“It’s too dangerous!”
“I know! If Angelo hadn’t saved us, you’d probably be dead! We’d all probably be dead! I know about danger!”
“No, Roux, you don’t. Sometimes people are psychopaths, okay? I have a talent, I have a gift, and I’ve been trained since I was a little kid. I made a huge mistake by dragging you and Jesse into it last year, I know that, and I will not do it again. You deserve better.”
Roux sat back against the bench and looked very, very small. “So you go off and do your job and I stay here and do what?”
“You go to school,” I told her. “You apply to colleges. You harass Harold! Do whatever it is you enjoy doing! You love talking to Harold!”
It might have been just the sun, but I thought for a split second that I saw Roux’s lip tremble. “Do you have any idea what it’s like?” she said in a near whisper. “What it was like before you came here? Those girls hate me.” She pointed over toward our school, which was only a few blocks away. “They hate me. I made one mistake and they won’t let me forget it. Have you even noticed that you’re still my only friend? You know what they say to me, Maggie. How many different ways can you call someone a slut? Because I think they’re trying to set a world record.”
Now I knew it wasn’t the sunlight. Roux’s lip really was wobbling.
“My parents were home for two days and they took me to dinner and talked about themselves,” she said. “They asked about school and about friends and didn’t listen to any of my answers. Then they taped a note to the refrigerator door this morning and left a thousand dollars cash for emergencies. They don’t care about me at home and they hate me at school. The only place I can go where someone doesn’t try to shut me down is your house.”
I sat dumbfounded. I had thought that nearly everything rolled off Roux’s back, that she didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She never even blinked when someone in the hall threw a slur in her direction, but I guess if you fire a bullet at someone enough times, eventually they learn not to flinch.
And it made sense now, too, why she thought our loft was safe. Even without the bulletproof windows and high-tech entrance pad, it was still the safest place she had.
“No, it’s fine,” she said when I tried to reach for her, and she slipped a finger under her sunglasses to wipe at her eyes. “It’s cool. I think … I think I’m just going to ditch the rest of the class, if that’s okay with you.”
“I can ditch with you,” I offered. “I mean it. We can do something. Do you want to get a manicure?”
She smiled a little. “You’re a good friend. But I think I want to be alone for a while. Gotta get used to it again.”
And before I could stop her, Roux turned and walked away in the opposite direction of our SAT prep class, not even turning around when I called her name.
Chapter 8
“And then she just walked off. She just left me alone sitting on a bench like one of those people who feed pigeons and I feel awful.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you even listening?” I stopped walking and turned to Jesse in the middle of the street.
“Of course I am!” He held up his hands in mock-surrender. “Roux left you in the park and you turned into a pigeon. See, crystal clear.”
I tried not to smile but my mouth gave me away. “You’re horrible.”
“I think you mean hilarious.” Jesse looped his arm over my shoulders as we started to walk again. We were going to Joe’s in the West Village for iced coffee and some much-needed catch-up time. I had spent the two days since Roux’s outburst researching everything I could about the 1933 double-eagle gold coin, Saint-Gaudens, and Dominic Arment. I also kept working on the lock that Angelo had given me, but I was no closer to cracking it. Jesse had spent those same two days in soccer practice and, after his dad found out that he hadn’t done any of his summer reading yet, poring over The Poisonwood Bible and Slaughterhouse-Five.
Both things were excellent cover-ups for the fact that we weren’t really talking. I mean, we were talking. We just weren’t … talking.
“So Roux was upset and left you alone in Washington Square Park.”
“Yes,” I said. “And she didn’t answer any of my texts like she normally does.”
“What do you mean?”
“She usually sends lots of emoticons and emojis and exclamation marks. If she could text actual fireworks, she probably would.”
“Well, I’m really glad now that Roux never texts me. Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jesse said, grabbing my arm and reeling me back as I started to stalk away. “Sarcasm off, okay? I’m listening.”
“No, you’re placating me.” I stood on the sidewalk as he held my wrist. “There’s a difference.”
“Yes, in the spelling. I’m sorry things are weird now between you and Roux.”
I was not feeling particularly charitable, though. I had spent two days doing ridiculous amounts of research, but without the Collective’s resources, it felt like walking on a tightrope without a net. My eyes hurt from the computer screen, my neck was all wonky from leaning forward to stare at the screen, and now I wasn’t even sure how to talk to my best friend.
“No, you’re not sorry,” I told Jesse.
“Now you’re pouting.”
“Am not.”