One of Us Is Next (10 page)

Owen starts talking a mile a minute, but I’m not really paying attention because I’m still thinking about the relieved look on his face when he put the money away. My mom was an insurance adjuster on Mr. Lawton’s worker’s comp settlement after he died. I remember her telling my dad, when she didn’t know I was listening, that she thought the company’s payout for the accident was a lot less than it should have been.
I don’t think Melissa Lawton realizes how quickly that money will go when nothing’s coming in,
she’d said.

When Owen finally turns away from the counter, he has a big smile on his face.
He needed that,
I think. Some kind of dad figure, or a big brother, maybe. I get it. I know what it’s like to grow up surrounded by older sisters who might be great but can’t tell you how you’re supposed to function as a guy in the twenty-first century. When Owen passes by our table I find myself saying, “Hey, do you like
Bounty Wars
?”

Owen pauses and gestures to his T-shirt with his free hand. “Um,
yeah.
”

“Me too. I’m Knox, by the way. I go to school with Phoebe.” Maeve nods and smiles, like she’s confirming my trustworthiness. “Who’s your avatar?” I ask.

Owen looks a little cautious, but answers me readily enough. “Dax Reaper.”

“Mine too. What level are you on?”

“Fifteen.”

“Damn, really? I can’t get past twelve.”

Owen’s entire face lights up. “It’s all about weapon choice,” he says earnestly, and then bam, he’s off. The two of us talk
Bounty Wars
strategy until I notice the bag he’s holding is starting to soak through with grease from whatever’s inside. “You should probably get that home, huh?” I say. “People must be waiting for dinner.”

“I guess.” Owen shifts from one foot to the other. “Are you and Phoebe friends?”

Good question. Not exactly, although now that Phoebe is spending more time with Maeve at school she is also, by default, spending more time with me. In the snake pit that Bayview High has turned into lately, that’s probably close enough. “Yeah, sure.”

“You should come over and play
Bounty Wars
with us sometime. I’ll tell Phoebe to invite you. See ya.” Owen waves as he turns away. Maeve, who’d been scrolling through her phone the whole time, nudges my knee with hers.

“That was really nice,” she says.

“Stop calling me that,” I grumble, and she smiles.

A tall kid with shaggy brown hair comes through the door, holding it open for Owen to slip out under his arm. He scans the room, his eyes flicking past me and Maeve without much interest and pausing on a waitress arranging condiment baskets in the back. He looks like he’s only a year or two older than I am, but there’s something a little too intense about his gaze. Mr. Santos, counting receipts at the register, glances up and seems to notice it too. “Good evening,” he calls.

The guy crosses half the dining room with his eyes still on the waitress’s back. She turns, displaying a middle-aged face that doesn’t match her bouncy ponytail. Intense Guy shifts his attention to Mr. Santos. “Yo, Phoebe here?” His voice is too loud for the small space.

Mr. Santos leans on the counter, arms folded. “I can help you with whatever you need, son,” he says. No
mijo
for this kid.

“I’m looking for Phoebe. She works here, right?” Mr. Santos doesn’t answer right away, and the guy’s jaw gets tense. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his green hunting jacket. “You understand English or what, señor?” he asks in a mocking Spanish accent.

Maeve sucks in a sharp breath between her teeth, but Mr. Santos’s pleasant expression doesn’t change. “I understand you perfectly.”

“Then answer my question,” the kid says.

“If you have a food order, I am happy to take it,” Mr. Santos says in the same even tone.

“Look, old man—” The kid strides forward, then stops short when Luis and Manny emerge from the kitchen one after the other. Luis pulls a towel from his shoulder and snaps it hard between his hands, making every muscle in his arms stand out. It’s probably the wrong time to wish I had another guy’s moves, but damn, Luis is smooth. Somehow, he manages to come across like Captain America while wearing a grease-spattered T-shirt and a bandana.

Maeve notices, too. She’s practically fanning herself across the table.

Manny’s not as athletic as his brother, but he’s big and burly and plenty intimidating when he crosses his arms and scowls. Like he’s doing now. “They need you in the kitchen, Pa,” he says, his eyes locked on Intense Guy. “We’ll take over out here for a while.”

Intense Guy might be an ass, but he’s not stupid. He turns right around and leaves.

Maeve’s eyes linger on the counter until Luis goes back into the kitchen, and then she turns toward me. “What the hell was that about?” she says. Her phone vibrates again, and she makes a frustrated sound in her throat. “God, Bronwyn, give it a rest. I don’t care about set design nearly as much as you think I do.” She picks up her phone and angles it so she can see the screen clearly, then pales. “Oh no.”

“What?” I ask.

She holds her phone toward me, amber eyes wide.
Maeve Rojas, you’re up next! Text back your choice: Should I reveal a Truth, or will you take a Dare?

Maeve

Tuesday, March 3

If I text you a Truth or Dare prompt, you have 24 hours to make a choice.

I’m at Café Contigo with a full cup of coffee that’s gone ice cold because I keep rereading the About That post with the Truth or Dare rules. It’s three fifteen on Tuesday, which means I have a little less than three hours before the “deadline.” Not that I care. I’m not doing it, obviously. I was in the middle of the whole Simon mess, and I refuse to take part in anything that makes light of what happened. It was a tragedy, not a joke, and it’s sick that someone is trying to spin it into a fun game. I won’t be Unknown’s pawn, and they can do whatever they want in return because I don’t have anything to hide.

Plus, in the grand scheme of things: who cares about Unknown.

I toggle away from About That to Key Contacts in my list of phone numbers. There are five: my parents, Bronwyn, Knox, and my oncologist. I press my fingertips against the large purple bruise on my forearm and can almost hear Dr. Gutierrez’s voice:
Early treatment is absolutely critical. It’s why you’re still here.

I dial his number before I can think too much about it. A woman picks up almost instantly. “Ramon Gutierrez’s office.”

“Hi. I have a question about, um, diagnostics.”

“Are you a patient of Dr. Gutierrez?”

“Yes. I was wondering if…” I scrunch down in my seat and lower my voice. “Theoretically, if I wanted to get some tests run to…sort of check my remission status, is that the kind of thing that I could do without my parents being involved? If I’m not eighteen.”

There’s a moment of silence on the other end. “Could you tell me your name and your date of birth, please?”

I grip the phone more tightly in my suddenly sweaty palm. “Can you answer my question first?”

“Parental consent is required for treatment of minors, but if you could—”

I hang up. That’s what I figured. I turn my arm so I can’t see the bruise anymore. Last night I found one on my upper thigh, too. Just looking at them fills me with dread.

A shadow falls across my table, and I look up to see Luis standing there. “I’m staging an intervention,” he says.

I blink, confused. Luis is entirely out of context in my mental space right now, and I have to forcibly shove away thoughts of cancer wards and anonymous texting before I can focus on him. Even then, I’m not sure I heard right. “What?”

“Remember that outdoors you don’t believe in? I’m going to prove you wrong. Let’s go.” He gestures toward the door, then folds his arms. After the scene with Mr. Santos and the rude kid yesterday, I kind of can’t stop looking at them. Maybe Luis could do that towel snap another two or three or twenty times.

He waits for a response, then sighs. “Conversations usually involve more than one person, Maeve.”

I manage to unfreeze my tongue. “Go where?”

“Outside,” Luis says patiently. As though he’s speaking to a small and not particularly smart child.

“Don’t you have to work?”

“Not till five.”

My phone sits on the table in front of me, mocking me with its silence. Maybe if I call again, I’ll get a different person and a different answer. “I don’t know…”

“Come on. What do you have to lose?”

Luis gives one of his megawatt smiles, and what do you know, I’m on my feet. Like I said: I have no defense against his particular demographic. “What did you have in mind, in this alleged outdoors?”

“I’ll show you,” Luis says, holding open the door. I look left and right when we hit the sidewalk, wondering which way we’re going to walk, but Luis pauses at a parking meter and starts unchaining a bicycle leaning against it.

“Um. Is that yours?” I ask.

“No. I pick locks on random bikes for fun,” Luis says, detaching the chain and looping it beneath the bike’s seat. He flashes me a grin when he’s finished. “Of course it’s mine. We’re about a mile from where I want to take you.”

“Okay, but—” I gesture at the empty space around us. “I don’t have a bike. I drove here.”

“You can ride with me.” He straddles the bike so he’s standing in front of the seat, hands on the outer edge of the bars to hold the frame steady. “Hop on.”

“Hop—where?” He just looks at me, expectant. “You mean the
handlebars
?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you do that when you were a kid?” Luis asks. Like he’s not talking to somebody who spent most of their childhood in and out of hospitals. It’s sort of refreshing, especially now, but the fact remains that I don’t even know how to ride a bike the normal way.

“We’re not kids,” I hedge. “I won’t fit.”

“Sure you will. I do this all the time with my brothers, and they’re bigger than you are.”

“With Manny?” I ask, unable to keep a straight face at the mental image.

Luis laughs, too. “I meant the younger ones, but sure. I could haul Manny’s ass if I had to.” I keep hesitating, unable to picture how any of this is supposed to work, and his confident smile fades a little. “Or we could just walk somewhere.”

“No, this is great,” I say, because Luis with a disappointed face is just too weird. People who never get told no are
so bad
at hearing it. Anyway, how hard can it be, right? The saying
It’s as easy as riding a bike
must exist for a reason. “I’ll just…hop on.” I gaze uneasily at the handlebars, which don’t strike me as having any seatlike properties, and decide there’s no way I can bluff my way through this. “How do I do that, exactly?”

Luis slips into coaching mode without missing a beat. “Face away from me and step over the front wheel, with one leg on either side,” he instructs. It’s a little awkward, but I do it. “Put your hands behind you and grab hold of the handlebars. Brace yourself, like this.” His hands, warm and rough, close briefly over mine. “Now push down to lift yourself up and—yeah!” He laughs, startled, when I rise in one fluid motion to perch on the handlebars. Even I’m not sure how I did that. “You got it. Pro skills.”

It’s not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done, and it feels more than a little precarious. Especially when Luis starts pedaling. “Oh my God, we’re going to die,” I gasp involuntarily, squeezing my eyes shut. But then Luis’s chin is on my shoulder as a cool breeze hits my face and honestly, there are much worse ways to go.

He’s a fast and assured cyclist, navigating a nonstop route to the bike path behind Bayview Center. The path is wide and almost empty, but every once in a while a speck appears ahead of us and then, before I know it, Luis has passed whoever it is. When he finally slows and says “Hang on tight, we’re about to stop,” I see a wrought-iron gate and a wooden sign beside it that reads
BAYVIEW ARBORETUM
.

My descent is a lot less graceful, but Luis doesn’t seem to notice as he chains the bike to a post. “This okay?” he asks, pulling a water bottle from the bike’s holder and drinking half of it in a few gulps. “I thought we could walk around for a while.”

“It’s perfect. I don’t come here often enough.”

We start down a smooth gravel path lined with cherry blossom trees that are just starting to bloom. “I love it here,” Luis says, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun. “It’s so peaceful. I come here whenever I need to think.”

I sneak a glance at him, all bronzed skin and broad shoulders and that quick, easy smile. I never imagined that Luis was the sort of person who would go somewhere because he wanted a quiet place to think. “What do you think about?”

“Oh, you know,” Luis says seriously. “Deep, profound things about humanity and the state of the universe. I have those kind of thoughts all the time.” I tilt my head at him, eyebrows raised in a
go on
gesture, and he meets my eyes with a grin. “I’m not having any right now, though. Give me a minute.”

I smile back. It’s impossible not to. “How about when you’re not pondering existential crises? What sort of ordinary things do you worry about?”

“Staying on top of everything,” he says instantly. “Like, I have a full load of classes this semester plus extra practicum because I’m trying to graduate early. I work twenty to thirty hours a week at Contigo, depending on how much my parents need me. And I still play baseball every once in a while. Just pickup games with guys from school, nothing like the schedule I was on when I played at Bayview with Cooper, but we’re trying to get a league together. Oh, and I help out with my brothers’ Little League team sometimes. It’s all good, but it’s a lot. Sometimes I forget where I’m supposed to be, you know?”

I don’t know. When Luis was at Bayview, I thought all he did was play sports and go to parties. “I had no idea how much you have going on,” I say.

He glances toward me as we approach a rose garden. It’s early in the season and most buds are just starting to open, but a few show-offs are in full bloom. “Is that a polite way of saying you thought I was a dumb jock?”

“Of course not!” I stare at the roses so I don’t have to meet his eyes, because I totally did. I always thought Luis was a nice enough guy by Bayview athlete standards—especially when he stood by Cooper when the rest of Cooper’s friends turned on him their senior year—but not much else.

Except gorgeous, obviously. He’s always been that. Now he’s tossing out all these hidden depths and making himself even more appealing, which is frankly a little unfair. It’s not like my crush needs more encouragement. “I just didn’t realize you had your life figured out already,” I tell him. “I’m impressed.”

“I don’t, really. I just do stuff I like and see how it goes.”

“You make it sound so easy.” I can’t keep the wistful tone out of my voice.

“What about you?” Luis asks. “What do you spend your time thinking about?”

Lately? You.
“The philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization. Obviously.”

“Obviously. That goes without saying. What else?”

Dying.
I catch myself before it slips out. Try to keep the conversation a little less morbid, Maeve.
Whether something horrifying is going to be texted to hundreds of my classmates in, oh, about two point five hours.
God. It hits me, all of a sudden, that Luis has been nothing but straightforward with me, and I can’t manage to tell him a single true thing. I’m too wrapped up in self-doubt and secrets.

“It’s not a trick question,” Luis says, and I realize that I’ve been silent all the way through the rose garden. We’re in a mini-meadow of wildflowers—all bright colors and tangled greens—and I still haven’t told him what I spend my time thinking about. “You can say anything. Music, cat memes, Harry Potter, empanadas.” He shoots me a grin. “Me.”

My stomach does a flip that I try to ignore. “You caught me. I was just wondering how many flowers it would take to spell your name out in rose petals across the lawn.”

“Fifteen,” Luis says instantly, then gives me a look of wide-eyed innocence when I snort. “What? It’s a very common occurrence. The gardeners won’t even let me come here during peak season.”

My lips twitch. “Tienes el ego por las nubes, Luis,” I say, and he smiles.

His hand brushes against mine, so quickly that I can’t tell if it’s on purpose or by accident. Then he says, “You know, I almost asked you out last year.” My entire body goes hot, and I’m positive I heard him wrong until he adds, “Coop didn’t want me to, though.”

My pulse starts fluttering wildly. “Cooper?” I blurt out. What the hell? My love life, or lack thereof, is none of Cooper’s damn business. “Why?”

Luis laughs a little. “He was being protective. Not a fan of my track record with girls when we were in school. And he didn’t think I was serious about making a change.” We’re halfway past the wildflowers, and Luis glances at me sideways. “I was, though.”

My breathing gets shallow. What does that mean? I could ask, I guess. It’s a perfectly valid question, especially since he’s the one who brought it up. Or I could say what’s running through my head right now, which is
I wish you’d followed through. Want to try again?
Instead, I find myself forcing out a laugh and saying, “Oh well, you know Cooper. He always has to be everyone’s dad, doesn’t he? Father knows best.”

Luis shoves his hands into his pockets. “Yeah,” he says, his voice low and threaded with what almost sounds like disappointment. “I guess he does.”

Bronwyn used to tell me, when we were younger, that I had crushes on unattainable boys because they were safe. “You like the dream, not the reality,” she’d say. “So you can keep your distance.” And I’d roll my eyes at her, because it’s not like she’d ever had a boyfriend back then either. But maybe she had a point, because all I can bring myself to say is, “Well, thanks for the intervention. You were right. I needed it.”

“Any time,” Luis says, sounding like his usual carefree self. It hits me with dull certainty that if there was any chance for something to happen between us, I just let it pass.

After dinner, I’m restless and anxious. There are now three items on my list of Things I Can’t Stand to Think About: nosebleeds and bruises, the Truth or Dare prompt that’s hitting its deadline in fifteen minutes, and the fact that I’m an utter emotional coward. If I don’t do something that at least
feels
productive, I’m going to crawl right out of my skin. So I take out my laptop and perch on my window seat, then plug my earbuds into my phone and call Knox.

“Is there a reason you’re using voice technology?” he asks by way of greeting. “This is such a disconcerting mode of communication. It’s weird trying to keep a conversation rolling without nonverbal cues or spell check.”

“Nice speaking with you too, Knox,” I say drily. “Sorry, but I’m on my laptop and I need my hands free. You can let the conversation lapse at any point.” I type a bunch of search terms into Google and add, “Have you ever wondered how somebody can block their number from showing up in a text?”

“Is that a rhetorical question or are you going to tell me?”

“I’m looking it up right now.” I wait a few beats until my screen fills. “There are three ways, according to wikiHow.”

“Are you sure wikiHow is the authority on this subject?”

“It’s a starting point.” I clear my throat. To be honest, it’s embarrassing to remember how eighteen months ago, I was hacking into Simon’s About That control panel to grab evidence the police had missed, and now? I’m Googling wikiHow entries. I wish I understood mobile technology half as well as computer and network systems. “So, this says you can use a messaging website, an app, or an email address.”