I whip around to look at Star, but she’s already laughing. “What. The. Fuck?” I demand.
She just shakes her head, sending her dark hair tumbling around her bare shoulders. Great. Now I’m terrified and turned on at the same time. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Autumn and I aren’t really Roth’s type. If you know what I mean . . . ” She waggles her eyebrows at me. It takes me a shameful amount of time to realize what she’s trying to communicate here.
“You mean . . . ?” I say, and my hands make a weird gesture on their own before I can stop them, my face burning. Fuck. I don’t think I’ve blushed this much since I was a little kid and my friend Johnny told Katie Jenkins that I wanted to kiss her. Which, whatever. It was true. She was adorable. Didn’t want to give me the time of day, though, much to my shame. It sucked being the short kid.
Still kinda does, especially when Star’s friend the BTK killer has a good six inches and probably twenty pounds on me. It’s a little intimidating. I’m man enough to admit that.
But she just smiles at me. “Gay as Christmas,” she confirms, and turns back to the box she was working on, grabbing the flaps and folding them one over the other, so that the box is sealed closed.
“Oh,” I say. “Okay.” I turn back to what I’m supposed to be doing, gathering up obvious trash and stuffing it in one of the bajillion garbage bags that are hanging around the house. When I first saw how many she’d bought, I’d laughed, thinking we’d be using them ’til Judgment Day. Now I’m just hoping we have enough. We’ve already been getting dirty looks from people when we go into town. I don’t think that buying out every box of garbage bags in the place is going to endear us to them any further. But as I gather stuff up and shove it into the bag, her words play over and over in my mind, like a record with a skip. I’m missing something. I know I am.
All at once it hits me.
“Wait!” I cry out, louder than I intended to. “How does that help me?” If what Mr. Psychopath said about serial killers is true . . .
Star just grins at me. “You’ve been to prison Ash,” she says. “Toughen up a little.” Then she throws her curtain of long, inky-black hair over her shoulder, picks up the box she was working on and walks out of the room.
Goddamn, I think, feeling the confusing scared/turned on feeling well up inside me as I watch her body sway as she walks away. I’m in way over my head.
Star
“So . . . ?” Autumn sidles up next to me, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. I blink at her.
“So?” I prompt, pulling open another box. I peer down at the contents. Old magazines. Again. I sigh and replace the lid and pull one of the permanent markers out of my pocket. I use my teeth to uncap it, and scrawl garbage in crooked letters across the top before hefting the box to the side and starting on the next one. The sheer amount of money my mother spent on magazines astounds me. I could have paid my entire first year’s tuition just on what I’ve found so far. And most of it was going straight into the trash. We’d salvaged what we could, and had filled up bin after bin of recycling, but the terrible condition of most of the stuff made it impossible to save.
“Soooo . . . ?” Autumn draws out the word like it’s full of syllables, which, considering she’s an English major, she should know better. I turn and look over my shoulder at her. She’s bouncing on her toes like a little kid with a secret. Oh god. “What’s going on with you and Ash?”
My eyes go wide and I scan the room to see if he overheard her, but he’s off in the dining room, working his way through the leaning tower of newspapers, and luckily he doesn’t look up. I turn back to her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hiss under my breath, hoping against hope that she’ll take the hint and be quiet.
Unfortunately, my panic doesn’t seem to register, and she keeps going. “I mean the looks between the two of you . . . ” She waggles her eyebrows at me, grinning. “It’s like there’s fireworks going off in the room every time you meet each other’s eyes.”
“Shut. Up.” I mutter as quietly as possible, and look over my shoulder at Ash, just to make sure he can’t hear her. But he still isn’t looking at us. Instead he’s staring down at one of the newspapers, and the sheets of newsprint are trembling a little in his hands. My brow furrows, and I move to take a step closer, to reach out and ask him what’s wrong. But before I can take a single step, he shakes his head like he’s coming out of a fog and tears the top page off the newspaper. As I watch, he tosses the rest of the paper aside and slowly, carefully, folds up the piece he tore off and slides it into his pocket.
What on earth?
Autumn nudges me, but I don’t turn back to her. Not yet. Instead I watch as Ash takes a deep breath and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment. Then he lets out a sigh and scrubs his fingers up through his hair, leaving the pale strands sticking up in wild tufts.
“Hey, Ash . . . ?” The words are out of my mouth so quickly I can’t believe I’m the one who actually uttered them. Ash reacts with a jolt and turns to look at me, and I can see something in his eyes for a brief second, something almost haunted, before he manages to compose himself and nod at me. “You okay?” But I can see from here that no matter how he answers, the real answer is no. He’s not okay.
But he just nods and I let it go. Whatever’s bothering him, it’s not my place to bring it up in front of Autumn. If he wants to tell me, he’ll tell me. If not, well . . . that’s his decision.
He reaches down and hefts up the rest of the pile of newspaper, a stack about a foot and a half high, and makes his way toward the door. His path brings him right past Autumn and I, and as he passes I reach over and run a hand down his arm. Our eyes meet and we pause there for a second, frozen in our own little world.
“Fireworks,” Autumn says, and my entire body jolts and I yank my hand away like it’s been burned. I turn and glare at her, but she just smirks at me.
“What’s that?” Ash says, confusion lacing his voice.
“Nothing,” I mutter, and try to turn away and go back to work before I’m forced to kill my former roommate in cold blood. My heart is slamming so hard in my chest that it’s a wonder no one else can hear it. To me, it’s absolutely thundering. Dammit, Autumn.
But she isn’t done, and I have yet to figure out how to kill people with my brain, so she turns to Ash and I can feel her sunbeam-smile from where I’m standing, even though my back is turned. “Fireworks,” she says, and pauses because she’s trying to kill me. Just as I’m about to whirl around and drag her out of the room kicking and screaming—and probably laughing her ass off—she continues. “I was just telling Star that Roth and I are taking you guys out to see the fireworks tonight.”
Wait. What? I turn to look at her, and I’m more than a little concerned when I see the glint in her eye.
“Fireworks,” Ash says, like the word is unfamiliar to him and he’s testing it out for the first time. I catch his eye and we come to a silent agreement that Autumn is insane. At least, I think that’s what that look means.