She’s smiling back at me now, because I laughed, and she was the one who made it happen, because, as she said in that goddamn diary, “Dear God, make me funny like Tim, because people like funny people and maybe then Mark Winthrop would . . .”
Love her.
“Nano – the school shit,” I say, then swallow. “I can’t help you that way anymore. You get that, right?”
She nods, staring fixedly at the beanbag chair. “Look, about the college money, Tim – Dad said I’d probably get it for Columbia because you –” She stops, and I can hear the gears turning as she tries to figure out how to put it. Because you –
Are the boy most likely to.
Fail.
Everyone and everything.
There it is again, its silver top gleaming under the light of the Schmidts’ fake streetlamp, glossy from the rain. The car pauses at the end of our block, as it has three times since Brad dropped me off. Then, as I watch, it signals the turn, though our street is completely deserted. I edge down the steps, arms folded against the wet, silty breeze blown over from the river.
Looking up at the shaded windows of the garage apartment, I see Tim’s rangy figure pass by, then someone else, a girl, hair in a ponytail, gesturing with both hands.
As I’m watching this, the car pulls slowly into our driveway at a bad parking angle, sharply slanted behind my Bug and Tim’s Jetta.
The headlights snap off.
Enough. Who’s this weird about pulling into a driveway? Who cases the street beforehand? I can’t see through the tinted windows.
Dealers?
Maybe the garage apartment’s new tenant has brought his sketchy past with him.
Or hired a hooker to join the party.
I stalk down the steps to the car.
Rap sharply on the window.
Right as it occurs to me what a stupid thing this is to do.
No weapon. No Mace. Unless they’re vulnerable to the power of Harry’s authentic Nerfblaster Lightsaber with glow-in-the-dark detailing, lying in the grass nearby.
The car turns back on, window slowly rolling down, and I’m staring at a girl, my own age or younger, with long brown hair and huge, thickly lashed blue eyes, wide and unblinking in the throw-back glow of her headlights.
“Looking for someone?”
She edges back at the sound of my voice. Her fingers, with chipped dark pink polish, clenched at the ten-and-two position on the wheel, tighten even more.
“Yes. No. I mean . . . I . . .” she stammers. “I . . . I –”
“Are you lost?”
She gives a quick, unsteady laugh, and then says, “You got that right. Sorry – don’t worry about it. I’ll find my way.” Then she rolls the window up and backs out as slowly as she drove in.
“I’m coming in, we need to talk,” I say before the door’s even half-open.
Tim blinks at me, takes a step back, then peers over my head as though expecting a lynch mob.
“The scariest phrase in the universe.” He’s wearing baggy striped pajama bottoms, with a toothbrush in one hand, Crest poised in the other.
“Let me in,” I repeat, louder.
“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin. You’re looking predatory.” He stares down at my shirt, slightly damp with rain. “And your – uh – chest is heaving. Is that you huffing and puffing?”
“Tim. Now.” I’m not here to be disarmed.
Raising his hands holding the toothbrush and Crest, he steps aside. I brush past him, into the center of the room. My room. Which he’s completely marked as his territory. Open Grape-Nuts cereal box and an empty carton of orange juice on the counter next to a worn leather wallet and a handful of crumpled bills. Socks and a sweatshirt balled up in a corner. More clothes piled on the couch. Dishes in the sink. An iPod with a tangled wad of chargers and an Xbox next to the TV.
A lavender windbreaker tossed on the bean bag chair.
“Look, for starters, where’s the girl?”
Except when he’s loaded, I’ve never seen Tim so slow on the uptake. Now he’s blinking again. “Um – you mean . . . ? What girl?”
“You’ve got more than one? Look – you can’t do this – I need to be here, and I’m sorry if you were planning to use this place for your hookups and booty calls or whatever. I don’t care what you told Jase you’d pay, he had no right to go ahead and hand this over to you.”
Tim tosses the toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter, grabs a pack of Marlboros, whips out a lighter, shakes out a cigarette, and lights up, all in about two seconds.
I scowl at him. Smoking in my apartment.
“Sorry – where are my manners? Want one?” he asks around the cigarette trapped between his lips.
The bedroom door opens and out comes . . .
Nan, Tim’s nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof twin sister.
“So, yeah,” she says, twisting a coil of hair around a finger and reaching back to flip off the light, “I’ll reassure Mom I did my duty. Think she wanted me to tuck you in too? I forgot to bring Pierre the Bear, but I can . . .” She stumbles to a halt. “Oh – hi, Alice.”
“Hey, Nan.” I give her a brief, but actually genuine smile, which she returns hesitantly. This girl, she’s like one of Jase’s animals that was badly treated by its previous owner.
“We can skip the tucking in,” Tim tells her. “Sending over sheets and towels, that was – uh, nice. Tell Ma thanks. Not when Pop’s around, though. Pretty sure I’m supposed to be sleeping under some newspaper on a sidewalk grate somewhere.”
Nan bites her pinkie nail, tearing at the cuticle so savagely, mine nearly bleeds in sympathy. Studying me with a vertical line between her eyebrows, identical to Tim’s, she picks up the windbreaker, looks back and forth between us, then doesn’t budge – until Tim sets his hand in the middle of her back, steering her toward the door.
“Good deed done, Two-Shoes. You’d better beat it. I don’t think Alice here wants any witnesses to the homicide.”
When the door closes behind her, he gestures at me, like, bring it on. Then, before I can say a word, “You want me to get lost, right, Alice? Spreading like a virus, that. Schools, jobs, my folks – should I start a running tally? We can put a list on the fridge.”
No flirty flippancy. Hard, sarcastic – like a shove. I haven’t heard him like this since he first stopped drinking. Then he studies me, eyes drifting from my face down to my clenched fists, back to my face again.
He turns away. “Shit, I’m sorry, Alice. I was gonna go to my friend Connell’s, but he relapsed, so that was a no-go. Jase said . . . I didn’t know this place was supposed to be yours. Shoulda guessed. No worries. I’m one hell of a fast packer.” He tosses me the kind of smile one of my little brothers would after skinning his knee. See, I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt at all.
Then he starts skimming the crumpled bills off the counter, shoving them in the wallet, concentrating