20. Tink
TINK
I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, there’s daylight glowing behind my blinds and a buzzing in my head.
No, not in my head. Next to it.
“Goddammit,” I mutter, and fumble around for my phone. But no, my phone is right in front of my face, which means this buzzing sound is…
Right. Shit. Last night comes flooding back—the library card, the Googling, the…cyberstalking. Blue at my door.
Krye’s burner phone.
Answer it, I hear in my memory. It’ll always be me.
I shove myself to sitting and grab around in my blankets, but by the time I find the stupid thing and figure out how to answer it—push the awkward center button—the call’s gone dead.
“Fuck,” I mutter. I try redialing again, but same thing as last night. No dice.
I sigh, sagging a little over my hands. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know Pan needs to know. And that means I’ve got to go wake him up.
I slept in my binder by accident, but I swap out my T-shirt for a clean one before pulling on pants and swinging by the minifridge for something with caffeine. Not that my heart isn’t already going a thousand beats per minute, though.
Because truth is, of all the places I’ve been as Tink, the situations I’ve had to act in, the underground locations and bad neighborhoods and seedy joints, the hardest place to know what to do is where I’m headed now.
A bedroom. Pan’s bedroom.
Not that I haven’t been in guys’ bedrooms before. But this…this is a totally different context. I’ve never seen how guys act when it’s just the two of them in one of their rooms.
And something about it feels…personal. Intimate, almost.
But, then again, only if I let it.
I take a sip for energy, grip the burner in my hand, and knock.
“What?” comes a mumbled voice from the other side of the door. “Who’s there?”
“Me,” I answer. “Can I come in?”
“Ugh.” I hear a groan, the soft flap of blankets. “Sure.”
Pan’s room is a mess. Of course it is. It’s not disgusting—he doesn’t leave crusty food bowls or used condoms just lying around—but if you’re trying to find anything, good luck. Clothes everywhere. Pan likes clothes and Pan has a lot of clothes.
And not all of them are even his, I notice. Right under the corner of the bed: crumpled, hot pink, lacy—a thong. I ignore it.
Pan sits up in his swirl of blankets, blinking and running a hand through his hair. “Hey.” He squints at me. “What’s up?”
And shit. Him, there, like this. In bed. Half smiling, croaky morning voice, no shirt. All the winged keys and constellations and antique clocks, hearts and arrows, anchors and everything patterning out his sleeves. The contours of his chest muscles and abs, the lines of his hips—
Fuck. I close my eyes. Not this, not now. I should not have had that drink last night, or…done any of it. Stupid, stupid. Hard reset, Tink.
“Nothing,” I say, opening them again. “I mean, actually, something. Can we talk?”
Pan gives an exaggerated sigh. “I guess.” He leans forward across his bed, and before I clock what he’s doing, he’s grabbed the can from my hand.
“Hey!” I cry, but he just laughs and takes a sip.
“You woke me up,” he grumbles. “Give me a break.” He takes another sip, then offers it back, but I wave him off. “What’s up?”
I sigh through my nose and hold out the phone. “Remember this?” I say. “The one you told Krye you were gonna hold on to and weren’t gonna lose?”
Pan jabs his tongue in his cheek, thinking. “Yeah, I guess.” He lifts a shoulder. “Although if memory serves, I think he gave it to you.” He picks up something lying flat on the mattress—a hunting knife, with a ridged black handle and a wicked sawtooth blade—and points it at me.
I scoff. “That supposed to scare me?” I ask.
Because…scared is not exactly what I feel right now. Nope, nope, never mind.
Pan just rolls his eyes. “So the phone. What about it?”
“It’s been ringing,” I say. “Apparently a lot. Blue found it last night, said it was going off, and I just missed another call right now.”
“Okay,” Pan says, twirling the knife handle through his fingers, looking at it and not at me. “So call him back.” Then he looks up at me. “What’s the big deal?”
He spins the knife to upright, balances it in his hand, and, quick as a whip, flicks his wrist at the wall. It spirals forward and sticks, blade wedged into the cork of the target he’s got mounted.
“Hell yeah,” he says, and springs up to tug it out, glancing at me as he does. “So? Did you?”
“Well, yeah, I tried,” I say. “Number’s blocked, it doesn’t go through.”
“Stupid,” Pan mutters, jumping back on his bed with both feet and plodding toward the headboard.
“Typical Krye, gets his panties in a bunch about one thing”—he lines up the target, one eye closed, extends his hand and retracts it a few times—“and then when you finally get it back to him, it’s nothing. ”
Again, he snaps his arm out, letting the knife fly. Thunk.
“Probably just wants us to pick him up some Starbucks or something.”
I think of the call log. The frequency of all those calls. “Yeah, I don’t know,” I say, hedging. I don’t want to protest too much and be anxious about it, but at the same time—
“Relax, dude.” Pan vaults off the bed, landing on his heels inches from the wall in a crouch. He straightens, pulls out the knife, and gestures at me with it. “If it’s really an emergency, he’ll call again. If not, he’ll give up. So unless we hear from him again—”
The phone buzzes in my hand.
Pan blinks. Sucks his teeth. Folds his arms across his bare chest. “Well, shit,” he mutters. “Give me that.”
He stabs a finger at the keypad and puts it to his ear, scratching the back of his head with the same hand holding the knife, which makes his hair stick up like even more of a rooster’s comb.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says into the phone. “How can I—”
I can’t make out the words Krye is saying, but I can hear his tone of voice.
Loud. Angry. Maybe even panicked.
“Okay,” Pan says quickly, dropping his hand, patting the air in front of him like he’s trying to physically calm someone down. “Okay, okay, okay. What—say it again?”
He closes his eyes, drops the knife to the ground, and rubs his forehead.
“Her what?” His eyes open again, then screw half shut.
Confused. “Who—okay, okay,” he says hurriedly, more shouting from Krye.
“Never mind, Jesus. I’ll—yeah, yeah, no, I am on my way,” he says, catching my eyes and rolling his.
“Yeah, as many guys as I can. I’ll—no,” he barks, his voice sharp and deeper than usual, in a way that makes something inside me sit up straight at attention.
His eyes are firm on mine as he says his last words: “I won’t let anything happen to your daughter, Krye. ”
Pan flies out of his room, the door banging, his jacket flung over his shoulder as he goes.
“Fucking—Pan!” I cry after him. “Where the hell are you—”
I skid out of his room and into the hall, barely catching him as he darts across the landing, past Wendy on the couch, tucked in a corner with a book in her hands and Nana in her lap, and thud down the stairs two at a time.
“For Christ’s—wait!” I bark-yell after him, tripping down the stair treads into the shop. “What’s going on? What happened? What did—”
I practically smack into Pan at the base of the stairs. He turns and smirks.
“Zuzu’s in trouble.”
It doesn’t make sense at first. Like it’s barely even words. “What?”
“Zuzu,” he says again, grinning like this is some kind of fun game. “Krye’s daughter. Some thug in her new neighborhood’s giving her a hard time. So, you know.” He runs his tongue over his teeth and smiles wider, tugging his collar into place. “Looks like we’ve got to do a little rescue mission.”
“Uh, we?” From his station in the shop, Kit lifts his head. “Who are you calling we?”
“Ollie ollie oxen free,” Pan says, lifting his hands in the air. “Told Krye I’d bring backup. You in?”
Kit shrugs. “Could probably use it,” he mutters, just as I say—
“Wait.” I inhale sharply. “Pan. Slow the fuck down. What exactly are you saying we do?”
“I just said,” Pan says. “Little rescue mission, make sure she’s okay.” He scratches the back of his head. “Kinda ridiculous, considering she’s a fucking Brazilian jujitsu artist or whatever, but, you know.” He grins. “Can’t ignore a damsel in distress.”
“Who’s a damsel in distress?” Fox pads in from the kitchen, holding what looks like an empty box of Bisquick—and once again shirtless, for Christ’s sake.
I close my eyes again. What is happening to me?
My hormones must be back online after getting my period or something.
“Hey, do we have any more pancake mix somewhere?” Fox continues, to Kit. “There’s only a little bit left.”
“I wasn’t aware we had any pancake mix,” Kit says, leaning against the shop counter and frowning. “Why?”
“‘Cause I’m making pancakes.”
“Again?” Pan says.
“Now?” Kit says.
“Zuzu,” I explain, since no one’s bothering to answer the question. “She’s in some kind of trouble, apparently.” I glance at Pan. “Did he say what happened?”
I don’t want to go out and help Krye’s daughter, necessarily. But I also don’t want things to get any worse. With Krye, or…in general. Especially if he’s been trying to call since last night.
So my read on the situation is what it usually is: the faster we get this over with, the better.
“Nah. He’s in Mexico or something so he doesn’t have a lot of the details,” Pan says, studying his fingernails. He looks up. “Wheels up in like two minutes. You coming, Fox?”
Fox glances at the box of pancake mix, shrugs, and nods. “Can I put a shirt on first?”
“Please.”
The single word from the corner makes me almost jump out of my skin.
Blue. Just lurking there in the piercing station, half concealed behind the leather of his chair. He steps out now, wiping something on a cloth that he sets down on his tray.
“I’ll go,” he says shortly. “If you need me.”
“Always,” Pan says, nodding.
“Me too,” Fox says quickly. “Uh, once I find a—”
His sentence is cut off by something soft hitting him in the face: a T-shirt, chucked over by Kit: “you’re welcome.”
“Great, great,” Pan says. “But come on, train’s leaving. Zuzu could be black and blue right now.”
“Wait.” Fox’s brow creases, holding the shirt. “Who’s Zuzu again?”
“Krye’s daughter,” I answer. “But she’s—”
“She’s getting some kind of shakedown over at her gym down by the Marina and we’ve gotta ride in and stop it,” Pan explains, a hint of irritation in his voice. “Can we get out of here now?”
All of a sudden, my limbs feel like concrete.
Because Zusanna’s gym is on Azucena Boulevard. Krye said that, I remember Krye said that. And flower street names like that, you’ll only find in one part of London Valley.
The Marina. The Marina. Of course.
The place I never, ever wanted to go again.
My ears are ringing, my pulse thin and fast.
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.
But I can’t just say no. I can’t bring myself to say yes, but—
“But what about Wendy?” I hear myself say.
Four sets of eyes turn to me.
“Oh yeah,” Fox says faintly, shaking his head through the neck of his T-shirt and giving himself a soft smack on the forehead. “Duh.”
“Oh,” Pan echoes, brows knitting like he’s just considering for the first time. “What about her?” He picks up his helmet from where it’s been resting upside down on the desk of the shop.
“I mean…she can’t just stay here by herself,” I say. “Right?”
“So you want to take her with?” Pan says, sarcasm and disdain dripping from his words.
“Yeah, no,” Kit cuts in. “It’s bad enough that we took to the Lagoon for a Happy Meal that one time. We do not need to bring her on…whatever this is.”
“Agreed,” Fox says. “Can’t she just stay here?” He swivels around to Blue. “Don’t you have security, or something?”
Blue just nods. Definitive, decisive. “I can lock everything down.” He slices his gaze to me, a faint smirk in his voice. “Unless he’s proposing staying back as babysitter.”
“No,” I say, even though I guess that’s exactly what I was implying. “No, I just—”
“Wait, actually, Fox? Do you guys have a waffle iron? Because I was thinking we could…” Wendy, with Nana trailing, slows on the stairs as she sees all of us. She frowns. “Um, what’s going on?”
Pan jumps forward before anyone else can speak. Of course.
“Listen, Wendy,” he says. “We’ve got to go handle some, uh, business stuff, for a bit. But you’re cool here by yourself, right? With your vicious attack dog?”
“Huh?” Wendy’s frown deepens. “I mean, I guess, yeah.” She looks around at all of us a second time. “What do I have to do?”
“Nothing,” Fox says. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“It’s probably better if you don’t do anything,” Kit says. “Like, don’t touch anything on the entire first floor unless it’s in the kitchen.”
“There is, like, Easy Mac and shit—I mean stuff,” Fox says quickly, “if you get hungry. I just bought a ton. And Nana’s got plenty of food, right?”
“Um, like fifty pounds?” Wendy says, like we’re stupid. “She doesn’t even eat that much. I mean, look at her.”
“We’ll lock all the doors,” Kit says, “and rig up all the alarms.”
“But do not answer for anyone,” Pan adds.
“I’ll take the password off of the TV,” Fox offers, “so you can watch shows with bad words in them or whatever.”
Kit glares at him.
“What?” Fox mutters under his breath. “I’m trying to sweeten the deal.”
Wendy considers.
“Yeah…I guess,” she says at last, and I can’t tell if the hesitation in her voice is genuine or just a kind of bargaining chip. “I mean, as long as I don’t have to like do chores or something.” She wrinkles her nose. “You guys are kind of gross.”
Blue makes a sound that’s either a snort or a laugh.
My stomach knots even tighter, and I sink my teeth into my lip, hard. “But—”
Now Pan turns to me. Just to me. Takes a few steps back so he can lean in. “What’s with the stalling, man?” he says. Softly, but with an edge to his voice. Like he’s suspicious. “What’s the big deal?”
He puts a hand on my shoulder.
I stare at the floor. Ignoring the feeling of him touching me, not even panicking about whether his fingers will slip half an inch to the left and graze the edge of my binder.
Can I do this? I think. Can I actually?
It’s one thing to be Tink. It’s another to be Tink there. But…
“I mean, we ride together, right?” Pan goes on, his tone turning more toward a whine. “C’mon, I don’t want to do it without you.”
…but I guess I don’t have a choice.
“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”
“Attaboy.” Pan claps me on the shoulder once and tosses his helmet into both hands. “Gentlemen, shall we?”
Something broad and warm slaps me on the shoulder. Fox’s hand.
“Hey, if it’s about your bike, don’t worry,” he says, leaning into my ear. “I’ve got you covered.”