Chaos (Kardia Chronicles) (Entangled Teen) (8 page)

“How about some dessert? I have strudel in the kitchen.”

She stared past me, her gaze pinned to a spot over my head.

“You see what I’m saying, don’t you, Phil?”

My skin prickled, and I bit my lip. Phil was my dad. He’d died ten years ago from a brain aneurism. I was six, and I swear it still felt like yesterday sometimes. Gram muttered his name occasionally, along with a list of other friends and family members, both alive and dead. Still, she seemed so lucid and focused, it was hard not to look over my shoulder to see…

“She’s stubborn, that one. Always was, but you and me, we’ll convince her.”

Again, she was addressing my phantom father, so I stayed quiet, instead opting to turn the movie up louder. I glanced at my watch, feeling both relieved and guilty when I saw that I was off duty in ten more minutes. Whenever she needed help getting to the bathroom, I was first up and ready. I’d lay with her and pet her hair until she fell asleep. I’d feed her and help her bathe, watch movies with her. But this? The thing with my dad? It killed me every time.

She rocked forward and back, eyes trained on me again, Phantasm Phil forgotten. “Cold in here?” She muttered her mantra softly, tugging the covers around herself more tightly.

I snagged another throw from the couch to toss over her. “There you go, Gram.”

She didn’t respond, seemingly lost in her own world again. I slunk out of the room, soup bowl in hand, and was about to wash it out when someone knocked at the front door.

“Come on in,” I called loudly, crossing the room to the hallway. The door swung open and Libby stepped in, bringing a blast of icy air with her.

“Holy cow, it’s chilly out there!”

She closed the door behind her but made no move to come in farther. “Is Bink here yet?” she asked, blowing into her hands and rubbing them together.

“Not yet. Any minute, though. Want to make some hot cocoa? I’m just finishing up with Gram.”

The awesome thing about Libby was that she didn’t need more of an explanation than that. She was always understanding but not pushy and she knew everything—well, almost everything—about me. That had happened right after the thing with Eric. I’d been out of school for a week with what Mom and I had decided to call “mono”. Libby had called every day and then, in spite of my insistence that she not, she came over to see me.

I’d been lying in bed, still not even close to okay emotionally and certainly not in shape to see people, but Mom had let her in anyway. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. She’d come unannounced and had swung the door open right as I was levitating about two feet off the bed, still a jumble of twisted emotion and lacking the control to keep everything contained in the process of trying to understand what had happened.

She had jerked back in total shock, and I’d dropped to the bed like a rock. It all happened in the span of about a nanosecond, but there was no amount of spin or fast-talking that was going to change the facts, and the facts were that Libby had seen something magic.

I didn’t have the energy to do anything more than tell her the truth about me and what I was…and some of what had happened with Eric. It was like being reborn. I didn’t know much about what was happening inside of me, but what I did know, I shared with her.

She sat by the bed and listened wordlessly. When I was done, there were a lot of tears, both hers and mine, but she never once judged or doubted me. Never asked for proof. She just nodded and shrugged her slim shoulders like,
Well, people are semi-gods sometimes; what can you do?
and then asked me if I wanted her to make me a smoothie. I did, and I truly think that moment was a turning point for our friendship.

We’d only known each other for a couple of years, so Bink and I had more than a decade on that, but what me and Libby had was like nothing I’d ever had before. Maybe it was a girl thing. All I knew was, at that moment, she was a lifeline. Having someone to talk to and share my struggle and fears with was worth every treasure I had.

Now she stood in the hallway, a steampunk bowler hat over one eye and a swingy cape-like coat wrapped around her.

“So does that make me Sherlock or Watson?” I asked drily.

“What?”

I eyed her outfit and she followed my gaze, glancing downward.

“Oh, this? I was going for a Diane Keaton meets Cyrano de Bergerac.”

I didn’t know who either of those people was, so I just nodded and smiled. She was such a goofball sometimes.

Another knock sounded, but this time it was muffled. I swung the door open to find both Bink and my mom laden with plastic grocery store bags.

“Look who I ran into outside,” Mom said, a cheerful smile pinned in place. “And good thing, too. He got all the heavy stuff.”

“No problem, Mrs. R.” Bink carted the lion’s share of the stuff into the kitchen and put it on the counter. “Are there cookies in one of these bags?” he asked, poking through them with a finger.

She set her bags down and slapped his hand playfully. “You’re going to get movie candy and popcorn, I’m sure, so you don’t need anything in these bags.”

He grinned, flashing his dimples, and managed to get a genuine smile in return.

“Gram ate most of her soup and is waiting on strudel. Maybe warm it up because she’s feeling chilly,” I said, suddenly anxious to get out of there while Mom was still smiling.

“Okay. Don’t be too late.”

The three of us filed out, and I stopped off at the coat closet to grab another layer. By the time we all piled into Bink’s car, we had only ten minutes to get to the theater before the movie started, and we ended up making it by the skin of our teeth. Bink and I stood at the concession stand while Libby went into the theater and saved some seats. She’d brought her own snack anyway. A paper sack full of what may or may not have been birdseed.

“Chia seeds. Mixed with raisins,” she’d told me when we first got there.

I’d grimaced and she’d grinned.

“Raisins are nature’s candy. Don’t hate.” She turned and took off with a dramatic swirl of her cape.

I snorted. As
if
. Everyone knew that nature’s candy was Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Nuts. Sugar cane. Cocoa beans. What could be more natural?

I was next in the snack bar line, looking forward to an icy, high calorie, fizzy beverage, something chocolatey, and a hundred and thirty minutes of blissful, mindless entertainment, when a voice had me flinching in shock.

“Hey there, Magpie. Fancy running into you.”

Only one person in all of New Hampshire called me Magpie.
FML.

I raised my brows and shot for super casual as I turned around. “Hi, Mac.”

Now that he had something on me—hell, more than one thing—I couldn’t outright ignore him. Until our dreaded talk, I had to play nice. And then it hit me again…

Want.

My hands itched to touch him, and I dug my fingernails into my palms. He was wearing his standard tan jacket that clearly wasn’t meant for this weather, his hair perfect as usual, and I had to fight the urge to lean in and smell him.
Weirdo alert.
Ugh. Why did I want to sniff and grope the enemy? Was I some kind of masochist?

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Bink said, moving closer and standing a little straighter, puffing up his chest. Even fully puffed, he was no match for Mac.

“Oh.” I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder, mumbling, “Uh, Bink, Mac, Mac, Bink.”

“Hey, Mmmac.” He said it like it was the dumbest name he’d ever heard, but Mac’s grin only grew wider as he tipped his head.

“Dink, is it?”

Bink had the good grace to flush a little. “Uh, Bink, actually. With a B. Real name’s Aaron. Bink’s just a nickname.”

He’d gotten it when he was four because his mom still hadn’t managed to pry the pacifier out of his mouth. Once he’d tried to sneak it into kindergarten, though, the teacher called shenanigans on that and did something his mom had never had the heart to do. I remembered it like it was yesterday. She just plucked it from his mouth and tossed it into the garbage can.

Oddly enough, Bink was totally fine with it. He stared at her hard for a long second, shrugged, and went on his merry way. He’d moved on to eating paste, and when they stopped him from doing that, he’d taken to sticking Tic Tacs up his nose, so I guess Bink was better than some of the nicknames he could’ve gotten tagged with. Still, at the moment, I felt a little bad for him because he’d only been bagging on Mac out of loyalty to me, and he was clearly out of his league.

“Well, it was nice seeing you. I’ve got to get myself a”—I drew a blank and turned toward the glass displays— “a d-dill pickle before they run out.”

A dill pickle? Like they’d ever run out of those.
Oh hey, look at all these delicious chocolate treats. I think I’ll skip ’em and go straight for a giant graying pickle,
said no one ever. They tasted like lukewarm pee and the three flaccid samples left in the display case were probably the same ones that had been there since the place opened six years before.

I flushed and Mac treated me to the same shit-eating grin he’d given my bestie. Apparently Bink wasn’t the only one out of his league. I couldn’t be around Mac for more than three seconds without him infuriating, confusing, or flustering me, and I was about sick of it. Still, when it was my turn at the counter, I ordered the goddamned pickle to save face, kissing three dollars good-bye and ignoring Bink’s massive eye roll. I scurried out of line before he even got his change from the ginormous carton of popcorn he’d ordered, just to get away from Mac’s penetrating stare.

Bink caught up before we got to our theater but kept his mouth shut until we settled into our seats, just as the previews ended. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on between you and Fake Gyllenhaal or not?”

I stared sullenly down at the soggy wax-paper-wrapped pickle in my hand and sighed. “Nothing’s going on.”

“Wait, what are you guys talking about?” Libby hissed, leaning in to hear better.

“We just ran into Mac Finnegan, and he was sorta flirting with Maggie.”

“No he wasn’t!” I protested, relieved when the lights flickered and went low. Surely they would leave me alone now that—

“I know flirting. I do it all the time,” Bink said flatly. “He was flirting. The question is, why? Yesterday you hated his guts, and now today, you’re all friendly and acting like a chick with a crush.”

Ugh, was I? And did Mac think so, too? My leg started bouncing wildly, and I used my elbow to hold it down. “Ew, no I’m not.” I looked at the pickle with self-disgust. At a loss, I punched Bink’s knee, and he brushed me off like a mosquito. “And I wasn’t
that
mad yesterday.”

“You were pretty mad,” Libby said, raising her voice to be heard over the opening credit music.

“Fine, I was mad. We talked today, and it was a misunderstanding. I don’t care about his stupid column anyway, and we’re…friends now, I guess.” That was one word for it. Blackmailer and blackmailee were two more, but why split hairs?

Mac walked by then with Ella Stevens, a girl who used to live next door but stopped talking to me once we hit high school. So apparently curvy, vacant redheads with nose jobs that made them look like Michael Jackson were his type. Good for him. The Coke in my hand warmed instantly, and I set it down in my cupholder, mentally cursing him for ruining both my snack and my drink.

“If you’re friends, then why do you tense up like you’re about to get sacked every time he comes around? That’s not normal, Mags,” Bink reasoned, clucking his tongue at me.

Damn straight it wasn’t. And I had no clue what to do about it. The plan, if one could call it that, was to get through the next couple days until I saw him and had a chance to figure out what he wanted. So had he shown up tonight just to add more pressure? I
had
told him I’d be at the movies. Still, half the high school was at the movies on a Friday night. It was the only entertainment in town during the colder months. But he hadn’t said,
Well, I’ll see you there
, when I told him I’d be going.
Oh, paranoia, my old friend…

“Can you either eat that thing or throw it out? The smell is making me want to hurl,” Bink whispered loudly, poking a finger at my pickle.

Two girls in front of us turned to shush him but changed their tune when they got a look at him. Their shushes turned to giggles, and they offered a wave.

Sometime between the opening credits and the first car chase scene, the two girls were sitting next to us, elbow deep in our double-buttered popcorn.

The first half of the movie went by in a haze as I did my best not to stare at Mac and his date a couple rows ahead of us. It was no easy task. Not like I cared, but I was curious to see if they were
together
together and if he really did have that bad of taste in girls. Then Ella leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder. So
together
together it was. Not like I cared.

Giving in to impulse, I dropped my pickle and gave it a sharp nudge with my toe, hoping it found its way far enough that it wound up directly underneath the two of them so they could share in the pleasure of its odor. Petty, for sure, but he’d been slowing my roll like it was his job for the past couple of days. Now even my weekend movie experience had been effectively shat on, and a twisted part of me felt like I needed to return the favor in some small way.

The rest of the show went by without incident, but I barely paid attention. My brain was too busy cooking up a thousand different nightmarish ways my meet-up with Mac could turn out. I was in the middle of spinning a doozy where he’d successfully negotiated fifty dollars a week for life in order to forget what he saw (and knew) when Bink’s elbow jarred me.

“You plan on staying?” He stood, eyeing me expectantly, his big body hulking over me as the last of the credits rolled.

The two popcorn thieves were already making their way out of the theater, and I sent him a questioning glance right as the lights rose. “Where’d your girlfriends go?”

He grinned and held up his phone. “I got the digits already.”