“Huh?” I asked, although I got up and moved around North to sit next to Luke on the floor. North had gotten a photo. Shouldn’t Luke?
“I mean he’s got a lot of pictures of all the times he’s ever pranked anyone,” Gabriel said. He became distracted when Kota pulled out his cell phone and started looking at it. Gabriel pointed to the screen as Kota started typing. “Don’t read the articles. Check out the videos. A lot of those articles are trash.”
“You don’t know that,” Kota said.
“Just trust me. You can watch someone on YouTube take off permanent marker, if it can be done. That way you know it works, and it isn’t just some geezer writing an article for a quick buck and he didn’t actually know shit. Video is evidence.”
Luke put his arm around me, and put his phone in front of our faces and flashed a few pictures. “Smile, Sang.”
I was still half listening to Gabriel and had lost what I was doing. I smiled, cheesy and guiltily. I reached up to my hair, unsure how sloppy it might be since we were wrestling a bit on the floor downstairs. Locks fell around my face. I reached back to fix them.
Luke snapped a few photos anyway, not giving me much of a chance to fix myself. I saw colored spots after the bright flashes. “You keep photos when you do pranks like this?” I asked.
“I can’t get photos every time,” Luke said. He leaned away from me, and started swiping through photos on his phone, searching through them. “Sometimes I’m too busy running.”
“Because you know you’ll get into trouble,” North said. “Which reminds me, you still owe me some new tires.”
My lips parted and I looked over at Luke, who grinned at his phone with a guilty expression. “What did you do to North’s tires?”
“How was I supposed to know the paint would eat away at his tire tread?” Luke asked. “I thought you could just wash it off.”
“If I wash my tires with water and soap, and they turn orange, the color doesn’t just wash out,” North said.
Luke flipped around his phone to me, showing me North’s black Jeep, only with bright orange tires. The tires were wet, with North standing by, looking angry and confused. Some chemical reaction must have happened causing the tires to change colors.
Luke beamed at the shock on my face. “Looks awesome, doesn’t it?”
“You’re costing me a fortune,” North said. “You’ve been going too far. One of these days, you’re going to piss off the wrong person.”
“I only mess with my favorite people,” Luke said. “If I don’t like you, I won’t care enough to do anything.”
North shifted his feet, stretching out his legs while sitting on the floor, and then bent them again, putting his arms over the knees. He peered over them, his dark eyes showing just a hint of amusement. “Please, Luke, don’t like me anymore.”
I smiled, tempted to tell Luke the same thing. Was it better to be pranked? It was kind of fun, but I could see North’s point that if he didn’t think ahead, it might cause problems, like costing North some new tires.
Kota returned with a bottle of sunscreen spray and a roll of paper towels. “According to the internet, this works.”
“I don’t know if we should trust it,” Gabriel said, trailing behind him. “That’s just the first one we came across. And someone in the comments said it didn’t work. I don’t know if this will just streak the marker.”
“We need a guinea pig,” Kota said and then turned to Luke, shaking the sunscreen spray.
Luke chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I’m it.” He pumped his fist once. “For science!”
“Or if makes it worse, let’s just call it karma for starting this whole mess,” Gabriel said.
Kota sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of Luke. “Let’s just focus on getting this stuff off. If this doesn’t work, we’ll need to try something else.” He adjusted his glasses quickly. He shook the sunscreen can again and then picked up Luke’s arm. He started spraying the stuff thickly over the black marks.
The ink started to streak, and at first, I was worried Gabriel was right. He’d end up with a coated partially blackened arm.
Kota took a paper towel and started to wipe. The marker came off cleanly. I blew out a quick breath, relieved and hoping that this still worked when it was my turn to get cleaned up.
“We might need more sunscreen spray after this,” Kota said.
“I’ll put it on the shopping list,” North said.
At least the marker was coming off easily. Kota continued to work on Luke by spraying carefully over his face and wiping away from his eyes.
I got up, heading to the bathroom and checking the mirror, looking over the damage. Luke had lied about the curse word on my face. There weren’t any words at all. There were stick men, and stars and a moon and something that looked like an alien.
And then I remembered my ear and I checked. There was a tiny heart, small and cute, right on my lobe.
I smiled at it, and then combed out my hair a bit, letting the locks that frame my face hide my ear. I didn’t want Kota to get rid of it just yet. If I could get away with it, I’d keep it. At least for a little while.
When I got out of the bathroom, Luke was wiping at his skin with a dry paper towel. Kota was collecting the stained dirty ones into a plastic bag. Gabriel was lying on the bed now, looking like he wanted a nap.
“I smell like I’ve been to the beach,” Luke said.
“Get over to the diner,” North said. “Take your shift back from Nathan.”
“I know what I need to do,” Luke said. “You don’t have to tell me.” He got up and started walking toward the stairs.
“You’ve been running off lately whenever you get a break from the diner,” North said. “Nathan needs a break. He doesn’t need you running off now.”
“I never miss a shift. I’m always back on time,” Luke said, pausing to turn and look at him. He held his hands out. “I do my job. Just because I’m not a slave to it like you are—”
“I’m not talking about working more at the diner,” North said. “I’m talking about you disappearing every day.”
“I don’t go anywhere,” he said. North opened his mouth to reply but Luke waved him off in a very abrupt way and rushed to the stairs. His footsteps shuffled quickly over the carpeted steps. I listened to the noises he made going through the house, and finally when he closed the door as he left.
I eased over to sit next to Kota on the floor, feeling odd about being there while North was fussing at Luke. Wasn’t North being a little harsh on his brother? I wasn’t sure what Luke might be up to, but unless Luke was really needed somewhere, like for the Academy jobs or for the diner, if he wanted to spend time alone, shouldn’t he be allowed? Just because North didn’t know where he went, did that mean Luke was going to get into trouble?
And where was Luke going? I hadn’t noticed him disappearing anywhere. The boys were coming and going all the time, so it was difficult to keep track, and I always assumed they were either at home or on some Academy job.
North scooted over across the carpet, heading my way. He took the sunscreen spray from Kota and motioned to me. “Let me get that shit off of you.”
I checked in with Kota, who wasn’t looking at me, but at the window, as if he following Luke with his eyes. Absently, he passed over the supplies to North. “Just be careful around her eyes.”
“I know, I know,” North said. He tried to look at my face while on the floor, but frowned. He got up and sat on the bed, nudging Gabriel over. “Don’t go to sleep. You’ll be up all night.”
Gabriel rolled over and faced the wall, giving North more room. “I’m a teenager,” he said. “I need lots of sleep. Science people said so on YouTube.”
North curled his fingers in my direction. “Get up off the floor.”
I sat on the bed next to North, and let him clean off my face. I wrinkled my nose at the heavy scent of sunscreen filling my nose. It was a little much and my eyes blurred as I wanted to sneeze. He ignored my ear, and cleaned my face and the marks on my arm. I didn’t need to say anything about leaving the heart. Either he forgot, or he liked it, too, and left it alone.
“Gabriel,” Kota said and got up to sit at his computer chair. He turned on his computer and started clicking on different files. I could see little over his shoulder, only the edge of Internet windows. “Where has Luke been going lately?”
“Shit if I know,” Gabriel said. “We haven’t really been hanging out lately.”
“What have you been doing?” Kota asked. “Are you two okay?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Just trying to stay out of Pam’s way,” Gabriel said. “She’s still into that new guy, the one that basically kicked me and Sang out. He stinks and is always looking for money. They fight about it. I might start storing stuff at Victor’s house before the guy thinks to sell things off while I’m not around. And whenever I see Pam, she’s handing me condoms. Like she thinks I’m fucking around with Sang every time I leave the house.”
I blushed, staring at the floor, embarrassed to think of if I ever had to go over to Gabriel’s house again and see Pam. Could I look her in the face?