Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,106
It’s dummyproof. Even for you.”
She snatched up her phone once more, glared at it, threw it back into the beanbag.
Evan said, “What’s with your phone?”
“What?” She reached over her shoulder again and started digging at that spot on her back. “Nothing.”
“You keep—”
“Look, it’s fine, okay? Gawd.” She stretched back, grabbed a Speed Cube from the windowsill, and started playing with it. It turned to a blur of colors in her capable hands, a magic orb. “Bicks is ghosting me. I was just checking if he texted me back, but he didn’t. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Hard pass.”
Dog nosed his empty Red Vines water bowl and whimpered. Evan stood and carried it into the bathroom. On the counter an array of lipsticks rose like rockets, and there were two kinds of concealer despite the fact that Joey had flawless skin. The sight brought him up short. How hard she was trying to fit in.
He filled the water bowl and brought it back to Dog and sat down again as the ridgie slurped and drooled on the floor. Joey kept spinning the cube, eyes down. Easier to focus on the plastic toy than on a human.
Evan waited.
She solved the cube, spun it on her finger like a basketball, then attacked it again, fingers flying. Now it was checkered. Now striped. Her proficiency was staggering.
He waited some more.
“I mean, what do I care if he posted a picture of him with Sloane last night? It’s his problem if he wants to date some stupid rich girl who exfoliates with whale semen and only eats panda meat.”
“Whale semen? Is that a thing?”
“Duh. They’re mammals.”
“I meant the facial-care application.”
“No, X. And she doesn’t really eat panda meat either. I’m just saying. He can go back to his life and his mom landlord and fuck right off.”
She winced, pulling her head to one side, contorting herself again to get at that knotted muscle by her shoulder blade. Her face looked suddenly full, a heaviness in the cheeks, beneath the eyes.
He remembered her once telling him about when she was fourteen, barely hanging on in the Orphan Program. After having an ear blown out from a demolition charge, she’d been left to find her own way to her pickup point. Stumbling along, she’d come across a father rocking his baby on a park bench, murmuring, You are safe. You are loved. After she’d conveyed this memory to Evan, she’d stared at him, her eyes glimmering, and said, Can you imagine?
He couldn’t. But since knowing Joey, he’d been starting to imagine how to impart something like that.
Right now it had to be without words. Without eye contact. For the millionth time, he wondered what Jack would have done. When Evan was young and guarded and lost, Jack had always known exactly how to find a way in, what not to say. This was the domain of other people—of Mia, of parents, even fathers like Andre who at one time had held the weight of Sofia’s life in his arms.
Until he’d chosen not to.
Evan cleared his throat. “If you need—”
“I don’t need anything, okay?” Flash of anger, her expression hard, impenetrable.
“Okay.”
“I don’t need you. I don’t.”
“Okay.”
Dog slumped down on the floor with a harrumph and panted contentedly. He smelled like musk and sunshine. Over on the beanbag, Joey strained even harder to reach the sore spot in her back.
Evan said, “Can I help you get that?”
“No.”
“You need to learn to accept help.”
“Why? You never do.”
Evan said, “So you can teach me.”
She still didn’t bother to look up. Meeting his gaze would be too much for her, but he could tell that she was selling it to herself differently, that he wasn’t worth looking at. Not a blemish on her face and two kinds of concealer on the bathroom counter. However hard it was for him to decipher the rules of ordinary life, it was harder for her. Sixteen years old with a labyrinth ahead and endless potential if she could just find the right route through.
She kept trying to get at that muscle. He sat, watching her frustration mount.
Finally she said, “Fine. Just ’cuz I can’t reach.”
He crossed to her and took her place on the beanbag, motioned for her to sit down on the floor in front of him. Facing away, no eye contact. That was good.
He set his hands on her shoulders. Her right one was a good two inches higher than the left, curled slightly forward, the muscle fiber