Panic(14)

And it was all Luke Hanrahan’s fault. He’d messed with Dayna’s car, f*cked with the steering in advance of the showdown, forcing her off the road. Dodge knew it.

“Mom went on a date last night,” Dayna said, obviously trying to change the subject.

“So?” Dodge said. He was still vaguely annoyed. Besides, everywhere they went, his mom found some new loser to date.

Dayna shrugged. “She seemed into it. And she wouldn’t tell me who.”

“She was probably embarrassed,” Dodge said. In the silence, he heard banging from outside—someone was going through the Dumpsters. Dayna leaned forward to look out the window.

“Shit,” she said.

“Little Kelly?” he said, and Dayna nodded. Little Bill Kelly had to be thirty and at least six foot five, but his dad, Bill Kelly, had been police chief for twenty years before his retirement, and everyone knew him as Big Kelly. Dodge had only ever seen Big Kelly once, and even then only for a second, when he’d accidentally biked out in front of Bill’s car. Bill had leaned on the horn and shouted for Dodge to be careful.

Dodge sighed, eased Dayna’s legs off his lap, and stood up. Through the window he could see Little Kelly balancing on a steel drum full of old grease, methodically sorting through one of the Dumpsters sandwiched up against the back of Dot’s Diner, just next to the kitchen door. It was the third time in a month he’d been picking garbage.

Dodge didn’t bother putting on a shirt. He crossed the short concrete alley that divided their apartment from the diner, careful to avoid the broken glass. The kitchen boys drank beers during their shift sometimes.

“Hey, man,” Dodge said, deliberately loud, deliberately cheerful.

Little Kelly straightened up like he’d been electrocuted. He climbed down unsteadily from the steel drum. “I’m not doing nothing,” he said, avoiding Dodge’s gaze. Other than the stubble on his chin, Little Kelly had the face of an overgrown baby. He had once been a star athlete, a good student, too, but had gotten screwed in the head over in Afghanistan. Or Iraq. One of those. Now he rode the buses all day and forgot to come home. Once Dodge had passed Little Kelly sitting cross-legged at the corner of the road, crying loudly.

“You looking for something?” Dodge noticed that Little Kelly had made a small trash pile at the foot of the Dumpster, of tinfoil wrappers, metal coils, bottle caps, and a broken plate.

Little Kelly looked at him for a minute, jaw working, like he was trying to chew through leather. Then, abruptly, he pushed past Dodge and disappeared around the corner.

Dodge squatted and started to gather up all the crap Little Kelly had removed from the Dumpster. It was already hot, and the alley smelled. Just then he sensed motion behind him. Thinking Little Kelly had returned, he straightened and spun around, saying, “You really shouldn’t be back here—”

The words dried up in his throat. Natalie Velez was standing behind him, leaning her weight onto her good foot, looking clean and showered and pretty and like she belonged anywhere else but here.

“Hi,” she said, smiling.

His first, instinctive response was to walk past her, go into the house, slam the door, and suffocate himself. But of course, he couldn’t. Holy shit. Nat Velez was standing in front of him, and he was shirtless. And hadn’t brushed his teeth. Or showered. And he was holding tinfoil from the trash.

“I was just cleaning up. . . .” He trailed off helplessly.

Nat’s eyes ticked down to his bare chest, then up to his hair, which was in all probability sticking straight up.

“Oh my God.” Her face began to turn pink. “I should have called. I’m so sorry. Did you just get up or something?”

“No. No, not at all. I was just . . .” Dodge tried not to talk too forcefully, or breathe too hard, in case his breath was rank. “Look, can you give me a minute? Just wait here?”

“Of course.” Nat was even cuter when she blushed. She looked like a cookie that had been iced for Christmas.

“One minute,” Dodge repeated.

Inside, Dodge sucked in a deep breath. Holy shit. Nat Velez. He didn’t even have time to worry about the fact that she was seeing his house, his crappy little apartment, and had probably had to walk past the grease traps being emptied, had gone in her little sandals past the sodden bits of spinach that got trekked out of the diner by the cooks, past the Dumpsters and their smell.

In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and gargled with mouthwash. He smelled his underarms—not bad—and put on deodorant just in case. He ran water through his hair and pulled on a clean white T-shirt, one that showed just a bit of the tattoo that covered most of his chest and wrapped around his right shoulder and forearm. His hair was already sticking up again. He rammed on a baseball hat.

Good. Decent, at least. He sprayed on a bit of this man’s body-spray thing his mom had gotten for free at Walmart, feeling like a douche, but thinking it was better to feel like a douche than to smell like an *.

Outside, Nat was doing a good job of pretending not to notice that Dodge lived in a falling-down apartment behind a diner.

“Hey.” She smiled again, big and bright, and he felt his insides do a weird turnover. He hoped Dayna wasn’t watching out the window. “Sorry about, like, barging up on you.”

“That’s okay.”

“I was going to call,” she said. “I texted Heather for your number. Sorry. But then I thought it might be better to talk in person.”