She raised her finger to her lips.Yes.She nodded.
No, he mouthed back. Then louder: “Goddammit, Frankie!”
She cocked her head around the doorframe, but there was no sign of the security guards.
Before she could give herself another second to hesitate, she looked at Ezra and then she whispered, “Run.”
FOURTEEN
Ezra
NOON
Ezra had never seen Frankie run that fast, even while palming the lump on her head, which didn’t seem to slow her down. She flew around corners, she raced up the footpaths in the middle of the campus’s rolling hills, she tucked into alleyways.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” he heaved as he raced to catch up to her. The wind and the snow pierced his already angry skin, and he felt his fury rising. All they had to do was stay! And be compliant. He was certain he could have cleared them. Why was everything with Frankie a level-five shitstorm?
He and Frankie used to do this all the time. Not flee from the campus security (obviously) but race all over campus. She’d just look at him whenever, wherever, and say:Run!And it was their unspoken agreement that they’d throw themselves into an all-out sprint. Usually, she’d end up grabbing his arm andtugging him back in an attempt to slow him down or clinging to the waistband of his jeans and trying to pants him. Frankie would do anything for a win, which meant that Ezra got to retaliate by picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder or by lumbering down the sidewalk with her hugging his leg. It was impossible not to end somewhere on the ground, limbs intertwined, tears streaking down their faces. The innocent hilarity of young love.
Today though, he saw only her back. She never slowed, she never turned around toward him, she never let him take the lead. How she moved so quickly in the snow would have been a thing of beauty if Ezra were in a generous mood. (He was not.) Middleton’s campus was a roll of hills with grayscale buildings springing up in various spots as if they were old English manors. Ivy crept up some of the facades; others were bestowed with jewel-toned windows. A few were adorned with scaffolding, awaiting a makeover. The blanket of white made the whole landscape appear a bit like a fairy tale. How Frankie remembered which footpath led to the next, he couldn’t say. But she had always flown on intuition: there were moments when this was his very favorite thing about her. There were also moments when he knew it could be the death of them both.
Frankie turned down a narrow opening not visible from the street, and he followed, panting, like a parent chasing a runaway toddler.
Ezra finally stopped, a cramp building in his side, and slapped a hand against the back of whatever building they were behind. He wheezed and tried to catch his breath and felt the residue from the pepper spray deep in his lungs. He didn’twant to panic; he told himself not to panic. He used to be able to tell when these anxiety attacks were incoming: like a spider creeping up the back of his neck, like a surge of toxins infecting his bloodstream. But now, until today at least, it had been so long since his last one that he couldn’t trust himself, couldn’t trust those warning signs anymore. He breathed in and out, like he had done with Frankie on the floor of the coffee shop. He told himself, even though he knew it was untrue, it was akin to the rush of adrenaline he got while playing cards, and that he should just ride the wave.
“Frankie!” he sputtered. “Frankie.”
He cocked his head up and saw her slow to a jog, then finally, blessedly, a stop. She spun around. He took another long inhale and exhale, and he felt the fever pitch of his disquietude ebb just enough to reassure him that he had himself under control.
“Well,” she called down the alley in which they’d landed. “Looks like one of us has greeted their thirties a little better than the other one.”
Ezra tried to right himself, but the pinch in his side barked back. He dug his fingers into his abdomen, an old trick from when he was forced to do cross-country in high school for PE credit. He’d never been the fastest, but by his senior spring, he was the one who could push himself through any sort of pain because he just went numb: there was too much else in his life to worry about than the onset of a cramp while competing against Radnor High School. Sometimes, when she was up for it, his mom stood at the finish line with red Gatorade, as if they were a perfectly normal family, as if the two of them weren’t carrying the weight of her mortality on each of theirshoulders. He ran faster because of that weight; he pushed himself further for her. But today, Frankie had beaten him.
Across the alleyway, she appeared—Ezra couldn’t believe it—exhilarated. Was she honestly exhilarated? Her cheeks were flushed, she bounced again on her toes, and she had to bite her lip to keep from grinning.
“Whatwasthat?” he finally bleated.
“I feel that I should share that I one hundred percent have a concussion,” she said, as if this were an answer to his question. “So I beat you even with a concussion. I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.” He could tell that she found this fucking hilarious.
“Frankie.” He eased himself to standing. “You just made things considerably worse.”
“Please. No offense but I was seriously underwhelmed with your legal defense.”
Ezra stared up at the gray sky and counted to ten before he absolutely blew his top.
“Like, remind me whonotto call the next time I’m in a jam in New York,” she added. Then: “Besides, it’s New Year’s Eve, Y2K,Y2Nay! Don’t you think they’ll have bigger things to deal with?”
“Well, yes,” Ezra said. “That was my whole point. Diffuse the situation, then move on. So now, you’ve made us look guilty.”
“Weareguilty. Hello? And I thought lawyers didn’t care about guilt or innocence.”
“You’re the one who chucked the brick through the window! For what? What did you even learn from going to Lemonhead?” Ezra did not want to consider what he had learned: theknowledge that his girlfriend, near-fiancée, had perhaps not shown up by choice. He really needed to find his phone and call her.
Frankie fell quiet, and he wondered if he’d struck a nerve.
“What?” he said. “Tell me or I walk.”
“Walk?” Frankie said, too loud. “To where? Am I keeping you here—”
