Truest (10 page)

“I happen to like his kissing
just fine
, thank-you-very-much,” I said, feeling my face flare.

“‘Just fine' isn't how you should be kissed,” he said matter-of-factly.

“
You
think you know how I should be kissed?” I challenged.

Silas shrugged and adjusted the shifter. “Sure.”

“I think Elliot's hot, West,” said Laurel.

“And
pissed
,” I added. “Silas, you know tonight was supposed to be a date.”

“It was?” Silas asked.

“I told you that yesterday.”

“I must have misunderstood,” he said. “Do you forgive me?” He flashed me a penitent pout. I rolled my eyes and looked away, no idea whether to be angry or not. I'd been looking forward to time with Elliot. Then again, I'd still get to be with him—only not alone.

I felt the tiniest pinprick of relief. Then guilt.

Laurel asked, “Who's the blond? With the longish surfer hair?”

“His name is Mark Whitby, but everyone calls him Whit,” I said.

“Whit,” she repeated thoughtfully, as if she were christening him.

After a pause, I continued the introductions. “Marcy—the one with dark hair?—she's always liked Elliot, so she's not exactly my biggest fan. Bridget, the redhead, is Marcy's best friend. Trudy and I hang out a lot with them during the school
year, but there's a pretty distinct divide, two and two, to be honest.”

“Nice friends,” Silas commented sarcastically.

“Well, what about you?” I asked. “You never talk about anyone from Alaska.”

I realized too late that I didn't really
want
him to talk about anyone from Alaska.

“You want to know about Beth? Is that what you're asking?” he said, looking straight at me. “What do you want to know?” He darted a stern look at his sister, then began. “Beth is
gorgeous
,” he said with emphasis. “Her mom is Yupik, and her dad's a Swede, so she has this dark skin and almond-shaped eyes, only they're blue. And she's this unbelievable math whiz. I swear she is going to prove the Riemann hypothesis before she's even a college graduate.”

“The what?” I asked.

“And she wears really short skirts,” Silas added, ignoring my question.

“Well, what about you?” I asked Laurel. “Have someone on the line back in Juneau?” It bothered me to hear Silas talk about Beth, though I knew it shouldn't.

“Fairbanks,” corrected Silas. I knew it was Fairbanks; I had said Juneau to punish him.

I kept my back to him and looked at Laurel. “Nah,” she said.

“Nah?” Silas asked with incredulity. “She only had like a
thousand guys hanging on her every word.” He grinned at her over my head.

Laurel rolled her eyes. “Like you can talk.” The knot in my stomach tightened. “No one,” Laurel said. “I'm way too strange.”

“Quit saying that,” I chided. “Besides, you seem fine tonight.”

She shrugged and looked out the window. “We'll see how long it lasts.”

The drive-in screen was in the middle of a field. We arrived early for the triple-header, and the three boys in our group tossed a football around with a couple of guys from Enger Mills, our sworn enemies on the football field but our teammates on the consolidated track team. Everyone was watching Silas and Laurel, these two beautiful and exotic specimens who had shaken up our same-old-same-old world like a snow globe.

“
Please
be friendly,” I'd whispered to Elliot as he'd taken the football out of the van. “He's my friend and business partner. I'd like you two to get along.”

“He hijacked our date!” Elliot said back. “And what does that stupid-ass shirt mean anyway?”

I glanced at Silas's chest, which declared, “HOLDEN CAULFIELD THINKS YOU'RE A PHONY.” I sighed.
“Never mind. Be nice.”

My heart raced. I didn't know how to manage the tension between Elliot and Silas.

Elliot eyed Silas with suspicion and tossed these impossible-to-catch long bombs that Silas somehow still managed to catch because he was so fast. It was irritating Elliot. He was bigger than Silas—thicker, more muscular—but Silas was taller.

For his part, Whit—hat on backward, his dirty blond hair curling out from underneath his cap—was torn between football with the guys and an obvious curiosity in Laurel.

“Hey!” she finally shouted at Whit, and he jogged over toward us, looking enthused. “I wanted to say hi,” she said, “so . . . hi, I guess. Did you know the name Mark means ‘warlike'?”

My gosh, she's flirting, I realized in horror.

Whit, buzzed from whatever was in the paper bag, staunchly shouted, “
Ihr seid verfluchte Hunde!
” from that scene in
Gladiator.

“Oh dear Lord,” muttered Marcy.

Silas had wandered close enough to hear the whole exchange and stopped to whisper to me, “Yeahhhh, she doesn't get out much,” to which I replied, “We try not to let Whit either.”

We chuckled till Elliot barked, “Hart, heads up!” Silas whipped around and caught the football before it clocked him.

“Nice,” he muttered.

I gave him a tiny smile and a tinier shrug.

While the sun fell lower and lower in the sky, the smell of buttered popcorn drifted over from the concession stand, mixing with the dry scent of dust and alfalfa in the rows of vehicles. Whit knew how to wire the giant speakers he'd brought so that the sound came through them, and we could all sit outside in the warm June air during the movies instead of huddling inside two vehicles. In addition to the lawn chairs, we'd taken out the seat from Elliot's minivan to create a makeshift couch.

“Well, hey there, you,” Elliot said softly, sitting beside me on the “couch.” “Together at last.”

And then—to my surprise—Silas came and sat down,
awkward as all get-out
, between me and Elliot. “That okay?” he asked Elliot, in a voice that obviously didn't care about the answer. Then—
I could not believe this boy
—put an arm around me
and one around Elliot.

“Uh,” grunted Elliot, shifting to the left to accommodate Silas, “I'd kind of like to sit by my
girlfriend.
”

“Oh, right,” said Silas. “Silly me.” Then he
picked me up
and set me down between them, first dragging me slowly over his lap.

“Why are you doing this?” I hissed at Silas.

“Doing what?” he whispered back. “Just switching seats with you.” It was so nearly identical to what he'd said during our first detailing that for a second I felt angry at him. But no—this was Silas, my
friend
, and we were going to be good to each other this summer.

Elliot picked up my hand and began kneading it out of habit. “Where you guys from again?” he asked Silas, trying hard to be peaceable.

Silas was looking at Elliot's hand massaging mine and didn't answer.

I answered for him. “They moved from Alaska,” I said, then—trying to find some common ground—added, “Silas is a runner.” Elliot was a record holder in our school for football and track. “The Filipino Palomino” is what the
Green Lake Times
called him.

“Yeah, what's your mile?” he asked Silas.

For the first time since I'd met him, Silas looked a little shy. “Oh, I do distance . . .”

But I knew and shared his average, and Elliot raised his eyebrows, impressed—but a second later, he frowned. “You play ball at all?”

“Not really,” said Silas. “I mostly just run.”

“Shoot,” said Elliot apologetically, his Minnesota
o
's stretching a mile long, “people here care more about football. Oh well.”

“
Shoot
,” repeated Silas.

“
Behave
,” I growled under my breath, not sure which boy it was directed to.

The movie lineup was a couple of years old. To my left, Elliot held my hand; he was finally relaxed and enjoying the movie. To my right was another story.

Silas leaned back into the van seat, long legs stretched before him, rocking his head on his neck to loosen his muscles. He leaned forward, eyes wide, and I could almost hear his mind humming.

Things always seem more important in the dark, more significant, more profound: he pushed his knee next to mine, and when I moved it away, Silas cracked his back, twisting a little in his seat, ending up half an inch nearer to me, and pressed his knee to mine again.

Was this all just to piss off Elliot? Why?

In any case, it wasn't working, because Elliot didn't even notice how close Silas was sitting to me, our bodies touching at the foot, knee, hip, and shoulder. Silas proffered the tiniest lift of the side of his lips, this sweet little grin of victory without turning his head at all.

What in the world?

Elliot held my hand, thoughtlessly making circles with his thumb. Marcy's eye wandered from the screen to Elliot every ten minutes while Bridget twirled her fingers in her long red hair, making tiny tendrils without noticing. Beside Laurel, Whit was leaning over to whisper something that made her laugh as he nodded toward the movie.

Then Whit left his seat, momentarily disappearing into the side door of the minivan, and reemerged with a bottle that he passed around the group, the smell of black licorice preceding it. I took a healthy gulp, and it burned on its way down like
swallowing cough syrup.

What would Dad say if he knew? I asked myself. But Dad doesn't know—and he won't. There's church in the morning. He won't even ask about tonight.

When I passed the bottle to Silas, he waved it off, and my thoughts changed direction. Forget what Dad would think—what does Silas think?

And why did I care so much?

I couldn't even tell you what movies were playing. Something with weapons. Then something with kissing. My head was a mess, what with Elliot holding my hand on one side and Silas pressing into me on the other. I felt exhausted and—almost literally—pulled in two directions.

Which was ridiculous.

You are here with Elliot, I reminded myself. Your
boyfriend.

It was already one in the morning when the final movie started. On the screen, a young farmhand visited a country carnival and boarded a rickety old roller coaster. Ominous music swelled in the background, so it wasn't a surprise when the coaster flew off the tracks . . . but right before it crashed, the boy woke up, no longer a farmhand but a famous actor, living in Hollywood.

“Shit,” muttered Silas and glanced at his sister. I did too.

She stared hard at the screen, eyes wide, and
seemed
okay enough—except I knew her brain was working overtime with
what if
s.

“What should we do?” I whispered to Silas.

“I don't know.”

“What's wrong?” Elliot asked on my other side.

“Nothing,” both Silas and I lied.

The boy in the movie was learning the ropes of life on the set of his daytime drama from his pretty costar. The two of them went to kiss and then he woke up again, this time as the oldest of seven children in an abusive home.

Laurel's face didn't betray her thoughts, but I imagined they were manic. I was worried—for her and for myself—that she might have a reaction—or worse, a breakdown, in front of my friends and in this crowd. She'd been triggered by far less before.

On the screen, the raging, drunken father hit the boy, who woke once again. Another new reality.

“Laurel,” Silas said softly. She looked over at him. “Let's go.” She nodded and got to her feet so readily I knew I'd been right about what was going on behind her calm exterior.

“You're leaving now?” Whit asked. “In the middle of the movie? You should stay.” He tugged at Laurel's hand, and for a second, she appeared to doubt her decision.

“It's late,” Silas said with authority. “Coming, West?”

I hesitated.

“We need a navigator,” Silas said.

Elliot threw an arm around my shoulder. “Dude, use your phone.”

“No reception,” Silas said, holding up his phone as evidence.

I looked at Laurel. She had that same wild, lost look in her eyes that I'd seen before on her worst days.

I looked at Silas. “Please,” he said softly.

I stood to my feet.

“What the hell? West? Draw them a fucking map.” I hated the tone of Elliot's voice—jealous, possessive, incensed.

Elliot and Silas both stared at me.

“Shut the hell up,” someone growled from another nearby group. “We're trying to watch the movie!”

I bent toward Elliot, kissed him hard on the lips, then apologized quickly, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll call you.” He stared after me as I climbed, along with the Harts, into Papa Arty's pickup: Silas in the driver's seat, me beside him, and Laurel by the window. Elliot blinked when Silas turned the pickup's lights on.

We drove the dirt path through the movie area and onto a back road between two fields where the corn stalks were climbing out of the earth. We were a few miles outside Enger Mills, and the night felt thick and black.

“Elliot's going to be so pissed at me,” I muttered.

“Sorry,” Silas mumbled back.

I didn't say anything to him, just leaned over Laurel and rolled the window down to let the night air work like a salve. “Laurel, you okay?”

“No.” Her voice was small, even in the tiny space of the cab. It slipped out the window and was left behind in the road.

“It's just a movie,” I said to her. “Just a stupid movie.”

She laid her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes.

“Laur, don't let this get to you,” Silas said, staring straight ahead, hands tight on the steering wheel. “It's just science-fiction shit.”

But she was shaking.

“Do you have something you can take to calm you down?” I asked.

“My beta blocker's at home,” she said.

“Perfect,” quipped Silas under his breath.

“Shhh, okay. That's okay,” I said, and took her hand. She squeezed it hard, and I let her. The three of us drove in silence, and after a while, Laurel stopped shaking and her grip relaxed. Her head felt heavy on my shoulder. “She's asleep,” I whispered to Silas.

He let out a giant breath.

“I was surprised when you spoke up tonight,” I confided. “I thought maybe you'd just tell her you were leaving through some twin power.”

Silas snorted. “That's ridiculous,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What?!” I said, trying hard not to wake Laurel. “You hear stories like that all the time. Once on
August Arms
, there was a story about twin girls—one was kidnapped and left to freeze to death in a cabin on a mountain, but the other twin knew just
where to lead the authorities to find her sister, even though she had never been on the mountain and had never seen the cabin before. They climbed into the detective's car together and she would—calm as anything—say ‘left' or ‘right' until they found her sister.”

“That's just creepy,” he said. At this early hour of the morning, the road belonged to us alone. The moon was big and yellow and very low; up ahead of us, it seemed to be biting into the horizon, perhaps peeking into the windows of the Harts' sunroom in Heaton Ridge. I located Saturn on my own.

“The same night,” I continued, “they told a story about these fraternal twins—the boy was playing baseball in the yard with some friends, and the girl was inside the house. The boy got hit in the face by a line drive but somehow wasn't hurt, but the girl ran out into the yard, blood dripping from her nose. You've never had anything like that?”

“Coincidence,” Silas said. “The closest thing we ever had to that was . . . well, okay. So, we grew up in Cape Canaveral, and we played pickup ball with other kids from our neighborhood, and Laurel and I always knew where the other one was on the court.”

I smiled. “I always forget you grew up in Florida.”

“Yeah, my parents were NASA hotshots. That's where they met—they both had internships at Kennedy Space Center.”

“So badass!”

“Yeah,” Silas admitted. “When we played basketball, we
would do this dumb thing.”

“Tell me.”

He laughed a little, and Elliot and the movie started to feel far away.

“We'd put a two over our hearts.” He demonstrated, holding out two fingers and placing them on his chest. “It started because of our basketball team name: Hart2Hart. Laurel picked it.” He grinned without taking his eyes off the road. “I don't know. It was like a little secret code for a million things.
I love you. You're my twin. I've got your back.
It's sissy, right?”

“No,” I said. “I think it's sweet.”

“We still do it.”

“I know.” Silas glanced at me, and I smiled. “What was it like growing up with Laurel?”