“Lucky broke the window?” Evie says, brow furrowing.
Ugh. I ignore the tightness of my stomach and whisper to Evie, “Don’t tell her about the photo. I’m sorry for making everything worse.” Then I nearly start crying again.
“Don’t be stupid. You didn’t do anything,” she says, wrapping long arms around me. Then she murmurs in my ear: “I waswrong about everything. We shouldn’t have gone to that party. It’s the curse. It works in weird ways. I’m sorry you got hurt in the blowback.”
While Evie and I lean on each other, clinging, Mom relays the story to Evie about the window, asking me for details occasionally. Like Mom, Evie seems to buy the lie. And I let her. Because I don’t know what else to do.
Well. That’s notexactlytrue.
I know I could confess. There are, in fact, several moments in the conversation when I thinkRight now! Do it now! Just tell them!But I hesitate, and the moments fall through my fingers like sand. The longer I stay silent, the harder it is to speak up, and the sicker and sicker I feel about it.
So I finally just tell them I’m tired, that I need to sleep. And because they are both better people than me, they don’t suspect anything is amiss.
If they only knew.
I’m so confused about the whole thing, and all I can do is go back over what Lucky said in the police station. What we talked about there … what we discussed behind the pool house at the party. Our old friendship before I left town. How much had changed.
And the flirting.
I consider what my mom said, the Bonnie and Clyde comment.
And the pit-pattering-panic I felt behind the pool house fillsup my chest again. Dear God. I have to stop thinking about that. There’s no way he’s suddenly filled with amorous longing for his former best friend and because of these feelings, decided to take the fall for her crime.
Correction:accidentalcrime.
Anyway, now we’re back to square one.
Why in the world did he do it?
I think before this goes any further, it’s best I find out.
Because it’s officially summer break now, I’m workingextrashifts at the Nook along with Evie and a couple of other part-time employees Mom has on staff. Summer season is serious business for the entire town—definitely for our bookshop. Yesterday, I was happy about putting in more time at the Nook. It’s Step Two of my three-step plan: Save up enough money for a plane ticket to Los Angeles.
Today, however, I want to bail on my shift and run across the street to Nick’s Boatyard, because I can plainly see through our front window that Lucky’s red Superhawk motorcycle is parked out there, which means he’s working for his dad today.
And I really, really want to talk to him.
But I’ve already been warned against doing that just this morning.
“I seriously don’t want you hanging around Lucky Karras anymore,” Mom told me at breakfast. “I’m not going to ask for details about the seriousness of your relationship with him, butall I know is that he’s in deep shit, and rumors will be spreading around town like wildfire.”
She doesn’t know the half of it. “I can handle it.”
“Don’t care. I don’t need our name tangled up in it,” she says, getting agitated. “So stay away. Period. Putting my foot down.”
That’s pretty much Mom’s harshest commandment. Putting her proverbial foot down means she’s serious and it’s final. No arguments. She’s assuming parental privileges, a rare event, and that’s that.
Only it’snotthat, because I can’t just never see him again. Hello! He works across the street, so it’s a physical impossibility. And on top of that, I need to find out what’s going on with him. Is he going to jail? Juvie? What’s going to happen to him?
It’s my crime, after all. I have a right to know.
And he’s my friend, not hers.
I put it out of my mind for a while and instead concentrate on my morning shift at the Nook, where I try to guess which of our regular customers have seen “my” naked photo or heard theThat’s the Girl Who Sells Nudes Onlinerumor—only, it’s hard to tell from their darting glances which ones may have also heard theThat’s the Girl Who Was Hauled to the Police Station Last Nightrumor.
Occasionally, someone walks by our shops and makes it clear by puckering up their lips and making a kissy face at me. Lovely. Just lovely …
Around noon, tourists begin heading to pubs and clam shacksfor lunch, and things finally quiet down enough for Evie to read a book at the counter on the Nook’s squeaky stool. I prop myself up on my elbows next to her and stare out the window, trying not to stress while watching Nick’s Boatyard. Below me is a string of gold-and-green postcards from Nepal: Kathmandu, temples, monkeys, and mountains. Grandma sends one a week with general updates. Regular customersoohandaahover her descriptions of yak milk.
