s some weird combination of prep and Goth I’m not sure I’ve seen before, and it’s almost funny.
“No pressure,” Bay says finally, and I nearly jump, he’s been so still until now. “But if you ever want to talk about what you can do, just let us know.”
I put all of my bite into my words. “Do you hear me asking for your number?”
Bay smiles, slow and wise, and Fiona slips her arm through his as she tugs him away, calling over her shoulder, “It’s already in your phone.”
MOM’S IN THE KITCHEN WHEN I WALK INTO
the house twenty minutes later. I wound up heading home when I was trying to shake off my two new “friends,” and suddenly I was too confused and off balance to turn around and face Gabriel. I’d been so worried about seeing Fiona again, and now she just seems like a harmless, flamboyant fairy with a bored poser boyfriend. I’m as mad at myself as I am at them, and I’m going to have to go back to get pictures of Bliss another day.
Mom’s somewhere between putting groceries away and laying out ingredients, although it doesn’t look like they’re going to add up to dinner.
“Hey, kiddo. I thought you’d be off with Gabriel somewhere.”
When I slide my arms around her waist and lay my cheek on her shoulder, I can feel the vague vibration of her laugh. “Glad to see you, too, sweetie. What’s up?”
I twist my head to look up at her. “Can’t a girl want a hug for no reason?”
“Sure. You just usually don’t.” She strokes my hair for a minute, her fingers catching in the coarse waves. “Wow, it’s cold out there. Get your coat off and help me with this?”
I step back and carry my coat out to the rack in the front hall, peeling off my gloves and scarf, too. I wish it were as easy to shed the hard little knot of guilt wedged up under my ribs at what Gabriel must think of me not showing up.
Mom is humming something under her breath as she turns the knob on the oven to preheat it, and I start collecting the assortment of brown-paper grocery bags and folding them up to put away.
“What are you making?”
“Desi said she would close up the shop tonight,” Mom explains, putting a new bunch of bananas in their bowl on the kitchen table. “She said, and I quote, that I looked ready to do violent murder, so I decided to come home and start on some cookies for next week.”
I blink, speechless. Every day gets more like Dickens around here lately, and it’s actually sort of nice. Before, when it was just me and Robin and Mom, cookies were usually a last-minute Christmas Eve thing, and sometimes just a ready-bake roll of dough from the supermarket. “Seriously?” I blurt out before I think twice, and Mom lifts an eyebrow.
“Yes,” she says tartly, but she’s smiling, too. “Once upon a time there was a more domestic me, for your information. And I’m trying to . . . well, get reacquainted with her.”
“You go, Martha.” I duck when she throws a roll of paper towels at me, and my elbow knocks into a bowl of eggs set at the edge of the counter. It’s pure instinct—I blink again, the image of a ball flashing behind my closed lids, and as the eggs fall they round out, white and shiny, and bounce off the floor and against the cabinets. The glass bowl bonks down beside my feet, thick clear rubber, and spins drunkenly to a stop while Mom and I watch the eggs roll in slowing arcs.
Her mouth is open when I glance at her, and my cheeks heat with something that feels weirdly like pride.
“You amaze me sometimes,” she says softly, and reaches down to pick up the bowl carefully, as if it’s some crazed wild animal.
I kneel to start picking up the eggs, which are already stretching back into ovals, pointed ends and round bottoms intact. “Is that . . . good?”
She doesn’t answer for a minute, standing at the counter and watching the bowl gradually lose its rubbery coat. When it’s done, she runs a finger along the rim, tracing the shape of it.
“I don’t know,” she says finally, and turns around to look at me. “You can do things I could never do at your age, and some things I’m not sure I could do now. Not off the top of my head like that, anyway. It’s a little . . . startling.”
I don’t know if I’m supposed to apologize for that, so instead I carefully put the eggs back in the bowl.
Before I can think of what to say, Mom adds, “I was almost sixteen before my powers really showed up.” She shakes her head, her eyes focused on something faraway. “Mari, too. I guess we didn’t think about—”
She breaks off that thought so quickly, I can practically hear it snap. I don’t know who she means by “we” and I really want to, but Mom’s already turned around, doing a good impersonation of the woman she was a few months ago, the one who wouldn’t talk about the magic.
I push the bowl away from the edge of the counter and sit at the kitchen table. I hate it when she does this, especially when I’m not ready to let the subject go. I hope if I keep my questions more general she won’t turtle up completely. “Where did it start, do you know?”
She glances over her shoulder, one finger stuck on the page in the cookbook propped against the sugar canister. “Where did what start?”
I shrug. “What we can do. It had to start somewhere, right? And why is it only women?”
She’s so still, poised over the cookbook, I’m afraid she’s going to do the whole “turn this car around” bit that parents are so good at, but after a second she says, “I don’t know, now that you ask. It’s not just women, though.” The last part is thrown off like an afterthought, even if it’s the most interesting tidbit to me right now.
It means Bay could actually have powers, too, although he didn’t show any sign of them. Come to think of it, Fiona didn’t, either, unless I really do find her number in my phone. I’m not sure I want to look yet.
I can’t tell Mom about any of that, though. So I ask, “Didn’t you ever wonder? Or ask Gram about it?”
She sticks the grocery receipt in the cookbook and closes it, and when she turns around her face is softer, memories shifting in her eyes, pushing her mouth into a wistful smile. “Sure. But I was also sixteen, and I didn’t really care that much, you know? I wanted to
play
.”
It stings a little—when my power started exploding out of me at all the worst times, huge and scary and thrilling, I didn’t have Gram to guide me through it. Mom wouldn’t talk about it and definitely didn’t encourage me.
“I can see ‘unfair, unfair’ in neon over your head, you know,” she says, and sits down next to me, her knee bumping mine, her pale hand reaching out to touch my cheek. “It wasn’t right, keeping it from you, and I am sorry. You’re my oldest, babe.” Her smile is a little crooked, as regretful as it is fond. “I had no idea what I was doing as a parent, especially after your dad left. The magic on top of it, well . . .” She shrugs.
Her eyes are still focused on something I can’t see, and I don’t know whether she’s remembering those horrible weeks when my power started to emerge, or when her own did, which was probably pretty cool, knowing Gram.
For a minute, I can almost see her as a kid, long-boned and pretty, dark hair swinging around her face, all the future years still ahead, nothing more than a vague idea of being grown-up. I smile and twist my hand around to squeeze hers.
She squeezes back, and I can tell she is sorry for how different it was for me. “You know the thing that scared me most?”
I shake my head, and she tilts her head as if she’s trying to pick just the right words to explain it. “When my powers showed up, it was like being given the keys to a reliable, slightly dented, old Volvo. Nothing flashy, you know? But it ran, and that was enough.”
“And me?”
She sighs. “Like someone handed you the keys to a really cherry, brand-new Lamborghini.”
I roll my eyes at her use of “cherry,” but I can sort of see what she means. What I don’t understand is why I’m so different, and why Robin must be, too, since her power is already rattling in its cage.
But Mom is standing up, and the determined set of her shoulders means the conversation is over.
But only for now,
I tell myself.
She’s getting out bowls and reopening the cookbook, and her tone is ruthlessly cheerful when she says, “I think Gram had some stuff collected somewhere about the family history. I bet Mari has it. I’ll ask her to find it for you, okay?”
It’s a compromise, but for now I’ll take it.
I force myself to grin, pushing my questions to the back of my mind. “Okay. So. Let’s make some cookies.”
The house smells like warm sugar and vanilla, with tomato sauce on top, since we ended up ordering pizza for dinner. It also smells faintly like Mr. Purrfect, at least in the dining room, where I’ve stacked my books to study for exams.
What I’m really doing is cropping and resizing the photos I took this afternoon, using the laptop’s crappy basic software.
“We need a new computer,” I call into the living room, where Mom and Robin are watching TV.
“Gee, did I forget to shake the money tree again?” Mom calls back. “So sorry. Let me get right on that.”
I sigh, and push the cat a few inches farther away. He’s been sprawled on the table ever since I sat down, way too close to the laptop’s keyboard for me, since he likes to walk across it if I look away. He sniffs, and I growl, “Go. Away.”
I’m contemplating whether I can actually soup up the speed on the old machine when the doorbell rings, and my heart sinks.
Aunt Mari doesn’t ring the bell, and it’s almost nine, too late for any of Robin’s friends to show up without calling first. I close the photo software quickly, and summon up my best innocent smile when Robin grunts, “Gabriel’s here,” from the front hall.
I wave him in, wishing I had at least one book actually open. Even a notebook. But it’s too late, he’s already walking through the living room, cheeks pink with cold, his pale hair windblown.
And he looks hurt. I don’t think I’m imagining it, anyway, although it’s hard to tell with him sometimes. If Mom can be a turtle when she wants to, Gabriel can be . . . I don’t even know. Some weird creature that lives at the bottom of the sea in a cave.
“Hey.” I stand up and take his hand, peeling off the glove to rub his frozen fingers.
“You didn’t come by the store.” His eyes are nearly pewter in this light, too dark, and unhappiness is thick in his voice. “Did you lose your phone?”
I pretend surprise, even though I suck at it. “Oh, wow. I must have left it up in my bag. And Mom and I were making cookies, and then we had dinner. . . .”
I sound open, I think. Open and honest and completely innocent, like there’s nothing I’m keeping from him. Definitely not anything like the two kids who freaked me out for no reason earlier this afternoon.
I can see him wavering, his eyes searching mine as he pulls back the ESP that comes so easily. “I could be distracted with a cookie, you know,” he says finally, and I grin.
“Wow, you’re easy. I was thinking it would take a kiss, at least.”
He grabs for me, but I’m too quick, twisting away from his reach and skirting the table to run into the kitchen, laughing.
“Oh my God, do you mind?” Robin yells, and I hear Mom’s voice next, too stern and quiet to make out.
Gabriel follows me into the kitchen, and I swing the door shut behind him, stretching up on tiptoes to kiss him. I can’t believe it was so easy to distract him, not when he’s the one who’s usually the worrier. And whatever happened last night seems distant now, with everything else on my mind. Anyway, that’s not going to happen here in my kitchen, with my family in the next room.
I hope.
And it doesn’t. It’s just a normal kiss, which is awesome, especially when Gabriel fastens his hands on my hips to pull me a little closer. His mouth is still cold, but it’s firm and a little demanding against mine, and he tastes like dark coffee. If I wasn’t completely awake before, squinting at the computer screen, I am now.
“Hi there,” I say when we break apart, and I actually have my breath back.
“Hi.” He leans his forehead against mine before kissing the tip of my nose, and then steps back to take his coat off. “Now give me my cookie.”
I laugh and turn around to get one from the cooling racks on the counter, but I know Danny would have questioned me. Danny would have called the house phone, all “Dude, where are you?” Because there was nothing he didn’t expect to know about me, or for me to tell him, even if he had no idea how many secrets I kept.
Gabriel never pushes, not really. Not when it comes to this thing between us. And I can’t help wondering if it’s because he doesn’t want me to push back and ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer.
I hand him one of each cookie, and he licks his lips. “No one’ll notice if I take, like, a dozen home, right?”
“Try it and watch Robin attack,” I say, and clear the empty pizza box off the kitchen table so we can sit down. “How was work?”
“Not as busy as Sheila wanted, I think.” He pulls out the chair beside me, and leans in to kiss me again, a quick, sugary peck. “I guess the latest collection of horror stories doesn’t really say ‘Peace on earth, good will to men.’”
“Yeah.” I lay my head on his shoulder, and swing one leg over his until we’re all mixed up together.
“We should probably talk, you know,” he says quietly, and for a moment I think he’s poking into my head again before I realize he means about last night.
I sit up, but he keeps his hand on my knee, so I leave my leg where it is. “There’s nothing to say. Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out. And in the meantime, I don’t think it’s . . . dangerous.”
Even I can hear how hopeful I sound. Because what do I know, really? We could go up in flames the next time we’re making out, and based on last night, neither one of us would probably care.