“Yeah, okay, doesn’t make him not your dad. I wish Lehrer wasmydad.”
Ames snorted. “C’mon, Taye, we’ve all met your dad. Your dad’s awesome.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket and tapped them against the end table. “Howard’s not here—y’all mind if I smoke?”
“Go for it,” Dara muttered, and he spun on his heel, disappearing down the dim hall toward the bedrooms.
He didn’t emerge again, not even when Taye paused the movie to pass around obligatory it’s-a-national-holiday shots, even though Dara never missed an opportunity to get drunk. Noam was halfway to wasted already, and the shots just made it worse.
Probably inappropriate, all of them trashed on shitty tequila—except Bethany, whom Ames had developed some bizarre sense of protectiveness toward; the older girl snatched every shot passed Bethany’s way right out of her hand. For her own part, Bethany just kept giggling about the biceps of the actor playing Lehrer, drunk enough on cherry soda. A part of Noam felt guilty. It was Remembrance Day. They ought to, like, watch the memorial ceremony, or something, where the real Lehrer was speaking on the loss of his brother and everyone murdered during the catastrophe.
Instead he ended up sprawled on the couch, with his head in Bethany’s lap and his legs in Taye’s, Ames in the chair by the window, where she could blow her smoke into the night air.
The movie was actually good. Noam had read the book, of course—it’d been one of his first self-prescribed assignments after he started Level IV. Lehrer had been Noam’s age when he was liberated from the hospital, but even at sixteen he’d been more legend than teenage boy.
Lehrer’s brother died when Lehrer was nineteen, and Lehrer was crowned king less than a year later. Then he’d spent years fighting off Canada and Mexico and half of Europe when they all tried to bomb Carolinia off the map. They’d claimed they couldn’t let someone as powerful as Lehrer rule a country, but everyone knew the truth: Lehrer declared Carolinia a witching state, and that was something the mundane world would never allow.
Meanwhile, Noam had done... what, exactly?
He’d hacked a few websites. Gone to some protests.
Hadn’t made a bit of difference.
Brennan would’ve said he was too young to change the world on his own, but Lehrer was proof that age was no excuse.
He noticed Ames was gone an hour or so into the movie, right after the part where Lehrer closed Carolinian borders for the last time. Her cigarette was a cold butt abandoned on the windowsill, popcorn bowl empty.
“Be right back,” he murmured.
He slipped down the hall to where a sliver of amber light glowed from the door to the boys’ bedroom, left ajar. Noam didn’t mean to eavesdrop, not really, but there was no other excuse for the way he started to step softly as soon as he heard the low murmur of voices from within.
“... let it get to you,” Ames said, and when Noam moved closer, he could see her through the half-open door. She had her hands on Dara’s narrow hips, head leaned in so her brow rested against his. She hadn’t seen Noam, but Dara did almost immediately.
Their gazes met. Dara’s eyes were coals gleaming in the lamplight, the expression that flitted across his face nearly inhuman in the moment before he grasped Ames’s arms and pushed her back. She looked over her shoulder. When she saw Noam, her mouth twisted.
“Sorry,” Noam said, lifting both hands. “Just looking for Ames.”
She glanced at Dara, who said nothing.
“Be right back,” Ames said, after the silence had stretched on just a beat too long. She moved away from Dara and out into the hall with Noam, pulling the door shut behind her. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Is he all right?” Noam kept it just above a whisper.
Ames exhaled softly, then said, “C’mon” and tugged him after her across the hall into the girls’ bedroom. She didn’t bother turning on the light, just shut them in, the room lit only by the gray moonlight from outside the window. “Listen,” she said, keeping one hand on the doorknob. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just... complicated. Dara and Lehrer don’t have a great relationship, and Taye can be kind of oblivious.”
“What happened?” Noam asked.
Ames made a strange, abortive little gesture toward her pocket, then muttered, “Damn, left my cigarettes” and dropped her head back. Sighed. “You’d have to ask him,” she said eventually. “It’s not something he’d want me to share around, you know? Anyway, just...” She waved one hand. “Just keep it in mind. Not all of us had a great, loving fatherly relationship.”
Noam bit his cheek over what he could have said in response to that. Instead: “Clearly it goes a little past that.” Shitty father-son relationships didn’t make people try to hack the Ministry of Defense.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Ames said. “I know Dara gives you a hard time, but he doesn’t usually hate people for no reason. That includes Lehrer.” She opened the door and stepped out into the hall again. “I’m gonna make sure Dara hasn’t finished a whole bottle of gin on his own, okay? I’ll be out later. Hold down the fort.”
She clapped Noam on the shoulder and flashed one of those fake smiles that didn’t reach her eyes. He watched her disappear back into the other room, to Dara and Dara’s gin and Dara’s secrets. To whatever else they’d been doing, Ames with her hands on Dara’s body and their lips so, so close.
Bethany and Taye were still watching the movie, popcorn bowl lodged between their legs and Bethany’s head against Taye’s arm. Noam took Ames’s seat by the window instead. He didn’t smoke, but he lit one of Ames’s cigarettes and took a few drags anyway.
An hour later, Ames returned to claim her chair and cigarettes, and in another hour, Dara emerged from the bedroom wearing something black that clung to his body like it was painted on. He didn’t say a word. Just walked past the chairs and the movie screen, the edge of his coat grazing Noam’s thigh as he stepped over a forgotten glass on the floor.
He smelled like liquor and left through the front door. He didn’t come back till morning.
