Chapter 10 #2
More silence settled in while we chewed, sighed, and generally brooded.
Eventually, Brady grumbled,
She elbowed him hard.
Brady snapped.
Softly, I inserted myself between them.
When no one said otherwise, I added,
Griffin asked, rubbing his hand nervously along my thigh.
I grabbed his hand, squeezed it. I included the others with a sweeping look.
I held up my palm, the skin at its center marred by a paper-thin scar every one of us still wore. Our superior healing, it seemed, didn’t erase marks from when we were ten, long before we were ever shocked back to life, our immortality kicking in.
Griffin, Hunt, Layla, and Brady also held up their palms, faces out. Layla’s was smeared with Russian dressing, Brady’s with marinara sauce from his meatball sub. They were similar in more ways than they liked to admit.
the four of them repeated.
Then Layla reached for our hands.
Brady said.
Layla examined her hand, wiped it clean, then smirked when she noticed the streak of marinara on his.
she told him.
he asked.
She demonstrated by running her palm across the tip of her nose.
When he copied her, she busted out laughing.
It was almost possible to believe the Fischer House party had never happened, that we were normal high school seniors with higher-than-average intelligence and an uncommonly close friendship.
After Brady cleaned his hand and his face, and smacked Layla on the arm, and after she smacked him back, we piled our hands together in the center of the table.
Brady said.
Griffin said.
Layla tried, but then winced.
Yeah, I didn’t believe it either.
Griffin insisted anyway.
I said.
Now was not the time to be concerned with hows or likelihoods. Now was the time to gather whatever pep in our steps we could, just as Layla said. Without believing in ourselves, we were doomed already.
Layla said.
I smiled at seeing more of my usual friend shining through the nonsense.
She popped the final bite of Reuben into her mouth and proceeded to lick her fingers, the feathers in her hair bouncing as she did so.
I said,
But was it really?
I swallowed the lump in my throat that was interfering with my appetite and slid my half-eaten chicken salad sandwich to Brady. Without comment or question, he accepted it like he always did and dove in.
I said.
Hunt said.
Griffin and I arched our brows at him. Lucky wasn’t the word I would have chosen.
Hunt answered our unasked question.
My brows lowered.
Hunt nodded, the turquoise of his sole earring swinging with the movement.
Griffin said.
Layla said.
I said.
Griffin leaned his lips to my ear and whispered in a deep, husky drawl, “We need to find time for me to help you … release that from your system.”
My core clenched at the implication, and Layla rolled her eyes.
“I’m totally jelly, not gonna lie,” she offered aloud, before adding into our private chat,
I rubbed the sore spot at the back of my neck where last night’s dart got me. Around the table, the others worried at their puncture sites too.
Brady said,
I muttered bitterly.
With a matter-of-fact grimace, Layla nodded, curled her hand around an imaginary dart, and pretended to stab the air over and again.
She raised a second similarly curled hand, jabbing upward with it.
I said,
I scanned the faces of my friends, searching for unanimous agreement.
I found it in their resolved yet uncertain stares. In their determined nods.
In more courage than we should need to have.
Brady polished off my sandwich, then the rest of Hunt’s, and soon we were piled back in Clyde.
Why wait when you had a highly dangerous plan with very low odds of success? Better to rip off the Band-Aid quickly from that sucker.
We ditched our bags in our school lockers since it would support our stories of an impromptu joyride, and Griffin pointed Clyde toward the Periwinkle Hill neighborhood and my sweet boy Bobo.
Afternoon classes were gonna suck it. And maybe, just maybe, so were Magnum, Fanny, the lie-rents, and Magnum’s murder squad with the happy trigger fingers.
When Griffin’s hand wasn’t on the gearshift, it was on my leg. We drove home in complete silence, feeling the weight of the world on our shoulders. Feeling the razor-fine line between life and death chomping at Clyde’s back bumper.
We were going to run. But could we really outrun our deaths?