“I’ll be heading out,” he says, and I nod gratefully, stepping to the side so he can pass me on the way to the front door. When I open it for him, I feel an anticipatory relief over him being gone. I can already picture what I’ll do next: stand here in this foyer by myself until I get my bearings enough to go face Dad and Bernila in a way that will make me seem tough, unruffled, ready. I’ll say,Well, that’s done, and I’ll ask if my dad can stop by our house a few times over the next three weeks to check our mail. I’ll answer their questions vaguely. I’ll say I need to get home to pack.
But instead of going, Adam pauses in the doorway. He looks down at me with those same searching green eyes as before.
“One of your conditions,” he says, and I stiffen, no longer anticipating relief. If I have to fight him on any of these, I’ll do it. But I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.
“You could consider requesting that we don’t use your voices. That we re-record any interviews later. With actors. Sometimes people prefer that. For their privacy.”
I hardly know what to say. I settle for a shocked, inarticulate, “Oh.”
He doesn’t give me any extra time to answer, or to be certain. He says, “See you soon,” and ducks out the door and down my father’s front steps.
And when he’s gone, I wonder why I feel so small.
Chapter 6
Adam
The next morning, I’m driving to Jess’s house in the rented minivan I’m going to spend a good portion of the next three weeks inside, Salem in the passenger seat, our bags tidily stacked on one side of the trunk. I’ve got a worried knot in my stomach I’m trying to ignore, and I know even before we pull into the driveway what we’re going to find when we get there.
Jess and Tegan already outside on their small front porch, bags at their feet, the house locked up behind them.
“Efficient,” says Salem when I’m proven right, but I don’t agree with her. I know better now. Twenty minutes inside Jess Greene’s father’s house, and I know better.
This isn’t efficiency.
It’s privacy.
She’s out here because she doesn’t want us inside her home again.
I pull into the driveway, shutting off the engine. I’m pretty sure Salem is looking over at me with the same blend of curiosity and doubt she’s leveled at me ever since we met up in the hotel lobby after my meeting with Jess. I’d told her all the conditions I’d been given, though for now I left off mentioning the one I suggested myself. I still can’t really admit to myself why I did it, especially not after Jess treated me like I’m some kind of heavy. But I had a feeling if I’d told Salem, she’d admit it for me.
She’d know.
“Come on. You can help with their bags.”
I stifle a groan. It isn’t that I don’t want to help with their bags; it’s practically in my DNA to want to help people with their bags or their flat tire or the too-big box a delivery man left outside their door.
It’s that helping with their bags is going to make me look like I’msecurity.
And I’m grown enough to admit: that makes me feel insecure.
If Cope were here, he’d get it. In a different way, but he’d get it. For a long time, not a lot of people really believed Cope when he said he was struggling; not a lot of people thought someone as good-natured and fit and talented as him would be struggling, at least not for long. With me, it’s more—it’s more that most people look at me and think there must not be room for a brain. Most people think I’m built for flattening.
Most people including a whole lot of my teachers, my coaches. My classmates in graduate school. Probably even Salem, when she first met me.
Jess Greene.
Still, I get out of the car, knowing I’m going to head straight for those bags.
Salem’s saying hello as if this whole setup hasn’t been ten kinds of tense, because that’s how she is. We’re on the path to the story she wants now, so it doesn’t matter what happened to get us here. I guess I should take a lesson.
“Morning,” I say, approaching them. Tegan is smiling, something victorious in her expression, and that’s fair enough, given she got one over on us and her sister. Beside her, Jess is ramrod straight in basically the same outfit I’ve seen her in the last two days: black sneakers, black jeans, loose black T-shirt. In the sunlight, her hair is spun gold against her shoulders.
I bend down to pick up their suitcases.
“I can get it,” says Jess.
It sounds pretty much the same as everything else she’s said either to or around me: tight, impatient, final. But when I look up at her, I think I see something different in her expression. It might be regret.
