Fan Art (17 page)

I step onto one running board and he steps on the other. The Jet Ski wobbles, reminding me of a soon-to-capsize canoe. When I sit down, Mason sits behind me, close enough that I can feel how warm he is compared to my own damp skin. My brain empties of all other thoughts.

“. . . the throttle, and that’s the gas.” Mason is reaching around me and pointing to things on the handlebars.

Oh, God, he’s explaining something. And I missed it.

“Got it?”

“Yeah,” I say, although the only throttle I’m familiar with is on a lawn mower.

He pulls the strap from his wrist and hands me the key. His arm brushes mine, and I close my fingers too soon. They close on air. My heart leaps at the thought of dropping the key.

“Here,” Mason says, pressing it into my fingers and practically closing them over it.

I get the strap over my wrist and the key in the ignition. Then I ease the Jet Ski forward, putter it up to golf cart, and once I get the hang of the steering, I go to Volkswagen bus.

“Good job,” Mason says with a reassuring squeeze.

So I push it a little faster and a little faster still. The choppy waves are slapping up under us, slamming the Jet Ski up and down. My muscles jerk and twist with the
motion and my stomach lurches.

“There you go. A little faster and you won’t feel those.”

I squeeze for more gas and it rockets ahead. The wind whips my face, but the choppy ride smooths out as we skim over the surface.

“Awesome!” Mason shouts in my ear. “Woo-hoo, Jamie!”

I let a whoop fly into the wind.

And I’m pretty sure I feel Mason hug me tighter.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

TWENTY-SEVEN

“It’s good to go outside your
comfort zone,” Mason says, getting all philosophical on me as we lie in the grass at the edge of a little beach, letting the sun dry our clothes.

“Yeah,” I agree. “That was friggin’ awesome!”

“I told you. McCall’s great without Frank.”

“No canoe,” I say.

“And just us.”

My skin goes cold, as if I weren’t sprawled on the warm ground in the warm sun.
He said this earlier, in relation to Eden
. But now I’m not sure I understand. I want to ask him to translate, but don’t know how. “You’re going all nostalgic on me,” I accuse instead. “It’s not like we won’t see each other at college.” WSU and the University of Idaho are only eight miles apart.

“Not nostalgic,” Mason says, turning his head to
look at me. His glasses are resting on his chest, drying like the rest of us.

I study his bare face, his chocolate eyes, and boy-long lashes. His straight nose and his lips, dusky pink, shapely and—I so wish I was Bahti and he was buzzed—kissable.

It’s hopeless.

I’m hopeless.

I roll over onto my stomach, prop my chin on my hand. I lean closer, watch a smile tug the corners of his lips up.
I imagine this is an invitation, imagine closing the gap between his lips and mine
. My head spins, dizzy from lack of oxygen, and I remember to breathe. I pull back, gulp down a breath.

“. . . things change. New place. New friends,” Mason says.

And,
damn it
. I missed something.
Again
. Something important. “Sure,” I say.

“It’s not like I’m
not
looking forward to college. I need to get away, out from under my father’s thumb, but I—I don’t want to lose you in the process.”

It seems like he says this in slow motion, because a million thoughts pop into my head in the time it takes for the words to form on his lips, starting with,
You lose me all the time—I get lost in my fantasies for seconds, minutes, hell, I don’t know.
And
I’m so glad I didn’t come out to you—then I might lose you for good.
And
God, I love you. You won’t ever lose me.

I don’t say any of those things. “We won’t lose each other. I’m taking my Honda to college, and if you want a ride back to Boise, you’re gonna have to call me.”

“And if your Honda needs an oil change, you’ll have to call me.”

“I can change the oil,” I say, lying through my teeth.

“Yeah, right.” Mason laughs. “And I can play the trumpet.”

“Can too.”

He gives me a shove, and his glasses slide off his chest and land in the grass. “Like, when?”

I shrug. “Dunno.”

“You’re such a dork,” Mason says. “You probably never change the oil in your car.”

“And you’re a brainiac,” I retaliate, not wanting to admit that he’s right.

“Am not,” he says, moving his glasses out of the way.

And I know I’m in for it.

I duck from his reach as he aims to mess up my hair, and I get a good shove in. He falls onto his back in the grass, momentarily defeated, but he recovers and rolls back my way. I hold him off, my long arms an advantage. “What is it, Mason? A four-point-two GPA?” I tease.

“Hell, no,” he says, twisting out of my grip and pressing me back into the grass with a shoulder in my ribs.

“Four-point-five?” I taunt, his weight heavy on my ribcage.

A flicker of recognition crosses his face. His rather close face.

I know I’m onto something. “It is, isn’t it?”

Mason sits up, no longer wrestling.

“Impressive,” I say.

“Boatload of work,” he says.

“So you’re runner-up.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Who’s valedictorian anyway?”

“Juliet.”

“No way!” I say. “She doesn’t talk. How can she possibly give a speech?”

“She better give a speech,” he says.

“Oh my God, if she doesn’t, you’ll have to.” I sit up.

“She’ll do it,” he says, more convinced this time.

“It was the best of times,” I say, holding my fist like a microphone and pretending to give a speech. “It was the worst of times—”

“It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,” Mason continues.

“And now that we are all headed our separate ways,” I say in my microphone voice, deviating from Dickens because I don’t know the next line.

“We had everything before us,” he says.

“Freedom, college, the future . . .”

“The whole effin’ world!” Mason says with a whoop. He jumps to his feet, then reaches down for my hands
and pulls me up.

I’m barely standing when he bounds down the beach and into the water.

I follow like an excited puppy on a leash, dizzy and dancing like the sunlight and shadows over Mason’s white T-shirt. Until the cold of the lake water grabs my ankles and pain rockets up my legs. “Holy—” I exclaim.

Mason’s in up to the hem of his shorts, still whooping and splashing.

I’m swearing at the water.

And, when a wave splashes higher, I switch to praying. Which Mason finds funny. He wades back to me, holding an arm over his stomach as if to hold the laugh in. “I love you, man,” he says, propping himself up on my shoulder.

The heat radiates from his hand, down my body. And I half expect the lake to begin to boil.

The pine trees swallow up the last shred of daylight as we leave McCall and begin the trip back to Boise. We’d spent the evening lingering over burgers and fries, drinking refills, and talking about all the stuff we’ve done over the years—from replacing Londa’s hamsters with toads we found in the sprinkler box to floating the river in inner tubes and freezing our behinds off while the rest of me blistered with sunburn (Mason got a tan) to watching all the Jason Bourne movies in a row when Brodie was
all bummed about losing the homecoming game—so it’s later than it should be. We’re crossing the vast spread of valley floor when the radio station goes to static. Mason adjusts the dial only to find eerie silence.

“Do, do, do, doo,” I sing what I imagine the theme to
The Twilight Zone
might be.

“Ha-ha,” Mason says, and turns the stereo off.

A huge pair of headlights illuminates the interior of the car as an eighteen-wheeler comes up behind us.

Mason turns in his seat, looks over his shoulder. “He’s really moving.”

I scan the road ahead as the headlights get bigger, brighter. There are a few cars in the other lane, driving toward me, so there’s no way the rig can pass. I flip the rearview mirror to dim, but it doesn’t help. It’s as bright as noon in August in here. I can’t see a thing.

Mason stays turned in his seat, as if he wants to watch the end of the world barreling down upon us.

I want to get out of the way, so when I see what might be a driveway, or maybe a cross street, I flick my blinker on and hope I’m right. The blinker
ca-chink-ca-chink-ca-chinks
a rapid rhythm that matches my pulse—like we’re both on meth.

“Huh?” Mason asks.

It doesn’t look like much, maybe an old ranch road, and I slow as much as I dare—eliciting an earsplitting blast from the truck. I pull over onto the gravel and the
truck roars past, its horn still bellowing. The cars I saw earlier pass by us, their taillights red blurs.

We sit there until the sound fades, leaving us alone with the manic
ca-chink-ca-chink
of the blinker. I turn it off, hoping to signal to my pulse that it’s okay to return to normal.

“That the blinker?” Mason asks.

“On crack,” I reply with a laugh that diffuses the tension in my muscles.

Mason turns on the radio. A whisper of static, then nothing. This bothers him. I don’t know why.

I look in the rearview mirror. It’s clear and I want to pull back out on the road.

But Mason barks, “Put the flashers on.”

I push the button as he gets out of the car. The emergency lights come on with a vengeance, machine gun
rat-a-tat-tatting
into the now empty night.

“Pop the hood!” Mason shouts.

Reading his lips, I do as he says.

The headlights hit Mason’s white T-shirt and give him an angel-like glow and highlight the shapes of his muscles underneath. He fiddles with the latch and the hood rises, blocking my view.

So I climb out and join him. I peer under the hood too, at the jumble of hoses, moving parts, and wires. I can’t tell one thing from the next, and it isn’t the disco lighting—I don’t know crap about cars.

“Electrical,” Mason says. “Maybe the battery.”

And, as if the car hears him, the headlights dim noticeably, flicker like candles, and go out. The engine sputters and dies. A cold prickle works its way up my arms as the darkness edges in around us. But Mason is all business. He takes his cell phone out and peers at the battery in the square of light.

I wince when he leans over and rubs at the battery with the hem of his new T-shirt, leaving ink-black smudges.

“See if it starts,” he says.

I climb back inside, put the key in place, and turn. Two clicks, faint as the ticking of a clock, answer me. I let go. Try again.

Tick.

“No go?” Mason asks.

I open the door.

“. . . or a new starter motor.” He’s in the middle of a sentence. “Maybe an alternator.”

I feel it coming, a wall-of-cold-water feeling. Dread. None of these things can be found on the side of a highway in the-middle-of-nowhere Idaho in the middle of the night.

“Damn it,” I say, the anger in my voice surprising me.

“You got triple A?” Mason asks quietly.

“No. Why would I?” I ask. I know the answer. But I lash out at him just the same. “I never go anywhere!”

“Flares?” he asks doubtfully.

“No!” I shout. My voice echoes as if to repeat just how alone we are.
How screwed.

“Geez, Jamie,” Mason says. “Chill.”

That does it. Lights the fuse, hot in my gut. Pushes out the last of the cold dread and ignites the anger inside me. “This was your idea. Your goddamn stupid idea! McCall. What’s so goddamn special about it? What’s wrong with Lucky Peak? Lake Lowell? They’re a whole lot closer!”

“I just—” Mason begins. He takes off his glasses, rubs the heel of his hand into one eye socket. At the same time, his cell phone lights up, illuminating a black smudge on his cheek. “I wanted—”

“What?” I shout. “To break the rules? To screw the hell up?”

“I thought . . . ,” his voice trails off.

“You thought what, Einstein? That this would be fun? That getting stuck on some two-lane highway to nowhere would be fun?” I’m being an asshole and I know it.

“Never mind!” He stomps around to the passenger side, reaches in for something, and slams the door.

“Argh!” I shout at the trees. I feel the anger leaving my body with the guttural sound, so I growl out more frustration. At Mason. At my stupid-ass car. At the world.

And when I’m done, I feel like crying. But I gulp it back. There’s no way. No way I’m going to let Mason see me do that. He’s leaning on the remnants of a split-rail fence, his shoulders hunched and his back to me.

I collapse in the driver’s seat. Weary now, and cold. And wishing for a bed.

After a while, the passenger-side door opens and Mason pokes his head inside. “There’s nothing we can do until morning. I called Londa, told her to tell Mom what happened.”

“You told your sister?” The last thing I need is to get in trouble right before graduation. “Your mom will call my mom!” As I say it, I know it’s the right thing to do. I should call her.

Mason doesn’t hear me. He reaches over, takes the keys from the ignition. Soon he’s opening the trunk and rifling through our backpacks. When he returns, he has on a long-sleeve shirt. He tosses one to me. “Come on, let’s go.”

I’m still angry. Angry that I let him get me into this mess. I leave the shirt where it fell on the stick shift.

He waits.

A car passes and then fades into the vastness of the valley.

Finally Mason shuts the door without a word. I hear his sneakers on the gravel as he leaves, walking on the shoulder back toward town.
To my stepfather’s condo
, I bet. That’s where he wanted to stay all along. That’s why we’re here.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE