Since it was six hours until her shift ended, I could have biked back home. I should have. Nan was disabled and could have used my help. Instead, I spent a good chunk of the time aimlessly meandering down the boardwalk, taking in all the sights. Sure, I was a local, but the truth was I hadn’t been to the Heights since the idea of cotton candy sounded good, which was years ago. The farthest I ever ventured up there was to the Seaside Park Beach Patrol headquarters, which was right on the border between the two towns. Here, though, the crazy people and steady clicking of the big wheels and the whir of rides combined with the scent of saltwater taffy and pizza to make it virtually impossible to hear the You Wills.
Now I worked extra hard to hear them. Something was making me cling to them. Of course it was Taryn. I strained to hear the You Wills, which led me to a stand in the corner of the boardwalk that was raffling off ugly dollar-store stuffed dogs. I blew eight dollars trying to win one by throwing darts before I realized I was a sucker, since I already knew what was going to happen. What the hell would I do with a stuffed dog, anyway?
By the time I returned it was 4:05. I’d timed it perfectly. I didn’t want to appear too overeager by showing up early or right on time. So I figured five minutes late was good, even though I spent those five minutes staring at the clock on the boardwalk and watching the seconds tick away. When I got there, she was sitting outside the stand, hat removed, tapping her foot and looking anxious. “You’re late,” she said.
“Sorry.”
She grabbed me by the wrist and immediately the You Wills stopped. A gust of air flooded my lungs at that second because I gasped and choked a little. She led me toward her grandmother’s booth. “You don’t get it. My grandmother starts working at five, but she always arrives early. And she can’t know we’re here.”
With my mind calm, I could really concentrate on her for the first time. She had little crinkles around her eyes and freckles over the bridge of her nose. I realized I’d already had the map of those freckles committed to memory—a dark one under her left eye, a constellation of three at the side of her nose. She didn’t wear any makeup and her hair was in a ponytail, but she still managed to look beautiful. She always would, even when she was older.
“Why are you staring?” she asked, sounding annoyed. I probably would be, too, if someone was studying me as closely as I was looking at her.
“Nothing. Um, why? I thought your grandmother and I really hit it off that last time.”
She smirked, then jabbed her finger at the tiny sign that said: ABSOLUTELY NO REVERSALS. “That’s why.”
“But what does it mean?” I asked again, as she lifted the velvet curtain and pulled me inside. This was right from my vision. The room was barely the size of a closet, with a small table in the center, a crystal ball atop it. Everything was dark velvet, hot and cramped, like the inside of a coffin. The stench of incense was so strong I had to swallow again and again to keep from gagging.
Taryn reached under the table and pulled out an old book. “This,” she said, “is the Book of Touch.”
I stared at it. It wasn’t anything remarkable. It was small with a simple black leather cover, kind of like one of the ancient Bibles Nan kept by her bedside. “What is it for?”
“I’ll show you.”
At first I thought it was a how-to manual for massage or something, but I wasn’t lucky enough to have Taryn wanting me to give her a backrub. Not yet, anyway. She hurried to a small dusty bookshelf and slid her hand behind a picture of a man who looked about a thousand years old. She pulled out a key. “That’s my grandfather,” she said, motioning with her chin as she turned the book on its side, revealing a half-rusted lock. “He’s dead.”
“Nice.”
She shrugged. “He didn’t speak English.”
She put the key in the lock and it clicked open. For a moment I could have sworn the temperature in the tent dropped, but that was probably just the result of watching too many episodes of Scooby-Doo. Taryn opened the book to the first thick, yellowing page and motioned me over. “Each page is a Touch.”
I watched her flip through. The book must have been crazy old, because it smelled moldy and almost every page was mostly blank, with just a few foreign words in bold print and a signature on it. The ones that were full had an ornate, slanting gold script that was somewhat faded or smudged. But I couldn’t make a thing out. “That’s not English.”
“Duh. Hungarian.”
“What does it say?”
“It tells you what to say to perform the Touch. First you have to sign on the page. It’s like a contract. And then once the Touch is performed, the words of the spell fade—look.” She opened to a page that was blank except for a heading and a signature, Ernesto Pugilini, at the very bottom. “This Touch has already been performed.”
“What the hell is a Touch?”
“Oh. Sorry. It’s like a spell.” She stared at the page. “And this one is … Paws of the Bear. Ernesto received unnatural strength.”
My jaw just hung there. “Wait. You can read Hungarian?”
“Duh. Isn’t that what I just did?”
“Okay. So you’re telling me that this book can make someone—strong? Or whatever? Give me a break.” I studied her face. It was completely serious. “You don’t believe in that crap, do you?”
“Um, of course.” She stared at me. “Wow. Didn’t think I’d have to convince you.”
“Okay. Prove it.”
I was already getting that feeling, as if the You Wills were saying, Great thing to ask, Captain Obvious. She flipped through a few pages and turned the book around to face me. It was an almost blank page, I guessed from a Touch that had already been performed, or whatever. Under the heading I saw a very familiar signature. A name I’d seen signed on every absentee excuse I’d ever brought to school, usually after a bad bout of cycling. Moira Cross.
Taryn pointed at the heading in Hungarian. “This one says Sight of the Eagle,” she said. “Three guesses what that will do.”
Outside, a balloon popped, making me jump so high I hit the cobwebbed chandelier above us. A child’s cries echoed in the background as I stared at the name on the page until my vision blurred.
Of course. Of course.
It was like the vital missing puzzle piece, and as soon as I fit it in, everything else became clear. I wondered why I didn’t think of it before. It seemed so like her. Always wanting to know her future, always being tied up in superstitions. I’d bet before this, she’d visited every fortune-teller in the Heights.
“So you’re saying …,” I sputtered, collapsing in a black pleather armchair and ignoring the farting noise it let out. I knew what she was saying. I just couldn’t form the right words.
Taryn crouched beside me. “This book has been in my family for hundreds of years. There aren’t very many Touches left.”
“Wait. She let your grandmother …” I tried to say more, moved my mouth in a thousand different ways, but the words didn’t come out.
“She paid to do it. Probably a thousand dollars or more.”
“Paid? Your grandmother ruined her life, my life, and charged her for it?” When Taryn nodded, I realized I couldn’t breathe anymore. I doubled over, feeling like I had been kicked in the gut.
Taryn pointed to the date, which was in July, eighteen years ago, a month after my mom’s graduation and a few months before I was born. Eighteen years ago. I stared at that date until my eyes burned. The exact date our nightmares began.
“And it transferred to me, because my mother was pregnant with me,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes.
“That’s where the ‘No Reversals’ comes in.”
I dropped my hands. “You mean, she could reverse a Touch if she wanted to?”
Taryn shook her head. “No. I just told you, that’s not possible.”
“You didn’t say it wasn’t possible. You just said she wouldn’t do it.”
“It’s not possible,” she said firmly. She took the book and closed it, then locked it with the key. “But Grandma warns people. She doesn’t just take all their money and give them a Touch. She has seen that, while some of these Touches perform miracles, some of them destroy people’s lives. She tells them that sometimes a person’s greatest desire can be the most terrible curse.”
Of course we would have the luck to fall into the “curse” category. “So let me get this straight. My mother paid so that she could be this way?”
She nodded. “Every one of these Touches is something really cool. Something people would kill for. And long ago my ancestors realized that certain people would not only risk their lives to be Touched but they’d also fork over huge sums of money. Charging a lot also helps to ensure a person is serious about it. Grandma doesn’t want just anyone waltzing in and getting a Touch. When people put together that much money, they’re usually serious. Plus it pays her bills.”
I leaned my head against the table and muttered my mom’s name. “Why?” I whispered, and no sooner had I done that then I saw the answer. I saw my mom, explaining, tears running down her face. I was so scared when I found out I was pregnant. And there was so much uncertainty with your father. He said he loved me, but I couldn’t be sure. When he asked me to marry him, I was so afraid that one day he would leave me, like my father left your grandmother. So I pulled together my life’s savings—a thousand dollars—and went to her. The first thing I saw when I got the Touch was me, alone. Your father was gone. And then the worst thing—I saw I’d given this curse to you. I destroyed every chance of us having a normal—
At that point I started to green-elephant. I didn’t want to hear her whining anymore. She knew. All this time I was searching for answers, and she already knew. It was her fault. At that moment, I didn’t want to see her again.
“What is that?” Taryn asked. “The green elephant?”
I groaned through the pain, through the memory that came up at that moment. Really, anything would work, but I started saying that because when I was seven or eight, I bought my mom this necklace for Christmas that had a jade elephant pendant. I bought it for a buck at school, so it wasn’t real jade, but she wore it every day. On bad days, when my head really hurt, I’d sit with her and she’d hold me to her and I would see nothing but that green elephant, with its trunk in the air. It meant good fortune. Good fortune.
She didn’t wear it anymore. It was probably in a landfill somewhere. That was one of the few times I’d experienced cycling because of something she did. One day the cable had gone out, so she reached behind the set to jiggle the wires, and the necklace’s black cord, which had been fraying a bit, got caught on a screw and snapped. The jade elephant fell to the ground and the trunk broke off in a pile of green chalk dust. That day, it was as if every future memory I’d have of my mom changed just a bit and felt slightly strange, like new shoes that needed breaking in. In each of those visions, the elephant was gone from her neck.
I leaned back in the chair, feeling something close to the numbness I’d get after a night of bad cycling, when my head had been thrashed so much it couldn’t feel anything anymore. “It’s just a nonsense phrase. It doesn’t mean anything. I say it to keep the future memories from invading. To calm my mind. If my brain is concentrating on something else, it doesn’t have time to dwell on the future.”
Taryn nodded as if it wasn’t the stupidest thing in the world, and I loved her for that.
The picture of my mom sobbing kept invading, and I pushed it away. She was lucky we could carry on conversations in our minds, because if I’d been in the same room together, I didn’t know what I might have done or said. “So, what other Touches are in there? What else can this book do?”
She flipped through the pages. “Like I said, there’s only a handful of them left. Um, this one is Poison Arrow. Architect of Time. Small Army …” She kept flipping pages.
“Any Touches that will undo previous Touches?” I asked, hopeful.
She shook her head. “No such luck.”
“Well, can you, like, say the curse backward and—”
“Uh-uh. Absolutely no reversals.”
“But is that because it can’t be done, or because your grandmother doesn’t know how to do it?” I asked, getting desperate.
“It can’t be done. Touches are permanent,” she said, making my heart, which was suddenly twittering with all these new, thrilling sensations, turn to lead. She looked at her watch. “We’d better get out of here. Grandma will be here any minute and she does not want me talking to you about the Book of Touch.”
“Why not? Isn’t it good business for her?”
“Sure it is. Like I said, it pays her rent. But I don’t think local law enforcement would be too happy about it, so it’s very hush-hush.” She walked to the opening of the booth and stopped short. I didn’t have to look out; I immediately saw what was coming. Her grandmother plodding up the ramp, her thick sausage cankles visible under that same shapeless dress of dead brown flowers. I grabbed Taryn by the wrist and the vision dissolved in my head. We needed to hide. But when I turned, there was nothing, just mounds of red velvet on the walls. Sure, there was the little table, but it was too little to hide both of us, and did I really want to spend any length of time with Taryn’s grandmother’s cankles in my face?
Taryn led the way, pulling back one of the curtains. “In here,” she said. I climbed in. There was a cinder-block wall about three feet behind the curtains, but it was a good hiding spot.
“How’d you know this was here?” I whispered.
“I used to spend a lot of time back here when I was a kid,” she answered. “Grandma thought it would be good for me.”
“Good for you? You mean, she wanted you to see people get this … Touch?”
She nodded, then shrugged.
I laughed bitterly. Her grandmother was totally whacked. Letting a little girl see people curse themselves was the perfect playdate, right up there with Chuck E. Cheese’s. Taryn let the curtains fall behind us. From where we stood, I could look up and see neon lights from the arcade next door. The bells and chatter of the electronic games were loud enough to make me realize they were probably right on the other side of the wall. It only went up seven or eight feet. I could probably hoist myself up and escape that way. As I was looking for a way out, Taryn cursed. Really loudly.
“Shhh,” I said. “What?”
“Forget it. Grandma’s practically deaf,” she explained, and not in a whisper. She held out the key to the book.
I stared at it. “You forgot to …”
“I was in a hurry. It’s no big deal. She probably won’t perform any Touches tonight, anyway. I’ll just put it back tomorrow.” Then she put her hand on my knee, steadying it. I hadn’t realized it, but I was fidgeting, something I did all the time. “You are a jumpy one, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, not really thinking. “Sue always says I’m so jumpy I make kangaroos jealous.”
“Sue?”
Oh, hell. Usually I was good about keeping my future under wraps, especially with complete strangers. But like I said, she put me at ease. Why else would I be bringing up my no-longer-wife-of-thirty-years? Sue, who was probably now going to marry some other guy and have a lot better future than she would have had with me. “Forget it,” I mumbled.
I watched as her grandmother lumbered into the tent, breathing heavily. She was nothing like Nan, who was barely sixty. This lady looked ancient. “How old is your grandmother?”
Taryn studied her from the slit in the curtain. “I have no idea. But I’m her twenty-ninth grandchild. Her last grandchild.” She exhaled slowly. “Lucky for me.”
“What does that mean?”
She motioned to the wall with her chin. “I’ll tell you later. Let’s go.”
We walked through to the rear of the arcade, looking for a door. If we could get out onto Ocean Avenue, we could get around the booth and to the bicycle rack without any possibility of Old Scary Lady seeing us. “So, who is Sue?” Taryn asked.
And I’d thought maybe she’d forget. I cleared my throat. “No one. Really.” Which was the truth. Now she was no one to me.
“Old girlfriend? Current girlfriend?”
I just mumbled, “My wife. In a different lifetime.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean, different lifetime?”
“Like I said, every time I do something off script, I can throw things off. And once, before I met you, I had this future where I was going to marry a girl named Sue.” I had a momentary reflection back to that feeling, that feeling of safety and happiness I’d only had in that life, and cringed at the thought of losing it. Could I ever get that back? “It was a good future. A perfect one.”
“And the one you’re going to have now?”
I shrugged. It was hard to explain. That last future, I’d had time to settle into. It took a while, but eventually I learned all the ins and outs, and the more I learned, the more perfect I realized it was. I knew this new one didn’t feel right, but it was too soon to tell. All new futures felt that way. It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff. Maybe I would fly, maybe I would fall. It always took a few days or weeks to fully understand it. “I don’t know. I need time to sort it out.”
“It could be even more perfect. You don’t know.”
“I guess.” I didn’t bother to tell her I had had hundreds of futures set in my mind before. None of them was as good as the one I’d just lost. Sure, there had been okay futures, but in a good majority of them, I ended up alone. I understood that; I’d been alone most of my life so far. Nobody got me. Nobody could stand me for too long. Sue had been a miracle, even though I hadn’t met her. And Taryn … Taryn was another miracle, with a difference. She was here, in the flesh.
I looked at Taryn, filled in that moment with the urge to grab her and hold her against me and never let her go. Suddenly, she stopped and looked at me. “You look like you’re going to throw up.”
My throat was desert dry. I shook my head and started to say something to blow it off when she caught sight of something beyond me. “Oh, Skee-Ball! Let’s do just a couple of games.”
I agreed, even though I hadn’t done Skee-Ball since I was, like, five. Taryn fed all the quarters she could find in her bag into the machine and the balls fell down the chute. I did the same and then realized I was playing next to a master. One after another, she popped those suckers into the little circle in the center marked 50. I kept hitting the gutter. The You Wills kept repeating the same thing to me, like a record skipping:
You will hit the gutter, you will hit the gutter, you will hit the …
“So you’ve seen people get Touched, huh? What’s that like?” I thought maybe conversation would take the focus off my sucktastic abilities.
She straightened and threw her first gutter ball, then swallowed. “It’s … horrible. I don’t want to think about it.”
I stared at her as my brain quieted from the You Wills. “Then why would your grandmother make you watch from behind the curtain?”
She threw another ball. “Because I am the last grandchild. And in the lore, the last grandchild inherits the power.”
“Power?”
“The power to use the book. And … other things.” She looked away. “Not nice things.” She blushed a little. “I am afraid if I tell you this, you’ll think I’m a freak.”
I grinned, surprised. “Look who you’re talking to.”
“Well, I also attract certain people. People with a certain wanting or void in their lives. And people like that aren’t usually the best people to hang out with.”
“Like me?”
She finished throwing her last ball and shook her head. “You’re different. You didn’t ask for this. But I kind of lied to you about why we left Maine.”
“Your father wasn’t laid off?”
“Oh, no, he was. But it was because of me.” She bit her bottom lip. “I’m an only child and my mom and dad wanted me to be a doctor. They weren’t too keen on me growing up to be a fortune-teller.”
“Understandably.”
“Right. So when I was six, Grandma started taking me to see the Touches performed. And as I said, they were horrible. Then the nightmares started. When my parents found out what I was going through, there was a huge fight. My grandmother told them I’d never be able to escape my destiny, but they thought she was crazy. They dropped everything and moved me to Maine. And everything was okay for a while. My dad started doing really good. He was one of the top executives at the factory. Everything was great. I think my parents thought we’d escaped it. But like I said, I have these powers. The power to attract certain people. I had friends up there, or at least, I thought they were friends before I came here and realized they were just being drawn by the Touch. And you know how I am about saying no.”
“So you were a troublemaker, huh?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Uh-huh.”
“Seriously?” I asked. She just didn’t seem the type.
“I was! I was terrible. It started when I was thirteen or fourteen. My friends and I would stay up all night, doing things. Mostly little, stupid things that bored kids do when they have nothing better to do. Breaking into houses. Destroying property. Stuff like that. I refused to listen to my parents, and no matter what they did, I found a way around it. They barred my windows, for God’s sake. And I knew it was stupid but—”
“You couldn’t say no.”
“Right. And I couldn’t shake them. Just as they were attracted to me, I fell for them, too. They kept following me around, worshipping me, and I never realized that it was because they were attracted to what I could do for them. The Touch. I kept running away from home and my dad took all this time from work to go looking for me or deal with the trouble I’d gotten myself into. So he was fired. And we were forced to move here. The funny thing was, all those great friends I had back in Maine never emailed me, called, texted … not even once. They didn’t want me, they just wanted to be Touched.”
“That sucks.”
“Like my grandmother said, I can’t escape my destiny. I have to take over for my grandmother and perform these Touches, or else things will get bad. Really bad. My parents are finally accepting that, I guess.” Her face had paled past its normal pale, to an unnatural and deathly bluish-white. “They have no other choice.”
“What do you mean by ‘really bad’?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “The worst. But I don’t want to talk about that. I get really nervous thinking about it. That’s why I like hanging out with you. I don’t think about it constantly when I’m with you.”
I ran out of balls, so I stood there and watched her throw her second gutter ball. When she threw a third one, she grimaced and massaged her arm. As soon as she started throwing again, she hit the 50.
“And that’s why I knew you were Touched. The second I felt your hand, it was like I understood everything. But it’s more than that. We’re alike. Usually, people get Touched of their own free will. But you didn’t. We’re both cursed, but it’s not our fault.”
I nodded. “When I touched your hand, I couldn’t see the future anymore. It made me almost feel normal.”
She stopped throwing balls and straightened. “I guess that makes sense.” Then she said, “Do you like it?”
“What? Touching your hand?”
She grinned. “Feeling normal.”
I smiled. It didn’t matter which question she had been asking; either way, the answer was yes. “Of course.”
She reached over and grabbed my hand. “Better?”
My mind stopped in the middle of a You Will and I just nodded. “Yeah. Much. It’s like … almost …”
She squinted. “Like what?”
“Almost too quiet. I’m used to multitasking. Doing things while seeing what’s coming next. You know, like if you have two televisions tuned to the same program, but on different signals, and one is a few seconds ahead? That’s what it’s like. I’m used to it. This is …”
“Exciting?” she said, giving me this coy smile. “For once in your life you have no idea what is coming next.”
I was going to say scary, but then I realized that made me sound like a wuss. “Um, yeah. I guess normal life can be exciting.”
Never letting go of my hand, she ripped her tickets from the dispenser and dragged me to the prize center, where she traded in her twenty-five tickets for two neon slap bracelets. She gave the blue one to me and kept the hot pink one for herself. Then we walked onto the boardwalk, away from her grandmother’s tent and toward the rides. I felt two feet taller. I’d never held hands with a girl before, much less a hot one. Other guys were checking her out, and each time I stuck my chin out farther. It felt freaking phenomenal.
“So,” she said as we walked. I guess we were walking aimlessly, because our bikes were in the other direction. I didn’t care. I could have walked all night like this. “What else do you know about me?”
I smiled. “I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“Well. I’m curious. It’s nothing bad, is it?”
Holding hands with Taryn did nothing to erase the image of that birthmark, of the curve of pale skin on her lower back, leading to her backside. It didn’t matter how many girls I cycled through; I knew that would be etched in my brain permanently. “No. It’s nothing. Really.”
“Well, I think you must know something. Your face keeps getting red every time I bring it up. Do we get really close or something?”
I swallowed, fully aware that anything I said now could totally destroy that future. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” she teased.
“Look,” I said under my breath. “The future isn’t set. And I don’t want to …”
“Oh, you don’t want to blow it. I get it. But you know, normal people don’t worry about these things. They just take it naturally.”
Even though the ocean air was cool, my hand was sweating in hers. How the hell did I know what normal people would do? All that confidence I had a second before drained away and I found myself wondering again why she’d want to be seen with me, the abnormal person who didn’t even know how to take things naturally, whatever that meant. “Okay,” I mumbled.
“We can go on a ride. Like the Tilt-a-Whirl? Or the haunted house?” she suggested. “What do you think?”
“Surprise me.” She was still contemplating, unaware, so I said, “Get it? Surprise me? That’s a joke.”
She gave me a look. “Oh, right, because you can’t be surprised. Funny,” she said, like it wasn’t. “Wait, can you be surprised? When you fell into the water at the pier, you were surprised.”
“Nah. I knew it would happen. But by then I couldn’t stop myself. It’s okay, though. I don’t really like surprises.”
“You don’t? Are you scared of them?” she taunted.
“No, I’m—I like to be in control as much as I can.”
“Booor-ing!” she singsonged. “You should forget about that. Live a little. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
She didn’t get it. I could see the worst things that could happen. A lot of them would make her lock herself in her bedroom for the rest of her life. “Most surprises are bad.”
“That’s not true. There are lots of good ones, too.” She surveyed the amusements and her eyes widened. “Oh yes, the haunted house. I love it. Don’t you?”
“I—I’ve never …” I clamped my mouth shut. It was obvious I was a dork. That I led a sheltered life because of the curse. I should just take things naturally and tell her. But from the way she was looking at me, I think she already knew.
“Don’t worry. It will be fun. Lots of surprises in the haunted house.”
“Bad ones,” I answered, reluctant, as I tried to understand what about the concept of surprise could be good. Surprises sucked. It was so much better to be in control.
Taryn dragged me toward the stucco housefront at the end of the pier, with the fake wrought iron fence and cobwebs everywhere. There was a raven with a skeletal hand in its beak perched on the sign that said 6 TICKETS, but even that looked pretty pathetic. Taryn must have come here a lot because she had a book of tickets in her bag. She handed the attendant twelve and we squeezed into a car.
Then she clutched my hand tighter. “I’m scared,” she said, but in a way that I couldn’t tell if she was joking. Before I could look at her face, the car jerked forward and we careened into darkness.
It was pretty dumb. The scariest thing was how the ride twisted us around, almost dislocating my spine, and our car shook back and forth so much I was sure the whole thing was going to collapse. The squealing of the wheels on the track drowned out any scary noises we were supposed to hear. Occasionally someone in a scary mask would jump out at us, but it wasn’t dark enough to make it a complete surprise. I think Taryn was disappointed, because the first time it happened, she let out a high-pitched, deafening yelp, which dissolved into laughter, but after that she just muttered things under her breath.
When the ride found daylight again, we squinted at each other and then said “Lame” at the same time. I shrugged at her as we got off. “Oh, well. At least you paid.”
“Hey!” she began, but stopped short. She was walking in front of me, so I couldn’t see her face, but then I looked up and saw him.
Terrific. Sphincter.
He was with—of course—two girls from school with too much in the way of hair and makeup and too little in the way of clothing, the kind of girls who never gave me the time of day. They were his bookends. His smile disappeared as he took us in. “Well, hello, Taryn,” he sang in a game-show-host voice. Then he nodded at me. “Cross.”
I nodded back. Taryn gave a little wave. “Hi, Evan!” she said in her typical bubbly way, but there was something weird about how she stiffened.
“How are you doing?” he asked, not casually, but in a tone you would use if you knew a person’s close family member had just died. I knew the question was just for Taryn, because he stood so that his back, and the backs of the other girls, were to me. The perfume and cologne and whatever else they were wearing smelled worse than the incense at Babe’s tent, but the view of the girls’ asses made it tolerable. “How’s your grandmother?”
“Fine. We’re all doing good,” she said.
Both girls looked away, bored or annoyed or a little of both. One fed herself a long string of sticky blue cotton candy; the other inspected her nails. I suddenly had the feeling I was listening in on a private conversation. Like maybe Taryn knew Sphincter. Like, really knew him.
They talked a little more about school starting next week and doesn’t-it-suck-that-summer’s-almost-over? Even though it was a really generic, safe topic, the more they talked, the more my stomach churned. Sphincter moved in really close, probably just to piss me off. It was working. How did they know each other? I stared at the lame “his” slap bracelet on my wrist and silently wished Sphincter would crawl back into whatever hole he came out of. When they parted, Taryn just said, “Let’s go on this Rock n’ Roll thing. I have more tickets.”
I shrugged and we walked to the ride. I heard him mumble something about “Crazy Cross,” and the girls tittered. They headed off toward the haunted house. While Taryn reached in her bag for tickets, I turned and caught Sphincter staring.
I thought maybe I could get her to admit what they had going on. “He totally wants you,” I said as we settled into the car.
She shrugged, not impressed. “I’m sure he does.” She shifted in her seat. “They always do.”
I thought she meant guys, but I couldn’t remember when she’d last been so full of herself. So I just let out an amused “Oh, yeah?”
She nodded, biting her lip. “Yeah.” The ride started to pick up speed then, so I couldn’t be positive, but I was pretty sure there were tears in her eyes.