Reckless Hearts (20 page)

On the roof
level of the visitor's lot at Sloan-Whitney Hospital, the black checkerboard Mini gleamed in the sun like someone had mounted it there in preparation for an ad. From a distance, it looked brand-new.

Squeezing Jake's hand, Elena said, “There it is.” She smiled at him, shyly.

“Cameron had it brought up here, for when you recovered,” said Jake's mother. She reached up and massaged his neck. “Like we knew you would,” she added.

They'd all come to help him check out of the hospital—Elena, Jake's mom, Cameron.

The expression on Jake's face said it all. Wonderment. A wistful thankfulness at being alive. The world
was a beautiful place and he was glad he was still in it. Even Cameron seemed more benign than before—Jake had watched how attentive and caring he'd been toward his mother over the past few days, canceling everything on his schedule in order to be there in the hospital with them, and he was thankful for this. He wasn't Dad—he could never replace Dad—but the man had a good heart.

Jake still couldn't speak above a whisper, but as they approached the car, he pushed out a hoarse thanks and said, “I'm surprised it survived.”

Cameron ran a hand through his mane and winked at Jake. “Nothing but a tiny ding on the front fender,” he said. “We had it taken care of. Look.” He knelt next to the driver's-side wheel and ran his hand over the repaired fender. “Good as new.”

Jake shook his head in wonder at his good fortune.

“You'd barely gotten out of your parking spot,” Elena said. Since he'd been awake, she'd begun to explain things to him, filling in the gaps in his memory. “And the cars were backed up like they always are after school.”

Jake squinted and smiled through his headache at her. The way she'd begun to intercede between him and the world, running interference, trying to cushion him from too much stimulation, was cute, endearing. What he couldn't understand was why, when he tried to reach out to her in moments like this, she flinched.

Like now: instead of meeting his eyes and making
one of her funny faces, she turned her head away, looked at the ground, and slid on her sunglasses.

“Relieved?” Cameron asked Jake, patting the car like it was a new pet.

“Yeah. But, uh, Dr. Lawrence said I can't drive until he clears me.”

Cameron pressed the button on the key that unlocked the doors. “I'm driving today.”

“Can we all even fit in there?” Elena said, peering in the window at the sliver of space that made up the backseat.

“I'm parked downstairs,” Jake's mom said. “Cameron's going to drive Jake, and you and I will follow in the Lexus. We'll meet at the house, where there's muffins and pastries waiting for us courtesy of Tiki Tiki Java.”

Jake frowned. “What about if Elena drove the Mini and Cameron rode with you, Mom?”

His mother and Cameron glanced at each other, sending messages back and forth for a moment.

“Sure,” his mom said finally. She ruffled his hair like he was a child and then turned her attention to Elena. “Take care of this boy. He's fragile right now.”

“I know,” Elena said. “You can count on me. I'll protect him with my life.”

Cameron lobbed the keys to her like he was shooting a basketball and then he and Jake's mom wandered arm in arm back toward the ramp leading down to the
interior floors of the parking garage.

Settled in the passenger seat of the Mini, Jake watched as Elena adjusted the seat until it was pulled forward as far as it could go. She seemed uncomfortable, jittery. She kept glancing around like she was looking for an escape hatch. Maybe it was because she hated driving. Or maybe it was because of what had happened last time he'd been in the car.

“You'll do fine,” Jake said. “This car is amazing. It almost drives itself.”

He explained the various controls, the turn signal, the buttons that controlled the windows, the AC, and through it all, she couldn't even look in his direction. Every time she tried, her eyes gravitated to the passenger-seat floor. Maybe she was just spooked. Jake tried to ignore it. If he showed her he was strong, maybe his bravery would rub off on her.

“You ready?” Jake whispered. “Just turn the key.”

She did as he said, her hand quivering, and navigated them down the looping pathway out of the garage. She stopped at the sign and then turned out onto Marine Drive.

“You okay?” asked Jake. “I've never seen you so quiet.”

“Yeah, I'm . . . I'm fine.” He could tell she was lying, but he didn't push it. His head still throbbed, deep under the surface. He could almost ignore it as long as he didn't try to think too hard. Sadly, talking her through whatever
it was she was feeling was too much for him right now.

She turned onto Pleasant, heading toward Magnolia. Her hands were shaking and he could tell she was squeezing the steering wheel as tightly as she could to control them.

He had to do something to let her know he cared. “You don't seem fine,” he said.

She stared straight ahead silently. Then she pounded the palm of her hand on the steering wheel.

“It's not fair,” she said.

“What's not fair?” Jake asked.

She wouldn't look at him. With her sunglasses on, he couldn't gauge what was going on behind her eyes. “Nothing,” she said. “It's my own fucking fault. I don't have a right to whine about it.”

Now he really didn't know what she was talking about. Something having to do with Harlow? Some secret betrayal that she'd perpetrated while he was lying unconscious in his hospital bed? No. He told himself not to let his imagination run wild. He trusted her. He had no reason not to trust her. But then, what?

When he tried to comfort her with a hand on her knee, he could feel her muscles tense and recoil at his touch. He could feel himself beginning to become alarmed. His headache flashed like lightning across his forehead.

“Elena,” he said. “Will you talk to me? Today's
supposed to be a good day. I survived. I'm going home. Just tell me what's wrong,”

They were stopped at a light. She whipped off her sunglasses and he could finally see her eyes—intense, defensive, clouded with self-loathing. “You really want to know?”

The words shot violently out of her mouth and he winced like she'd just slapped him.

“It was me,” she said. “I put those bees in your car. I didn't
know
it was your car at the time, but that's no excuse. I still did it. That asshole Harlow convinced me that I had to protect him from some bullshit drug dealers who wanted him dead. It was stupid. But I believed him. And . . .” She'd run out of things to say. Well, except for one. “And I almost killed you.”

And then she just stared at him like she was engulfed in some fire of her own making, like she was waiting for him to shove her into the street, to take the wheel and run her over.

For an instant, he felt the blood surging through his veins, pumping with great pressure against his brain, and he almost thought he might be capable of this violence.

But no. He wouldn't do that. Elena was as much of a victim as he was. No matter what she had done to inadvertently hurt him, he could never bring himself to cause her pain. Nathaniel, he was the one who deserved to be
punished. Visions of the guy on his knees, begging for mercy, flashed through Jake's head. They embarrassed him. He didn't want to become the kind of person who took pleasure, like Nathaniel did, in others' pain. He just wanted to make sure Nathaniel could never hurt him or Elena again.

He calmly stared at her. It was time to contact Arnold.

The car behind them honked and Elena realized the light had changed. She hit the gas a touch too hard and they jolted through the intersection.

Jake just went on staring.

“Say something, Jake. Tell me you hate me.”

“You mean Nathaniel,” he said. “Not Harlow. Nathaniel.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Nathaniel. And you kept telling me that Harlow wasn't who he claimed to be and I didn't listen and then it turned out to be
him
and—wait, you knew it was Nathaniel? Why didn't you tell me?”

“I was going to. That day. Remember I said I had something to tell you? Arnold Chan and I put together some research. IP addresses. Screenshots and stuff.”

He reached out and touched her knee. This time her muscles relaxed under his hand.

“It's okay,” he said. “Elena, it's okay. I'm not mad at you.”

“Well, we should do something,” she blustered. “We should punish Nathaniel. We should—”

“No,” said Jake. “No. Forget Nathaniel. He's not worth the effort.”

“But—”

“Think about it. Here I am. Here you are. We're both still alive. And he did us a favor in a way. He brought us together. We should thank him for being such a douche bag, really.”

Elena threw him a skeptical glance.

Chuckling, Jake said, “And also, Cameron told me this morning that he's transferred Nathaniel's trust fund into my name. Let him stew on that.”

As they continued down the length of Magnolia Boulevard, Jake thought about the justice of the situation. The sun was shining. The palms were rustling in the breeze. Elena was here by his side. Nathaniel had lost everything, despite his tricks and mind games. Maybe it really was a beautiful day.

“What if he tries to come after you again?” she asked.

Jake tipped his head mischievously. “He won't.”

“You can't be sure of that.”

“Oh, but I am. You're just going to have to trust me on that.”

It was time. Jake slipped his phone out of his pocket and pulled up Arnold's contact information. He typed a quick text:
“READY, SET, GO!”

They continued on down Magnolia until they came to the intersection of Shore Drive. Elena hit the left turn
blinker and waited for the green light.

The light didn't turn.

After a minute, the red warning hand was blinking in a weird way. Then the white walking figure flickered on, flickered off, and flickered on again.

“Something weird's happening,” Elena said.

“Is it?” Jake said, trying to keep his poker face.

She peered at the stoplight. Now it had gone from red to yellow.

“Definitely,” she said. “You seeing these lights?”

It wasn't just the stoplights. The lights in the stores up and down the street were flickering weirdly, too.

“Wait for it,” Jake said. He counted out one, two, three with his fingers.

And all the lights went out at once.

“You know something about this?” she asked him.

“I wouldn't say that,” he told her. “But if I had to guess, I'd say it looks like Nathaniel broke into the Dream Point power grid and sabotaged the computer system that controls the electricity. You know, hacking into a government agency is a federal crime. Two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar fine. Mandatory five years in jail.”

Finally, he allowed himself to laugh.

Elena stared at him for a second, gauging how seriously to take what he'd just said. Then she laughed, too.

They laughed together.

First there's music
over a blank white screen. A quiet, tender strumming on an acoustic guitar.

Then Jake's voice, strong and pure, no sign of damage. He sings of all the ways he's always known that Elena was the girl he loved. A simple song. Just a list.

The way she draws her life in exquisitely expressive pictures.

A line draws itself on the white background. It turns into Elena's face—not Electra's but Elena's, in a realistic mode.

Jake sings of Elena's toughness.

The face takes on a tough expression.

Her sensitivity.

The face changes, softens, smiles.

Her undying love for cookie-dough ice cream.

A carton of Ben & Jerry's floats in. Elena's body is drawn now and she holds the ice cream, spooning some into her mouth.

The constantly changing stickers she plasters all over her computer.

The ice cream carton morphs into a Mac and a barrage of anime stickers begin adhering to it, covering parts of each other up.

The way she bops her head, tipping it to the side, skeptical, flirtatious, a gleam in her eye.

The way she skips a step sometimes when she's walking along the sidewalk.

A sidewalk appears and Elena skips along it.

“The way she dances when she dances with me,” sings Jake.

Jake—not Jaybird, but Jake—skips up alongside Elena. They dance in joyful circles, slowly rising off the ground as the lyrics fade away and are replaced by a simple but lyrical finger picking.

They float into the clouds, still dancing with each other.

“The way she completes me and makes my life worth living.”

The finger picking continues.

Gradually, the black-and-white line drawings fill in
with color. First Elena and Jake. Then the clouds and the sky. Then finally, a rainbow arching over them, binding them in its beauty.

And still they dance.

Nathaniel sat on
a beat-up aluminum bench wired to the chain-link fence in the dusty far corner of the yard. It was his usual spot, far enough from the Bloods playing basketball to avoid the run-ins he'd had with them in his first few weeks at Coleman Penitentiary but also too far out toward the wall—and the prying eyes constantly watching from the guard tower—to have to worry about the fiercer, and more dangerous Aryan Nation dudes pumping iron inside the workout cage.

Since arriving at the prison, he'd developed a number of survival strategies. He'd relied on his charm and aura of entitlement (and the perks he was able to get from the guards based on his graceful manners and
ability to pay) to secure cigarettes and nudie mags and other contraband that he could then either sell or give away for favors and protection from the tougher, more physically intimidating guys who'd tried to make him their punk in his first few weeks. With a little help from Paco, the six-foot-six, 285-pound enforcer, known for his rippling bald head and the tattoo of a vulture spanning his entire back, Nathaniel had managed, pretty quickly, to gain control of the black market. By now, a year into his sentence, he and the gangs had developed a cautious understanding. He stayed out of their turf wars and they left him alone to run his shop.

Meanwhile, he'd gathered a gang of his own. Besides Paco, there was Willie Riggs, Little Jay, Lazy Eye, and Old Bobby McTeague. They ran his product to the various cell blocks for him and generally hung on his every word, basking in his reflected luster and imagining how different their lives would have been if they'd been given the leg up he'd had.

They called themselves the Smarts, not because they were all that intelligent, but because they'd all taken to wearing their prison blues in the tailored way Nathaniel did. None of that pants-around-the-knees stuff for them. They'd taken in the waists and rolled up the cuffs, tucking in their shirts so that, if not for their worn faces and oddly shaped bodies, they looked like they might have
walked out of the pages of a special jailhouse-themed issue of
Vogue
.

Today they sat around him as usual, some lined up on either side of Nathaniel on the bench, some sitting on the ground. They smoked the Camels they reserved for themselves and made the most of the hour of fresh air they were allowed each day.

“You gonna miss us when you get out next week, Willie?” asked Lazy Eye, leaning forward on the bench and flashing his giant maniacal grin six inches from Willie's face. “I bet you are. I bet you're wishing you could shiv somebody and tack on another three years so you could hang around a little longer.”

Willie, who never smiled, scowled at him. “Shee-it, man. Get out of my face before I knock your other eye loose.” Pushing at Lazy Eye's chin, he shoved him away.

Paco and Old Bobby laughed at this, Old Bobby slapping his knobby hands together in laconic glee.

“You're getting out next week, Willie? You didn't tell me that.” Nathaniel leaned back against the fence and tipped his head back so he look archly down his nose at Willie.

“It's true,” said Willy, simply.

The rest of the gang glanced nervously at one another, unsure of whether Nathaniel was annoyed by
the news or just tugging at the strings of his power like he sometimes did.

Nathaniel let Willie dangle for a moment.

Dragging long and hard off his cigarette, Willie stared back at him. None of these guys were the type to back down from a conflict.

“I'm going to have to find somebody to take over your beat on block C,” said Nathaniel. “You've sort of screwed me here.”

“See, that's why I didn't tell you. I didn't want to let you down, Boss.”

Nathaniel smirked and stared across the yard at the basketball game in progress. He watched as a scrawny guy, just a kid really, new to the prison, went for a crossover and was shoved to his back by the steel mountain that was Junior Suarez, the biggest, baddest guy on the court.

He could feel the guys waiting for him to give them something, a barrage of fancy words dressing Willy down, or a sly joke at his expense.

“It's cool,” he said. “There's always new blood showing up in this place. I'll find somebody.”

“Just say the word, Nate. I'll give them no choice,” said Paco, bouncing his pecs to prove his worthiness.

Nathaniel smirked again. “But, Willy,” he said, “you're not getting rid of me that easily. I've treated you pretty well in here, but the real prize is out there.” He
surveyed the faces of his disciples. “All of you, listen. I've got a proposal for you. Imagine, if you will, a hoary, aging hippie chick, maybe forty-five, fifty, getting too old to float through the scene at the beach any longer and now scared that she's going to die poor and alone. She owns a little run-down café that she can barely afford to keep open. And she's got a teenaged son, a tall, skinny guy who's so self-pitying that all he ever does is sit in the dark of his room and whine into his guitar.

“Now imagine a suave and cosmopolitan man, a playboy who owns half the world and toys with the other half. This man's wife died, tragically, a number of years ago and he's been very lonely for a long time now. He meets the woman. It doesn't matter how or where. What matters is that this woman, seeing him, casts a spell on him. She's learned some tricks during her years in the sandalwood-scented haze of the beach. She tricks him into falling in love with her.

“And before you know it, she's taken over his life. She's moved into his luxurious house on the beach. She's convinced him that everything he ever cherished before should be forsaken and replaced by her and her son.

“Now, the man has a son of his own, whom he'd worked hard to protect and provide for. But under the woman's spell, he takes everything he'd once promised his son and gives it all to hers, leaving his son nearly penniless, alone, struggling to survive.”

He looked from face to face, meaningfully locking eyes with each guy one by one.

“Do you think that's right?”

“Naw, it ain't right at all,” said Little Jay.

“Damn straight,” Willie said.

Nathaniel nodded his agreement with their assessment. “See, that's where you all come in. You in particular, Willie. That suave, cosmopolitan playboy is my father. And the hippie woman, she's my stepmother. She stole my life from me. I want it back. And you, Willie, can help me now that you're getting out. I'll make it worth your while. This goes for all of you. What do you say?”

He could see the greed flushing their faces.

“I've got it all worked out,” he said. “It's all I've been thinking about since I got locked up in here. The key is the son. Jake is his name. And the way to get to him is through his girlfriend, Elena. Now, here's what you have to do . . .”