“Uh, do you have a pocket that’ll fit the phone?” He glanced down his body, and once again she couldn’t help following the path of his eyes. “This costume wasn’t built for storage.”
“I have pockets inside pockets.” She’d worn military-style cargos for that reason. As she buttoned the phone away, he did his scanning thing. “What are you looking for, when you look around like that?”
He met her gaze, his forehead creased. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been doing a scan of the area every few minutes since you got here.”
“I have?”
“It makes me feel like someone’s watching us.”
“Photographers,” he said in a tone of surprise she didn’t quite follow.
“There are photographers?” She looked at the lip of the gully, expecting to see a long lens peeping over like a sniper’s rifle.
“Not that I know of. But usually there are. Where I go, they tend to follow—or they’re already there.”
“So this scanning—this is something you always do?”
“I dunno. Maybe. It’s not a conscious thing—until I know therearephotographers, and then I look straight ahead.”
“Go into neutral.”
“I guess?”
“I’m not the only one with a tell,” she explained.
“I have a tell? What?”
“If I tell you, you’ll stop doing it, and it won’t be a tell anymore.”
A smirk played on his lips. His full attention was on her, which was both thrilling and unnerving, especially in such close confines. No wonder she kept getting distracted.
“You retract,” she said, relenting.
“I …retract.”
“It’s like an enchantment comes over your face that makes it unreadable.”
“Huh.”
“Ironic that your ‘tell’ is a face devoid of expression. Anyway. Let’s climb.”
“After you.”
Lana had to inhale deeply to squeeze past him without brushing against his chest.
“Even if the phone still works,” he said, as she scrambled up, “how will we get into it?”
“I know the passcode, assuming Vivi hasn’t changed it—I set it up, the same time we put location sharing on. I bought her the phone after she lost hers on a bender.”
“I’m getting the sense that Vivien’s alittlewilder than you—if that’s even possible.”
“She’s always been the ‘sociable one,’ as my mom diplomatically puts it.”
“And how would you put it?”
“Look, I get it. I get her. We grew up feeling like we didn’t fit—both in the community and outside. I kinda got used to it. Stoppedtryingto fit—or maybe I never bothered to try. But Vivi went the other way, still does. She’ll go along with anything and anyone to feel part of something.”
