It had been a week since I’d flown home from Eugene. Thinking about my mom and Beth sitting together at our dining room table was still a little surreal. I had always assumed that they wouldn’t be in the same room until I graduated from high school. Who knew all it took was one giant betrayal of trust to bring them together? After all of my privileges had been revoked—car, phone, computer, TV, friends—Mom and Beth had split a cocktail shaker of Dad’s chocolate martinis and stayed up until the wee hours giggling together. I wasn’t sure if I or Dad had been more unsettled by this.
Aunt Bobbie had stayed behind in Eugene to watch Isaiah compete in the last skirmish. She’d never turned down a chance to watch her son show off how much smarter he was than other people and she wasn’t going to start now. When Team Three had advanced to the final round of the Melee, Bobbie had sprung for a hotel room and had stayed to watch Isaiah win his scholarship. She swore that none of the Lawrences could argue with free tuition to one of the top schools in the country, even if it meant that her baby wouldn’t be joining up.
I wasn’t sure if that logic would fly at the next family holiday, but I also got the impression that Bobbie and Mom had made some sort of pact to never tell Grandmother Lawrence about anything that had happened in Eugene. I was positive that it had taken a lot of blackmail to get Isaiah’s scholarship locked down in spite of him being in violation of the age requirement.
Luckily, the dean of Rayevich and the principal from the Messina were terrified of news coming out about Cheeseman rigging prior Melees. It would bankrupt the camp to have to refund every student who’d come through for the last two years.
The doorbell rang.
“I got it!” Ethan screeched, his feet flying down the stairs so fast that there was a chance he was somersaulting.
“You’ll be sorry if it’s a kidnapper!” I called.
“You’ll be sorry!” he called back. “You’ll be grounded if I get kidnapped!”
“I’m already grounded!” I closed Starship Troopers and got to my feet. I took a moment to pluck the hem of my shorts back to a more ladylike position. “If you don’t get kidnapped, remind me to teach you about double jeopardy.”
I waddled out of the kitchen and through the living room and nearly dropped my Popsicle when I spotted the tall, slouching figure standing on the front porch. His hair was covering most of his face as he looked down at Ethan.
“She’s not allowed to have friends over right now,” Ethan was saying, barely containing his joy at being allowed to turn away a teenager. “She’s grounded.”
I swept forward and shoved Ethan back with one arm. “Go up to my room,” I hissed at him, one eye on the vision on the porch. “Under my mattress there’s a sock with fifty bucks in it. It’s yours if you never, ever tell Dad and Beth that this happened.”
Ethan considered this, his lips pursed into a duck’s bill of thought. “Fifty bucks and your Greedo.”
“Ugh. Go, booger,” I said, shooing him away. I shouted at his back as he scurried back up the stairs, “But this never happened!”
“What never happened?” he called back.
I turned back. Brandon was still there. Standing on my porch. In a gray T-shirt and blue jeans and the same Chuck Taylors. Smiling. Real.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” I wanted to reach out and touch him and didn’t know how or where to start. “You’re in California. How?”
He gestured behind him. “Wave to Ben and Trixie. Or don’t. They don’t care.”
I peered over his shoulder and saw a small red SUV parked across the street from my house, covered in Spider-Man bumper stickers.
“They drove you to California?” I gaped.
He winced a shrug. “Crumbs felt bad for ruining my first date, so she told my parents that she was driving me up to Washington to visit our sisters. I don’t know where she went, but Ben and Trixie were coming down here to find a new apartment, so I tagged along.”
I laughed. “You’re Bunburying.”
“I learned from the best.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, moving out of the way of the doorway. “Come in. It’s a million degrees out here.”
He stepped up into the house, setting a black backpack at the foot of the stairs. I threw my Popsicle into the yard before I closed the door behind us.
I watched him taking in the meticulously organized throw pillows, the collection of pictures of Ethan and me as babies, the decorative candles that had never been lit.
“It’s a little catalogy, I know,” I said, perching on the edge of the long sofa. “Beth’s a real estate agent and stages houses for a living, so it can be kind of sterile looking sometimes, but I swear we live here and we’re normal and you can put your shoes on the couch.”
He laughed. “I was raised to never put my shoes on the couch, but I’ll take it under advisement.”
He sat down next to me, his back pressed against a yellow throw pillow with a sea horse on it. I’d never questioned that pillow before, but now I couldn’t help but wonder why it was here and what it said about me and my family that we owned it.
“This was supposed to be really romantic,” Brandon blurted, sweeping his hair out of his eyes. “But I realize now that it’s coming off like, uh, really fucking needy and stalkerish and probably the biggest mistake of my life? I’ll just go kill Ben and Trix for not talking me out of it four hundred and eighty miles ago. They obviously don’t know anything because they’re high school sweethearts.”
“What? No!” I moved closer to him, wrapping my arm around his neck and kissing him swiftly. “This is legit romantic.”
“Whew,” he said. “Because I was walking up to the door and realizing that this could be such an invasion of privacy. I got your address from Leigh, and before you left you said a lot of stuff that made me think that you wouldn’t mind if I showed up here. But I’ve been wrong before. I’ve been wrong a lot, actually.” He twirled a piece of my hair around his fingers, examining the curl. “I never should have left the sci-fi section that night. I don’t need you to promise me anything. I want the chance to keep knowing you. That’s all.”
I picked up his free hand, which was roasting hot, even in the air-conditioned living room. But I couldn’t set it down. What if he stopped being real? “I’m sorry I didn’t understand that. I was so caught up in winning and being scared of what happened after I got back here, I forgot to, I don’t know … hope? I’d love to keep knowing you. I don’t want an ending. I just didn’t think I could stop it from happening.”
He leaned forward, his head tipped to one side, and planted a kiss on my cheek before getting to his feet.
“That took an unexpected turn,” I said, watching him run to his backpack. He dragged it over to the couch and, from within its depths, pulled out a hardcover book with an ivory jacket and yellow lettering. He set it in my hands and I let out an involuntary gasp as I recognized the bar code in the top left corner. It was Rayevich College’s copy of Survivor by Octavia Butler.
“What?” I squealed, unsure if I was thrilled or terrified to be holding this. “I can’t steal this!”
He held up his hands, refusing to take the book back. “You aren’t stealing it. First of all, I stole it. Well, I asked Meg to steal it. Second of all, you’re borrowing it until next fall. There’s nothing in the Melee rules that says we can’t apply to Rayevich like normal people do.”
“And if we don’t get in?” I asked.