The Accidentals(15)

P.S. I’m jealous of your Cape Canaveral access. But Astronomy Nerd Central would be somewhere like New Mexico, with its big telescope arrays and meteorite fields. Trivia: there has never been a meteorite found in New Hampshire. Although I’ve picked up about a million rocks trying.





I adjust my mental picture of Jake on the beach. Now he’s picking up rocks, examining them, then tossing them into the waves.

His messages are like an escape hatch from my real life. They make Claiborne Prep seem like a real place. And when I read his messages, I can almost believe that the earth is still turning around the sun, and that I’m really going to a fancy new school in the fall.

At one o’clock, Haze finally pulls up outside to rescue me. I cram my laundry into his trunk and then fall into the passenger seat.

He moves fast, reaching across the center console to pull me toward him. The kiss takes me by surprise. And maybe because I’m so happy to see him, the slide of his lips over mine has a brand new effect on me—an unexpected zing through my chest.

Haze deepens the kiss, and the taste of him is warm and familiar. The longer it goes on, the more I forget to be nervous.

But then Haze makes a noise. It’s a guttural, needy sound from deep in his chest. My comfort stutters. His arms feel more like a vise than a hug, and I stiffen inside them.

Haze releases me then, and we both take a giant breath. “I smell like motor oil,” he says, looking down at the mechanic’s shirt he’s still wearing from his shift at the Jiffy Lube. “Sorry.”

Self-conscious now, I sit back and put on my seatbelt. A moment later the car pulls away from the curb.





I’d asked Haze to take me to a laundromat because I’d missed the Parson’s Home laundry day. He’s brought his own too. Side by side, we load our things into washers.

Haze strips off his shirt right there in the Kleen & Bean. And suddenly I didn’t know where to put my eyes. Haze used to be a skinny kid with the occasional zit on his chin. But somehow he’s become awfully ripped when I wasn’t paying attention. All that muscle and smooth, coppery skin.

“Where’s Daddy today?” he asks, tossing his shirt into the washer.

“I told him I was busy.” The lie just pops out. Nothing good ever comes of discussing Frederick with Haze.

“I just don’t get that guy. He’s too good for you for seventeen years. And now he wants to spend every afternoon with you? Is there some reason why he waited until Jenny was out of the way?”

“Haze! He didn’t know she was sick.”

He rolls his dark eyes at me. The lashes are incredibly long for a boy’s. “He didn’t know, because he never asked. And now you’re the center of his universe? It doesn’t smell right to me.”

“What are you saying, Haze? That Frederick is creepy? He’s not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Okay.” I slam my washer door. “In the first place, ick. Where do you get these ideas? And in the second place, it’s kind of an insult to me if you’re saying I wouldn’t notice.”

Haze puts up both hands defensively. “Easy. Nobody is smarter than you, Rachel. But from where I stand, it looks a little like taking candy from a stranger. Because he is. A stranger, I mean.”

Well, that’s depressingly true.

“I mean, he’s too good to drive his own car.” Haze laughs. “What’s up with that? What does he want from you, anyway?”

I walk over to the change machine so I won’t have to admit that I don’t know.

Haze has a poor opinion of fathers, anyway. His own had killed himself when Haze was twelve and I was eleven. One day, his dad drove his old blue car over to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, parked it, and then jumped off.

My mother cried for a week afterward. “At least he didn’t do it at home,” she said. But she also said, “Men don’t think they owe anybody anything. They leave the women to pick up the pieces.”

Haze’s mom, unfortunately, has not picked them up too carefully. The extra time Haze spent over at my house after that was directly correlated with the amount of wine his mother drank.

The old blue car waited on blocks for four years until Haze was old enough to drive it. In the glove compartment Haze keeps the note his father left for him there. It reads: Hazario—This isn’t your fault. Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise. Papa.

The change machine eats the first dollar I put into it, giving nothing in return. I plunge my thumb down on the cancel button, with no result. I stare at that machine for a full minute, wondering if it would be madness to put another dollar in. Having no obvious alternative, I try it. Somehow, four quarters come shooting into the steel cup.

While our washers and then our dryers spin, Haze and I wait on plastic chairs. My math book sits open on my lap the whole time, but my concentration is shot. Since my mother entered the hospital three weeks ago, every minute of every day demands two dollars for four quarters.





“It would be great to go swimming right now,” Haze says when our clothes are finally dry and folded. “Want to sneak into the Sheraton? I have the key card in the car.”

“I don’t have a suit.”

“Where is it?”

“At my house.”