If it were anyone else, I would’ve laughed and told them to suck it up. Lake not working on her birthday made me happy, though. Part of me didn’t even like the idea of her working at all. She should just have fun, shop with her friends, ride bikes along the beach, at least until college started. “So you’re getting into trouble instead.”
She smiled a little. “What trouble? I’m just talking to you.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe you’re the one getting into trouble,” she said.
I tried to enjoy the way she blushed as she flirted with me. The way the color of her eyes deepened. But a thought nagged the back of mind. Fun as it sounded, I could never get into trouble with her. Not even little things, like sneaking in somewhere we shouldn’t be or getting caught drinking on the beach or taking off for a weekend in Vegas. All things she should be able to do. Being on parole meant playing by the rules and staying within state lines. I couldn’t go far away with her. I couldn’t soar.
Which would mean she couldn’t, either.
“Tiffany mentioned that you applied somewhere other than USC,” I said.
“Oh. Yeah. It’s supposed to be a secret so my dad doesn’t find out.”
Pissed me off how she wouldn’t even entertain other options because of her dad. He should’ve been encouraging her to look at lots of school for a decision as big as this, but instead he’d just packed on more and more pressure. “So where is it, this mysterious school?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m a Trojan now, that’s that.”
“Yeah? You never even considered this other place?”
“Why should I?” Her blue eyes shimmered like the ocean’s surface on a sunny day. “Everything I want is here.”
The look on her face said everything her words couldn’t. I was what she wanted. I was here. It should’ve made me happy, but instead, it sobered me. The last thing I wanted was for her to make such huge decisions based on me. That made me no better than her dad. If I had anything to do with her choice to stay, especially after the way she’d broken down at the restaurant, it told me all I needed to know—she might’ve been eighteen, but she still wasn’t making decisions as a grownup.
Lake reached around me to touch my hip, and my back went rigid. “What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Trying to see what you’re reading.” She stuck her tongue between her teeth, patting around my back pocket.
“Other side,” I said.
She couldn’t reach that far, so she had to go around my knees. She slipped a paperback from my back pocket and read the title. “‘Tropic of Cancer.’”
“Not going to find that on your reading list,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It’s, uh . . . not suitable for high schoolers.”
She bent back the flimsy cover with her thumb and flipped through the pages. After a few seconds, she looked up, scanning my face. “You’re still having nightmares.”
I tensed instinctively. Images I fought during the daytime flashed across my mind. Me, locked in a six-by-nine cell for eternity. Lake being pulled into the black water. Madison alone in a room with my father. Lake alone with my father. Sometimes I was in the room, too, stuck in a chair I couldn’t get up from.
I could never give Lake those images. “No, not really,” I said.
“Well, then something’s keeping you up at night. You have these . . .” She reached up to touch my face. “Dark circles . . .”
When I noticed Lake’s friends wheeling back toward us, I pulled my head back, and Lake dropped her hand. Val skated in the middle, eating a frozen banana and flanked by the other two. She stuck a foot on the sidewalk and gracefully flipped up her board. Like little green magnets, her eyes went directly to the cigarette behind my ear. “Can I bum one?” she asked me.
“No.”
“I’ll pay you for it. For a pack, even.” With hardly a look, she tossed her banana into a trashcan a few feet away. “I’m not old enough to buy them yet.”
“Don’t bother,” Lake said, her lips curling into a mischievous smile. “He’ll never give in.”
I narrowed my eyes at her ribbing. “Excuse me for trying to keep you girls pure.”
“What’s that?” Val asked, taking the book from Lake.
“It’s Manning’s.”
Val flipped it over, reading the back cover. “Holy contributing to the delinquency of minors!”
My chest rumbled with an unexpected laugh. “Did you just quote Robin from the Batman series?”
“Yes, and you get points for noticing. It says this book was originally banned in the U.S. for being obscene. Is it like a sex book?”
The other girls went wide eyed. “No,” I said, “but it’s pretty graphic.”
“How?” Lake asked.
To hell with it. She was eighteen now. “Lots of drinking, women, prostitution, and, ah, misogynistic language. Miller supposedly took a lot of it from real life.”