Reckless Hearts (14 page)

A pulsing, pounding
techno beat.

A strobe light illuminates the heavens.

In short bursts of stop action caught in the strobe, a slick red-and-white racing cycle roars across the universe along a ribbon of starlight. It passes stars and planets, weaves through fields of asteroids. As it dodges and turns, it throws up sparks, leaving a trail of flames in its wake.

The motorcycle jumps over the moon. Landing hard on the trail of starlight, it wobbles but doesn't fall.

It roars on.

As it gets closer, we can see a stylized Harlow hunched over the handlebars. He wears aerodynamic shades and
his full leather gear. His hair is a mess of wavy blond spikes. Behind him, holding on for dear life, sits Electra. She smiles maniacally, with a bright joy that glows all over her body.

Harlow skids to a stop. He reaches into the breast pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out a silver flask inlaid with an image of a stalking tiger carved in ivory. Twisting the cap off, he takes a swig and hands it to Electra. She takes a swig of her own and hands it back to Harlow. He puts the flask back in his pocket and pulls Electra in for a kiss.

Stars explode around them.

Then he opens the throttle and the cycle races onward.

Harlow points to something up ahead. The sun. They're headed right for it. It looms larger and larger.

And suddenly, it's right in front of them, glowing orange, yellow, white hot. Harlow doesn't slow down. He digs in lower over his handlebars and guns it.

Electra, seeing what's about to happen, grapples with him, attempting to peel his hands off the bike, to save them both, but he's too strong, too determined. He shakes her off.

She goes flying, and as she floats away, spinning in the cold cold gravity-less void of space, he surges forward straight into the sun. Sparks and leaping flames and for a moment, he and the cycle can be seen burning up, a
singed black silhouette of what they once were.

Then Harlow is gone.

Electra lets loose a silent scream as she floats off into the black nothingness.

In the three
days since New Year's, Jake had hardly left the house. He'd hardly even left his room. Lurking around in the gloomy darkness, he picked at his guitar—his secondary guitar, a crappy old Crescent that fell out of tune every ten minutes—and brooded over all the ways his life had gone wrong since moving with his mother into this ridiculously opulent house.

There was Elena, first, of course, and the sad, swift deterioration of his relationship with her. It used to be that he could intuit what she was thinking just by glancing at her. Now it seemed like he barely knew her. She been so distant when he'd seen her at StarFish, like one of those kids at school who tolerates you but keeps
his in-jokes to himself, leaving you to wander away feeling less connected to him than you were when you first said hi. He hadn't heard from her since and he'd been so demoralized by the experience that he hadn't dared reach out to her himself. The whole thing had upset him so much that he couldn't even write a song about it. He just felt sad and confused.

That would have been bad enough, but there was also Nathaniel.

The thing that really got him, the thing that, if he was being honest, had been sticking in his gut and making him sick all week was the way Nathaniel had sneeringly talked about Elena during the argument they'd had on the beach. “Go find that hottie of yours with the cute little strawberry mark on her thigh.”

That's what he'd said. Jake would never forget it. And how did he know about Elena's strawberry mark? He'd never seen it. He'd never met Elena.

By the time Jake had worked himself up enough to consider confronting Nathaniel about it, the guy had left town, headed back up to the Roderick School with Cameron to pay them off and get himself reinstated. Cameron was back and he'd left Nathaniel up there, which was a relief, but even so, every time Jake ventured out of his room, it was like he could feel Nathaniel's presence, anyway. His oily sheen, like the trail of a slug, clung to every square inch of the house.

Better to keep himself locked in, out of sight, alone with his wounds and his pride.

But even here, the world came rushing in. He couldn't avoid checking the internet. Especially now that Elena had posted a new video. Electra and Harlow on a motorcycle, racing through the universe.

He'd watched it at least a hundred times, and each time just made his stomach knot tighter. It didn't even matter that the ending implied that there might be some trouble between the two of them. What mattered was the way it sparked and clarified so many associations that Jake had been sensing but not really understanding. A question had begun to form in his mind:

What if Harlow was really Nathaniel?

He watched the video again, now, with a notebook in front of him, pausing it every time he saw something new.

Harlow's spiky blond hair. Pause. He jotted down a note: “Blond Short and Wavy = Nathaniel.”

The flask. Pause. “Stalking Tiger = Nathaniel. Is this a coincidence? How many flasks can there be like that?”

Not many. And if there were more of them, how many of them would be owned by a blond guy who lived in Dream Point?

He stopped the video before it got to the part where Electra reaches out to futilely try and save Harlow. He didn't want to see her yearning for someone else. Instead,
he cued it up again and studied what he saw.

That crotch-rocket motorcycle. Pause. He'd never seen Nathaniel riding one of those. He wrote, “Cycle. Does Nathaniel have one? Where does he hide it?”

So, one point against, two points for.

He tapped the tip of his pen rapid-fire against the notebook page, trying to think of other relationships he may not have noticed before.

There was that ronin video Harlow had stolen from the Japanese site. Could that have been Nathaniel? Was he savvy enough with editing programs to strip out the sound track and replace it with a new one? Maybe, maybe not. If nothing else, it was proof that Harlow wasn't who he presented himself as being. Best to note it either way. Jake wrote in his notebook, “Ronin? False pretenses? Possible purposeful targeting of Elena? But . . . motive?”

Realizing that there was no way to connect the stolen clip to Nathaniel, Jake backed away from the thought. Too much speculation would lead him down a rabbit hole. But how else to untangle his gut feelings? He doodled in the margins of his notebook. A rabbit peering over a hole. A crappy version of Elena's stylized Harlow character. Then, annoyed both by his lack of drawing talent and the fact that this Harlow was staring up from his notebook, he scribbled it out.

Unless he had, which—yes. He had. He must have.

Jake was barely able to get the trash can out from
under the desk in time to catch the vomit burning up his throat. He pressed his forehead against the sharp edge of the desk and spit the residual bile out of his mouth.

Harlow. Nathaniel. They were the same person. He knew it. He just knew it. Even if he couldn't prove it.

His mind wandered back to various times Nathaniel had disappeared.

New Year's Eve. He'd run into Jake on the beach, that was true, but where had the guy been earlier in the evening? And was it possible that he had something to do with Elena's weird mood that night? Come to think of it, why would Elena have been at StarFish at all if she hadn't been dragged there by someone like Nathaniel?

And what about Christmas Eve? He knew Elena had seen Harlow—she'd told him about it. Was it possible that this was why Nathaniel was so late for their dinner at The Spanish Armada? Hell yeah, it was possible.

Jake grabbed his cell phone off the bed, where he'd thrown it. He couldn't help noticing that he had no new text messages. No word from Elena. Still. It had been three days now. His imagination flashed on what would happen when they returned to school on Monday. More awkwardness. More rejection. He couldn't bear to think about it.

Anyway, he wasn't about to call her now. He had work to do. He dialed Arnold Chan.

“Jake! Wow! I was just thinking about you,” Arnold
said, answering on the first ring.

“Oh? I was thinking about you, too, Arnold.”

“We should hang out. Do you like BioShock? I got the new BioShock for Christmas. You should come over. We can play it one-on-one.”

“I can't, Arnold. I'm really busy right now.”

“Writing new songs.” Arnold said this with a kind of dusting of pride.

“Yeah. Exactly,” Jake responded. “But, listen, have you made any headway on that thing we discussed? Any idea what the IP address is or where it's located?”

“The dog,” Arnold said darkly. “We will hunt him down. We will put an end to his dastardly adventures.”

Jake didn't have the energy for Arnold's autistic melodrama right then. “Yeah,” he said. “But have you learned anything yet?”

For a long minute, Jake heard nothing but silence.

“I've learned a lot of things,” Arnold finally said.

“Like what?”

“It's classified right now.”

Jake had had enough. “Arnold. You haven't learned anything, have you? Do you even know how to do this? Be honest with me. I know you don't want to let me down, but I really need this information.”

Again, silence on Arnold's end of the line.

“I know how to do it,” Arnold said. “You'll see. I'll be your hero. I'll have what you need in thirty-seven and
one-quarter hours. I promise.”

“I'm counting on you,” Jake said, almost pleading, realizing as he said it that he was at Arnold's mercy.

“I'm counting on me, too,” Arnold said.

Jake cringed.

But despite Arnold's oddly precise calculation, Jake reflexively glanced at the time as he hung up. Thirty-seven and one-quarter hours would be eight a.m. on Monday. Homeroom. The first day back from winter break.

Through the window,
Elena listened as the cab slowed to a stop in front of her house. She watched as the door opened and Nina placed one leg then the other on the sturdy pavement of the street, taking care to ensure that her feet were well planted.

As the driver hefted Nina's small pink roller bag out of the trunk, Nina braced herself on the open door and pulled herself slowly out of the cavern of the backseat. Elena watched her totter up the driveway, dragging her tiny suitcase behind her. The rhinestones spelling out
Juicy
on her sweatpants sparkled in the sun. Her hair hung limp and distressed across her face, but as she got incrementally closer, Elena could see that her face was
flushed and puffy, her cheeks streaked black. She'd been crying.

Matty. Damn him.

It must have been bad for Nina to pull herself out of her state of inertia and make the trip home like this. Elena jumped up from the couch, where, with Nina gone for the past ten days, she'd been able to nestle as she sketched out storyboards and experimented with the filters in Final Cut Pro, and prepared herself to be outraged on Nina's behalf.

She threw the door open before Nina had made it halfway up the drive, and, standing on the mosaic portico, hands on hips, she called out to her sister. “What happened? Are you okay?” she asked.

The wounded look reaching out to her from Nina's face broke her heart. She felt her sister's pain like it was her own. And then she felt a vengeful, defensive rage bubble up in her.

“What did he do, Nina?” Elena asked. “Did he hit you? Did he hurt the baby? I'll kill him.”

Propping her roller bag back on its wheels, Nina let loose a massive chest-heaving sigh. She looked like she was going to crumple to the pavement, but instead she sat on the top of the bag. And she sobbed.

Elena felt a tug in her chest, an acute ache for her sister's well-being. She ran to Nina. Wrapping her arms around her, she squeezed with all her might.

Pulling herself together, Nina asked, “Is Dad home?”

“He's in the Slats. Colleen called in sick again.”

Nina nodded. “Good,” she said.

Elena refused to let her go. If only she could hug the pain right out of her. “You gonna tell me what happened?”

“He didn't hit me.”

“Well, he must have done something.”

“Sabrina Perez. That's what he ‘did.'”

“Sabrina Perez?”

“Yeah. That skanky
puta
who hangs out at Cubano Cantina with him and all his jackass
hermanos
.” Nina revved herself up to blow her anger and pain into a hot balloon of words. There was the Nina Elena knew. “He wasn't even sorry. He doesn't give a shit. He brought her back to the apartment, and they did the gooney while I was sleeping in the other room! And Sabrina fucking Perez. She was, like, screaming like a dying cat, like Matty—limp-dick, coked-to-the-gills Matty—was the best fuck she'd ever had. Or, really, like she knew if she howled long enough she'd wake me up. She's always wanted him. And she's always hated me because I knew how to treat him. But, ut-uh.” She wagged her finger in front of Elena's nose. “Nut-ut-uh! That's all over. She can have him. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘What do you expect? It's not like I can get any from you.'”

“God. That's horrible,” Elena said.

But Nina wasn't done.

“Then later, when the skank slinks her way out of there, he's begging me to stay. He's all, ‘Nina! Nina! I can't live without you!' Fuck him. My baby deserves better than him. I'm moving back in here with you.”

Elena's heart froze for a second. She could just imagine the storm that would erupt if her father got home to see she'd let Nina back in. He'd never understand. When he made a decision, he bullheadedly stuck to it regardless of how wrong it turned out to be. If Elena let Nina back in today, it would be just like that time last year when Matty had stolen two hundred dollars from the cigar box her dad kept hidden in his closet. He might just kick both of them out.

“Nina,” she pleaded, hedging.

She stepped back to take in the whole of her sister, holding her hand to let her know that she wasn't turning her back on her.

Even so, Nina could see what was coming. “Oh, not you, too,” she snapped. “Who's on my side? Where's the person in this whole world who's on my side?”

“I'm on your side. It's just . . . Dad would kill me. He'd kill both of us.”

Nina burst into tears again. She hugged her chest like she was showing Elena how hard it was to comfort herself now that she'd let her down. A burbling, bubbling
mess of tears. The longer she cried, the more helpless Elena felt.

“Let me talk to him at least. Before you move in. If you can just hold off for a day or two, Nina—”

“And go where? I have no place else to go!”

“Can you go back to the apartment?”

“Matty's there!”

“Well, kick him out. You want me to come with you? I'd kill to tell him off.”

Nina looked around helplessly. “My cab's already gone.”

“We'll call another one. It's not like they're in demand at four o'clock on a Saturday.”

Nina reached out and held Elena's hand. “Please,” she said, the tears teetering on her eyelids.

“One day. And I'll talk to Dad for you. I promise.”

Relenting, Nina reluctantly nodded. “Okay,” she said, sighing.

Elena placed her hand tenderly on Nina's shoulder. “Do you want me to come with you? To deal with Matty?”

Nina shook her head no.

“Okay. You wait here and I'll get you a glass of water. I'll call that cab, too.”

As soon as she was back inside, Elena squeezed the bridge of her nose, leaned back against the closed door,
and tried to slow her racing mind.

What an impossible situation.

It would take a whole lot of begging to get her dad to change his mind. His pride would have to be massaged. His deeply submerged sense of compassion would have to be slowly coaxed to the surface. She wasn't sure she could succeed if she tried. And Nina, she was all emotion and impulsive action. Without Elena's intervention, they'd barrel into each other like two semis going full speed. And
with
her intervention, she might just get smashed between them.

Mostly, she was afraid that if she tried to intervene, she'd make everything worse. She had a temper, too, and right now it was flaring. It was ironic. If she was going to successfully support Nina, she'd need someone to support
her
.

Whipping her phone out of the back pocket of her black jean shorts, she dialed Harlow. As the phone rang three, four times, she found herself begging him to pick up. He was supposed to be her conquering hero, but she hadn't heard a word from him since New Year's Eve. The phone kept ringing, five, six times, and then it went to voice mail with an automated message: “The caller you are trying to reach is unavailable at this time.”

Where could he be?
she wondered. Was he really in danger, or had he just flaked? She didn't want to believe that he was the kind of guy to vanish as soon as he'd
notched her name on his belt, but part of her worried that maybe he was.

She hung up without leaving a message.

So, what now?

She did the only thing she knew how to do, the thing she'd been doing for as long as she could remember when she felt overwhelmed. She texted her best friend.

“CAN WE TALK?”

It didn't take Jake ten seconds to respond.

“OF COURSE. WHEN?”

“NOW.”

As soon as she hit send, she regretted leaning on him like this in her moment of need. It wasn't fair to him. Not when things were such a mess between them. She'd have to be careful, kind, mature. Was she up for it? She hoped so. She needed him. She suspected she always would.