Turn Up the Heat (21 page)

Authors: Serena Bell

BOOK: Turn Up the Heat

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And by God, I wish I could say the same. My mouth is actually hanging open a little, though I do my best to keep it closed. I keep glancing back and forth between him and the kid, and when he speaks again I struggle to respond to him.

Of course I do. Now my head is stuck on some god-awful violent moment from my childhood, instead of right here and right now.

“Maybe you don’t want to talk to someone like me, huh?” he says, and a dozen possible answers flit through my fevered mind. All of them are completely impractical, however. They start with
Is that a trick question?
and end with
You just slapped someone in a really humiliating fashion,
none of which are appropriate to aim at someone like him.

He’ll probably kill me if I try.

He’s probably going to kill me anyway.

So I put on the most neutral accent I can, and go with:

“I just don’t think you can help me.”

“No? So I seem unhelpful, then?”

“That’s not what I meant at all.”

“Then what did you mean?”

He doesn’t say it angrily, or as if he’s trying to trap me. In fact, his words are so casual and curious-sounding I’m almost tempted to go with the truth.
I meant that I’m scared out of my wits and not sure how to explain without enraging you,
I think, but at the last second I chicken out. He probably is angry, beneath this layer of quiet calm. It’s probably like the slap: not hard or brutal, but still shockingly there.

And I don’t want to be shocked.

I had enough of being shocked with my father.

“I’m looking for people who might know where my brother is, and I don’t think you do. I’ve never seen you around him.”

“You sure?”

“I think I’d remember,” I say, and though I don’t intend it, I can hear a wry slant to my words. It’s as though my sarcasm doesn’t know how to help itself, and I can’t really blame it. After all, who wouldn’t remember this guy? Even his eyes are distinctive, amid that strange maze of black hair and black brows and those racing stripes. They’re the color of a winter sky, pale but with the faintest hint of blue.

I should be freezing beneath their frigid glare.

So it’s weird that I’m kind of not.

“He in trouble, this brother of yours?” he asks, and though I feel that old urge to lie for him, I somehow escape it.

“His name’s Tommy. Tommy Becker.”

“Uh-huh,” frigid glare says, as if the name means nothing.

I see his eyes narrow just a little, however.

“So if you know where he is…”

“Let me guess: I tell you, and you go find him.”

“That’s the plan.”

“And you don’t see any problem with it?”

“Nope.”

“He might be in the middle of a crack den, but you’re just gonna walk right up like you did here and knock on a door that probably isn’t there.”

“Well, maybe I won’t just
walk
up,” I say, but even I can hear how foolish and weak and unprepared I sound. It’s not a surprise that he then does what he does, yet somehow I find myself a little flummoxed anyway—probably because he stands up. Anyone would be alarmed at seeing him stand up. He’s enormous sitting down, but on his feet he’s fricking huge. He looms over me like some stone monolith, swallowing everything in his shadow, and then to cap it off he says:

“I tell you what, girl. How about you hop on, and I’ll take you to where he is.”

Some of the guys around him laugh. Hell, he seems to be laughing a little, too. He even slaps the back of his bike like the punch line to this whole crazy joke—he knows I’m never going to climb up on that thing. Everyone knows I’m not going to climb up on that thing. I’m a soft little kid, in corduroy.

Though for once in my life, I don’t want to be. I want to say yes, just to show him. Just to make up for all the times when I went back to my room and changed and changed and changed until my clothes were suitable, or stayed silent because silence was golden and talking back got you the basement. I don’t have to stay silent here, if I really don’t want to.

But that only makes it more disappointing when my sad little mouth leaks out, “I can’t do that.”

In fact, it’s so disappointing that he seems to catch some of it. He snorts, of course, as though he expected that answer all along. Yet beneath that snort I think I see something else, just sort of drifting around down there. A bitterness, I think, that carries through his otherwise amused and rather withering words.

“Afraid of bikes, huh?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“And maybe afraid of me?”

“I’d have to be insane to be anything else.”

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

“Think it’s pretty obvious.”

“Try me.”

“Mostly it’s the size.”

He makes a face like
Yeah, that makes sense.

But the shadow of that odd disappointment is still there.

“What can I say? I’m a big guy.”

“And maybe the tattoos.”

“I sure got them.”

“And the hair.”

“You don’t like it?”

He runs a hand over that thick black stripe right down the center, like some lady at a salon showing off her new hairdo. And it’s funny; it really is funny. It’s so funny that the assembled crowd laughs again to see him do it. This is probably the kind of show he does all the time, and I’m sure none of them ever question it.

But I’m questioning it. I can still see that serious undercurrent beneath his jokey manner, and it makes me answer him in a more impassioned way than I intend. “No, no, it’s not that at all,” I say, though it’s only afterward that I realize how true that sentiment is.

Yeah, he’s scary as fuck. Yeah, the thought of riding off with him on that bike almost freezes my blood. But if I’m honest with myself about liking that hair…I can’t exactly say no. I
do
like it. I like a lot of things about him, in a way I don’t fully understand. He should ping just about every aggressive-man fear I have, but every time I try to think of him that way, something else happens instead. I see the contrast between those black stripes and his pale blue eyes, and the way he waits for my answer in this actually interested manner, and how strange all of his clothes are and that flash of bitterness or weariness in him again, and then suddenly there it is:

The word
handsome.

Dear God, I think he might be handsome, though I’m not going to stick around long enough to find out for sure.

“I’ve got to go,” I blurt out, but I immediately regret it. I should have just turned and run really quickly—not given him warning. Now he’s got time to punish me as I ever so slowly start to walk away.
Oh, look at the little college girl. She’s frightened,
he’ll say, and then someone will throw a rock at me. All of them will throw rocks at me, until I’m a bruised and bloody pulp on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper.
Idiot Student Finds Angry Biker Handsome,
I imagine, though I’ve no idea why I’m doing it.

That doesn’t even make any sense. People don’t write reports about girls randomly noticing attractiveness. They write reports about girls being murdered, so really, that should be my headline.
Idiot Student Has Arms and Legs Pulled Off by Handsome Biker,
I try, but I can’t help noticing that the word
handsome
is still in there.

God, I wish it wasn’t still in there.

It’s hard enough as it is to walk to my car without glancing back. Putting the word
handsome
in there makes it nearly impossible. My eyes want me to double-check, and not just because I probably hallucinated how good-looking he is. They want me to check because I’m almost positive I can feel his gaze pressing into my back. I can feel it the way people in books say they can feel it, even though I usually snort and roll my eyes when I get to stuff like that. You can’t sense someone’s stare in real life. That’s just not the way it works.

So how come I’m right?

I dare to glance up once I’m inside the safety of my car, expecting to see him going about his business. Maybe he’ll be in the middle of some awful drug thing, I think. Maybe he’ll be making some kid pay for wanting to do something other than come right home after school. But he isn’t doing either of those things—not even close.

Instead I see those frostbitten eyes still steadily on me, as everyone around him returns to their rowdy and brutal ballet.