Twisted Fate(10)

“Don’t you think you’re giving this guy a little too much thought?” Declan very reasonably asked. “I mean, he sounds chill. I’m not really up for spying on some guy because you’ve got a crush. It doesn’t bother me; it shouldn’t bother you. Why don’t we just hang with him?”

This was classic Declan. Once he got high he was all philosophical about how “everything in the world is connected” and everyone is chill and we should all get along. And peace and love and God in the smallest drop of water blah blah blah.

“Yeah, a lot of thought,” Becky said, and then started laughing. “Too much thought.” She looked at us but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Is he yummy?” Then she laughed again. “Oh . . . wait . . . no . . . didn’t mean to say yummy . . . ,” she whispered to herself. “Is he . . . um . . . ?”

“He’s like some kind of teen idol,” I said, interrupting her weird digression. “It’s gross actually. Fancy car, fancy clothes, pretty golden hair, like he belongs in a catalog, except for all the other stuff I told you about. Y’know, how he looks like an old man kinda . . . all serious.” I could have gone on and on discussing the details but I got lost thinking about it and then I got distracted looking at the leaves moving gently in the wind.

“Definitely not your type,” Declan said, grinning, bringing me back to the conversation. “But he doesn’t sound like a creepy dweeb either.”

Becky laughed. She said, “Dweepy creeb.”

“He is!” I shouted. “Being from a catalog and being a creep are not mutually exclusive. They don’t cancel each other out, you can be one and still the other. You can—”

“We get it, we get it,” Declan said, waving his hands in front of my face. “It just seems weird of you to be so wrapped up in a guy like that when you only hung out with him once. I know you have your Spidey senses, Tate, but maybe they’re not working with this dude. I mean, think about who you really want to invest your energy in.” He leaned forward, smiled beatifically at me, and batted his eyelashes.

It was funny but I really didn’t want Declan to start going on and on about “energy,” which was a whole other lecture he liked to give when he was high. “Energy” and then, without fail, physics and string theory and YouTube videos of talking crows. Weed just made Declan more in awe of the world than he already was, which was saying something, and made him talk ten times as much, which could get pretty unbearable—especially if you were also a little effed-up.

I knew what he was getting at by the “my type” comment. Declan was “my type” and he knew it. He was the ranked chess champ of the county, had nearly a perfect score on his PSAT, and he dealt pot and read Dostoyevsky and Jane Austen. That’s who I want to be with. That’s who I want to run away and sleep on the beach with. That’s who I want to give it to and take it from. Not some weird kid from the south. I told myself that again to make sure I really got it. Declan, I thought. Declan, not Graham.

But I had to admit there was some pull I felt from Graham. Like he knew something about me right away. Something other people ignored or just didn’t realize. There was a mystery about him that I wanted to understand. The way he laughed when he met me and Ally. The way he looked at Ally. Our fates were twisted. I knew it the minute he crossed into our yard and stood with the sun on his face beneath the pine tree.

I know it seems like even then I was becoming obsessed with him. That I was paying too much attention to him, like Declan said. Now I only wish I had paid more attention. Those cool blue eyes were used to looking at people a certain way. Used to being looked at like he was the black sheep. And he was smart. My only hope, now that time is running out, is that he was never—even at his best—smarter than me.





I told Sydney about the calls at work and she made her usual snide comments. She told me that it definitely wasn’t some cell tower problem and that probably someone was stalking me and that I should have told Mrs. Porter. It’s a little hard to take her ideas seriously sometimes. She can get paranoid and see the worst in everything. I told her I’d tell Ginny Porter if it happened again but that I wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions about anything or take advice from someone dressed head to toe in black. “Can you get out the sugar?” I asked her. I was reading a new scone recipe.

“You’re ignoring me!” she shouted.

“I think I’ll put walnuts in these,” I told her, and she groaned and slapped her forehead dramatically.

“Listen to me, Ally,” she said. “Has anything like that ever happened at work before?”

“Not that I remember,” I said, cutting the butter into small squares and pouring a cup of sugar into the bowl.

Syd was overreacting as usual and I think this time it was because she was jealous. The fact is Syd can be jealous of my job. It’s probably the only thing she is jealous of. I don’t think there’s anything else she pays attention to. She’s jealous of my job because she’s unemployable. She interviewed for positions at other B and Bs in town and did not get them. Too busy hanging out skating with Becky and Declan to really make an effort to get dressed up and submit a résumé and look like she was interested in the places. And I think people could tell by looking at her that she was a little wild.