A Song to Take the World Apart (19 page)

A
T SCHOOL THAT DAY,
Lorelei is listless. She and Zoe take their lunches out and eat on the bleachers overlooking the basketball courts.

“I don't understand why you're not more excited about singing with him,” Zoe says through a mouthful of grilled cheese. She wants to talk about The Trouble playing Daniel's party, and Lorelei keeps trying to avoid the subject. “This is a good opportunity for all of you, actually. Some of Daniel's friends know, like, producers and stuff. It could be their big break or something.”

It's so impossible: sitting in back of her normal high school with her normal best friend, talking about boys and dates and bands, and thinking about the mess she was born into, and how to keep herself from getting any further into it.

Zoe gets tired of saying things Lorelei won't respond to. She lets it get quiet, picks at a loose thread at the hem of her sweater, nibbles cheese from the edge of her sandwich.

Her strategy works. Lorelei says, “I don't really know what's going on with me and Chris after yesterday.”

“Whatever, he's totally obsessed with you,” Zoe says. “And if he lets his
mom
boss him around— I mean, do you really want to be with a guy who's so whipped?”

“It's more complicated than that.” Lorelei tilts her head back and looks up at the powdery sky, thin clouds scattering light so that it's even and flat and surprisingly bright. “He doesn't want to hurt her. I get that, you know? Like, it's actually kind of—”

“If you say sweet, so
help
me, Lorelei, seriously? That's creepy. It's super not okay.”

“Ugh. I mean. I know. But it's also— They've both been through a lot. I think maybe they don't really know how to be good to each other anymore. In a less codependent way.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

Lorelei shakes her head. “He didn't call after I left, and I haven't seen him yet today.”

“Oh my god, you are
ridiculous.
You're actually pining over someone who hasn't even dumped you yet?”

“Yeah, exactly: yet.” Lorelei told Zoe the story about Lisa and the backseat of the Mercedes at some point. She doesn't need to repeat it. “Anyway, I'm just being realistic.”

“You're just being defeatist.” Zoe finishes her sandwich in one enormous bite. She takes her time chewing and swallowing, watching Lorelei contemplatively while she does. “Do you care about him?”

“Yeah,” Lorelei says. “Yeah, of course.”

“And he cares about you.”

“It's different. It's his
family.
”

“You could be his family,” Zoe says. “And, look, the point is: what's so wrong with getting what you want?”

That's exactly what's wrong,
Lorelei thinks. What she wants is too much of everything. Her father is her mother's curse. She is too.

She doesn't say that. Instead, she says, “I don't know. I'll think about it, I guess.”

“That's almost the spirit,” Zoe says.

Lorelei smiles at her. It's so nice having Zoe on her side. Zoe can believe in her enough for both of them. “I'm working on it,” she says.

“Good.”

She finds Chris after school, mostly just out of habit. He's managed to shake Jackson and Angela, so it's only the two of them. He says, “I'm sorry about all of that yesterday. With my mom and everything.”

“It's my fault,” Lorelei says. “You said we should leave, and I—”

“You didn't do anything wrong.”

Lorelei stifles a snort. People keep telling her that. “Anyway.”

“You know how she is about me,” Chris says. “And I—”

“Don't want to hurt her. I know.”

“I don't want to hurt you, either.” He turns to her and takes her hands into his. It's a simple gesture, almost casual. Lorelei remembers the first time he found her deliberately at school, how he walked her to class and his knuckles brushed the backs of her hands and wrists, and she felt that little touch light her up all over. His body was unfamiliar then, so much strange territory. He himself was a stranger.

He's restless too. He asks, “Can we— I don't know, you want to get out of here?”

“Sure.”

They drive aimlessly for a while. Lorelei suggests stopping for coffee, for sandwiches, and Chris says,
Yeah, maybe,
and doesn't slow down. She decides to leave it alone. They end up on the Pacific Coast Highway, crawling up the California coastline in a snarl of slow-moving traffic. Chris keeps one hand on the steering wheel and the other threaded tightly through one of Lorelei's. He hums along to the radio and doesn't say much of anything. When he glances over at her, his face is soft.

They make their way toward Malibu, where bougainvillea vines spill purple over the white walls of houses. The hills are wild with fall rain, and the ground is loose and heavy and wet. There are mudslides to the north of them, and blinking orange signs warning of road closures ahead.

When Chris pulls over into a parking lot, it isn't anywhere Lorelei recognizes. They're at the top of a high, rocky cliff, with wooden stairs winding to the shore below. He pulls a dusty blanket from his trunk and throws a spare jacket at Lorelei. The wind is bitterly cold, so biting that she almost wants to ask if they can just stay in the car. Instead, they sit on the hood together, wrap the blanket around their legs, and stare out toward the setting sun.

“What did she say to you?” Chris asks. “My mom.”

“She just said she didn't want us hanging out anymore.” That was part of it, anyway. “She talked about your dad a little, I guess. She said she missed him.”

“She talked about him with me too,” Chris says. “After she came home. She never does that. It was like you had knocked something loose in her. I thought maybe you'd be different.” He sighs, blows out a breath that gets lost in the wind.

You were singing,
Mrs. Paulson said.
When I came in.

All love spells are curses,
Petra told her last night. But it isn't just a love spell: it's something stranger and more powerful than that. Either way Chris seems fine, still, mostly.

But if she tries too hard to keep him, he won't be.

Chris's hand finds Lorelei's under the blanket. “I thought maybe I could find a way to make it different, with you.”

She means something different than he does when she says, “That's what I was hoping too.”

“Did anyone, you know, warn you?”

“Everyone. Or Nik, anyway, and then Jackson.”

“And you still stuck around.”

“Where else was I going to go?”

Chris shakes his head, his gaze still turned outward. “
I
should have warned you,” he says. And then: “She met my dad when she was in high school. That's one of the things she was talking about last night.”

“Huh.”

“They were together for almost thirty years before he died.”

“She doesn't— I mean, that's not what she's worried about, right? That I'm going to, like, steal you away and marry you? I was planning on at least getting my driver's license first.”

Chris laughs. For a moment it all seems possible again, but then his face darkens and closes, and his shoulders draw toward one another in a protective hunch. “She wants me to be happy,” he says. “She really does. I think she just knows that I have no idea how to take care of two people. How to have that much time, I guess. How to love you, and to love her, and not hurt either of you.”

Lorelei lets the weight of his words settle. “Do you love me?” she says, then, because she can't form the other sentence just yet.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at her, finally. Finally. His voice is thick, but he looks at her steady and certain: sure. “Yeah, I think I do.”

“I think I—” Lorelei says. “Okay. Yeah. Me too.”

“Me too?” He leans his forehead against hers. “That's all you've got?”