He was hers.
Weren’t she and Sam one?
Hadn’t they already been tested?
Since the impossibly sexy Destiny had appeared, suddenly they were one plus the shadow of someone else. And it felt like they were three.
Was she imagining that?
No.
It was real.
When she and Sam were alone together after work, she felt as if the magnetlike pull of emotion that brought them together had been blocked.
Or rearranged.
Some other element had entered the equation. And just because they weren’t talking about it didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
He was vulnerable. Emily knew that. He didn’t have enough experience living a stable life. He was strong, but at the same time she could feel his weakness. It was real. It might lead him astray. It might ruin his life.
There was morning light in the sky when Emily finally fell back asleep. But the distant pink on the horizon was Destiny’s favorite color.
At least that’s what she had told Emily at the restaurant when she’d applied a smear of gloss over her large, pouty lips.
Before, Emily might have seen the sky as beautiful, but as she dozed back to sleep, her last thought was that the future light looked grim.
25
Law enforcement should have immediately informed the Bell family that Clarence Border was no longer incarcerated.
But he was in prison in California, and the Bells lived in Oregon.
And while Clarence had abducted his children and shot a firearm at both of them, he had not been classified as the highest level of violent offender.
His case had not yet gone to court, and because he was going to roll over on the charges and had a major disability with his amputated leg, he had been given a break in prison placement.
So while the story hit the press that an inmate had escaped while on a medical examination at the Merced Medical Center, and a description of Clarence with a photo made the news around the state, no large-scale manhunt captivated the public in Oregon.
Major news sources were consumed with the fact that the current Miss America had been found naked in a donut-shop bathroom with the governor of Oregon.
The security tape of the incident had been posted online, and it was downloaded so many times that servers were crashing.
The nation’s rival donut chain had immediately come out with a specialty pastry that mocked the incident. The appropriateness of that new food item was also being discussed in the mainstream press—adding fuel to the salacious fire.
And that kept the heat off Clarence.
The pawnshop trade was simple.
It was all about waiting and watching.
Clarence saw the guy go into the store with the box, which he was certain held a weapon. And he waited to see him come out with the same box still in hand.
He could see a person’s intention by the slump of the shoulders. He knew what defeat looked like in a man’s posture. A deal gone south.
Clarence got out of the car that he’d stolen in Sacramento and headed across the parking lot. It looked like a case of great timing that the two men should run into each other.
Clarence spoke in a soft voice. He had such clean hands, and he wore a cashmere sweater. He kept his fingers from strumming too intently on his thighs.
He was going into the shop to buy a firearm, he said to the man, and he wondered what it was like in there.
The weapon was not for himself, he added. He had no idea how to even use one. It was for his mother, who was feeling afraid in her home. She would never use it. She would never register it. It would be a prop. She wouldn’t even leave the house, since her fall on the back stairs.
She’d given him money for the gun. He had her cash right here, in fact. He fanned out hundreds in his left hand.
The dejected man was happy to help.
It happened quickly, and both sides felt good about what they’d done. Wasn’t that the definition of a square deal?
When both sides are smiling?
26
Destiny had let Robb Ellis sleep over on her second night at the Starlight Motel. He was, after all, paying for the place.
But he bored her, and not just because he talked a lot about nothing, but because he was so easy to figure out.
Destiny could imagine getting the guy to build an altar to her image. He already said that he wanted to take her to Hawaii, which was a place she’d never been but of course always wanted to visit.
But that promise was for when he graduated from high school, which was something like a year off.
If it were maybe three weeks away, she would have laughed more at his jokes.
Now, as she sat on the edge of the bed waiting for her newly applied orange toenail polish to dry, Destiny’s face scrunched up. She had a way of not wanting anything she had (which wasn’t much) and desiring everything she didn’t have (which was plenty).
Robb Ellis was only several feet away, but he could have been in another state.
“I told my parents I slept over at Rory’s.”
She could hear his voice, but the words didn’t penetrate any more than the ceiling fan did.
“I’m going to say that I’ll be at Nick’s tonight.”
Destiny nodded. He was like a radio that was tuned to the Dull Station.
Destiny got to her feet and carefully slipped her not-yet-dry toes into a pair of rubber sandals. Robb Ellis looked over. “You can’t wear sandals to work.”
Destiny then grabbed her purse out of a pile of handbags. Today’s choice was a pink, fluffy thing that looked like a stuffed animal.
“I’m going,” she said.
Robb was still staring at her feet. “I think it’s because of the health code or something. The sandals.”
Destiny looked at Robb Ellis now for the first time since she’d pushed him away and taken three steps into the mildewed shower, where she’d happily stayed until the last drop of hot water was gone.
“What are you saying?”
Robb cleared his throat. “You can’t wear the sandals to the restaurant.”
But Destiny’s hand was on the doorknob, and she pulled to open the entrance.
Hard light flooded the room, making it look suddenly tiny and tattered and cheap, which Destiny now realized it was.
“I’m not going to work,” she said. “You don’t have a day shift. Cover for me.”
And then Robb watched as she disappeared straight out the door.
Clarence headed north.
He bought a sleeping bag, a foam pad, and a small tent at the Walmart in Redding. At a gas station later in the day, he lifted a map and located a campground, where he staked out a spot with as much privacy as he could find.
He drank vodka, smoked cigarettes, ate a plastic bucket of teriyaki-style beef jerky, and passed out with his shoes and his artificial leg still on. His newly acquired handgun was under his rolled-up cashmere sweater.
He slept for almost twenty-four straight hours.
Since it was summer, families invaded the outdoors with mountains of crap and armies of undisciplined kids on the weekends.
Clarence emerged from his tent in the afternoon in a rumpled daze to find a six-year-old kid peeing on one of his tent stakes.
He wanted to teach the soft brat a lesson, but then the voices inside stopped him.
It’s not worth it.
If he were going to hit a kid—and he was—it would be his own damn kid. And it would be a teaching moment Sam and Riddle could never forget.
Clarence spent two days at the state park, soaking in the beautiful fact that there was now darkness in his life.
And silence.
At least at night, when the yapping kids and their heavily drinking parents finally passed out.
He shut his eyes and didn’t feel the hot burn of the overhead fluorescent tubing that was 24-7 prison lighting.
The voices in his head weren’t interrupted by the rants of his
fellow inmates. Bandit couldn’t be heard trading a tortilla for a piece of tinfoil.
It was a miracle.
He was one step ahead of the haters.
Maybe two.
He would continue north.
Moving to his goal.
It was a piece of good luck that the Bell family lived in Oregon, not Arizona. Everyone knew that it was better to be a criminal in colder climates. In cool places, you can hide a damaged mind and an evil soul and an artificial leg.
But north really meant the one thing, above all, that his life was now about.
Sam and Riddle.
And the Bell family.
Clarence felt his blood pressure literally rise.
It was payback time, people.
27
He was back in school.
Sam sat in English Composition Skills and waited for class to begin.
The windows were open in the lecture hall, which was only one-third full, and a warm summer breeze, which smelled like fried onions, drifted into the room. They were dangerously close to the student union, and half the time the classroom was like a food truck.
Sam was bracing himself for the fact that he was going to have to write the first paper of his life in only a week. The idea terrorized him.
But what didn’t terrorize him right now?
He was trying as hard as possible to keep on track.
Scattered in the rows directly in front of him was a collection of students, who, for varying reasons, were all forced to take what in the catalog was known as English 101, or Bonehead English, according to the guy who sat behind him.
During summer session a handful of huge guys who were on the football team took the class so that they could have a lighter load during the season. There was a big group of English-as-a-second-language students. There were a few kids with medical problems, who were now trying to catch up on credits. And then there was Sam.
Just as everyone was settling in, he looked over to see someone talking to the professor out in the hallway.
The Someone turned, revealing the kind of body that was used to sell underwear and perfume. It was all curves.
That Someone did not belong in the lecture hall.
But she was coming in.
Someone took a seat in the back of the room. Sam could feel her eyes on him. But he would not—he could not—acknowledge that she was there.
For the rest of the ninety-minute class, Sam stared straight ahead, more absorbed than he’d ever been in the technique of diagramming sentences. He watched as the professor circled nouns and verbs and adverbs and adjectives.
He wrote down almost everything the teacher said, concentrating on the front of the classroom, the light fixtures above the whiteboard, and the crimped quality of Professor Hunt’s handwriting, which was projected up onto a large screen.
And then finally, after forever, the class was over, and Sam gathered up his things and shoved them all into his backpack, never looking even once to see if Someone was still behind him.
Only one entrance of Addison Hall was open in the summer, so he had to go out the front door.
But of course she was right on his heels. She immediately hollered out, “Hey, you’re a real student. I saw how you were writing stuff down. I couldn’t understand half of what the lady was saying. I had no idea you were Mr. Scholar.”
Several of the thick-necked football guys laughed, and one of the ESL students murmured, “Mr. Scholar.”
But Sam didn’t acknowledge her.
Destiny hopped after him. “Don’t you want to hear how I knew you were in class?”
Sam shook his head. “Nope.” And he kept walking. But she stayed right with him, at his elbow now.
They looked, to the outside world, like a couple. Only, because he was rigid and stared straight ahead, they appeared to be a pair who had just had a fight.
She continued. “You hungry?”
He was starving, but he answered, “No.”
She smiled. “You are just the worst liar.”
Sam stopped. His feet seemed to freeze to the walkway, and he now faced her. “What do you want from me?”
Destiny grinned. She had him now. He had stopped. He was angry, but he was talking to her. “I want to get to know you better.”
“Why?”
“I just do. I feel like we might have stuff in common. My dad’s in jail. So is yours. That’s a start.”
“How did you know that?”
“Robb. He tried to make himself into some kind of crime fighter. He told the whole story of how you met Emily and then just disappeared because your dad was mental. My dad’s in jail for stealing cars. But he’s a nice guy. When he was around, that is.”
“And your mom?” Sam heard himself asking.
Destiny broke his gaze. “Pushing up daisies. What about yours?”
“Same,” Sam mumbled.
Destiny grinned at him. She had his full attention. And he no longer was some kind of rage machine.
She whispered, but loud enough for him to hear: “Girls choose. You know that, right?”
He tried to keep his eyes on her face. He didn’t want to look at her clinging, low-cut top that had nothing but skin underneath. Or stare at her short-shorts.
He shifted his weight as he answered. “Choose what?”
“Girls choose guys. Boys think they’re in charge, but they’re not. We decide.”
Sam sounded defeated. “I don’t think I’m in charge of anything.”
Destiny smiled. “Clearly.”
Sam was lying in the dark staring up at the ceiling and wondering how it happened that he’d driven Destiny back to the Starlight Motel.
Why did they stop first at Tommy’s Market, and why did she come out with not just shampoo, like she’d said she had to buy, but with a six-pack of beer?
Why did he sit in the car and allow her to drink a bottle?
And why, when he told her that he was in love with Emily, and that he belonged to a family now and everything that he’d ever dreamed of had come true, did she laugh at him?
Why?
And when, in the late light of the afternoon (with the red spill from the neon sign that said Starlight Motel burning in through the side window), why did he just sit there when she got out of her seat and straddled his lap and kissed him, full on the lips, like some kind of wild, wounded animal?
Why had he not stopped her before that happened?
Even when he finally got her off him and out of the car, why could he still taste her beer breath?
Why could he still smell that oil she put behind her ears that was musky and pungent like fresh-cut hay put in an old barn?
Why was it that sometimes things that were rotten smelled sweet?
28
Sam didn’t ask himself the most important question, which was: why did Emily happen to drive by and see it all happen?
He didn’t ask, because he didn’t know she had. His eyes had momentarily shut, and he had a woman’s body pressing into him. Destiny wasn’t there for long before he pushed her away.
But Emily had driven by just as Destiny wedged her small but shockingly full figure between the steering wheel and Sam.
Emily drove by just when his lips were locked to hers.
She was in her father’s car, because she’d heard from Nora, who had heard from her boyfriend, Rory, that Destiny was living at the Starlight Motel with Robb Ellis. Or at least that he’d spent a few nights there and lied to his parents.
Emily wanted to see the place.
Sam had class, and she was waiting for him to call her when he was done. But she hadn’t heard from him, so she decided to surprise Jared and Riddle and Beto and go get pistachio gelato, which was a special flavor at the little Italian ice-cream place downtown.
Did Emily know that going to the gelato shop meant that she could drive by the Starlight? Of course.
She thought she might spot Destiny. And maybe Robb Ellis.
But she didn’t expect t
o see her car, the one Sam drove, parked right in front of the dumpy little motor court.
And she didn’t think that she’d see her boyfriend, the love of her life, her reason for living, the most beautiful person in the world on the inside and the outside that she’d ever met, sitting in the driver’s seat with a girl on his lap.
No.
She didn’t expect that.
It was too good to be true.
That’s an expression.
It was too good to be true.
One more time.
Too.
Good.
To.
Be.
True.
Which is another way of saying not true.
Which is another way of saying false.
Which is another way of saying liar.
Okay. Liar. Liar. Liar.
O. O. O.
Oh. Oh. Oh.
Emily’s brain went on pause. It stopped thinking about Sam and Destiny and thought only of how to make it home without crashing the car.
Red means stop.
And green means go.
You do what you are supposed to do.
You believe in the system, because it is set up and it works and you are supposed to believe in things.
You are supposed to stay in the lanes when you drive, and you are supposed to drive a certain speed in certain areas and that’s not too fast and not too slow.
And you can count on the other people in their cars to do that, too.
Because there are rules, and one of the rules is that you follow the rules.
You follow the rules, because if you don’t follow the rules, then there are consequences.
Emily put her foot on the brake and pulled her father’s Subaru to the curb. If her dad had driven to work instead of taking his bike, then she wouldn’t have been able to go for ice cream. And then she wouldn’t have driven by the motel. And she wouldn’t have seen what she saw.
Was this all her father’s fault?
Emily reached over and looked at the brown paper bag with the pistachio gelato hand-packed in a white cardboard container. A single, thick rivulet of icy, sick-green goo oozed out of the top and ran down the side.