Caleb’s eyes swung back and forth between his sister and parents. He hadn’t been the centre of conversation once during the meal. As the baby of the family, that was tantamount to invisibility. ‘Stephen Stafford kissed a snake,’ he said.
‘I hope that’s not a euphemism, because eww,’ Carlie said.
‘What’s a euph–’
‘The snake in your science classroom?’ Cindy asked, focusing on her youngest kid. Caleb nodded. ‘And how did this happen?’
‘Dale Gallagher dared him.’
‘Ah.’ She looked at Charles across the table. ‘Well, I feel very sorry for Stephen Stafford’s parents.’
Caleb frowned. ‘Why? He probably didn’t tell them he kissed a snake.’
‘Still getting mental pictures and trying to eat, thank you very much,’ Carlie mumbled, wrinkling her nose.
‘Also Dale Gallagher had to pay him five bucks to do it.’
‘Then I suppose we can feel sorry for Dale Gallagher’s parents as well,’ Charles said, arching a worried brow at Carlie. ‘If he’s dumb enough to pay someone to kiss a reptile.’
When I’d first moved into the apartment above the Hellers’ garage, I hadn’t known what to expect – from how much interaction I would have with them to what the apartment would look like. No one had lived there since they moved in. They’d only used the space for additional storage. But I figured that whatever it looked like, it would beat sleeping in a pantry.
Carlie ran up to the SUV when Charles and I drove up. She’d been a preemie baby, so she had been small for her age all her life. Next to my eighteen-year-old body, she’d never seemed tinier. Still, she nearly knocked me over when she launched herself at me, as wide-eyed as a little kid on Christmas morning.
‘Landon, you have to come see!’ She grabbed my hand and pulled me along the driveway. After the four-hour drive, I was ready for a bathroom, a meal and a nap, plus I had a carful of shit to unload, but there was no stopping a fully energized Carlie.
Her brothers and parents followed us up the steps, where Carlie presented a key ring with a single key attached. The ring’s logo was that of the university where I would, unbelievably, be an official student in a week’s time. As she bounced on her toes, I unlocked the door and found a sparsely furnished apartment. I hadn’t expected furniture. Or newly painted walls, newly installed blinds, dishes in the cabinets, towels in the bathroom. An entire wall of the bedroom was covered in cork, ready for the drawings I might want to pin to it. Sheets were stacked at the foot of a platform bed.
With effort, I struggled to swallow. I couldn’t turn and look at any of them. I couldn’t speak. It was too much.
I walked to the window and twisted the rod, opening the blinds and flooding the room with light. My bedroom view was treetops – thickly leaved live oaks, and sky. The view from the living room would be the Hellers’ backyard, pool and house. They would be feet away. Steps away.
Charles and all three kids disappeared without my notice, and Cindy moved to stand beside me as I stared sightlessly out the window. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Landon,’ she said, her hand coming to rest on my back. ‘Charles and I are proud of what you’ve done to make this happen for yourself.’
The Hellers were like family to me. They always had been. They always would be. But they were just that – like family. They weren’t really mine.
13
Landon
‘The frog is dead. It can’t hurt you.’
Melody batted her lashes from behind a huge pair of goggles. ‘That thing is disgusting. I’m not touching it.’ The one-size-fits-all lab apron fell to her knees and wrapped all the way round, and she held her forearms up, elbows bent, to keep the gloves from falling off her small hands. She looked like a child playing operating-room nurse.
Don’t think about her hands right now.
I crooked an eyebrow at her – the one with the barbell she was staring at last week when Pearl snapped her fingers in front of Melody’s face to get her attention. ‘Would you have said that to Pearl?’ I asked.
She shrugged one shoulder, her eyes on my eyebrow. Her dark green sweater looked as soft as her hair. The colour darkened the edge of her irises and contrasted starkly with the pale strands forked over that shoulder. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Don’t think about her eyes. Or her hair.
I sighed. ‘Okay. I’ll dissect. You pin and label.’
She thrust her plump lower lip out in a pout that should have looked ridiculous on a sixteen-year-old girl. God. Damn.
I was grateful for the heavy canvas apron I was wearing. And the high table between us. ‘Fine. I’ll dissect and pin … and you label?’
She picked up a pen and smiled – awarding me positive reinforcement for caving so easily. ‘What’s first?’
Like a lab rat, I itched to discover where she hid that lever. I’d push it over and over to have that smile directed at me.
‘Uh … well, let’s see …’ I checked the instruction page. ‘Um. First we’re supposed to determine the sex.’
Melody caught her glossy lower lip with her flawlessly white, straight teeth, and I felt that bite – as though I was made of a single nerve ending – in one concentrated place. My dick twitched like a flag caught in a sudden gust of wind. Jesus, what am I – eleven?
Damn Boyce and his stupid mononucleosis. Damn Pearl and hers, too. They’d both been out for a week. Without Pearl’s dampening presence or Boyce here to irritate Melody every five seconds, we’d begun to talk every day like we hadn’t done in over a year. Since the doomed geography project. Since her boyfriend paid Boyce to kick my ass.