that boy to eat some. He’s nothing but gloom and doom and gibberish to boot.”
“You leaving?” I ask.
“That nitwit I hired to run the kitchen just called in sick,” she says, throwing a bunch of stuff into her purse.
She knocks a makeup brush to the floor, and Jake stoops to pick it up. “I hate being sick when it’s so nice outside,” he says.
“He ain’t sick. I’ll be back just as soon as I drag his sunshine-loving behind into the diner.”
She squeezes me again, her ample hips forcing me back onto the stoop.
“Is Kay inside?”
“Yeah, in her room. Heard her squawking something about a nail polish emergency.”
Kaylee left me after her proclamation that I’d been swallowed in flames. She had to meet Olivia at the community center, something about donated photography supplies. On any other day I’d have followed her there to examine the bounty. Instead, I left the teeny tiny ballerinas to Helene and begged Jake’s boss to give him the afternoon off. He agreed to give him an extended dinner break, but that meant waiting until dinner. So I leaned on the counter and stared, making Jake smirk while he processed orders. It made Phil nervous, I guess, so he finally gave in and sent Jake from the building.
Delia’s climbing into her car. I wave and step back inside, closing the door behind me. The lamps are unlit, the room dark. A sliding glass door at the back of the house lets cloudy sunlight through. It settles on top of the furniture, making me squint, but stubbornly refuses to brighten the room. Marco’s on the couch, Ali’s journal resting loosely between his fingers. He’s sitting upright, his feet on the table. His head rests on his chest and he snores. Jake takes a seat at the opposite end of the couch and turns his eyes to me.
“Should we let him sleep?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “He’s pretty gone.”
He’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and his five o’clock shadow has darkened, but he looks mostly peaceful. I hate that we’re going to make him relive something that had him running from the room.
“I’m gonna tell Kay we’re here.”
I’m still five steps from Kaylee’s room when the smell of acetone hits me between the eyes.
“Holy cow, Kay,” I say. “What did you do?”
“Just painting my nails.”
“Oh my . . . you look part Avatar.”
Her right foot is blue and sparkly—just like her eyelashes—and she’s mopping at it with a wad of paper towels soaked in nail polish remover.
“How did you . . . never mind.” Sometimes the how just isn’t important. I grab a few paper towels and set to work alongside her.
“You here to talk to Marco?”
“Yeah. Kay, maybe you should stay in your room. I don’t want Marco freaking you out.”
“Not a chance,” she says, standing.
“I just don’t think . . .”
“Look, I’ve known something was weird about that bracelet for months now. Since the warehouse. And I’ve known my nightmares from that night were more than just post-traumatic stress. Though I’ve had a bit of that too. But as shocked as I was to hear Marco tell me you were the human torch, I’m not shocked at all to hear your self-warming arm cuff has sci-fi-channel-like powers.”
“You’re not shocked?”
“No,” she says. “I’m irritated that you didn’t tell me before. Frustrated that I’ve been hinting around about that thing for months and you just brushed me off. But no. Your bracelet’s more than bling. I’m not shocked.”
How can she accept the weird so easily? Why was it so hard for me?
“Kay, it’s not a bracelet. Not really.”
“I know,” she says, throwing her hip into the end of her bed, moving it away from the wall, covering the blue stain on the floor. “It’s a halo. Marco told me.”
Kaylee and I find Jake and Marco on the back patio sitting at a small table under a green fiberglass awning. The afternoon sun presses against the awning, making it glow, coloring everything below it a sickly shade of lime. Delia’s backyard is really just a thousand yards of dried dirt and scraggly grass. No fence, just train tracks that cut through the back of her property.
Jake’s made coffee, and while he sips from his mug, Marco stares at the steam escaping from his.
“Why are you always making me coffee?” he asks.
“I didn’t realize it had turned into a habit,” Jake says.
“Whenever you want me to tear out my soul, you serve me black coffee.”