Still not sure what to do for him, Rebecca tugged him down onto her bed, turning them both so she could spoon him. Her arms around him, her chin on his shoulder. She listened to his breathing smooth. She slipped her hand up to his chest, feeling the thrum and beat of his heart, too fast at first, until it also settled.
“He’s a good old guy. He lost his wife a few years ago. He had a son, but I think he died, too. He never talks about him, but there was a picture on the mantel. Young kid in an army uniform.” Tristan’s voice, low and shaky, cut off.
He was crying. She didn’t know what to do or say to him. So she said nothing and only held him. When he turned on the bed to bury his face against her, Rebecca ran her fingers through his hair, over and over again, until he stopped shaking.
“I don’t want him to die,” Tristan whispered into the base of her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He held her tight, but said nothing else. Eventually, the steady in-out of his breathing told her that he slept. Carefully, Rebecca pulled away to turn out the bedside light. In the dark, she gathered him close to her again. She breathed in time with him. If she dreamed, she didn’t remember it, and when she woke to the absence of him in her arms, she wondered if he’d ever been there at all.
Chapter 14
Jenni
Then
The Sterns and the Harrisons had been in the habit of moving back and forth between the only two houses there at the end of Quarry Street, so Jenni wasn’t shocked when Niko showed up and let himself into the house. He tossed her one of the cookies in his fist.
Jenni caught it, barely managing not to crumble it although she was in the middle of painting her nails. She ate it anyway, because she wasn’t about to pass up one of Babulya’s cookies. She eyed the daytime soap she’d been watching.
"Jerk, you made me mess up my polish."
“Bitch,” Niko said.
It was the standard comeback they all used, not an insult. Jenni rolled her eyes. "Where's your brother?"
She regretted asking the moment the words slipped out of her mouth. If she’d been suspecting that Niko and Allie were harboring sexy feelings for each other, it could be reasonable to think that Niko might suspect the same of her and his brother. She didn’t want anyone to know it, but especially not Niko, who would certainly tell Allie. Allie would then pester Jenni about it, and what would Jenni be able to tell her? Nothing. She would never be able to say a word.
Niko shrugged. "I think he went over to Kim Lee's house."
Jenni flinched. Kim Lee had been crushing on Ilya since seventh grade. She was always trying to spread rumors about Jenni. Nobody ever believed them, because Kim Lee was known to be a big fat liar. If Ilya was fooling around with her, Jenni might literally puke.
Niko flopped onto the couch beside her and propped his feet on the coffee table, but first snagged the remote to change the station. He laughed at her cry of protest and held the remote up and out of her reach.
"Jerk," Jenni muttered again, then fixed him with a steady look. He’d thrown Kim Lee in her face. She could do a little of the same. "Allie isn't home, by the way. She stayed after to do something for the play."
Niko looked caught. So he did like Allie. He gave an exaggerated shrug and turned toward the TV screen. "Why do you think that matters to me?"
The pager on Jenni's hip beeped and she grabbed for it with a small, secret grin, studying the number on the small black screen. It was code, one of the dozens of strings of numbers that meant full phrases. She held the pager to her chest for a moment. Did a little seated dance. Steve. She hadn’t heard from him for a couple weeks. He never contacted her when he was on the road.
I want to fuck you.
Niko strained to catch a look at the pager. "Got a boyfriend or something?"
"None of your business, buttstain," Jenni said, but she was distracted. Paying too much attention to the message on the pager to notice that Niko was close enough to snag it from her grip.
"Give me that, shithead!" Jenni swept the pager out of his hand and punched him on the arm for good measure.
"Sorry," he muttered. "You don't have to be such a bitch about it."
"Fuck you, Niko." Her heart pounded. Had he seen the message? Even if he had, it wasn’t any of his business. He had no idea who it had come from. Her stomach churned, twisting at the idea of being caught.
Without another word, Niko got off the couch and left the room. Jenni stared after him. He’d definitely seen the message and interpreted it. He might tell Ilya. Well, that wouldn’t matter. If Ilya asked her about it, she didn’t have to tell him anything about it. Or she could tell him everything.
Swiftly, she typed in the code 6-9999999 — get in line.
Breathless, she waited to see what he’d reply. It felt empowering, this flirting. The back and forth. Being pursued. It was a recent development, his chase. The tables were turning, and although Jenni didn’t know exactly why or how it had happened, she liked it.
In the beginning, serving him coffee and sometimes a few small white or blue pills passed along with the check, Jenni had flirted with Steve the way she flirted with all the customers. A bright smile, a toss of her hair. Sometimes, she’d lean over a little too far when pouring the coffee, and even though she never let her tits hang out of her waitress uniform, the men never, ever failed to try and look down the front of her dress. Men were predictable. She’d learned that right away.
Steve hadn’t been so predictable. Dark hair. Dark eyes. The scruff of a dark beard feathered with silver. He hadn’t smiled or tried to joke with her. He’d simply, one night, jerked his head toward the parking lot and described his truck.
She hadn’t gone with him that night, but two weeks later, after he’d “tipped” her enough to get a couple pills from her supply, she had gone out after work to see him standing next to the big rig. Smoking a cigarette. Waiting for her? She’d thought so, but wasn’t sure. She’d climbed inside the cab of his truck and let him kiss her. Let him do more than that, too.
He wasn’t like the other truckers who came to the diner, because Steve was a local. His truck was only ever in the lot on his way out of town, or maybe on his way back in. Sometimes, he showed up at the diner in his black Camaro. Sometimes, he even took her for a drive in it. But the only times they ever fucked around were in the cab of his truck.
Jenni never asked why Steve didn’t take her home. She wasn’t sure she’d have gone with him, if he’d asked. Doing it this way kept it in a certain place, made it a certain type of thing. Only now, Steve was making more of this whatever-it-was.
345987 — I’m horny
She rolled her eyes.
335, she typed. You’re crazy.
She was the crazy one, though. Playing with fire. He’d already put his hands on her, too hard, too much, when once she’d refused to go down on him. He’d been sorry after, or said he was, but the truth was that she hadn’t minded. When she was alone, Jenni looked at the bruises he left and felt her heart pound. They were proof of…something. She didn’t quite understand what or why, but something big, vast, beyond her.
“I want out of this place,” she’d told him the last time they’d been together.
“So,” Steve had said, “let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Maybe tonight she’d take the roll of cash she’d been saving, put it in her pocket. Leave everything else behind. She’d get in Steve’s truck with him and get out of here, just like he said.
Maybe.
Chapter 15
Jenni
Then
It was so cold, Jenni could see her breath. Looking at the stars overhead, she wondered if it would be worth making a wish. She wished Ilya had sat next to her at the battered picnic table in the Stern back yard, the way Allie and Niko were sitting. Instead Jenni and Ilya sat as far apart from each other as they could get.
He hated her, or he wanted her to think he did. Well, sometimes she hated him, too, even though she loved him
. Jenni couldn’t remember when she’d stopped thinking of him as just the boy who lived across the street. It would have been so much easier if she’d never started thinking of him as anything else.
Only two days ago, she’d come over here in the afternoon. Both Barry and Galina’s cars were gone. She’d found Ilya in his room, jamming to music while he flipped through a sports magazine. She’d wanted to see if he would kiss her. Touch her. She wanted, maybe to get him to go all the way with her, kind of like a test.
She wanted a reason not to run away from here, but Ilya hadn’t given her one. They’d fought, instead. He’d been cold and derisive. She’d been shrill. They’d ended up saying things that still left a bad taste in her mouth. He blamed her, she knew, for being what he thought was a tease.
"How long do we have to wait? It's freaking cold out here." Ilya shrugged deeper into his heavy winter coat and acted like he wasn’t eyeing Jenni from the corner of his eye.
He should've just sat next to her. He wanted to. Jenni wanted him to. Too bad neither of them would admit it. They both were freezing their asses off. Not for the first time, she longed for the days when they’d been just friends, before the tension between them and the promise of something more had changed everything. She and Ilya had known each other forever, but now she didn’t feel like she knew him at all.
"It might be too cloudy." Niko stretched out his legs and leaned his head back to look up into the winter sky.
"Just watch," Jenni said. "It's going to be amazing."
Tonight, something special was supposed to happen. An alignment of the planets, nine of them. Something rare. A once-in-a-lifetime event, the sort of thing you wanted to share with the people you love best in all the world. That was the four of them, together, the way they'd been for so long. Friends. More than friends. Family. Lovers.
Allie rested her head on Niko's shoulder and smiled when he tilted his to rest on hers. Beneath the blanket covering them both, they thought nobody would see they were holding hands. A horrible pang of envy sliced through Jenni, worse than a razor. Allie and Niko? It should have been Jenni and Ilya, too, but it would never be.
"Wouldn't it be great," Niko said, "If we could travel into space the way we can fly in an airplane?"
Ilya inched closer to Allie’s side to grab some of the blanket, and as if on cue, she and Niko both pulled their hands from underneath it. "Why would you want to?"
"I'd like to," Jenni said. She did not move closer to Niko's other side, although the blanket was big enough for all of them. "Just...fly away."
Ilya leaned to look at her. "Where would you go?"
"Anywhere."
"I'm with you," Niko said. "Get out of this town. See something. Do something important."
He got it. He understood. It was his older brother who seemed stuck here, determined to live his whole life within the confines of Quarrytown.
“It’s not happening,” Ilya said impatiently with a gesture at the sky. “Or if it is, we aren’t going to be able to see it with these clouds.”
“Patience,” Niko said, and Jenni and Allie both laughed, because Ilya didn’t have any.
“I’ll be right back.” Jenni scooted off the picnic table. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Refill the thermos,” Allie suggested and handed it to her sister.
Jenni took it. Inside the Sterns’ kitchen, she set the thermos on the counter and put the kettle on to boil the water while she used the toilet. When she came back out, Barry’s dark silhouette leaned in the doorway.
“I’m due a deposit,” he said.
“I don’t have it with me.” Jenni didn’t look at him.
She hadn’t given Barry anything for two weeks, and the last time she had, it had been lighter than it should have been. She’d said it was because nobody was buying, or if they were, they were haggling about the pricing. It was a lie. She was taking a cut and holding it back. She deserved it though, didn’t she? She was the one taking the risk by making the sales.
“You haven’t been holding out on me, have you?” His tone was light, but the words were menacing.
Jenni helped herself to the container of hot cocoa mix in the cupboard, too aware of Barry’s gaze on her as she moved about the kitchen in the house that wasn’t hers. She poured powder into the thermos. The kettle wasn’t crying yet.
“No. Of course not,” she lied.
“Avoiding me, though, aren’t you?”
She faced him finally. “No. I’ve just been busy. I’m in high school and I have a job and —”
“A boyfriend,” Barry put in. “Right?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Jenni muttered.
“You have someone.”
Jenni shook her head, mute. What she had was not up for conversation, especially not with fucking Barry. Still, the fact he knew, or only suspected, gave her pause.
“My life isn’t any of your business,” she said.
A clicking noise issued from Barry’s throat. “I need to move product, Jennilynn. More of it. The supplies do me no good if you can’t get it into the hands of the people who want it.”
“I’ve been busy at school. I haven’t had as many shifts at the diner. That’s all.”
“I’d hate to think you were maybe just trying to go around me or something. Or maybe you were skimming?” Barry moved a step closer.
Jenni held up a hand. “Don’t you fucking dare, Barry. I will scream so fucking loud.”
“Not sure what you thought I was going to do to you,” he said but kept his distance. Incredibly, he sounded a little hurt that she would even suggest he might have tried something inappropriate.
“You don’t scare me.”
Barry laughed. “Look, I’m not trying to scare you.”
“Then don’t make stupid fake threats,” she told him in a low, furious tone. “Because guess what, you and I both know that if anyone finds out about any of this, you’re the one who’s going to get in the worst trouble. You and Galina. Not me!”
“Nobody’s going to get in trouble.” Now he was trying to placate her.
The kettle began to scream, and Jenni yanked it off the burner. She blinked away the threat of angry tears. She filled the thermos with boiling water and put on the lid, then shook it to mix the cocoa.
“You’re going to burn your mouths on that, if you’re not careful,” Barry said.
Jenni put the thermos on the counter. “What if I did want to get out of it, huh? What would you do about it? You have a guy ready to rough me up, or what?”
Barry grimaced. “The way you like it, right?”
She went cold, colder than she’d been outside. Frigid down to her toes. “What?”
“You left quite an impression on Dillon.”
Before she could stop herself, Jenni touched her throat. The place Steve liked to choke her and she liked him to do it. Quickly, she took her hand away, but Barry had seen her. She wanted to slap his smug grin right off his face.
“Dillon can eat an unsalted barrel of dicks,” Jenni said. She hadn’t seen him in months. After the night of the party, he’d stopped buying from her and coming around the diner at all. “Does he say we’re together?”
“No. Just that you used to be.”
Jenni grimaced. “He shouldn’t run his mouth.”
“Just get me the cash or the pills,” Barry said. “One or the other. Then we’re golden. If you can’t do that, I’ll have to find someone else to sell for me.”
No. She didn’t want that. She wanted the money. And the danger. She needed both.
“You’ll get it,” she said.
Chapter 16
Jenni
Then
If her parents knew how many times Jenni had climbed up and down this tree to sneak out of the house, her father would have cut it down years ago. Every time she did, she couldn’t help thinking about that movie, Pollyanna, where the girl fell out of the tree. The fall had messed that kid up bad, but it was just a movie. This was real
life.
Jenni slid open the window and swung a leg over the sill. She’d expected to see her sister getting ready for school, but Allie must’ve been in the shower. Thank God. Jenni didn’t have the energy for a fight. Not this morning.
She put a hand over her mouth to fight back the retch that threatened, and looked desperately for something to puke into. There was nothing, and she managed to keep herself from vomiting only because she didn’t have any food in her stomach to come up.
She and Steve had spent the night drinking and smoking and getting it on. It had been weeks since the last time he’d paged her, so long she was sure he wasn’t going to. They’d fought about it in the cab of his truck. She wasn’t his girlfriend, he’d reminded her, and she’d tossed back that he wasn’t her boyfriend. He’d put his hands on her, hard, and she’d purred like a kitten. It was a fucking mess, one she didn’t know how to get out of. One she didn’t want to get out of.
Jenni was in bed and settled beneath her faded quilt made from squares her mom had sewn out of old baby clothes and blankies when Allie got back into the bedroom. She’d pulled the covers up over her head and was breathing slowly in and out through her nose to get her stomach to ease. Her eyes felt like someone had ground glass and sprinkled it into them. They were closed, and she swore she could still see swirling bands of color every time she shifted her gaze. She totally got why people took pills, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever understand how they could function at all, ever, while doing it.
Allie sounded pissed. "Hey. Get up. You're going to be late for school."
“I’m sick."
"You're not sick. You're hungover."
"Not." Jenni didn’t so much as twitch back the covers. She didn’t want to look at her sister. More importantly, she didn’t want to have to look at the light.
Allie tried to pull on the blanket, but Jenni had a death grip on it from underneath. They struggled for a few seconds before Allie won. The blankets ripped back. Jenni grimaced and tried to shield her eyes.