“Hmmm.” He closes my door and gets in on the other side.
I have a rather horrid thought. “Do you speak Spanish?”
“I speak Greek, English, Arabic, and a little bit of Girl.”
Relieved, I rest my head against the seat, the food’s heat almost uncomfortable against my thighs. Then I realize he didn’t actually answer my question. “Hablas español,” I say, glaring at him.
He grins but says nothing.
“You jerk!” How does he speak so many languages? Apparently the chatter about the American school systems is wrong. They are seriously doing their job.
“Hey, it’s not my fault you all chose to talk about me in a language you assumed I didn’t speak. Which, in this area, is a very unsafe assumption since most everyone speaks at least a little Spanish.”
“But you encouraged the assumption!”
“I didn’t want the cashier to feel awkward. Plus now I know you’re okay with the fact that I really enjoy looking at you.”
“I am—you’re not—that’s not what I said.”
“And I quote: ‘But it’s okay to look at friends.’”
I will not blush. I will not blush. I will not blush. “I can engage in a clinical assessment of physical features. It’s possible to recognize attractiveness without being attracted.”
“What is wrong with being attracted to someone? It’s a natural thing.”
“Yes, well, cancer is a natural thing, and we try our best to kill it.”
“You’re comparing love to cancer. I don’t believe it.”
“Actually, we were talking about attraction. And you proved my point about avoiding attraction because you jumped straight from there to love. But yes, love as cancer holds up quite well. Something that grows inside of you against your will and without your consent, slowly taking over more and more vital parts until it kills you. That fits nicely.” I smile, pleased.
“Stop,” Ry says, frowning. A deep crease forms between his eyebrows. “That’s not funny.”
I’m taken aback. I talk a lot of crap to Ry—especially the last few sleep-deprived days working so closely together. Usually he laughs. Oh, no. Oh no. “I’m sorry. Have you lost someone to cancer? That was really insensitive of me.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just—you can’t really think that about love. Not really.”
I shrug, an itch growing between my shoulder blades, soul deep. “It makes everything hurt more,” I finally say as we get out of the truck, because it’s the only true thing I can think of to say about love right now, here with Ry. If I hadn’t loved my parents—I mean, come on, I literally worshipped them—finding out they were just using me wouldn’t have been so awful.
We stop at my favorite tree beneath the footbridge and Ry climbs under the stairs and into the roots. I follow and we open up our food without a word.
Except . . . oh, idiot gods, why didn’t you choose this area of the world for your sad little reigns? Because carne asada french fries are, beyond a doubt, the most deliciously disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. I shovel them into my mouth, cool sour cream and guacamole, crisp salsa fresca, mushy fries, melted cheese, tender meat. Every bite is like a revelation of what the perfect harmony of ingredients can be.
“I think they modeled this stuff after ambrosia,” Ry says, watching me with a tentative smile.
“I can feel it clogging my arteries as I eat. And I don’t care. It’s going to be such a happy death.” I finish before him and lean back against the roots, groaning and holding my stomach. “Too much. Not enough.”
He laughs, and I stare at the bits of sky bold enough to break through the dense, tangled weave of branches. I should have brought mints. My throat prickles with dryness, a strange, salt chemical taste that sucks the moisture out, leaving my tongue thick and chalky in my mouth.
The back of my neck tingles and I look around sharply.
“Something wrong?” Ry asks, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
“Do you smell something weird?” I don’t see anyone, but I can’t be this paranoid. There has to be a reason it smells like Sirus’s house did the day of the break-in.
“No, why?”
My phone rings before I can answer him. Mother on the caller ID. The ancient Egyptian in me wonders if the strange smell and fear are connected to my mother somehow, connected to the twisted memories I dream every night.
“My mom. Gotta answer.”
“No problem. I’ll go get my notebook and be right back.” He grabs our garbage and leaves. His limp has an odd grace to it, almost like a swagger without the arrogance. I love it—it’s enough of a break in his physical perfection to make him interesting where otherwise he’d be unreal.
Oh, floods, I am not watching him walk away.
I answer the phone with a distracted, “Hey.”
“Little Heart,” my mother says, and she sounds tired. Maybe that’s a normal mom thing, but Isis the Ever Energetic doesn’t do tired. Now I’m worried again. In her emails she said Nephthys has been staying with her around the clock. I wish I could be there, too. No, I don’t.
“What’s up? Are you okay?”
“I have not been well. But I’m feeling better. How are you?”
“Better is good. I’m fine. Busy.”
“That’s nice. Your work is going well? Your friends are kind?”
I’ve been trying to tell her more about my life in my emails. It feels . . . nice. Nice to be able to talk with her a little more. She never listened to me when I was at home, but she can’t very well ignore typed words she has to respond to. “Yeah, everything’s really good.”
“I am glad. I wanted to ask your opinion on colors for the baby’s room. You’re so much better with this than I am.”
I sit up straight. “Yeah, sure. What are you thinking?”
“I need something neutral, but I want it to be warm and welcoming. Maybe blue and yellow?”
I bite my lip, running through palettes in my head. “You don’t want to do a baby’s room in yellow—it’s not soothing enough. Brown and green will give you more options if it’s a girl and you want to add some pink accents. If you go with a spring green, it’s still a very warm color without the inherent energy of yellow.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
I smile. She really does value my opinion on this stuff, just like she told Michelle.
“Also, how many coats do you think we’ll need to cover up the black?”
“I would say—wait, the black? What room are you painting?” My heart skips erratically. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.
“Your old room.”
“MY ROOM? You’re painting over my room for some stupid baby?”
“Isadora! I didn’t think you’d mind. I have always used this room for babies.”
“I spent months decorating! It’s MINE. Of course I mind! Do you even care that I’m gone? Obviously you don’t think of me at all! I knew Osiris didn’t, but at least you pretended to care.” I stand, livid, almost screaming into the phone. I know I’m not going back home, but she doesn’t know that. How dare she destroy my work, give my place in the family and my room to my replacement.
“That’s enough!” The whipcrack of her voice makes my temple throb even over the phone. “If I’d known you would be so selfish and immature about this, I wouldn’t have brought it up. I’m very disappointed in you. You know your room is temporary. It isn’t the room that will matter in the future, and I don’t see you putting time and care into that one.”
“My—Amun-Re, Mother. You really think it’s okay to destroy the one thing that was mine because I still have my tomb? You really can’t wait for me to die, can you? It’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing that the goddess of motherhood can suck so bad at being a mother! Well, guess what? You can give both rooms to your new victim, because I am never coming home. Ever. EVER!” I scream the last word and throw my phone down, wishing she were here so I could hit her, physically hurt her to make her feel what I’m feeling, to finally show her what she does to me on the inside.
And then somehow my rage is leaking out my eyes and I sit back hard onto the roots, my tailbone stinging, and dig my knees into my eyeballs as I wrap my arms around my legs.
I hate my parents. I hate them. And I hate that I hate them, because it means I care. I wish I could feel the same way they obviously feel about me—I wish they were the nothing to me that I am to them.
Ry’s arm around my shoulder is surprising; I’m still not used to being touched, and it’s comforting. “Is your brother here?” he asks. “I thought I saw him.”
I shrug, not lifting up my head. “Maybe. He’s been paranoid lately. I can’t remember if I told him I’d be here tonight or not. I’ll text him and tell him I’m coming home now.”
“I have a better idea. Text him and tell him you’ll be home late. I know where we need to go.”
The Milky Way is above me, each star a perfect point against the black night sky. I had gotten so used to San Diego’s light pollution that I’d forgotten just what, exactly, the stars were supposed to look like.
But even as I drink them in, let them fill me while the desert night air tickles my skin, I can’t help but notice something is off. They don’t anchor me like they used to. They’re still mine, my soul still sings to see them, but . . . I don’t know. That invisible something, that heartstring that used to stretch between me and my guiding stars is different. It’s shifted, and I don’t know where or why. Maybe it’s because Orion—the stars Orion—isn’t out?
I wiggle my legs, trying to ease my spine off a raised groove in the metal of Ry’s truck bed.
“I should have brought pads or something,” he says from where he’s lying flat on his back next to me.
“No, this is perfect.”
We drove straight east, where the sprawling tangle of the city suddenly ended in nothing. Through and over a mountain with wind turbines so big it looked as though the gods from one of Ry’s myths set them there. Then back down the mountain and past kilometers and kilometers of horizon-meltingly flat farmland to the waves and crests of sand dunes in the middle of nowhere.
Though the air still tastes different, the sand and the stars surround me like a blanket of home, a snatch of comfort and familiarity in the middle of a strange new land. And Ry found it for me when I needed it the very most.
I turn my head and look at his dark profile as he studies the sky—his long, straight nose, angled jaw, full lips. He could be a Greek statue come to life. I smile at the thought, and a small line in my chest, the line that anchors me and connects me to my Orion, suddenly gives me a tug.
Toward this Orion.
I close my eyes and hold perfectly still. The impulse to scoot over and close the gap between our bodies, to rest my head in that spot between his shoulder and chest where I know—I know—it will fit perfectly, to twine my fingers through his—
I don’t want that. I won’t. I can accept that he is important to me. He’s a friend. I’d had no idea how much I needed friends until Tyler and Ry. And I’m vulnerable right now, still trying to find me in this new place, still trying to fill the holes inside. I can’t seem to keep my heart from leaking out of the cracks, like sand clutched in a fist.
But I won’t fill those holes with him. I can’t. To do that would invite other holes to be punched in right next to the ones my parents made.
I will fill myself with the desert and the sky. I will be stone and stars, unchanging and strong and safe. The desert is complete; it is spare and alone, but perfect in its solitude. I will be the desert.
I open my eyes to see Ry staring at me, and my desert soul erupts with turquoise water, floods and cascades and waterfalls rushing in around my stone, swirling and eddying around my rocky parts, pushing and reshaping and filling every hidden dark spot.
“Stop it!” I gasp.
“What?”
“That thing you’re doing! With your eyes!”
“Um, opening them? Or blinking? Should I not blink?”
“Just—make them less blue or something.”
He laughs, oblivious to my drowning desert. “It’s pitch-black out here. You can’t see what color they are.”
“But I still know, and they know I know. So just—point them somewhere else.”
He blinks, slowly, the line of dark lashes standing out against his skin in a semicircle smile, mocking me before he opens them again. “But it’s okay to look at friends, remember?”
“Shut up.” I smack my hand against his chest and then it stays there and I need to pull it back I can’t leave it there why isn’t my arm pulling it back and
oh idiot gods I can feel his heart beating and nothing has ever felt so simple and pure and honest and right in my entire life.
GET OUT OF HERE, my brain screams. Move your hand, Isadora. Move it. Move it. But that line, that traitorous anchor that misaligned, that picked the wrong Orion, it’s singing out to stay.
Ry reaches up, ever so slowly, and puts his hand over mine and now his heartbeat is underneath it and his skin is on top of it and I can’t breathe, I’m holding my breath because if I let it go I have to make a choice to drown or to flee, and I cannot make this choice
I like the person I am with him
and no one’s skin has ever felt this way before