“How old are we talking? Last decade or last century?”
“Last century. There was this band my mother loved. Maroon 5. Ever heard of them?”
They were one of Nima’s favorites but I doubted he wanted to hear our mothers had anything in common.
“Know any of their songs?”
I answered him by singing the opening verse of “Sunday Morning.” He watched me, or rather my mouth, and it made me a little self-conscious, so I dipped my chin and started down the stairs ahead of him.
22
The Confession
The ground, obscured by the cloak of mist, was flat and spongy beneath my boots. It no longer wriggled with spiky reptilian bodies.
I stopped singing to ask, “You think the snakes are gone?”
“I think you should keep singing in case they’re camped out somewhere else.”
So I did. When we reached the nextcalimbor, we circled it, looking for a door, but the tree was solid bark. As Remo rapped on the trunk to see if it was hollow, I lumbered toward the next one. My boot caught on a jutting root, and I went sailing through the mist, landing hard on my knees and good hand. My elbow rocked in the sling but thankfully didn’t connect with the ground. I grunted because damn, that hadn’t felt nice.
“Amara?” Remo shouted.
“Down here.”
Remo had offered to hold my hand when we’d exited the candy shop, and I’d refused, because I hadn’t wanted to feel like a cripple. When he crouched beside me, concern edging his expression, I sensed he was about to duct-tape our palms together. Sure enough, he extended his hand.
I climbed back to my feet on my own. “I was just checking formikos.”
“Were you now?” He unfurled his tall body. “If I bring you back in parts to Neverra, your father will have me gassed, so give me your hand.”
“Ugh.” I slapped it into his. “I feel like a kid.”
“You’re acting like one.”
“How am I acting like one?”
He closed his fingers around mine. “By making such a big deal about holding my hand.”
As we circumnavigated yet another doorless tree, I said, “It’s a well-known fact that boys have cooties.”
Humor streaked across his face. “This might be part of the reason you don’t have a boyfriend.”
My cheeks warmed. Hopefully, my blush wasn’t noticeable behind the rising tendrils of mist and the myriad of cuts and bruises I sported.
When his fingers flexed around my knuckles, I whispered, “What?” certain he’d spotted something in the fog and was trying to silently alert me.
“What,what?”
I scanned the heavy mist. “I thought you saw something.”
“What made you think I saw something?”
My cheeks flared anew. “You squeezed my hand.”
“That was me trying to keep your dead-fish hand from flopping out.”
“Dead fish?”
