The Rules (10 page)

“Hey,” he said, coming up short.

“I was listening to you drumming,” she said. “You’re really good.”

He gave her a little bow. “The drummer never gets the love. It’s always the lead guitar.”

“You’re a lot cuter than Mick,” she said.

“Don’t let Mick hear you say that.” He laced his fingers, stretching his arms. “August said we won’t be playing again for a while yet. This is a weird gig, even for us. Everyone taking off all the time.”

She remembered that he’d been on the stage when she’d thrown her tantrum. “I hope you got paid up front,” she said, even though she had no reason to believe that August would cheat them. He was so into his integrity tonight. Jerk.

Hiro got a funny look on his face and rolled his shoulders. “I’m sure he’s good for it.” He stepped into the room. “I was just looking around.”

She looked more closely at him and felt a familiar heat at the base of her spine. Six-pack, and a drummer, on his way to the top. Getting together was half the reason everyone came to these parties. It wasn’t like it
mattered
anymore. She could do it if she felt like it. The heat fanned outward, and she smoothed her hair with her free hand.

“So, what are
you
doing back here?” he asked. “Hiding?”

She set her lantern down so that the light bounced off the ceiling, wrapping them both in a muted, flattering glow. “I needed to take a moment away from everyone. I have this neck ache,” she said, stealing the idea from the way he cricked his own neck and rolled his shoulders. “I’ve had it all night and I can’t even think straight. I pulled something.”

“Oh? I get a lot of those,” he said. “Drumming.” He held out his hands, an offer, and she turned around. Lifting waves of blond hair off her neck for him, she licked her lips and took a slow breath. His hands dipped lightly against her skin as he began kneading her neck and upper back.

“That’s so nice,” she said, rolling her head, daydreaming about being in Hollywood together, the actress and the rock star. The classic story. It could happen. People who weren’t on her career path had no idea of how likely it actually was.

Hiro moved in closer, his body heat bathing her in toasty goodness. Then he kissed the flare of her jaw beneath her left earlobe, his breath tickling the inside of her ear.

I’m going to do this,
she thought, turning around to face him. As his lips met hers, a new thought suddenly occurred to her. She could claim he was the father. Young, impassioned artists in love, rocketing to the top together in Los Angeles sounded much better than the truth.

As his kiss deepened and his arms tightened around her, she realized that this could work out really well for her.

“Hey,” he murmured, “so…”

“It’s okay,” she whispered in his ear.

They kept kissing. Hands began to move. It only took a minute for bells to ring and his breathing went completely ragged.

“How old are you?” he asked her.

“I’m fine.” Her mom had initiated the process of emancipating Heather so that she would legally be an adult. Mr. Riker had suggested it, saying that it would make things easier for her in Hollywood. Heather wasn’t sure why, but she hadn’t argued because she had nursed another crazy dream that Mr. Riker would marry her.

That was before Starbucks. Before she’d seen him all cozy with that woman.

“I need to get a condom,” Hiro said.

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” she murmured, pushing farther.

He slid her arms from around his neck and kissed her knuckles. “I’ve got some in my bag. I’ll be right back.”

“You really don’t need to do that.”

She pressed herself against his chest before he finally took a step away and she realized she couldn’t protest too hard for fear of him guessing why she wasn’t so concerned.

“Right back,” he repeated, trailing his finger down the side of her face.

“I’ll be waiting,” she purred.

“Don’t you dare move,” he said.

He trotted into the darkness.

His persistence put a minor crimp in her plan, but condoms weren’t a hundred percent effective. She could always say it was defective.

A few seconds ticked by. Maybe half a minute. She stood in the dim light and looked at all the crap in the room, the cobwebs, the dust. It was gross.

“God,” she whispered. “What am I doing?”

She fanned her hands across her abdomen. This was pathetic, and it was wrong. She couldn’t do this to this guy. She didn’t even know him.

A footfall on cement echoed behind her and she spun around.

“Listen,” she began.

Then she staggered backward.

And screamed.

“What was that?” Larson said as he stepped across the threshold of a shed about fifty feet away from the warehouse.

It had sounded like someone in trouble.

“Praveen?” he called, ducking back outside. “Did you hear that?”

The fog levitated in layers of bundled cotton and the beam from his flashlight bounced off the billowing white. No Praveen. Maybe she’d bailed. Gone home. Scratched herself to death.

Weirdo.

“Hello? Praveen?”

Was she trying to scare him? Have some fun?

This whole thing was anything but fun. She wouldn’t tell him what the deal with the sweater was, but he was sure it meant something big. Larson didn’t like August tonight. Not a bit. Albino Man was acting like a total a-hole.

Finally he shrugged and entered the shed. Everybody was letting loose tonight. It was the nature of the game.

August had installed some fun house mirrors and Larson grunted at the image of himself with no head, then super fat, and then skinny. Praveen had the paper with their clue on it but he remembered the lines:

GoIng thRough life

NicKing what you choose

But Believe it or not

Eye C u

That had to be the clue:
Eye C u
.

“Hi,” Larson drawled, waving. Maybe there was a camera or something. He tried to peer around the mirrors but they’d been bolted firmly to the walls. He waggled his flashlight all over the room for something to take. A pair of glasses? A telescope?

He’d realized what the numbers in the sweater had been: part of Alexa DeYoung’s phone number. Larson figured he’d better set the record straight with August. Yes, he had given Alexa a ride to Jacob’s party. And yes, he had slow-danced with her. She’d stepped on his toes and sprayed him with spit while she’d talked so fast he had no idea what she was saying. His friends had made gagging gestures behind her back and Cage laughed so hard he fell down.

So yeah, he blew her off after that. He didn’t even know she’d left the party until she had called him in tears and told him that she needed him to come get her out and then they got disconnected. He’d tried to call her back but his call had gone straight to voice mail. She was too wacko to deal with. She was dead, and that was sad and freaky, but it hadn’t been his job to babysit her.

“Praveen, shit,” he said irritably, poking his head back outside. “Where are you?”

This hunt was too hard. They had always been a fun excuse to party, not some kind of reality show audition. If he got to vote anyone off the island, it was going to be August. The test answers would be nice, but he knew he’d be going to Yale unless he really blew it. And as for his own prize, a getaway on
Guilty Pleasure
for two would also be nice, but nothing he couldn’t live without.

Maybe she’d gone back into the warehouse. He crunched over the fifty or so feet of shells to the back door, moving mostly by memory because he couldn’t see a damn thing. His hand brushed against the door handle and he yanked. It squealed open just like in a horror movie.

Oooh, I’m so scared.

This room had not been decorated; it was just a bunch of crap that had been stashed for a million years. He ran the flashlight beam along the floor. Something glittered and he bent down to get a closer look. Nestled among some rodent turds and scraps of filthy cardboard lay a shiny diamond hoop earring. It looked familiar and he ran down the list of girls at the party, trying to figure out who had lost it.

He dropped the earring into his pocket and turned his head at a noise. A cough? A chuckle? Someone trying to get dressed?

“Hey?” he said.

The noise stopped, and Larson laughed.
Busted.
He said, “Did you lose something?”

No response. Maybe it was one of August’s winged monkeys. His
spies.

He heard the sound again. Not a cough or a chuckle this time. Like someone dragging something?

“Hello?” he called again. He cupped his ears, trying to pinpoint the location of the noise, crossing the room and walking into a hall on the opposite side. Go left? He took a few steps before he paused and listened again, then continued down and tried the door there, but it was locked.

Suddenly he was sure that someone was standing directly behind him. He could almost feel their eyes burning holes into the back of his skull. Someone in the hallway. Maybe it was a girl looking for her earring or Praveen had caught up.

“Boo!” he cried, whirling around.

To his surprise, there was no one there. He made a slow pan with his flashlight. Not only was the hall empty, but also there weren’t any doors along the walls that a stalker could have darted into to escape detection.

It had to have been his imagination. But it had felt so
real.

“Good one, August,” he said casually.

Then he ran-walked back outside as fast as he could.

PRAVEEN’S RULE #1:
Only trust Drew.

Praveen was running her flashlight along the wall of the warehouse, batting at the fog as it rolled in. She’d been hoping Drew would come see her on his break but it seemed he was keeping up the façade that they meant nothing to each other. Praveen was more disappointed than she should be, she supposed. But half the reason she had shown up tonight was to see him.

She stopped and readjusted her top, which wasn’t nearly as comfortable as it looked. It was so unfair. Seeing the green wrap on the hanger in the boutique, it looked like the softest thing in the entire world. She knew she needed it. It would complement her skin perfectly, move like a dream, and drive Drew absolutely wild.

So she had slipped it into her purse and casually headed for the front door. She didn’t even see the antitheft device tag clipped into the armpit. The boutique had never used them before, which was one of the reasons she “shopped” there.

When the alarms went off, she’d panicked. She’d had the hood on her sweatshirt up so she was reasonably sure they wouldn’t be able to identify her on the security cameras, but a guard had given her the run of her life.

She had met Drew in the Callabrese music store. Her cousin Sudeep wanted a harmonica for his birthday, and she was casually going through the sheet music, which was organized in bins close to the harmonica display, preparing to make her move. Once she’d accounted for all the clerks, making sure their attentions were occupied, she had sidled over to the display and wrapped her hand around the nicest one.

Suddenly there was a clatter across the store. She jerked and glanced in the direction of the noise. At the same time a clerk who had been squatting undetected behind the harmonica display had popped up like a Whac-A-Mole and she had pulled back her hand just in time.

A shaggy-haired guy in a Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt and jeans said, “Whoops,” and picked a pair of cymbals off the floor. As he straightened, he gave Praveen a wink. She caught her breath.
He knew.
And not only did he know she’d been about to take the harmonica, but he’d also saved her from getting caught.

“We all have our things, man,” he’d told her, and then she’d recognized him and realized he was Drew from Maximum Volume. She was breathless. He was famous.

They went for coffee—she was dizzy with amazement—and she was just about to ask him for his autograph when he’d invited her to a practice and then a concert and then she was, like, his girlfriend. But they had to keep it quiet because of his image. It had been exciting at first to be together in secret. It was like they had a world all their own, where everything could be perfect for a few precious stolen moments.

Praveen went to as many of Drew’s gigs as she could, but she had to pretend to be a fan, a pathetic groupie. She did it for love, but she did not have a song in her heart when she joined the other girls at the foot of the stage, gushing over him and talking about his hotness and his great butt.
Mine, mine, mine!
she wanted to shout at them. Drew said it wouldn’t be like this forever. And she knew that, but it already felt like forever.

He’d been super moody lately, but she had chalked that up to his responsibilities to the band. He was under a tremendous amount of pressure. Maximum Volume had been signed by a record label, and their first album had to be perfect or they’d be back on the street. Drew had worked so hard for so long. She wasn’t sure the others fully appreciated what he had done for them. But she’d found strange bottles in his underwear drawer—she had
not
been snooping, just looking for a pen—filled with little blue and white capsules. She was afraid to ask him about them because it
had
been a little odd to think she could find a pen mixed in with his boxers and she didn’t want him to think she was checking up on him.

“Praveen!” someone shouted, and she winced. It was Larson.

She waved her flashlight back and forth, watching it bounce off the fog, until a dark shape approached and her scavenger hunt partner materialized through the mist as if he were moving curtains aside. She wondered, not for the first time, what crime he had committed that August had tried to humiliate him with.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, scowling at her.

“Where have
I
been? Where did
you
go?” she countered.

“Never mind.” He waved a hand. “I got nothing. I don’t even get what we’re supposed to be looking for.”

“A brick,” she said.

“What? How did you get that?” he asked.

She handed him their clue.

GoIng thRough life

NicKing what you choose

But Believe it or not

Eye C u

Larson studied it, then looked at her.

“Well,
genius,
he capitalized the letters
I, R, K, B,
and
C
when they shouldn’t have been. Unscrambled they form the word
brick.
” She sighed and ran her beam along the wall. “But I haven’t found anything yet.”

“It’d have to be a loose brick,” Larson said. “We have to take it back to him.”

She winced. She hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Larson wasn’t a total idiot who deserved to be lobotomized.

“There’s a pile of bricks in the parking lot,” he said.

She nodded, and they began to walk over the noisy shells, then around the tall wall made of abalone shells, rocks, and cement.

“So what’s he got on you?” he asked. “What did you do wrong, Miss Demeanor?”

It took her a moment to realize he was making a pun. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Underage drinking,” he replied smugly. “But you’ve got another story—am I right?”

He should mind his own business. She imagined his head exploding like a giant watermelon dropped from a thirteen-story building. It made a satisfying
pop
as his brains sprayed everywhere.

Drew’s groupies? There were so many things she’d do to them. In her mind’s eye she armed herself with ice picks, knives, matches. The girls who pushed in front of her, that girl who had flashed her boobs at him two weekends ago at Petrol, the local coffeehouse—

They came to a pile of blackened bricks, pieces of trash, and beer cans. Gross.

Eye C u.
He’d used texting abbreviations for
see
and
you,
but he’d spelled out
Eye
for
I.
So an eye must be significant to the brick they were looking for. Or else he was being a perv, or reminding her that he had spies or whatever. This was all so annoying.

She crouched down and passed her flashlight over the blackened brick. “Not fun, August,” she muttered as she inspected each mottled surface.

“What are you looking for?” Larson asked, crouching down beside her.

“A picture of an eye on one of them. At least, I think that’s what we need to find.”

“You’re shivering,” he said. “Let me rub your arms.”

“No!” She jerked away from him.

“God, Praveen, what’s your deal?” he said. “I only—”