“What?” He lifts a shoulder. “Just trying to go at your pace, since you took all the time in the world at the bakery.”
“Yeah, but I was only doing that to annoy you.”
The ghost of a smile threatens at the corners of his mouth. I nearly stomp my foot.
“It’s only all right when I do that!” I cry. “Come on, justtellme.”
Alex refuses. He maintains gloating silence while I wander around aimlessly, foraging for ideas. He probably doesn’t even know the answer to number three. I tell him so.
He shrugs again.
“Fine, I’ll carry this scavenger hunt on my back,” I snap. “Sounds great. How lovely that I got stuck with you as my partner.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“Shut up. Tell me the answer.”
“How can I tell you the answer if I’m supposed to be shutting up?”
“Tell me the answer,thenshut up.”
He pretends to consider it, taking a good long while. His pace has slowed to a crawl. One of his defining traits used to be his speed: jogging instead of walking, constantly moving, fidgeting. When we were teenagers, all it took was one whiff of my perfume floating into the room to get him going, and he was notorious for not being able to resist touching me. My dad teased him about it all the time, because you’d never see him without his arm around me or seated right next to me on the couch like we were attached at the hip. During dinner he’d rest a hand on my knee or try to hold my hand under the table, which could make eating tricky. He’d bounce a leg with perpetual nervous energy, glancing sidelong at me with liquid stars in his eyes.
Smitten, my dad had said. And now the smitten boy stands before me starless, wholly unaffected. “No, I think I’ll watch your brain run in circles for a while longer. How was your pineapple-cherry dump cake? I hope it was worth it.”
My hands ball into fists.
He lets me lead the way down a narrow alley, pushing asidetree branches so that I don’t get scratched, letting them whip back right into him. A stray cat follows us, darting across the tips of a yellow picket fence. “You know what,” I tell him suddenly, turning around and pointing directly at his stony, cynical face. A mild breeze swirls around us, stirring the hem of his shirt. “I know the answer to number four, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. How do you like that?” Number four on the scavenger hunt isBring a flower of the gods to the ghost of Downigan.
He scoffs, one hand on the back of his hat, the other on the bill. Kicks a foot behind him, taking a couple backward steps before circling around to stand closer to me than before. Gravel crunches beneath his shoes, shrubbery rubbing itself across his arms as he moves, tufting his arm hair with fine yellow pollen. “You do not.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I think you’re lying.”
“Prove it.”
(We are the height of maturity.)
“Want my proof? Right here.” He bends his knees, nose to my nose. “I can see all your dirty secrets right here in your—” He pauses. Draws back as he studies me. Dons a smile so naughty, it’s almost profane, which instantly has me on the defensive. “Ah, what’s this?”
“What’s what?” I touch my face, as if I might have scrawled messages across my own forehead without knowing it.
That self-righteous expression is shot through with curiosity now, and something else I can’t identify. “Your pupils are dilated to fifty-cent pieces.”
Adrenaline floods. “It’s dim here, there are lots of trees blocking the light. Pupils get bigger when it’s dim.”
“Does your neck get red when it’s dim, too?”
I clutch my neck, growing faint enough that he splits into twins. “It’s too dim to tell if it’s red.”
“I should observe your vitals, to make sure you’re all right.” He clasps my wrist between his thumb and forefinger. I gawk at him, attention falling hard onto his mouth as he silently counts the beats. “Mm, just as I thought. Your pulse is fast, too. Why is your pulse fast?”
I yank my arm back. “It’s always fast. I’m a medical anomaly.”
He taps my nose. “You forget I went to medical school for a hot minute, honey. Your lies are futile.”
My eyes narrow. “Your pupils are dilated, too. Explain that.”
