Ex-mas (6 page)

"And you are definitely no Zac Efron," Lila said, smirking as she tried to imagine Beau in
High School Musical.
Or even watching
High School
Musical.

He ignored her. "I think maybe we should cal the police, Lila. Do they put out Amber Alerts for missing kids even if you know it's not an abduction or whatever?"

Oh my God, police?
Lila thought she might have a heart attack. The police would want to talk to the boys' guardians, wouldn't they? That meant hunting down her parents at Aunt Lucy's house in Phoenix, and
that
meant total and utter disaster. Look what had happened when they'd found out about the party!

Lila couldn't imagine what they would do if they discovered Cooper had embarked on
interstate--and
possibly
international--
travel.

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"We can't cal the police," she said in a flat, no-arguments tone. She and Beau would simply have to find the boys themselves.

"We can't?" Beau threw a look at her. "Um, why is that?"

"Al you need to do here is drive fast, okay?" Lila rubbed at her arms. "We'l head them off at the next station. We'l get them back safe and sound, with absolutely no reason whatsoever to cal the police. Except maybe for when I kil Cooper with my bare hands."

Beau looked skeptical. "Isn't that what you're supposed to do when kids go missing?" he asked. "Cal the cops?"

"They're not missing!" Lila yelped. "We know exactly where they are!"
Still
he frowned in that way that signaled he didn't agree with her. "Listen, Beau,"

she said urgently. "What's the first thing the police are going to do? After they intercept the boys wherever?" She made an impatient noise when he didn't respond. "They'l tel our parents." She shuddered, and not for effect. "It wil be carnage. The total and utter end of me."

"I thought you said they're already pissed at you," Beau pointed out with a shrug, like the end of Lila was not something that overly concerned him. "Isn't that why you stomped al over Cooper's Santa fantasy in the first place?"

"Getting tattled on for al egedly,
maybe
throwing a party is one thing," Lila said darkly. "Getting cal ed by the police because 57

Cooper took off on a train to Seattle? They'l ground me for the next eighteen years. I'l never go to Stanford, and I wil never, ever be the proud owner of a convertible VW Beetle."

"A car?" Beau frowned deeper, his mouth curling derisively. "You're worried about getting a
car?"

"Easy for you to say, since you have one," Lila retorted. She wrinkled up her nose as she looked around at his version of a vehicle.
Sort of.

She blew out a frustrated sigh. "Listen, Beau, your mom has always been way more chil than mine. Remember when we snuck out to see that movie in eighth grade? I was grounded for two weeks and had to do
yard work.
Your mom just laughed." At the time, she'd thought that the punishment was worth getting to be out so late with Beau. Now she couldn't imagine pul ing a single weed just to spend a few minutes with him. "But do you real y want her to know that you lost Tyler and he's now on a
train?
To another state?"

"No," he said quietly after a moment, surprising her straight down to the soles of her boots. "I don't."

Something about the way he said it made her wonder if something else was going on. But maybe she was just imagining it. She shifted around so she

could look at him as the streets zipped by outside the window, one ranch-style split-level after another. The only thing that real y distinguished the houses were their varying front-yard holiday decorations. "I mean, it

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would be different if they were real y missing," she said. "But we know they're on that train. They're, like, contained."

This time when Beau looked over at her, his eyes were crinkled up a bit in the corners, like he wanted to smile but wasn't letting himself.

"You can stop the hard sel ," he said gently. "I'm not arguing about it. I'm driving."

"Okay, then," Lila said, feeling suddenly off-center. She looked away, at the red tail ights of the car ahead of them as they raced west. "So--drive faster!"

she ordered him, hunching down in her seat. "We have a train to catch."

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Chapter 7

***

LOS ANGELES

DECEMBER 22

4:01 P.M.

***

Santa Susana Mountains that loomed in the north. Or even the Simi Hil s to the south--she wasn't picky.

"What are you doing?" she asked when he zoomed past yet another entrance to the freeway. What was the matter with him? Didn't he know where he was going? Everybody knew the quickest way to Simi Val ey from their hometown in the San Fernando Val ey was the 118 Freeway that curved through

the mountains separating them.

Everybody but Beau, apparently.

"Um, I'm driving." Beau didn't spare Lila a glance. He just slouched there, one wrist fal ing over the top of the steering

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wheel and the other in his lap. So nonchalant, like he wasn't, in fact, racing a train across California.

"You just missed the freeway," she pointed out, trying to sound calm. "Twice."

"I didn't 'miss' the freeway." Now he looked at her, his dark eyebrows high, like she was the one acting crazy. She could see a gleam of that mocking blue, and it immediately made her shoulders tense up. "I don't like the freeways."

"You don't
like
them," Lila repeated, as if she couldn't understand the words without sounding them out. "Nobody
likes
the freeway, Beau. But it does happen to be the quickest route between point A and point B."

Beau snorted like that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard in his life. "Sure, if there's no traffic, the freeway is great. But when does that ever happen? It's always a parking lot."

"So we're going to miss this train because you have some philosophical objection to the
possibility
of traffic on the 118?" Lila asked. She shook her head, her knee jogging up and down in place. "That's a great plan. Real y."

"It's not a philosophical objection. It's a practical objection," Beau retorted. "Surface streets are faster."

"You live in a fantasy world," Lila replied. "Surface streets have stop signs, traffic lights, not to mention speed limits. Hel o."

"I had no idea you were this obsessed with the California

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freeway system," Beau said in a dismissive way that burrowed right up under her skin and made her itch--like he was his own personal brand of poison oak and she was particularly al ergic. He raked his thick, dark hair back from his face with his free hand.

Lila's jaw clenched and she ground her teeth together. Could Beau be any more condescending?

In a word: yes. He could, as she recal ed pretty clearly, set records for being the most condescending, patronizing jerk around. But there was no use in letting the situation go nuclear, as their fights had often gone back in the day. She could remember, in particular, how he'd reacted when he'd found out that she'd gotten together with Erik--the day after breaking up with him.

Congratulations, Lila,
he'd drawled, his eyes blazing at her, hotter than the sun above them in the courtyard at lunch.
You're apparently even more
vapid and pathetic than you sounded on Friday.

She'd tried to apologize to him--stil feeling badly, at that point, about hurting someone she'd cared about for so long--but he'd brushed her off.

Don't let me hold you back from your glorious destiny as Erik Hollander's latest groupie,
he'd said, his voice so sarcastic and cutting that al these years later, the memory of it made her cringe. Lila squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

62

She was stuck in this car with him, true, but that was a temporary thing. She hadn't somehow woken up to find herself back in time, trapped in her

going-nowhere relationship with a guy determined to be as miserable as humanly possible. She restrained a shudder at the very idea.

The silence dragged out between them as Beau's car raced through the late afternoon. The hil s loomed up on either side of them in the winding mountain pass, looking almost sinister against the golden sun in the western sky. Lila checked her watch: four ten. She tried to pretend that she was

somewhere else, somewhere Beau-less. Like, for example, driving up to her dorm at Stanford next fal in her shiny new convertible, having left her parents and Cooper and al their assorted expectations behind. She imagined the northern California wind gently tossing her dark, blown-out hair back and forth.

And then she pictured Erik running toward her across the bright green lawn of the quad, sweeping her up into his strong arms, twirling her around, and kissing her long and hard in front of the entire incoming freshman class.

She heard Beau sigh slightly, and then he clicked on the car stereo. It was worth significantly more than the car it sat in. He fiddled with the console, clicking over to his iPod connection.

Good.
Lila nodded to herself.
Music will make this all slide by like a dream

But the thought died away as absurd sounds fil ed the car,

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jaunty and bouncy, with a scratchy voice that drowned out everything. It sounded like the circus. Like a creepy, demented circus in a horror movie. Was that an
accordion?

"What is this?" she demanded. The weird music made her think of old men with thick accents, playing chess in the park in heavy sweaters no matter how hot it was.

"Beirut," Beau said defensively, glaring at the road.

"As in, the music of a foreign culture?"

"As in, that's the name of the band," he shot back. "Which I'm listening to because it's good. Something I realize you don't care about anymore."

"You listen to polka music now?" Lila demanded, scandalized. "Seriously?"

"I forgot to download my Lady Gaga col ection," Beau said snidely. "My bad."

"There's nothing wrong with Lady Gaga," Lila snapped at him. "At least she can carry a tune. Unlike
this
crap!" She waved her hand at the stereo. The music now included what sounded like a sitar.

"Fine," Beau said tightly. He punched at the console again, and something more folky--and more melodic, at least--fil ed the car. "This is Fleet Foxes.

They played on
Saturday Night Live
once, so hopeful y that won't be too esoteric or weird for you."

"Right," Lila said, not even bothering to rol her eyes. She

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channeled her annoyance through her voice. "Because if a band you like is even
known
by more than two people, they've sold out and are lame. I forgot."

"I don't like Top Forty music," Beau said, his voice clipped. "So sue me."

"You don't like it because it makes you feel superior not to," Lila countered. "Not because you actual y dislike the music. You've probably never listened to a Fergie song in your life."

"Do I real y have to listen to every overproduced piece-of-crap song to know they al suck?" Beau asked, and laughed disdainful y. "That they're an offense to anyone who's actual y interested in real music?"

"As defined by you, Beau Hodges," Lila pointed out. "You get to decide what's real and what's not. You think it makes you cool to hate on things that other people like."

Lila had no idea why she was acting like pop music was this important to her. It was something in the way Beau dismissed it, like it was
beneath
him--

while he was listening to glorified polka music. What gave him the right to decide what was good and what wasn't?

There was another silence between them, as the music soared, surprisingly crisp and beautiful, between them.

"What the hel happened to you?" Beau asked final y, as if the question were being torn from him. Lila had the feeling he would have given a lot not to ask it.

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"Britney Spears fried my brain," she replied dryly. "Is that what you want to hear?"

"I'm serious," Beau said, and for once he didn't sound like he was trying to trap her into saying something he could misconstrue. He sounded puzzled. "I mean, you used to love music. You used to live for it. Real music--and now you're mounting a defense of bubblegum pop? I don't get it."

"People change," Lila said. Because there was nothing else to say. How could she explain the choices she'd made? To him, of al people? It either made perfect sense why she'd had to do what she'd done, or it didn't, and no amount of explanation could bridge that gap. It had never made any sense to Beau. Because he was a guy, maybe, but also because he was Beau. And it wasn't about pop music. Obviously. It was about...having the kind of life that you could look back on and be proud of. That would make sense on yearbook pages ten years later. She had wanted her life to
matter.

"Tel me about it," Beau said with another snotty laugh. Because Beau thought even wanting that kind of thing was a sign of weakness. "I guess becoming Miss Popular, Queen of North Val ey High, means you have to give up everything you love. Sounds like a great bargain. Real y"

"You don't know what you're talking about." She eyed him, taking in the proud, defiant tilt of his chin and the way his dark hair fel so messily over his face and neck, then looked back

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at the road. The dark pavement stretched out before them, the mountains rising in the distance. The sun was lowering in the sky. "I didn't give up anything."

"Uh-huh." Beau was shaking his head again. "Look at yourself."

"So?" she demanded, opening her arms and looking down at herself, pleased with what she saw. Her silky, dark brown hair was pin-straight past her shoulders--she had her blowout down to a science. She knew her Dior mascara was perfect, because she'd slept on it before and it had stil maintained