What Happens Now(75)

Her hand reached for the collar of Kendall’s X-Men T-shirt. And she pulled. Hard. Harder than I thought someone as small as Eliza could.

The collar started to rip before Kendall smacked Eliza’s hand away. It made a loud thwack, comics-style, as their skin made contact.

“Stop!” yelled Max, crawling out of the van now.

“You,” said Eliza, holding out one finger and jabbing the air with it. “You do not get to do this. Not to me. Not with my boyfriend.”

Kendall whimpered, clutching the collar of her shirt. Eliza put her hands on her hips in a gesture of victory.

Because girls like Eliza always won. They always owned and they always received. They never expected anything less.

A second later, I was shoving Eliza up against the side of the van.

“You do not get to treat people like that!” I yelled. “You can’t bark orders and try to control everything!”

Eliza’s face. Not angry, but shocked. Her eyes and mouth all perfect O’s.

“Ari!” someone shouted from somewhere, but I didn’t turn to look.

My hands gripped her shoulders and held her there, and I was surprised how easy it was. She wasn’t even fighting back.

“Ari, stop!” someone shouted again.

“You also do not get to steal things from people and expect them to let you!” I hissed. “You do not get to take advantage of people who thought you were their friend!”

I let Eliza go for a fraction of an instant, then pushed her again. The tinny noise of her body against the metal of the car. It was suddenly the best noise ever. Who was doing this? Ari wouldn’t do this. Satina? Maybe.

Or maybe Ari was always doing this, somewhere deep down. Not to Eliza, but to everyone and everything I wanted to push back against.

I wasn’t thinking about that. I was only thinking about the satisfying sensation of Eliza’s body on the other side of my hands. How the way she was looking at me made me feel so present.

Then, tears pooled in her eyes and she started to sob.

Arms wrapped around me, pulling me back. Max grabbed Eliza and walked her down the aisle of cars until they were a good distance away from us.

I turned to see that it was Camden who’d yanked me away. He kept his arms tight around me and I could feel his breath panting against my ear. I realized I was panting, too.

Kendall opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The three of us stood in suspended animation.

“Hey,” said James, ambling across the parking lot toward the van. I could tell he hadn’t seen or heard a thing. “Is it time to go?”

Stating the obvious: the drive home sucked.

Eliza sat up front with James, while Kendall and I were in the middle. Camden sat with Max in the way back.

I would never have believed that six people could be that silent for that long.

To pass the time and to avoid looking at Camden behind me, I read my new Silver Arrow book. When I felt carsick and could read no longer, I spread my hands in front of me, examining my palms whenever something outside would flicker light into the interior of the van. I moved my fingers, twirled my wrists. Were these really my hands that had pushed and held Eliza against the side of a car? And my brain had told them to do that?

It didn’t make sense. One of the things I knew for sure about myself was this: when I got angry, it stayed indoors. I never let it out to roam and roar and scratch. It hid in a corner or burrowed inside a couch, easy to ignore. A thousand silent times, I’d raged against my mother or Dani or the thought of my father. But it had screeched out now, and who knew what the consequences would be.

Somehow the hour passed and we were back in town.

James dropped Eliza off first, of course. No discussion necessary. I’d never seen Eliza’s house and she never talked about it—she never talked about her family at all—so I wasn’t sure what I expected. Certainly not a McMansion in a subdivision called Morningside Meadows. She climbed out of the van and didn’t look at any of us. James followed, walking her past a Mercedes parked in the driveway and around to the back of the house. He returned a minute later.

“Dude,” said James to Max when he slid behind the wheel again. “Why was it me who just did that?”

Max gave him a dirty look and pulled out his earphones. “Can we get everyone else home now, please?” He leaned his forehead against the window. Kendall stared straight ahead.

When we pulled into Kendall’s driveway, she gave an unashamed sigh of relief. I found myself hopping out of the van with her.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly so nobody would hear.

“What do you have to be sorry about? I’m the one who kissed another girl’s boyfriend and caused some kind of nuclear reaction. By the way, that was both amazing and scary as hell, what you did.”

I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Way to make your first kiss extra memorable.”

“I’m glad you can joke about it. Guess who has to deal with the fallout while I skip town?”

Oof. This reminder hit me square in the chest.

“You leave in what, two weeks?”

“Eleven days.”

“At least you’re not counting or anything . . .”

Kendall gave me a bittersweet smile. “We’ll hang out between now and then. A lot.”

“Do you want me to come in with you?” I asked. “I could stay over.”