“How does that put me in danger?” Nick asks. It’s the first question he’s asked the entire time. Devyn, however, has been Mr. Nonstop Wondering Question Guy.
“Because . . .” I don’t know how to say it, struggle for the words. “Because you and I are a thing and you’re a threat.”
“You better believe I’m a threat,” Nick growls. The entire car seems to shake with his energy. Little hairs on my arm lift and vibrate.
“He’s going macho again,” Dev says, totally nonchalantly, while he unlocks the door.
“He’s always going macho,” Is adds. “It must be the wolf thing.”
“I am not going macho. I am always macho,” Nick says, and for a moment the tension ratchets down, but then his face muscles become rigid again. “I can’t believe he used you like that. He totally manipulated you, scaring you just to get some kind of sick joy ride. I thought my parents were bad, but crap, your freaking father, Zara.”
Nick slams open his door and gets Dev’s braces. As Is and I get out I whisper, “What did Nick mean about his parents?”
Issie’s face opens up. She whispers back, “He hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?” I am hissing almost. Pebbles crunch beneath our feet. One rolls into an icy mud puddle.
“I’ll tell you after.” She nods her head toward the guys. Dev is standing, waiting for his braces. An eighteen-wheeler carrying Poland Spring water trundles down the road. About a year ago three people from Myanmar gave some water to monks who were walking in the street protesting rights abuses. The government said that giving water was an act of supporting terrorism. For a second I wish I could magically transport that entire truck to those monks. For a second I wish I could magically explain to the government of Myanmar about pixies and show them what terror really is.
“Zara? You there?” Is pokes my arm.
“Yeah. Sorry. Am I still blue?”
She eyes me. “A little, but you can’t really tell from the makeup. I think it’s getting better.”
My fingers touch the edge of her dirty car, make marks on it, just light little lines. I lift my fingers away, examine the dirt. “Are you lying because you’re my best friend and you don’t want to scare me?”
Is makes a smiley face out of my lines. “Yeah.”
We head into the building and once inside the square front office, Josie the dispatcher stands up from her old, monstrous metal desk and smiles. The blue and yellow beads at the end of her cornrows sway. “Well, look who’s here. Are we all legally skipping school or should I call in one of those deputies to bring you all up on truancy charges?”
“Legal. We have a note,” Nick says. He bounces on his toes; too much energy inside him has nowhere to go.
“I should have known. Working the system, right?” Josie nods her head toward the coffeemaker. “You all want something to drink? Or just Betty?”
“I’ll have some water,” Devyn says, hitching across the ugly linoleum floor that looks like it came out of some 1970s discount department store. He grabs a cup and puts it under the big blue jug of water.
Josie presses a button and says, “Betty, you’ve got visitors, a whole troupe of them.”
My grandmother’s voice crackles on the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Zara, her handsome boy toy”—Josie wiggles her eyebrows and Nick starts blushing beside me while Is cracks up—“and friends.”
“Tell them to come on back,” she orders.
“Thanks, Josie,” I say. I give her a kiss on her cheek. “You smell like coconut.”
“My moisturizer,” she says. “How about your boy toy gives me a kiss?”
Nick does.
“Boy toy,” Dev mocks as we walk the narrow corridor to the back room.
“You’re just jealous,” Nick grunts.
Dev sort of laughs through his nose in an absolutely geeky boy way. “Right, boy toy. Are you a Mr. Potato Head or a Wolverine action figure? No! Wait! A Transformer.”
“Shut up.” Nick and I make eye contact. He smiles. I break free from Is so she and Dev can be a little closer, and also so I can open the door to the break room where the EMTs hang out when they aren’t on a call. Nick beats me to it. He hauls open the door and holds it there for all of us to go through.
“Thanks,” I say, inhaling his scent as I walk by.
“Anytime.” His free hand touches the small of my back really lightly. It makes me shiver. It’s the good kind of shiver.
He notices. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I tilt my head up at him.
Is and Dev are already in the room. Nick takes my arm and gently pulls me back into the hallway with him. We’re alone. He whispers down, “You don’t need to be brave with me, Zare. That’s the point of a relationship, right? You tell each other things. You let each other see things that you don’t let the rest of the world see.”
I swallow hard. “I just don’t want . . . I don’t want you to worry. I’m sorry I went off with my father.”
His hand cups my cheek. His thumb grazes my skin, slow and light and strong all at once. “I know. And I’m sorry I get so macho.”
I press my lips together.
He nods fast and hard like he’s trying to hold back some big emotion. “Come on, let’s go in and have Betty check you out.”
The ugly yellowy lights in the room make Betty and Mike, the EMT with her, look a little jaundiced, like they have some sort of liver disease. Mike is sitting on the dilapidated brown sofa watching CNN, absentmindedly picking at the edges of some duct tape that is wrapped around the sofa arm holding it together. The TV drones on about sex scandals and politicians. There is a box of Dunkin’ Donuts on the middle of the table at the left of the room. Betty is doing what she does best. She is walking on the treadmill with a copy of The Economist splayed out in front of her. She used to be an insurance company president. She retired before they started making eight hundred million dollars a year. This is unfortunate. I’m sure if she was still a CEO I’d already have a new car and a new laptop.
“Well, Devyn! Look at you walking again. That’s a blessing for sore eyes.” Her gray hair bounces with every forceful stride and she smiles at us. “I have thirty seconds left before I hit five hundred calories. You should see my pulse rate.”