“Right.” She looks away, lifts her hand. “Instead of?—”
I grab her hand and hold it to my face again, my heart beating so hard I can feel it pounding through my temple. My mouth is dry, and it’s dark, and I feel like I’m standing on a knife edge, here, at midnight, in this space between one year and another. We’re a minute into January first. I always have such high hopes for January first.
“I’m sorry I broke up with you,” I tell her, and her hand flexes softly under mine.
“Oh,” she says, and then there are footsteps on the stairs.
I don’t know what to say to that—I never know what tosay; I’m never good with words—so I lean in and kiss her again. It’s rushed and exuberant, warm lips and her hand sliding into my hair.
“Madeline?” calls Gerald. “You up here?”
She pulls away too fast and runs a hand through her own hair. “I’m here,” she says.
“You seen Javier?” Gerald’s voice says, and at the last second, I lean against the back of a chair and hope it looks casual.
“Yeah, we’re…looking at trees,” she says, and I don’t even have time to wince at the lie before Gerald comes around the corner
“Hey, you two,” he says cheerfully. “Happy new year! Why’s it dark?”
“I kissed her,”I tell Zorro as I double-check the area around my space heater. The thing gives me anxiety—IknowI’m messy—but the insulation in my apartment is truly atrocious, so I have to choose between definitely being cold and having a slight chance of a house fire. “Ionlykissed her. And then she said I broke up with her.”
Zorro yawns from where he’s sitting on my bed, then glares at me. He takes it as his sworn duty to answer the door whenever it opens, but he’s clearly unhappy that I missed my curfew by several hours.
“I know,” I say, just to keep the conversation going. “I thought that, too.”
Cats can’t really roll their eyes, but they can sure give that impression. Zorro radiates attitude as I turn the space heater on.
“Goodnight, Prince of Darkness,” I tell him. I think it’s his favorite nickname. Not that I can really tell, but he seems to tolerate it more than others? “Sweet dreams.”
Once I’m under the covers, Zorro gets up, stretches, and assumes his usual spot directly next to my head. I have a really strange dream about a giant pineapple.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MADELINE
I awaken,far too early, to gentle knocking on my door. Followed by my dad’s face peeking in, haloed in light from the hallway.
“I’m awake,” I say, instinctually. High school habits die hard, I guess.
“Forty-five-minute warning, sunshine.” He’s already chipper. He’s also wearing a short-sleeved button-down tucked into slacks. It’s what he wore on the five-hour drive down here, too. It’s insane. This man is insane. A danger to society.
“Okay,” I manage. It’s still dark outside.
“I’d like to be past Roanoke before rush hour,” he says. “If we manage that, we can get through Richmond before lunch and be home with time to spare before the sun goes down.”
“Isn’t it a holiday?”
“Still,” he says. “Here, I’ll get the lights.”
I make a noise and bury my face in my pillow.
“No,you have to enter the code andthenpress the lock button,” Bastien is saying to an increasingly frustrated Paloma, who is pushing too many buttons. “Here, do you want me to?—”
“I am perfectly capable oflocking a door, Bastien,” she snaps, because I don’t think anyone in Javi’s family is good with mornings. We’re not driving in the same car, so I have no idea why they’re also leaving at the crack of dawn, but I’m too tired to ask questions.
“I’m just trying to help,” he huffs like a sullen teenager.
“Text your brother and see where he is. He said he was going to see us off.”
