what you want. I’m here to look after you.” She steps into the house, returning a few minutes later with a tall glass of water. I take it and sip. It’s heaven on my raw throat.
“Have you moved things around in the kitchen?” she asks. “I was trying to find the saucepan to make you some pancakes, but it seems to have disappeared.”
I nod to the broken shards of the demijohn on the driveway. “I don’t know. Probably. How can you make pancakes in that kitchen, anyway? The mice probably got into the flour in the cellar.”
“I have supplies in the car.” She winks. “I know if my Elias is sad about a girl, he needs pancakes.”
Pancakes are our comfort food, our secret code. We used to make them together whenever one of us felt sad. Once, I brought Mackenzie around to our place and Maria showed her how to measure the ingredients and flip the pancakes in the frying pan. Mackenzie had never cooked a thing in her life, and she got so frustrated that her pancakes didn’t flip that she threw the pan on the floor and smashed the handle. Afterward, when she calmed down, we ate the pancakes Maria cooked smothered in chocolate chips and syrup, and Mackenzie gave me a sticky kiss on the cheek and said I was her best friend.
That’s why I made pancakes for Mackenzie at Gabriel’s after Noah and I rescued her from the desert. I thought it might help her remember something good and sweet and happy. But you can’t remember something when you’re living a lie.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask. She’d never come out to the ranch since it had become a ruin – yet another one of Dad’s grand plans that has crumbled to dust.
“This is where you go when you’re upset. I followed you out here years ago – I needed to know where you were slipping off to for days at a time.”
I wince at my stupidity. Of course, Maria would keep an eye on me, make sure I was safe.
Maria folds her arms. “Don’t look at me like that. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important. I know teenage boys need their privacy. I actually thought you might’ve brought your girl out here.”
“Why did you come?”
“Your mother wanted me to find you. She tells me you must be home for dinner tomorrow night. She says she has something to announce.”
I rub my head. The last thing I want is to play happy family with my mother across the dinner table. “I plan to not be hungry that night.”
Maria shoots me that look of hers, the one that never failed to get me to pick up my toys or finish my homework. “It’s not a matter of being hungry. She’s your mother.”
I stare out across the broken landscape of my father’s dream, at fences pushed over, construction materials half-buried in weeds, bare patches where the pasture hadn’t been cared for. Beyond all that is the harsh, alien landscape of the desert. Gizmo’s face appears around the corner of the barn. She meows at me before turning tail and trotting back inside, as if asking me to come and see what she’s found. Out here, with the fresh air and the desert heat bearing down, it’s almost possible to believe Emerald Beach doesn’t exist, and all my problems are a dream. But Emerald Beach has a way of finding you, and I have lived experience of just how quickly a dream can transform into a nightmare.
10
Noah
We decide to skip school for a couple of days. Antony needs to prepare protection for Claudia at Stonehurst. Normally, I’d be concerned about falling behind, but I can’t muster up a fuck to give. Now that I’ve had actual bullets whiz past my face, I struggle to see the importance of algebra.
I call in and pretend to be Gabriel’s manager needing the rockstar for an urgent meeting, then I hang up and call back, using a deeper voice to impersonate my father saying that I’m taking my son to the office for ‘work experience.’ I can’t believe this shit flies, but you can get away with a lot when your daddy is a senator.
Claudia calls and claims she’s ill. The secretary insists she’ll need to show a doctor’s note when she returns to school. I tell her not to bother – it’s an empty threat. The staff knows the students hold all the power.
We eat breakfast in