Page 11

She releases her lip, leaving behind two little white indents, and says, “That would be ni—” She stops, searching for a different word. “Convenient.”

When she gets in the passenger seat, I smell rain and girl and a hint of chemicals.

I pull away, all the conversations I’d imagined us having since we talked last leaking out of my brain completely. So I say, “Were you swimming?”

“No. Why would I be?”

“Nothing, it’s just . . . you smell like the pool, or chlorine, or . . . something.”

“It’s bleach. I’m doing my SYE at the animal shelter and we clean out the cages on Saturdays. Turn right here.”

I brake and look for the road, aware that she hasn’t given me her address or any real directions to her house. “Here?”

She nods, but is quiet after that. I clear my throat.

“Doesn’t Peekay volunteer at the shelter, too?”

Alex wrinkles her nose, sending her freckles into a huddle just on the bridge. “That’s not her real name, is it? I always wondered.”

“It’s what we call her. PK because she’s the preacher’s kid, you know?”

Alex nods and looks down at herself. “These are her clothes. That’s why they’re so tight on me.”

There are about a thousand sex jokes Park would trot out right now about girls wearing other girls’ clothes and naughty overnights. I’m so glad he’s not here. But it makes sense to me suddenly why I was so surprised to see Alex’s face on the trim silhouette that emerged from the rain.

She’s slipped out of the conscious thought of just about every guy around because she doesn’t make herself visible. Other girls push the dress code, showing a solid few inches of cleavage or leggings that hug so tight you don’t need an imagination. The cheerleaders’ skirts are short enough you can easily pinpoint where leg makes the curvy transition into ass.

But Alex is different, remarkable because her clothes are utterly nondescript. She wears jeans that give no clue what’s underneath and solid-color shirts that are all function, not fashion, like they’ve done their job of keeping the wearer from being naked and that’s all that can be expected. I notice these things because in a sea of flesh, all I can look at is Alex’s hair swinging as she walks.

It’s been like that since I saw her face the night I ran away from a dead body in the woods, shame tearing through the high of weed and sex to punch me so hard that I had to stop to catch my breath fifty feet away from that circle of flashlights. Three years I’ve been trying to find the right things to say to this girl sitting in my passenger seat, and all that pops out of my idiot mouth is:

“Well, you look nice in Peekay’s clothes.”

“I . . . thank you,” she says awkwardly, like the words don’t quite fit around her tongue. “Turn left.”

“You really do.” I plow ahead. “I didn’t know you were so fit.”

It’s an incredibly stupid thing to say, but it’s also the only thing on my mind. She’s put together in a way that seems a little dangerous, all whip-thin and muscle. On a guy that build means he can kick your ass, but he can also lean against a wall and you don’t see him until he wants to fuck with you.

I don’t know what it means on a girl, but I know I like it.

“I run a lot,” Alex says. “I like to be outside. Turn left again. It’s the third house.”

It’s pretty much the only one. The other two are abandoned farmhouses with rotting barns splitting like old shoes, ancient bales of straw hanging out of busted haymows. But Alex’s house is nice and shiny, the kind that you pick out of a catalog and someone builds in two weeks. They’re expensive and they look good, but it’s good skin with a folding skeleton, a house that will collapse in forty years while the farmhouses down the road with no windows and sagging porches will stand against the elements for another century.

I pull into the driveway, but she stays in the car and looks at me for a second longer than necessary. My heart goes up into my throat.

“Thank you,” she says again, this time thinking through each syllable so it comes out a little more smoothly. “That was ni—”

“Convenient,” I interrupt with her word from before and she smiles, the hint of a blush flushing her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and those words flow out easily, like she says them a lot. “I’m not used to . . .”

“Talking to boys?” I supply.

“Yes.”

“Well, get used to it,” I say, and before I even think about what I’m doing, I give her a punch on the arm. Which, it turns out, might have been the best thing I could do because she busts out laughing and punches me back.