I used to walk by, all the time, and wonder why Warner ever thought we’d need a common room this big. There’s tons of seating and a lot of room to spread out, but I always thought it was a waste of space. I secretly wished Warner had used the square footage for our bedrooms.
Now I get it.
When Nazeera and I walk in, ten minutes late to the impromptu pizza party, everyone is here.Brendanis here. He’s sitting in a corner being fussed over by Castle and Alia, and I nearly tackle him. I don’t, of course, because it’s obvious he’s still in recovery, but I’m relieved to find that he looks okay. Mostly he looks wrung-out, but he’s not wearing a sling or anything, so I’m guessing the girls didn’t run into any problems when they were patching him up. That’s a great sign.
I spot Winston walking across the room and I catch up to him, clap him on the back. “Hey,” I say, when he turns around. “You okay?”
He’s balancing a couple of paper plates, both of which are already sagging under the weight of too much pizza, and he smiles with his whole face when he says, “I hate today.Today is a garbage fire. I hate everything about today except for the fact that Brendan is okay and we have pizza. Other than that, today can go straight to hell.”
“Yeah. I feel that so much.” And then, after a pause, I say quietly: “So I’m guessing you never had that conversation with Brendan, huh?”
Winston goes suddenly pink. “I said I was waiting for the right time. Does this seem like the right time to you?”
“Good point.” I sigh. “I guess I was just hoping you had some good news. We could all use some good news right now.”
Winston shoots me a sympathetic look. “No word on Juliette?”
I shake my head. Feel suddenly sick. “Has anyone told you her real name is Ella?”
“I heard,” Winston says, raising his eyebrows. “That whole story is batshit.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Today is the worst.”
“Fuck today,” Winston says.
“Don’t forget about tomorrow,” I say. “Tomorrow’s going to suck, too.”
“What? Why?” The paper plates in Winston’s hands are going translucent from pizza grease. “What’s happening tomorrow?”
“Last I heard we were jumping ship,” I say. “Running for our lives. I’m assuming it’s going to suck.”
“Shit.” Winston nearly drops his plates. “Seriously? Brendan needs more time to rest.” Then, after a beat: “Where are we going to go?”
“The other side of the continent, apparently,” Ian says as he walks over.
He hands me a plate of pizza. I murmur a quick thanks and stare at the pizza, wondering whether I’d be able to shove the whole thing in my mouth at once. Probably not.
“Do you know something we don’t?” Winston says to Ian, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. Winston tries, unsuccessfully, to shove them back up with his forearm, and Ian steps up to do it for him.
“I know a lot of things you don’t know,” Ian says. “The first of which is that Kenji was definitely hooking up with Nazeera, like, five seconds ago.”
My mouth nearly falls open before I remember there’s food in it. I swallow, too quickly, and choke. I’m still coughing as I look around, panicking that Nazeera might be within earshot. Only when I spot her across the room speaking with Sonya and Sara do I finally relax.
I glare at Ian. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Winston, at least, has the decency to whisper-yell when he says, “You were hooking up with Nazeera? We were only gone a few hours!”
“I did not hook up with Nazeera,” I lie.
Ian takes a bite of pizza. “Whatever, bro. No judgment. The world’s on fire. Have some fun.”
“We didn’t”—I sigh, look away—“it wasn’t like that. It’s not even anything. We were just, like—” I make some random gesture with my hand that means exactly nothing.
Ian raises his eyebrows.
“Okay,” Winston says, shooting me a look. “We’ll talkabout the Nazeera thing later.” He turns to Ian. “What’s happening tomorrow?”
“We bail,” Ian says. “Be ready to go at dawn.”
