After about fourteen rings, Dad finally picks up the phone. “What is it, honey?”
“Mom wants to know if you’ll be home for dinner.”
“I don’t think so.” I can hear him typing in the background. “The lira has gone straight to hell today. Italy’s going to need someone to bail them out, but Germany’s not biting. Thank God the euro never went through; the whole continent would be screwed.”
He’s not really talking to me anymore, which is fine, because I’m not really listening. “Okay, I’ll tell her.”
“We’re leaving early tomorrow,” he says, “so I may not see you. I spoke to Luz, and she’s going to stay while we’re gone—”
“Dad! We talked about this!” My parents take off for Vail for a few weeks after Christmas every year. I thought they might skip it this year since they’ve been fighting so much, but they decided it would be a good opportunity for them to “reconnect.” Gross. I wander to the window and look out over the Shaws’ driveway. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I can stay by myself.”
“I’m sorry, honey, but I’m just not comfortable with that. Luz will be . . .”
I stop hearing him as headlights sweep the yard and a dark car pulls into the Shaws’ driveway. The rah-rah-girl-power I’d summoned earlier evaporates in a rush of adrenaline. James is home.
“Okay, Dad,” I say, cutting off some explanation about post-Christmas burglaries and high school parties. “Gotta go, bye.”
I run down the stairs and jam my bare feet into my snow boots, which Luz has wiped down and laid beside the door. I grab my coat from the closet and wrestle it on, suddenly clumsy.
“Going next door!” I cry back to Mom before closing the front door behind me.
I creep carefully down the icy front steps and then run across the yard through ankle-deep snow, slipping on the wet grass beneath, to the Shaws’ front door. I press the doorbell twice, which I’ve always done, and stick my hands into my pockets as I wait.
The door opens, and there’s James, all tall, dark, and gorgeous. It’s still kind of a shock to see him like this. A couple of years ago, he was just the gangly science kid with oversize ears who was more interested in puzzling out math equations than partying and hooking up with the rest of his classmates. Even though he was a Shaw, I was usually the only one who sat with him at lunch.
Then, practically overnight, James shot up six inches, grew into his ears, and became hot. Everyone wanted his attention, because apparently people can overlook your extreme dorkiness once you’ve been profiled by Vanity Fair. Luckily for me, he’s just as weird and antisocial as ever.
The girl I was a few weeks ago would have thrown herself into his arms as soon as he opened the door, but I suddenly don’t know what to do with myself. Staring at the lips that came so close to mine, I feel like I’ve become one of those corn-husk dolls we made in elementary school, brittle and fragile to the touch. Everything’s different now.
James pulls me into a hug and ruffles my hair. “Hey, kid!”
Okay, not so different. Maybe the almost-kiss never happened. Maybe I imagined it.
I’m so stupid.
James pulls back and grins at me. “Nice pajamas.”
I punch him in the arm and force a smile. “Shut up. They were a Christmas present from Luz.”
“What are they, dancing reindeer?” He bends down to examine the garish pattern more closely. “I like them.”
“Are you going to invite me in or not? It’s freezing out here.”
He steps aside and ushers me in with a sweep of his hand.
“That you, Marina?” James’s brother, Nate, calls from upstairs.
“Welcome home, Congressman!”
I follow James through the foyer to the kitchen at the back of the house. Once there, James pulls a gallon of double-chocolate ice cream from the freezer, and I smile. He has a whole mouth full of sweet teeth. “Isn’t it a little cold for that?” I say.
“Never.” He hands me a spoon and lays the tub on the counter between us. “So how are things, Marchetti?”
You’d know if you’d spoken to me in the last three weeks.
I walk around the island counter to stand beside him. “Stand still. I want to look at you.”
He grins and straightens, throwing his shoulders back. He’s a good eight inches taller than me, with long limbs that made him the best swimmer at Sidwell for the fifteen minutes he was there. His dark hair is a little longer than I remember but perfectly neat as always, and his light brown eyes are so bright when he smiles down at me that I swear my knees weaken.
“Yep,” I say, turning to dig my spoon into the softening ice cream. “Still ugly.”
He laughs. “Thanks.”
“You don’t look any smarter, either. Are you sure that fancy school is doing anything for you?”
James blushes—actually blushes, which hardly anyone really does—because not only is he a genius, but he’s a humble one. He doesn’t like people pointing out how very special he is, how he graduated high school three years early, and now, not even eighteen, is already working on his PhD at Johns Hopkins.
“Actually,” he says, “there’s something I need to tell you.”
I’m that empty corn-husk doll again, the slightest breath making me rustle and crack. Maybe Tamsin was right after all. He’s only trying to pretend everything is the same as it’s always been because he’s nervous—James isn’t exactly a model of social well-adjustedness—but he wants to tell me how he really feels. I just need to help him along, make the first move.
“Yeah?” I say. “Me too.”
He looks relieved. “You first.”
“Okay,” I say.
Then my mind goes blank.
I should have practiced this. I should have gotten Tamsin and Sophie to tell me exactly what to say. I spend precious seconds replaying what happened in my head. It was the night of the winter formal at school, and James was leaving for Connecticut the next day. The dance had been a disaster. My heel broke ten minutes after we arrived, Sophie drank too much spiked punch and spent half the night throwing up, and Tamsin broke up with Asher in a suitably dramatic fashion before the first slow dance was even over. After that, my date—Will Denby, who I didn’t want to go with in the first place, but of course James was too busy with school to take me—became, like, physically incapable of not hitting on her, and I ended up sitting alone at a table in the corner of the room, watching the two of them dance. I fled to the parking lot in my bare feet, holding my broken shoes in one hand and my cell phone in the other.
I knew he was in the middle of a big project for Dr. Feinberg, but I called James anyway.
“Sorry,” I said when he picked up the phone. “I know you’re working—”
“What’s wrong?” he whispered. He must have been in the library. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, my choked voice giving me away.
“Come on, Marina.”
“Well . . .” I took a deep breath and the story poured out of me. “Sophie’s sick and Tam’s dancing with my date, and everything’s terrible! Plus I broke my shoe.”
“Stay there. I’m coming to pick you up.”
I didn’t feel the gravel against my feet anymore. I was floating. “James, you don’t have to—”
“Twenty minutes.”
He showed up in a cab fifteen minutes later with a tube of superglue in hand. He fixed my shoe while the cab drove us to the Diner in Adams Morgan, where James wheedled until I split a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with him. After an hour and more calories than I cared to think about, the tight, queasy feeling in my stomach had dissolved, and I felt happy. Just happy.
Then James hugged me as we parted on the sidewalk outside our houses, and he paused with his face just inches from mine, staring at my lips. The air between us was suddenly electric, and I could feel the heat radiating off of his body. But he pulled away and the moment passed. We said good-bye, and that was the last time I saw him.
/>
It couldn’t have just been me, could it?
“James . . .” I croak.
“Yeah?”
“I . . .” Oh God oh God oh God. “Did you miss me?”
I could just slap myself.
He flashes me his most dazzling smile. “Of course.”
“Then why didn’t you call?” I say, in a voice roughly similar to one a kicked puppy would use if it could talk.
“That’s just it.” He moves closer to me, catching my sleeve between his fingers and rubbing his thumb over one of the reindeer in a Santa hat. I can’t breathe. “The thing I need to tell you about—”
The chime of the doorbell interrupts the moment. I start, and James drops my sleeve.
“That must be Abbott,” he says. “I texted him when we landed.”
I try to smile and feel my lips stretch uncomfortably tight across my teeth. “Great.”
James trots to the front door, so eager to see his other best friend, the one he texted. I stay in the kitchen, nursing a giant spoonful of ice cream because I’m disgusting. I can faintly hear the two boys greeting each other in the foyer, no doubt engaging in one of those strange boy half hugs or some kind of almost-manly fist bump. I knew from the moment I caught the two of them shooting hoops and talking computers when James came to Sidwell to meet me after tennis practice last year that he was going to be a problem, and I wasn’t wrong.
I hate him.
“Hey, Marina!” he says when he follows James back into the kitchen. “Sweet pjs.”
I roll my eyes and don’t say anything. I don’t even look at him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to break up the party.”
I accidentally glance over at him, and his eyes are alight with mocking triumph. Oh yeah, real sorry. The new boy who used to eat lunch at the edge of the basketball team’s table but had no real friends is the only one who’s managed to worm his way in with James; he knows exactly what he’s doing. James slides him a spoon as Nate appears from upstairs.
“Hi, Marina,” he says. “Mr. Abbott.”
“Hey, Congressman.”
“You guys know I hate it when you call me that,” he says, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. Nate’s almost twice James’s age and has raised him since he was twelve, but he’s not like a dad or anything. He jogs shirtless through the neighborhood in the summer, is the only person who can beat the boys at Call of Duty, and still helps me sneak into R-rated movies sometimes. “I’ve got to run to the office for a couple of hours. Top secret spy work.”
Nate is on the House Intelligence Committee, and he likes to pretend this makes him James Bond. “So, paperwork?” I say.
“Exactly, smart-ass.” He drops a kiss on the crown of my head. “Don’t burn the house down while I’m gone, okay?”
James’s stupid friend salutes. “Yes, sir!”
“Very funny.”
“I’d better go, too,” I say, seizing Nate’s exit as an opportunity to get out myself. The idea of James asking what I was going to tell him with his friend sitting right there makes me want to vomit. “Mom’s going to freak.”
“Let me grab my briefcase, and I’ll walk you out,” Nate says.
“Hey,” Abbott says, “don’t let me run you off.”
“You wish.”
“Can we talk later?” James asks, catching my hand. “I have some work to do first, but then . . .”
My chest swells, because I’m pathetic. “Sure.”
Nate appears at my side, briefcase in tow and coat already on. “Ready?”
“Nighty-night, Marina!” the idiot says. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!”
I punch his shoulder on my way out. Hard. “Shut up, Finn.”
“So, how was Connecticut?” I ask Nate as we walk out of the house.
He shrugs and swings his car keys around his index finger. “Fine. Good to be home, though. James really missed you.”
I brighten. “Yeah?”
“You bet.” He musses my hair, too, which is either a Shaw thing or a Marina-is-still-twelve thing. “Me too.”
“Thanks. Don’t work too hard, okay?”
Maybe it’s a trick of the light as we pass out of the shadows and into the glow of the streetlamp, but Nate’s expression seems to change, become harder. He smiles at me, but it looks different than usual. “We’ll see.”
“You okay?” I say, noticing for the first time that there are dark smudges under his eyes and his skin looks oddly tight, like the muscles underneath are rigid with tension. “You look kind of awful.”
“Ugh.” Nate grabs his stomach like I’ve punched him. “Way to hit me where it hurts.”
I grin. “You know what I mean. Is everything okay? We’re not about to be invaded by Canada, are we?”
“No, nothing that terrifying,” he says, unlocking his car and tossing his briefcase into the passenger’s seat. “I’ve just been busy with this investigation, ate up my whole recess. It’s nothing for you to worry about, though.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Do you . . .” Nate runs a hand across his forehead. “I’m sorry, Marina, this is a weird thing for me to ask.”
“What is it?”
“Could you . . . keep an eye on James for me?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I’m worried he’s working too hard.”
I laugh. “He’s always working too hard!”
“Yeah,” Nate says, “but this seems different. Can you just let me know if he says anything odd, or starts acting different? Different for James, I mean.”
A chill runs up my spine, and I pull my coat closed. It’s colder out here than I realized. “Sure, I guess.”
“Thanks, Marina,” Nate says. “You’re a good friend. Now get inside before you freeze.”
I smile and make my way back across the lawn. “Good night, Congressman!”
“Nate!” he shouts after me, and he waits beside his car until I’m safely inside my own house.
A faint trilling drags me up from the depths of sleep. I manage to crack open one bleary eye and reach for my cell phone, which is glowing blue in the dark of my bedroom. james, the display reads.
“Ugh.” I press the answer button. “Why are you calling me, you lunatic?”
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asks.
“Of course not. It’s only . . .” I glance at the clock. “Two thirty in the morning.”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late. I started working after Finn left, and I guess I lost track of time.”
I climb out of bed and wrap a throw blanket around my shoulders. With the phone still pressed to my ear, I settle into the window seat across the room from my bed. James sits in the window opposite, surrounded by a mountain of open books and papers, the golden glow of his desk lamp making a halo around him.
“Remember when we used to have two soup cans strung between our rooms?” he asks. The sound of his voice through the phone lags a fraction of a second behind the movement of his lips, so he looks like one of the filmstrips we used to watch in elementary school: not quite synced right.
I smile. “Quickly replaced by walkie-talkies, if I remember correctly. Mom said having cans hung from the windows made us look like hobos.”
“Yeah, but they were more fun.”
“Is this what you woke me up for?”
“I forget how cranky you get when you’re sleepy.” He smiles. “Actually, there was something I meant to ask you before you ran off earlier—”
“I did not run off—”
“Nate’s speaking at some DNC fund-raiser at the Mandarin Oriental tomorrow,” James continues, ignoring me, “and they need a couple of bodies to fill empty chairs. It’ll probably be boring, but he already put your name on the list and had you vetted, so do you feel like having a free dinner while the vice president speaks tomorrow night?”
Is James asking me out? A month ago the thought wouldn’t have crossed my mind, but now
. . .
“Do I get to dress up?” I ask.
“Black tie. And you thought you’d never have an excuse to wear your winter-formal dress again.”
A fancy dinner in a D.C. ballroom with James in a tux. Yeah, I think I can handle that. My mind instantly spins an elaborate fantasy: James’s face when he sees me in my dress, the way our hands will brush and linger as we both reach for the butter dish, the impromptu dance he’ll sweep me into under a streetlamp. He’ll lean forward and say the thing he’s been meaning to tell me, that he’s been waiting weeks to say: that he’s in love with me and can’t live without me.
“Finn’s coming, too.”
The dream shatters at my feet, and I scrunch up my face. Finn Abbott ruins everything.
James sees my expression and laughs. “You should give him a chance. I think you’d really like him. He likes you.”
“Aww, you are so terrible at spotting a liar. It’s almost sweet.”
“Anyway—”
“I don’t get why you’re friends with him. He’s an idiot.”
“No, he’s not. He’s amazing with computers, you know, even builds his own.”
“Okay, so he’s a big nerd like you. He’s still an idiot.”
“He’s funny,” James says, “and he treats me like a normal person. Could you at least try to be nice to him for one night?”
I sigh. “If the fund-raiser’s going to be boring, you have to let me have fun somehow.”
He smiles, and I swear the room gets a little brighter. “Fair enough. So, you in?”
It may not be quite the fairy tale I’d hoped for, but it’s still James in a tux. Even with Finn there. “Definitely.”
“Great! You’d better get some sleep, then. It’s late.”
“Oh, is it really?”
“Ha, ha.” He starts to get up, but then stops. “Oh, wait. What was it you wanted to tell me earlier?”
I don’t feel real without you beside me.
I swallow. I can’t do it, not now. “Nothing. Tell you later.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too. Probably better when you’re not half asleep.”
“Yeah,” I whisper.