Okay, this was not going to ruin the first night of my senior year. (Life with Vaclass="underline" saying “this is not going to ruin . . .” a lot.) Especially because by tomorrow we’d start having homework (and my life as a pack animal began) and I had to keep my grades up in case I was going to Runyon. If a good fairy zoomed in from Neverworld and gave me a fortune. A small fortune would do—I was okay to spend the rest of my life working off my college loan. But the end of September was only two weeks away and if I said “yes” I had to send them a (nonrefundable) check too.
So I bounced downstairs like the only thing on my mind was how much pizza I could eat (I burned a lot of calories working at the shelter) and there were Mom and Val holding hands at the kitchen table. Mom was staring at the table but Val looked up and our eyes met. I was even braced for the explosion of shadows up the wall behind him. This wall had photos and stuff so it wasn’t like it was blank, but it turned black with them. If you believed in hell, which I’d never thought I did, it was like looking into hell—like one of those horrible old etchings of people getting eaten by demons—I was sure if I blinked a couple of times it would all come into focus. . . . I ran for the front door. Mongo was on my heels, half-hoping he could come with me and half-worried about whatever was worrying me. “You stay here,” I said breathlessly, hoping that Val’s demons wouldn’t suddenly start eating dogs. “I’ll see you later,” and I closed the door as gently as I could. I hadn’t said good-bye.
Jill wasn’t here yet so I started walking down the road. I was shaking with adrenaline and—it might have been rage. How dare he destroy our family? How dare he turn my mother against her own daughter? How dare he . . . be whatever he was? Whatever monster he was?
Keisha and Lindsay were already in the back seat, or I might have blurted out the whole thing to Jill. I hadn’t told her about that last day I took a message out to the shed. I didn’t want to hear what she’d say. She would want to give me advice because she was my friend, and whatever she said would be the wrong thing. I also knew she still thought there was something wrong with Arnie, and it didn’t feel at all electric that there was some kind of bad stepdad virus going around.
Jill’s always been good at picking up mood, but she’d been almost creepily sensitive lately, so when she asked me what was going on I told her about the gigantic algebra book and how carrying the stupid thing was going to label me “loser.”
Jill laughed. “I think it looks kind of cool. Math as art. Most textbooks are dead boring.” Keisha and Lindsay—who were both taking trig, which had a normal, boring textbook—joined in with flipping Maggie’s switches. I had trouble not hitting flashpoint. But I could go to P&P and act like a normal teenager beginning her senior year of high school or I could go home. No choice.
But I guess I did go into P&P with kind of an attitude. Just like Jill knew there was something up with me when I got in the car, she knew I hadn’t been telling the truth that it was the algebra book. (Well, it was yanking my wiring: who wants to be wearing a big loser sign their senior year? But she was right it wasn’t the most important thing.) Keisha and Lindsay had gone on ahead while Jill was still trying to get whatever it was out of me as we went through the door and I was being about as friendly as a bucket of battery acid till she said, “Oh, Magdag, don’t be such a bugsucker,” and she said it in one of those little quiet spaces that happen somewhere like a crowded restaurant, especially when you don’t want them to. I know there’s often a brief pause to stop and look when someone comes through the door, but it doesn’t usually stretch past the first few tables, which may be having their breadsticks shot across the room by the draft, and it doesn’t usually last more than two syllables unless whoever is coming in is a movie star or something, and we don’t get movie stars in Station.
But—thanks a lot, fate—this time it was like everyone had shut up to hear someone call her best friend a bugsucker. The other weird thing was that the lights sort of flared and flickered for just a second, just enough to notice—which at least should have distracted everyone I might know from “Magdag.” I used to punch Jill out for calling me that when we were six. I didn’t think I’d get away with it at seventeen. I was still biting on “Val is not going to wreck my senior year of high school” like Jonesie on that burglar’s leg (that’s how he ended up back at the shelter, the family he’d protected decided they were scared of him, can you believe it?), and now Jill had called me Magdag in public. So I put my shoulders back and glared like the flickering lights were deference to my greatness. (Or that I was Jonesie and the restaurant was full of burglars.) I’m not usually the don’t-mess-with-me type. In fact, I’m never the don’t-mess-with-me type.
One of the people who looked up when the lights blinked was a boy delivering a pizza to one of the tables beside the aisle we were swaggering down. He straightened up at the commotion and I was sure I saw him flinch when Jill said “Magdag.” So I was planning on giving him my very best death glare when he finished turning around, since he was clearly turning to get a look at us.
I always thought that “my heart turned over” was just a phrase. Also, Jill and Laura both find boys cute really easily. I don’t. (Okay, I’m not entirely interested only in their minds.) But this one . . .
He was tall, but not a skinny phone pole like Takahiro. He had shoulders and arms—oh wow, those arms—his P&P T-shirt and apron were too baggy to guess what the rest of him looked like, but I guessed anyway. I saw the tight little butt before he turned around. I was pretty sure that my death glare had been neutralized by a nice curve of thigh through the apron as he finished turning toward us. And then he smiled. At me. At me.
My heart turned over.
He had long curly black hair tied back in a ponytail and gigantic chocolate-brown eyes—dark chocolate, not that feeble milk stuff. Heavy black brows, but artistically arched, and long eyelashes—long like you figure there’s probably a breeze if you’re standing near him. I wished I was standing nearer. Dramatic cheekbones, straight nose, full lips, wide mouth (smiling at me), golden-brown skin somewhere between fourteen carat and caramel. If it weren’t for the long square jaw and the gorgeous neck (the neck was obviously part of the package with the shoulders and arms) he might have been too pretty.
He wasn’t too pretty. Trust me. He was not too pretty. Oh, did I mention the dimple? He had a dimple in one cheek. Oh. Gods. Oh. Gods.
“Oh, gods,” breathed Jill next to me, like an echo of my thoughts. “Mags, he’s staring straight at you. Get his phone number.”
I hoped I wasn’t drooling. “Uh,” I said. We were nearly on top of him. “Uh, hi,” I said. It was pretty much the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life that I tried to keep going. But it was just too tacky to stop. He must be used to having nearly every female who’s ever seen him asking for his phone number. And a lot of the guys too.
I was trying to remember how to smile. I’d managed to turn the death glare off but I’d kind of stalled at that point.
“Hi,” he said back. To me. Still staring into my eyes. Still smiling. He’d smiled a little less while he said “hi” and then turned it back on again full blast, so the dimple showed.