Night Owls (26 page)

THE NIGHT BREEZE FLOWING THROUGH THE OPEN
doors turned brisk. Tucked against Jack’s side, I huddled closer, but even his hot skin couldn’t
drive away the chill.

“Cold?” he asked, rolling toward me to wrap himself around my body.

“Sort of. But I also don’t want to move. Like, ever again.”

“We can stitch our clothes together and make a blanket.”

“Collect rainwater in our shoes.”

“Harvest cypress needles off the treetops for food,” he suggested.

“Or fashion a trap out of books and lure seagulls to the balcony.”

“Mmm, raw poultry,” he said. “I renounce my vegetarian ways right this second.”

I laughed and clung to him with both arms and legs, inhaling the scent of his balmy skin. “You make me so happy,” I murmured against the steady drum of his heart.

“I think I’ve been waiting for you all my life,” he murmured back.

And then we did it all over again.

WE FINALLY ABANDONED OUR NEST IN THE ATTIC
around midnight. And after he’d fed me some crazy good corn chowder and cheesy muffins he’d
picked up from some takeout place (my chowder had chunks of ham in it, which, as I informed him, was the ultimate romantic gesture), he locked up the main house and we spent the remaining six hours
of stolen freedom in his warm and cozy room out back. Mostly naked.

We took a shower together and tried to have superhot sex standing up, but after nearly breaking both our backs trying to find a good angle—the short girl, tall boy thing wasn’t
exactly practical—we ended up in his bed. He let me read his comic book (Jack’s humor and storytelling skills were a little better than Andy’s drawings) and formally introduced me
to his betta, Sashimi 3. (Both her predecessors had been given full funerary rites and buried near the guesthouse.)

But after another round of sex in a very interesting position he’d learned in his book, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. So we spooned together, napping until his alarm went off and
he had to drive me home.

Saying good-bye to him that morning was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I cried a little. I couldn’t help it. If we were older, he’d have his own place, and I
could just stay over. Or I’d have my own place, and he could just stay over. It wasn’t even the sex. I wanted to sleep with him and wake up with him. I wanted the whole package. I
wanted more.

“One day,” he promised.

He held me on the sidewalk in front of my house until we couldn’t delay it any longer, and then I watched Ghost’s red taillights disappear into the fog.

The light in the front window was on. Maybe Heath had forgotten to turn it off. I hoped Mom hadn’t come home for a midnight lunch and noticed I wasn’t in my room. The dozen steps up
to my front door felt like Sisyphus’s doomed hill, and when I jabbed my key into the deadbolt, the mythical boulder rolled back down: It was already unlocked.

I pushed the door open with the tips of my fingers and stood in front of my worst nightmare. A two-person firing squad awaited me, consisting of both Heath and Mom, the latter sitting on the
living room sofa with her arms crossed and fire in her eyes.

I DIDN’T SAY A WORD. DIDN’T HAVE TO. MOM DID ALL
the talking.

“Have a seat, Beatrix,” she said in a strained voice.

In a daze, I sat on the sofa under the living room window, as far away from her as I could get. The floor lamp shone in my eyes like a spotlight.

“Not answering your phone anymore?” she said. “Because I’ve called it about a dozen times.”

Crap! I hadn’t looked at my phone when I was at Jack’s—probably the longest I’d ever gone without checking it. Guess I was distracted.

When I didn’t say anything, she demanded, “Where have you been all night?”

I quickly considered my options. Oh, that’s right: I had none. I was exhausted and had just spent the last ten hours, give or take, breaking my Howard Hooper sex record with Jack in a
single night.

“I was with Jack,” I admitted.

“Where?”

“At his house.” Should I say we fell asleep, or would that clue her in to what we were doing? I couldn’t decide, so I didn’t elaborate.

“And his parents were fine with you staying there until seven in the goddamn morning?”

Oh, boy. “They weren’t home.”

“That’s wonderful, Bex. Just wonderful. You’re sneaking around behind everyone’s back, then?”

“It was just this once.”

“Oh, really?” The color of her face matched the apples scattered over her nurse’s scrubs. She was
pisssssed
. “Just this once, was it? Guess who I ran into tonight, Beatrix? Go on, guess. Nothing? Your mind’s a blank? Well, let me help. I ran into Dr. Denise Sheridan, head of the anatomy lab. Ring any bells?”

Uh-oh.

“Oh, she was all kinds of familiar with you,” Mom continued in the Most. Sarcastic. Voice. Ever. “Her mother has been in and out of the ER this summer because of heart
problems—”

What do you know. Guess Dr. Sheridan really
had
been caught up with a family emergency that first night she stood me up.

“—and when I talked to her in the waiting room, she asked how your cadaver drawings were coming along. I, of course, looked like a complete fool because I remember that the last time
we’d talked about you doing that, I specifically said you could not
under any circumstances
do any such thing. That it was gruesome and inappropriate for a girl your age to be
sitting in a room full of dead bodies.”

It was at this point that I noticed my sketchbook of Minnie sitting on the seat next to Mom. Hard evidence. No getting around it. I looked to Heath, quietly begging:
Help a sister out,
dude!
But he just stared at the floor.

“And what’s more, you got Mayor Vincent to call up Dr. Sheridan and ask her to bend her rules for you?”

“I didn’t do that!” I argued. “Jack did that without me knowing. He was just trying to be nice. At the time, I didn’t even know his dad was the mayor.”

“
I
told you
no
,” she snapped. “I am your parent—not Mayor Vincent!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to win the scholarship money, and I needed authentic art. I wasn’t out drinking or smoking weed—”

“No, but you were running around town with a wanted vandal.”

I stilled, arms clenched against the back of the sofa as my heart galloped against my rib cage. There was no way she could’ve figured that out. No way, unless . . .

“I’m sorry, Bex,” Heath said, sounding defensive. “It just kind of came out.”

“You promised!”

“And I also told you he sounded like bad news!”

“He’s the farthest thing from bad news. He’s sweet and caring, and he likes both of you, and you threw him—and me!—under the bus?”

Heath grimaced and shifted uncomfortably.

“I never said a word to Mom when you were cruising bars in the Castro at the beginning of the summer.”

“I stopped,” he said angrily. “Did you?”

“Did I what? I never spray-painted a single line. And the two of you have no idea why he’s doing it or what he’s been through.”

“A police officer came to question you, and you lied to his face,” my mom shouted. “Jack Vincent is a felon!”

“He’s the most moral person I know. And I’m in love with him.” There. I’d said it. Out in the open. But what I thought was the biggest news flash of the evening
only elicited cruel laughter from my mother. The sound struck my chest like a hammer.

“You don’t know what love is,” she said. “And Jack doesn’t, either, because you don’t drag someone you love into the muck with you. You don’t commit
crimes and talk your girlfriend into sneaking around and lying to her own family.”

She really shouldn’t have said that. I completely lost it. All the bolts holding my brain together fell out and dinged against the floor-boards. “Oh, and you’re an expert? That
must be why you told Heath and me all those lies about Dad, like how his new wife owned a strip club when it was really a jazz club. And how Dad refused to pay child support when you were the one
who refused to accept it, because you cared more about your stupid pride than your own children’s well-being.”

Dead silence. Nothing but a police siren wailing somewhere in the distance.

Mom’s anger-red face drained to white while Heath’s mouth fell open.

Too late to take it back now.

“Yeah, I went and saw him in Berkeley that afternoon,” I said defiantly. “He sent me a birthday present—the one you said you’d throw in the trash. He’s been
trying to see us, and you refused.”

Mom’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m your mother!” she said in a voice that was out of control, anguished and broken. “He cheated on me. He left me for
her
.
He left all of us.”

“He might be a bastard, but he’s still our father. And you lied to us.”

“What? You’re on his side now?”

“No,” I said. “I gave him the gift back, and I had a huge fight with him. But you could’ve told us he’s been trying to see me and Heath. You could’ve told us
he’d moved right across the Bay.”

“He ruined my life. Made me feel worthless,” she said, a single tear running down one cheek. She quickly wiped it away. “I used to tell myself I didn’t want him to make
you two feel that way, too. But if you want to know the truth, you were the only thing I had that he wanted. And by withholding you from him, I had control over something. I could make him
suffer.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Heath, either. He put his hands atop his head and paced into the kitchen. Everyone was miserable now.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the anatomy lab,” I said after a time. “But we both know I can’t afford to go to college if I don’t get scholarship
money and grants. As far as Dad goes, I’m not sorry I went to meet him. He’s still an asshole, if that makes you feel any better. And I don’t know if I want to see him again or
not. But I’m not sorry about Jack. He’s going through something you can’t even imagine—”

“I don’t care,” Mom said, suddenly snapping out of her pain. “He’s a wanted felon, a troubled—”

“Please don’t say ‘Troubled Teen.’ ”

“Okay, smart-ass. But if you want to get into college so badly, think about this. You won’t be getting in anywhere if you have a police record.”

“I won’t—”

“That’s right, you won’t. You won’t be seeing him ever again. The only time you’re leaving this house is to go to work.”

“You can’t do that! I’m eighteen, not eight.”

“My house, my rules.”

“Fine. I’ll take my things right now and leave.”

“You even think about it, and I’ll go ring the Vincents’ doorbell and tell the mayor that his precious son has been vandalizing the c it y.”

“You wouldn’t
dare.”

“Try me, Beatrix. I would and I will.”

How could she be so unbelievably cruel? “All that talk about wanting me to be happy, but when I finally am, you just couldn’t stand it, could you? You had to ruin my life, too,
because if you aren’t happy, nobody is.” I stalked off toward my room and swung around for one last dig. “Maybe that’s why Dad left you in the first place.”

The X-ray doors shuddered when I slammed them closed. I fell onto my bed, sinking into misery and hopelessness, and buried my head beneath my pillow to shut out the sound of Mom’s
crying.

I SOMEHOW MANAGED TO SLEEP UNTIL NOON. WHEN
I woke, I stayed in bed and texted Jack to let him know I’d sent him an email about what was going
on. He didn’t reply, but I figured he was probably asleep or dealing with his parents’ coming back from Sacramento. I listened for sounds of life outside my doors, and when I determined
that the coast was clear, I made a beeline for the bathroom. When I got out of the shower and was combing my hair, a knock sounded on the door.

“Go away.”

“I’m so sorry,” Heath’s voice said through the wood.

“Me too,” I called back. “For trusting you.”

“Please, Bex. I want to know what happened with you and Dad.”

“You should’ve thought about that before you betrayed me. Go away.”

I turned on the shower again to make it sound like I was getting back inside, and he finally left. He didn’t make another appearance while I got ready for work, but Mom did. I saw her
petite silhouette under the arch of the kitchen as I was headed out the front door. “I work from three to seven,” I said to her. “If you don’t believe me, you can call Ms.
Lopez and verify my work schedule from now on.” And with that, I shut the door and left.

Much like my life, work was a disaster. I was preoccupied and a total klutz, and I nearly started crying when a twenty-something snot of a woman yelled at me for dropping her organic eggs. I
think Ms. Lopez took pity on me or something, because she quietly told me I was overdue for my break (I wasn’t) and took over my register, sending me to the count-out room. Once there, I
tried Jack’s breathing trick, but it didn’t help.

As if he knew I was thinking about him, my phone dinged with a Jack text, asking me to call him ASAP, so I did.

He answered right away with a breathless question: “Where are you?”