17 #2
From his wallet, he took out a thin piece of titanium.
They sold it online, and it was the size of a credit card.
It had little cutouts all over it. They called it a multi-tool because you could use this corner for a screwdriver and you could use—well, hell, he didn’t know.
But one thing he knew was that it was thin and strong, and that’s what he needed.
Standing as close to the Mercedes as he could, so that his body blocked what he was doing, he slid the piece of titanium between the glass and the weatherstripping.
Then he applied pressure—enough that his muscles tightened, but not so much, he hoped, that the glass would shatter.
A moment later, he had an opening wide enough to slide the vee of the hanger through.
It took him two tries to get the hanger around the little pull for the lock. Then he yanked.
The door popped open.
And the Mercedes’ alarm went off.
The headlights began to flash. Jem ignored them.
This was a good neighborhood. Nobody was going to rush out here with a gun.
Right now, they were all thinking somebody had pressed the wrong button on a key fob, or someone had parked badly and bumped another car in the process.
Maybe a kid had gotten hold of the keys.
And in a couple of minutes, they’d think the car’s owner was asleep or away from home, and they’d start wondering if they’d have to put up with the alarm all night. And—
It didn’t matter. He was already inside.
The glove box held tissues, two pens, insurance paperwork and car registration, even the original manual. The ashtray was clean. No loose change. In the center console, he found Binaca and a handful of loose peppermints.
Nothing. Not a fucking thing. Not that he knew what he was looking for.
What are you doing?
It had to be here. Something had to be here. He flipped down the visors. He twisted around to check the pockets on the backs of the seats. The trunk—
But the stopwatch in his head told him he was out of time. People were going to start getting annoyed. They were going to come to their windows, open their doors, check what the hell was going on.
He opened the glove box again and threw everything on the floor, to make it look like someone had busted in hoping to score something—
What?
—valuable. As he crawled out of the car, though, he stopped.
The visor.
He grabbed the garage door remote from where it was clipped. Then he got out of the car, shut the door, and hurried toward the corner. Were those lights in the apartments across the street new? Or had they been on before? At the gas station, a woman was peering out of the plate-glass windows.
Why hadn’t he worn a hat? Why hadn’t he taken the time to go back to the Subaru and get that stupid Jazz cap out of the back? Why hadn’t he turned around and done nothing—gone back to the car and sat there like he was supposed to?
His hand tightened around the remote, and the plastic bit into his palm.
Mouth dry. Face hot. Eyes blurry—the streetlights, one after another, turned into one long smear of light down the street.
You have to blink, he told himself. His breathing was fast, and the inside of his mouth felt like it was coated with gasoline.
He thought, maybe, he could smell Grey Flannel. Like he’d walked through a cloud of it.
You’re afraid.
But that was stupid because there was nothing to be afraid of. Absolutely nothing. He was fine. There wasn’t anything to be afraid of.
And anyway, it had all happened a long time ago.
If anything had messed him up, it had been Decker. Bouncing around? Going home to home? That was just something that happened. He barely thought about it. Barely even remembered it.
The yard had looked perfect for baseball.
Do you want a dog?
Raised voices made him try to clear his eyes again.
Ahead, on the next corner, Wendell was arguing with a drag queen.
It took Jem a moment to recognize Lupita Bonita.
In her heels, the drag queen towered over the older man.
She had on the same dramatic makeup, something like KISS meets Barbie, and under the streetlights, her wig was flat and colorless.
“—stay away—” the drag queen was shouting, one finger stabbing down at Wendell.
“I have every right to be there!” Wendell quavered back. “I’m helping those boys!”
“—I’m warning you!” The drag queen took a step forward, and Wendell scurried back. The movement took him over the curb, and Wendell came down badly, his ankle turning. He let out a pained sound, but he kept moving backward, hands raised.
The drag queen watched him, but she didn’t follow.
Jem ducked his head and turned down the side street. He shoved the garage remote in his pocket.
“You can’t do this!” Wendell was protesting, but his voice was getting fainter, moving away. “I’m going to call Nasha and tell her—”
The drag queen’s heel clicked as she stepped down from the sidewalk, and Wendell’s voice cut off. Whimpering breaths faded into the distance as Wendell scurried away. Jem kept his head down and focused on the Subaru.
A car rolled past.
In the distance, the Mercedes’ alarm was still blatting.
His ROOS made faint scuffing sounds, and he tried to walk normally.
Then, behind him, the click of heels began to move back toward Rainbow House.
Jem didn’t let himself look until he was in the Subaru. The drag queen was gone. Wendell was gone. The street was empty.
He started shaking, and it took him two tries to get the Subaru started because he forgot to step on the brake. Slowly, the car warmed up. He leaned his head on the steering wheel.
I was checking. I was making sure.
Of what?
I had to check.
What the fuck were you doing?
He sat back. He got out his phone. And he started scrolling through Instagram. And after a while, his hands stopped shaking.
When Daniel texted, Jem drove around the block.
He pulled up in front of Rainbow House, and—as usual—Daniel took his time.
Two minutes. Three. Five. Seven. And then the boy came out of the door with his face turned away from the wind, one arm wrapped around his waist. He’d ditched the leggings, and now he wore only the skirt, and his long legs were white in the harsh light.
As he came down the stairs, he kept one arm wrapped around himself, trying to cover himself where the cropped shirt rode up. He was holding something in that hand.
Daniel got in the car. He put on his seatbelt awkwardly, using his right hand, because he was still holding something in his left.
No, not holding. Hiding. A red mark, darkening like a bruise, was barely visible above his collar.
As he struggled with the seatbelt, he glanced over.
And then his expression hardened. “What?”
Jem tapped the time on the dash.
Daniel made an annoyed sound. “Nasha wouldn’t stop talking.”
And if you weren’t Jem Berger, and you didn’t bullshit for a living, you would have thought that was it. But he was Jem Berger. And he did bullshit for a living. And so he didn’t miss the relief that flickered, for a moment, in Daniel’s eyes.
It could have been a lot of things. It could have been anything.
But he still had his hand wrapped around whatever he was trying to hide.
Twenty questions: what’s smaller than a fucking breadbox?
All Jem said, though, was “Lose something?”
For a moment, Daniel didn’t understand. Then he shrugged. “Justin wanted to borrow them. I told him they wouldn’t fit.”
“Uh huh,” Jem said. “Is that how you got that hickey?”
He reached automatically to cover the mark and caught himself too late. Then he went straight on the offensive. “We made out. It’s not like that’s against the law.”
“Uh huh,” Jem said again.
Daniel’s face was annoyance, anger, the perpetual teenage bitterness at being treated unfairly. He let out a sound of disgust, adjusted the seatbelt, and said, “Can we go?”
“You don’t lie to me. I don’t lie to you.”
“I’m not lying! Why does everyone always think I’m lying?”
“Okay,” Jem said again, and he pulled away from the curb.
Silence. I-15 like black ice. And the orange lights of the city.
Halfway home, Daniel said, “I took them off because I didn’t want to wear them in the first place. I only put them on because I knew you and Tean would freak out if I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah,” Jem said. “Because we freak out so easily.”
“You do!” But he sank down in his seat. “Tean does. He gets this look in his eyes.”
That was actually spot on, and Jem was a little too familiar with that look, but all he said was “Tean has been really cool about everything. And I’ve been cool too.
I get it—you’re trying out some new stuff, seeing what works.
That’s great. You do you, Daniel. I don’t give two fucks, and yeah, maybe Tean gets surprised sometimes, but it’s not because he’s judging you or freaking out or anything.
He’s known you since you were a baby. It’s a big adjustment for him too.
I think he’s done a pretty good job, all things considered. ”
It was another mile before Daniel said, “Yeah, I guess.”
“Do I need to buy you condoms?”
The air was suddenly so sharp it felt like it could turn in Jem’s hand and cut.
“We haven’t—” But the words collapsed into silence. The boy made himself smaller in his seat. And then he gave a tiny, one-shouldered shrug. He was almost whispering when he said, “They have them at Rainbow House. You can take them and nobody says anything.”
“Do you know what I mean when I say you need to be careful?” Jem asked.
The teenage defensiveness was back. “Yeah.”
“Consent. Protection. Nobody pressures you.”
“Okay, God.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Daniel shook his head. But he was starting to cry, and his tears were silver in the light from the dash.
Jem squeezed his shoulder. “Hey, nobody’s mad at you. It’s okay. If you like him, and you want to do it, that’s fine. You don’t have to feel bad about it. We just want you to be safe.”