“You don’t think of pirates as navigating by starlight, do you,” she goes on. “It’s alwaysshiver me timbersandwalk the plank, neverwatch for the Pleiades to your left.I don’t know anything about navigating by the stars.”
“Wow, really?” I say, and she snorts. I think she’s about to say something else when Paloma comes up to us and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Five-minute warning,” she says. “Refresh your drinks if you need to. Are you Kat? I think someone was looking for you. Tall? Very charming?”
“God, don’t give him ideas,” Kat deadpans.
“Hm?”
“Nothing. I’ll go find him, thanks. Good talking to you,” she says to me, and I lift my sparkling cider in a cheers as she leaves.
“You haven’t seen Javier, have you?” Paloma asks me. “I don’t know where he’s gotten to.”
“Javi? No,” I say way too fast. “I mean, not for a while.” Am I being suspicious? “I was talking to him and his friend with the hair for a bit, but then I went to get another drink and we haven’t spoken since. I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”
“Oh, I’m not worried,” Paloma says. “I just don’t want him to miss out. Four minutes!”
She walks off with a smile and a shoulder pat. Once she’s gone, I down the rest of my cider, put the glass on a side table—I’ll grab it after the party—and pretend I’m going to the bathroom.
He’s not in the hallway or the kitchen or the screened-in porch, but there’s a little loft area upstairs, a weird corner with a big window and no foot traffic, and that’s where he is. Staringout of the window at the dark forest, the glow of the porch light illuminating the trunks below.
He turns when I come in, then smiles when he sees it’s me. It’s what I tell myself, anyway.
“I think the countdown’s about to start,” I say.
“Ah. Thanks.”
He’s wearing a soft-looking casual sweater that’s a deep rust color. It looks almost gray in the dark. He’s got his hands in his pockets. He’s watching me and not moving.
“You’re not going down there?”
“I wasn’t going to.”
I glance over my shoulder, like someone might be there, think for a moment, and then join him by the window. It’s a few degrees cooler next to the glass, and I shove my hands into my pockets, too.
“Who are we hiding from?” I ask.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
JAVIER
I’m hiding from her,but it’s not like I can tell her that. I’m hiding because everyone downstairs is a little tipsy and a lot happy, looking forward to the bright promise of another year, and I’m not ready yet. It’s allOut with the old and in with the new, and I’m still working onOut with the old. I might always be working on that.
And most of all, I’m hiding up here because everyone is going to do that stupid thing where they kiss at midnight, and I am not in the mood to see it.
“Who says I’m hiding?” I ask.
“Well,you’re lurking in the dark where no one can find you.”
“You found me.”
“My finding skills are exceptional.” She shoves her hands deeper into her pockets and tightens her arms against her sides. She’s wearing a black sweater with a pink lightning bolt down one side, the kind of thing you can see from across a room.
“Maybe I’ll test them by actually hiding someday,” I say, and she elbows me in the side. “What? If I were hiding, I’d at least be behind a couch. In a coat closet. Something.”
Madeline sighs, then tilts her head to look up at me. “Like I can’t find you in a coat closet? I didn’t even look that hard. I sawyou come upstairs earlier,” she says. “And then you never came back down. I drew my own conclusions.”
The thing about hope is that it hurts sometimes. It doesn’t grow like a flower but like a snake, bursting out of its own skin and slithering new and raw across the dirt. Hope is tenderness and stupidity and your little sister sayingBut did you use your words?, and it sucks.
