Alex nodded. All five of them planned to cut class that day, since it was the final day of the fair. Gabe, ever studious, opted out to take a quiz that morning; Kaleb’s flavor-of-the-week had convinced him to go elsewhere; and Chase couldn’t slip past the school’s strictest teacher. Alex and Jonas had been the only ones to escape to the carnival.
Alex stretched her legs in front of her. “I remember you let me drive. You were the only person who would ever have let me do something crazy like that.”
Jonas fought a smile. ”You’re a horrible driver.”
“No kidding.” Alex had barely been able to reach the pedals of the station wagon. The massive steering wheel had blocked her view of the rain-slick road. To make matters worse, they’d taken a twisting back road to avoid getting caught. Unfavorable odds, even for a good driver.
Alex had been tentative until Jonas barked at her: “Quit living like you’re already dead!” No one spoke to her like that. “Just live.”
She’d pressed her foot against the gas pedal as hard as she wanted to kick Jonas, and the car roared in response. With the windows down, the rain soaked them, but they didn’t care. Jonas never scolded her when the tires squealed. He never told her to slow down. He merely turned up the music. Alex had never felt such freedom before.
“Remember that funhouse?”
Alex nodded again. It was full of mirrors that made them look skinny, wiggly, chubby, all sorts of distorted. “I remember being scared,” she admitted. “It was disorienting.”
“But you know, I remember standing in front of those mirrors and thinking that no matter how warped my image was, yours always seemed clear. And your hand in mine just felt right.”
Alex watched him in bewilderment. “Jonas, you’ve had people trying to reach for your hand your whole life, and you smack them away.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” His tone was so hostile Alex could taste his resentment in her mouth like she’d bitten into a lime.
“Then help me to. I’m listening.”
“Anything I do, they do it better. Anything I want, they get it first.”
“What do you mean?”
Jonas shook his head and stood up. Alex followed suit. Arguing with him was a lost cause, and she was too tired to unlock the chains around his ego. But for some reason, the door to her room didn’t open. Evidently, she wasn’t supposed to go in yet. Then she noticed that Jonas had stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring back at her. “What?” she demanded.
“He kept you to himself for sixteen years, Alex. And he never even acted on it.”
So that’s what this was about.
“Have you ever even considered the possibility of someone else?” he added.
And then, the door to her room swung open with ease. Alex stumbled into the darkness, half expecting Chase to be waiting there. The lights came on to reveal an empty room, but she could have sworn she saw a figure disappearing from her balcony. A new pillow waited on her bed, and the room she’d neglected to clean that week was now free of feathers. She ran to the balcony but found no one. And Chase never came back to her room that night.
As children, the Lasalles would frequently gallivant around town playing out their own rendition of cops and robbers. Although the boys adopted interchangeable roles, Alex was typecast as the damsel in distress. The dramatic theatrics of screaming for help and pretending to faint were exciting at first, but one day she changed her mind. Following a debate during which Kaleb failed to convince Chase that Alex couldn’t be a robber, Gabe finally swayed the vote. Jonas had scowled, and Kaleb had thrown his hands into the air while Chase and Alex shared defiant grins.
In the midst of the heist, the plan went awry. Officer Gabe apprehended and arrested Kaleb in the Parrish shopping center, and Officers Jonas and Chase were detained by batty old Mrs. Morrison in the Hallmark store for waving their toy guns outside her window. Alex seized the opportunity to retrieve the loot from the trash can where Kaleb had stashed it. The filthy sack of “treasure” reeked of rotten onion rings and mayonnaise, but it was gold to Alex, and she clutched the neck of the bag so fiercely that her knuckles turned bleach white.
She was going to win.
She reached the old grandfather tree that Kaleb had designated to be home base and searched for something to hang the bag from the thick trunk. It was then that she felt a cold object jabbing her in between her shoulder blades.
“Pass over the loot, you crook,” Jonas commanded, pushing the barrel of his Nerf gun into her back.
Alex cursed loudly and spun around to face him with her hands in the air, still gripping the treasure tightly.
“Not smiling now, are you?” Jonas said. His cheeks turned pink with excitement.
“How did you know we’d take the treasure here?” Alex choked out in an attempt to buy time.
“Kaleb hasn’t won here yet,” Jonas replied, pointing to the old tree with his free hand. At that point, the trunk bore the tattoos of only three sets of initials: GML, JML, and CML. The Lasalles always marked their territory.
It was then that Alex heard a click.
“Put the gun down,” a new voice ordered. The barrel of another toy gun appeared from behind the grandfather tree. Jonas’s eyes widened first in disbelief and then in anger when Chase emerged from behind it.
“What are you doing?” Jonas gasped. “You’re supposed to be my partner!”
Chase smiled. “I’m secretly in cahoots.”
“Those aren’t the rules.”
“Since when do we follow rules?”
Jonas’s jaw jutted out and swayed. His cheeks flushed.
“Come on. You always find loopholes when it comes to boundaries. You should have seen this coming.”
Jonas pouted. “But I should win. You’re going to choose her over me?”
“Yes,” Chase said matter-of-factly. And he handed Alex his Swiss army knife to mark her victory.
28
Since both Chase and Jonas were avoiding her, Alex was hesitant to spend so much time at the ball fields, but when she wandered around campus, she’d find herself there anyway. She remained on the outskirts of the stands with her homework, looking up occasionally to watch them. It was the perfect hiding spot until Jack Bond showed up one night.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Detention. Duvall punishes me at least once a week. Believe me when I say this is much better than scrubbing the floors of her classroom.”
Alex was mortified. “Does she make you do that a lot?”
Jack nodded and extended his arms to either side like an airplane, balancing on one of the benches. He pivoted and began to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“To get an Ex. Then I’ll go to the far end of the fields by the skate park. Reuben should already be over there.”
“Your little sidekick,” Alex said, standing up and gathering her things. “I’ll come help you.”
At the Ex kiosk, the vendor slid the cups across the counter, avoiding Jack’s touch. The boy regarded Jack with the same disgustful expression Alex had received when she was dying. In the final months of her life, she became a skeleton. Even the other loony patients at the institution stared in revulsion at her sunken appearance.
“Thank you.” Jack said, either oblivious to the rude treatment or ignoring it. He ordered an Ex for Reuben, as well.
“What did Reuben do to land cleanup duty?”
Jack frowned. “I think he volunteered.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I think he does it just to get out. He doesn’t have a lot of friends.”
“Maybe he should resign as president of the ‘I heart Jack Bond’ club, and then more people would want to hang around him.”