Twisted Fate(17)

He followed me though the living room and out to the front hall. I sat on the piano bench while he went into the bathroom. He didn’t shut the door. And then I heard a faint scraping, crunching sound. I wondered what he could be doing. I tiptoed into the hallway and peered around the corner. In the reflection of the mirror, I could see him cutting up a white pill. There were three other pills laid out on a hand mirror he’d clearly found in the cabinet.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

He turned around, startled. “I . . . this . . .” He handed me a prescription bottle. “This is my anxiety medication,” he said. “Sometimes when I feel nervous I, ah . . . snort it. Because it, ah . . . it works faster.”

I took the bottle and it was indeed a prescription made out to him. The pills also looked the same as the ones in the bottle. I stared at him. I felt kind of sorry for him, but it was also too weird. This kid was into some things I couldn’t quite understand. Part of me wanted to understand them a lot better and part of me wanted him to leave.

“My sister really wouldn’t like that,” I told him.

“No,” he said slowly, looking deeply into my eyes. “She seems very different from you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t tell her.”





Since he hung out with me while I was baking, I guess it was my turn to hang out with him while he tinkered with his car. Or that’s what I told myself when I wandered over to his garage and poked my head in. He smiled and waved for me to step inside and look at the Austin. I was impressed with how much he knew about fixing things, about technical stuff and engines. Not that I found any of it interesting myself. But I liked to watch him work.

It was one more thing that made it obvious Syd was exaggerating when she told me he was using drugs. I told her to mind her own business and not be a gossip. Besides, he might just be tired or stressed out, and lots of people needed to take drugs for ADHD and things like that. Then she told me she’d seen him snorting drugs when he was over at our house. She said she told him she wouldn’t tell me, but I guess either jealousy or real concern made her do it. I thought her whole act was just really sad. Some attempt to get attention and make me not trust him at the same time.

Standing out there with him while he worked, watching how serious and focused he was, I knew Syd was exaggerating. He didn’t act like Syd and her friends—laughing all the time and lying around listening to Death Cab and stuffing their faces with Doritos.

Graham glanced up from the engine and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Whatcha thinking about?” he asked.

“My sister.”

“What about her?”

“She thinks you’re using drugs,” I blurted out.

He put down his tools and came and stood in front of me. Wiping his hands off on a towel.

“She’s right. I am.”

I shrugged awkwardly, waiting for him to tell me some secret.

“I need them to concentrate and to not be anxious.”

“That’s what I told her,” I said, and felt a flood of relief in my stomach.

He looked at me and his eyes were so blue and beautiful. He looked so sad and I felt that familiar flutter. Then he reached out his hand and I took it. I had the sudden desire to take care of him. I wanted people to know who he really was.

“I like Syd,” he said. “She’s fun. But I don’t want her coming between us.”

I smiled. “Don’t worry. She won’t.”





My mom called up to my room, and I ignored her, because I was writing code. It was one of those days where I would be wide-awake first thing in the morning with about a million ideas. And today I hadn’t even gone down for breakfast before getting right to it. The thing I love about coding is that you are building a whole world, a whole architecture, making something totally new. It seems like gibberish to other people, but really it’s very straightforward.

I heard my mom call again and finally tore myself away from the computer and turned around and shouted, “What the hell? WHAT?!” just as the door was opening.

Tate peeked her head in, and my mom’s voice yelled up the stairs, “I said, ‘Tate’s here!’”

I rolled my eyes and Tate laughed, came in, set her skateboard down, and then flopped on my bed. “Thanks, Mom!” I yelled back.

“Oh my God,” Tate said. “You’ve been up all night being a super nerd again, haven’t you? I swear, Becks, you are going to be awash in piles of sea glass jewelry and strands of computer code. Have you even combed your hair this week? And maybe change out of your pajamas?”

“Just got up early,” I said distractedly, turning back to the computer. “I’ll be done soon. Check this out.”

“What the hell is it?”

“I’m building an app that finds and gathers all the internet radio stations with indie music on them.”

“Doesn’t something like that already exist?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“Why didn’t you just buy it then?”

“I can do this for free,” I told her.

“But it probably took you ten hours to write the program. That’s a lot of free labor.”

“Five hours,” I said. “And I wanted to see if I could do it.”