“How’s it going with Eva?” I ask now. “Is she . . . okay?”
“Hard to tell. She just got here last week, but so far she’s pretty quiet. Stays in her room mostly.”
“Weird. You, like, have a sister. Sort of.”
“You’re my sister. And Eva’s kind of hot, which makes drumming up any sisterly feelings really hard.”
“What the hell? Are you saying I’m not hot, Luca?” I ask, a teasing lilt to my voice.
“Gross.”
I smile and walk the bike around the side of the garage before flipping out the kickstand. I look back toward the house, torn between wanting to go back inside and fix this mess with Mom—?if it’s even fixable—?and needing to get as far away as possible.
“So I can come over when my shift’s done?” Luca asks.
“You don’t have to. Mom wants a ‘family dinner,’ god help us all.”
“With Jay Lanier?”
“Will you stop saying his name?”
“He’s your roommate.”
“I swear to god, Luca Michaelson, if you laugh right now, I will shave your head with a cheese grater while you sleep.”
Luca gasps dramatically, and I can picture him clutching his beloved locks. “Look, Gray, I know this sucks. Just let me come over. Your mom loves me—?”
“Mom loves anyone with a generous helping of testosterone.”
“—?and I’ll bring pizza fries and Cherry Coke.”
I sigh into the phone. Normally, I wouldn’t let even Luca near one of our residences right after Mom and I crash into it, especially with a Pete involved. But this time, there’s a Jay thrown in for good measure, and I’d be lying if I said the thought of him existing a few feet from my bed didn’t make me want to curl into an itty-bitty ball. But really, it’s not only Jay. Jay is a minor annoyance. Jay is the growl of a much larger beast.
“Okay, but if it gets too weird, you can leave at any time,” I say.
“Right.”
“Hey, set me up with pizza fries and a Cherry Coke, and I don’t really care if I ever see you again.”
He laughs. “You couldn’t live without me, Grace. You know it.”
I laugh back and hang up, although he’s sort of right on that one. I know a lot of people on this godforsaken waste of space and a lot of people know me.
But no one really knows me.
For a while I was pretty much a sugar-and-spice kind of girl. I’ve had a handful of friends here and there, but with the ebb and flow of my existence, it was easier to keep my world as small as possible. Less explaining. Less lying to cover up why I’d moved again. Less worrying about what totally messed-up situation I’d encounter when I brought a friend home. Sure, Mom’s not always a mess. She has her good days. Good months, even. I just never know when a good day is going to turn to total crap.
Chapter Five
I SHOULDER MY BAG AND HEAD TOWARD THE SHORT walkway that leads down to the beach. It’s low tide and naked rocks pebble the sand on either side of me, the ocean spitting and spinning just ahead. The water is almost the exact same shade of blue as the sky, the two pressing together like a kiss. I kick off my flip-flops, leaving them near the dunes, and start walking.
The sand is cool between my toes, and the briny air opens up my lungs a little. The rolling hush-hush of the ocean and the yawning expanse of the sky open up something else in me too. I kick at the ground, sending puffs of off-white into the air. The wind seems just as angry as I am, flinging the sand around, and I kick at the earth again. And again and again until I’m walking through a sandstorm.
My eyes start to feel gritty and my knees wobbly, so I finally slow and sit down, folding my legs underneath me. I dig through my bag and pull out the wrinkled, torn-in-one-corner picture of my parents I always carry with me. My father is tall and handsome and refined in his uniform. My mother is smiling and bright-eyed, her perfectly purple-painted nails resting gently on her pregnant stomach. Luca’s caught me staring at this photo a few times. Usually he doesn’t say anything, just offers a shoulder squeeze or one of his annoying-as-hell noogies.
But I don’t really stare at this picture because of my dead father. He was killed in Afghanistan when I was two, so I never really knew him. No. I pore over this picture because of the woman. Maggie Glasser. Same name as my mother. Same face. Same long fingers. But everything else is different. Her hair isn’t dull and stringy-looking but shines like spun gold. Her eyes aren’t ringed with lack of sleep and sadness and booze; her shirt doesn’t droop on her shoulders as if from a clothes hanger.
Both people in this picture are total strangers.
