Mirage(39)

Dom’s other hand wraps behind my neck, and he pulls our heads together. His lips on mine feel like the crush of ripe summer berries, his tongue like wet velvet as we taste each other. Any resistance in my body has slipped away. Our breaths merge, mingling particles of ourselves. This kiss is a linking of some vital, beautiful essence of each of us. I melt into his cool skin, forgetting where I end and he begins.

Familiar yet foreign, this kiss is like a first kiss.

And a last.

“Ryan.”

Nolan’s voice. I don’t have to look up to know he’s staring at us with displeasure glinting in his eyes. Dom and I have an entire silent conversation before we turn to look at my father.

“Gran’s not feeling well. We need to take her home now.” I notice my dad’s words are a bit slurred. This can’t be good.

It’s cold where my body separates from Dom’s. I kick through the water and pull myself out of the pool. I’ll have to drive home like this. My dad doesn’t seem to think it’s odd that I jumped into the pool with all my clothes on. In fact, as far as they’re all concerned, it’s probably the most normal, spontaneously Ryan thing I’ve done since before the LSD trip.

“Let me go to the bathroom real quick and squeeze the water out of my clothes?”

My dad nods. “Okay, but make it quick. Your mom wants to get your grandma home ASAP.” Dom sloshes out of the pool, and my dad says to him, “Watch things for me here, would you? I’m going in case the girls need my help with Gran. I’ll be back in a bit to close up and get things ready for the demo jump.”

“Yes, sir.” Dom nods. “Hope Gran feels better,” he says to me.

My sneakers squeak as I jog past the rows of rental jumpsuits and helmets hanging on a rack in the hallway on the way to the women’s bathroom. Following an inexplicable impulse, I look over my shoulder to see if anyone’s watching me, then grab someone’s stray duffel bag and stuff a jump helmet, goggles, and a black jumpsuit inside.

I skid to a guilty halt in the bathroom. Avery is applying lipstick in the mirror and glances through it at me. I tuck the duffel against my belly and go into a shower stall to remove my sopping clothes, wringing them out as much as I can before slipping them back on.

“So.” Avery’s voice is higher pitched than normal. “Things are back on with you and Dom, huh? That’s great.” She’s sitting on the sink counter when I come out.

“I’m so glad I have you, cousin, to keep an eye on the people who are trying to comfort him.” The words are out before I can think to push them away. I was ready to let him go. I think . . . I don’t know. But I do know the world is made up of circles of people, and in most circles, it’s totally uncool for other girls in yours to pick up on the guy you were with.

“Is this all an act?” Avery asks, her blue eyes accusatory. “I mean, sure, you were always more flamboyant than everyone else. But I knew it was just to get attention. You could be doing that now, for all anyone knows, planting your flag on cray-cray mountain so we’ll all look at you.”

I want to hit her so badly, my fisted hands ache. “And what about you?” I ask. “You think hanging around exceptional people makes you exceptional?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need to be exceptionally screwed up just to get noticed. What’s the matter? Afraid if you act normal, you’ll be invisible?”





Twenty-One


GRAN DOESN’T LOOK very well. There’s a grayish cast to her wrinkled skin, like it’s been wrung of its color the way I wrung the pool water from my clothes. I squeeze her hand as we drive home.

“I feel as wispy as those clouds out there,” she says.

“How did you know it was cloudy?”

“I can smell them.” She yawns like a sleepy toddler. “And the quality of the light. It’s not as bright on my skin.”

I love the way she talks. I’m struck with a panicked sadness. I don’t want to lose her gentleness and wisdom. I don’t want to think of her in a dark place. But then, maybe that only happens to some people. People like me.

“I feel like I should pray.”

“But you’ve never prayed,” she tells me over another yawn. Through the rearview mirror, my father squints his eyes at me, and my mother begins biting her nails but doesn’t look back.

“Yes?—?yes, I pray.” Maybe it’s Gran’s dementia. She has to be wrong. There’ve been prayers. I’ve drowned in prayers. Though I can’t conjure a specific memory of doing it alone or with them. Only an inner knowing that my knees have been worn red from praying, praying so hard for something that my soul ached with the void of not getting it. “I’ve been angry at God.”

This time my mom does whip her head sideways, and she pierces me with a black look. Unease creeps through me. I’ve said something wrong. Still, I can’t help but stubbornly think that maybe if I pray for Gran, she’ll feel the brightness of heaven on her skin. Gran pats my hand like she knows I’m thinking blue thoughts. She probably does. I’m sweating anger and emanating bitterness from my fight with Avery.

“Avery accused me of faking everything,” I whisper to Gran. “For attention.”

“Psht. Don’t think on her and her sour words. Treat the bad ones like the vinegar they rolled in and the sweet ones like they were dipped in honey.”