A Tragic Kind of Wonderful(46)

Not long after, Declan shows up with Holly. She drove him over and says she’ll hang out and do homework she got assigned for the break. We deflect Mom’s offers of snacks and drinks and more throw pillows and whether the room’s too hot or too cold. “It’s all fine, Mom.”

She finally accepts this and leaves to do the weekly grocery shopping.

I hand Declan my lab notebook. That plus leaning over my laptop on the coffee table long enough to search for my other data files, and then e-mailing them five feet over to him, it exhausts me. I lie sideways and curl up on a pillow, my head next to where Holly works in a binder on her lap. Declan sits on the floor on the far side of the coffee table.

“Something you ate, huh?” he says. “Anything bad coming out the bottom end?”

“Declan,” Holly says. I’m not sure if she’s protecting me or just grossed out.

“Top only,” I say.

“I don’t think it’s something you ate.”

“You’re a doctor now?” Holly says. “Or are you browsing BeYourOwnQuack.com?”

“It doesn’t take a doctor to recognize when someone’s sick from something they drank.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t break eye contact with him, either. He holds it.

“Was it the King of Beers, or something more bottom shelf?”

“Vodka. From a bottle.”

He laughs.

“You’re hungover?” Holly says.

“If I say yes, will you think less of me?”

Declan says, “Not if it was really straight vodka shots …?”

I nod carefully.

He laughs again. “I had no idea you were a heavyweight.”

“First time drinking anything.”

“Even more impressive; skipping over Beginner and Intermediate straight to Expert. Well done. What was the occasion?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I say. “I don’t feel well.”

“You don’t look well,” Declan says.

Someone pounds on the door.

Holly says, “I’ll get it.”

She goes and opens the door.

“Where is she?” Zumi’s voice is deep and unreadable, like it carries too many emotions to separate out. Probably because she drank way more than I did.

Declan points to me warily.

Zumi comes around the sofa, Connor right behind her. He looks lost but on alert somehow. He had a lot to drink, too.

“Hi,” I say. “What’s—”

“That yours?” Zumi points at my open laptop.

“Yeah—”

She sits hard on the sofa, knocking my knees. I stretch my legs out to give her room. She jams a thumb drive into the USB port and copies a file to the desktop.

“You, Declan,” Zumi says. “You can’t see from over there. This is too good to miss.”

He comes around to stand by Holly.

I look up at Connor behind the sofa. “You know what this is?”

“No. She just called and asked for a ride.”

Zumi says, “All last week I kept calling Annie, texting and e-mailing. Last night I finally got an answer.”

I push myself up. “What’d she say?”

“Ten words.” Zumi counts them on her fingers: “Stop bugging me. Get over it. Maybe this will help.” She jerks the stick from the laptop and taps on the keyboard to open a movie file. “Sixty seconds of video can say a lot.”

The screen shows Annie’s room, pretty much exactly as I remember. The image shakes from someone adjusting the camera. It centers on Annie’s bed with her rose-colored comforter. The view stops jiggling but no one appears or talks for maybe thirty seconds.

“What took so long?” Annie’s voice finally says.

Then some soft talking. It’s impossible to make it out. It might not even be speech, just mumbling or something similar.

Annie appears, backing up toward the bed. She wears her favorite white button-down sleeveless shirt, only with the top few buttons undone. Her arm is stretched out of frame. She briefly makes eye contact with the camera and smiles. Her head turns to reveal a bright orange California poppy over one ear— I lunge for the laptop—but Zumi grabs both my wrists and drags me back to the sofa.

There it is. On the screen. Annie has pulled me up on the bed. We’re kissing, clumsily groping each other’s chests. It’s messy, awkward fumbling, but not tentative, and not one-sided. It’s enthusiastic, and not the first time, or the last. I had no idea she’d recorded anything.

Holly slams the laptop shut and grabs one of Zumi’s arms. “Let go!”

Connor jumps over the sofa and they both pry Zumi off me. She glares at Connor hard enough to melt lead but he forces himself between us anyway.

I curl into a ball and wrap my arms over my head and Zumi leans around Connor and growls through her teeth, “Don’t … ever … talk … to me … again!”

“Zumi!” Connor shouts in her face.

“What the hell, Connor?!” She pushes him back—he stumbles against the coffee table.

He stands up straight again and says to her, “We’re going.”

“Goddamn right, we’re going!”

I say, “Zumi—”