Don't Fail Me Now(57)

“What do you mean?”

“He could refuse to see us, for one.”

“But he called and asked for you to come.”

“He could have been drunk.”

“In a hospice?”

I shrug. “He’s done worse. Or he could say something wrong, or mean, or make her feel guilty—”

“What would she have to be guilty about?” Tim asks. “She was just a kid when he left.”

“We were all just kids,” I remind him. “He abandoned three of his kids.”

“I know.”

“So what does that tell you?”

“Point taken.”

“I don’t know,” I sigh. “Maybe I’m just afraid he’ll be okay, nice, even. And that I won’t completely hate him anymore. And then he’ll be dead.”

Tim’s quiet for a minute and then says, “That would be such a dick move,” and our laughter sends a flock of birds scattering into the sky.

“So where on the spectrum of dick moves does accosting someone in a Taco Bell fall?” I ask.

“Oh, somewhere in the middle, I think, just below kidnapping strangers and then making them recycle underwear for four days.”

I try to elbow him playfully, but instead I lose my balance and just sort of end up leaning on him. And it’s nice, so I stay there. I can feel his warmth through the thin cotton of the T-shirt, like I’m getting sunshine from all sides.

“Hey,” he says into the top of my head. “While I have you, um, on me, I wanted to say I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable last night. You know, with the song.”

“Shut up,” I say. “It was sweet. And I told you, you won. You get bragging rights for the rest of the trip.”

“Yeah, well,” Tim says softly. “I was kind of hoping it might win me . . . something else.”

“Like a giant teddy bear?” I say.

I tilt my face up toward his, and all of a sudden there are his lips, soft and warm and full and pressing into mine with an urgency that nearly topples me over. I freeze for a second. I wanted this in a vague, soft-focus, fan-fiction way, but here? Now? I don’t need anything else to worry about, much less my first set of boy problems. Physics problems, yes. Boy problems, no.

But then his hands cup my chin, his fingers tracing circles on my neck that send tingling waves down my entire body, and my brain stops talking. I open my mouth and let his tongue meet mine, and it’s nothing like that first time in the schoolyard, not awkward and rough and frightening but gentle and tentative and intimate, like we’re improvising a dance with no music. It’s hard to find the space to breathe, but it feels too good to stop. When I pull away, we’re both dazed. We should probably move back from the cliff.

“Sorry,” he says. “I had to do that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I say, running my tongue against the back of my teeth.

“So . . . you’re not going to hit me?” He grins, and I shake my head, leaning in.

“No,” I breathe as our lips brush again.

But that’s when I hear it: the scream, high and loud, its two syllables breaking into the still mountain air like a firecracker.

“MICHELLE!”

Tim and I jump to our feet to see Leah racing up the path, her face at least four shades whiter than normal, her eyes full of fear. What really chills my bones is that the look she has makes me think it’s not the cops but something worse. She doesn’t just look scared, she looks haunted.

“Michelle!” she cries, groping for my arm, her hands shaking. “It’s Cass. You have to come. I don’t know what’s wrong, but she’s on the ground, twitching. She can’t talk, her eyes are weird—” The words tumble out so fast it’s hard to process what they mean at first, but my body reacts before my brain has time to catch up. I break into a run, pushing Tim and Leah aside, racing past tourists with their Nalgene bottles and raised cameras, the canyon fading into blackness along with everything else in my peripheral vision.

My feet pound the ground, but I can barely feel them. I taste coppery blood in my throat. I can’t even think, except for three words that keep breaking through the chaos in my head: Nothing else matters. The money doesn’t matter. This trip doesn’t matter. That kiss doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters but getting to Cass. Nothing will ever matter again if I lose my sister.





FOURTEEN


Saturday Afternoon, Part 2

Grand Canyon, AZ Flagstaff, AZ




Here’s what I remember before the tidal wave hits: Running across what seems like miles of concrete, not understanding how I possibly could have gotten so far away. A cluster of people, three or four bodies thick, standing in the sunlight, silent, like a prayer circle. Just watching. Pushing through them, tearing at their clothes, their purse straps, not caring if it hurts. Their angry glances turning to pity, features melting into the periphery. Nothing else matters. And then Cass, on the ground, flopping, her eyes rolled back in her head. Bathed in sweat, so bad that at first I look to the sky for the rain I can’t feel. A man in madras shorts crouched over her, his finger in her mouth. Her teeth are bared; she doesn’t look like herself. I think: Come on, beautiful, give me that smile.

I fall to my knees. Cass, are you there? I grab her hand, clenching so hard the knuckles crack.