The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,54
friends.”
“We’re ordinary, get-pizza-once-a-week friends.”
“We’re soulmate-level friends, the kind who can’t live without each other, so we’ll probably die within fifteen minutes of each other.”
“You smell a little skunky,” Tean said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
Jem looked like he was trying to smother a huge grin. “I just took a shower.”
“It’s not BO. Well, it kind of is. But it’s worse.”
“Noted.”
“You might need to get that windbreaker cleaned.”
“I’ll put it in my day planner.”
“And change soaps.”
Jem was biting the corner of his mouth to stop a smile, shaking his head.
“What?” Tean said.
“It’s nice to know that if I ever get cocky—”
“If?”
“—I’ve got you around to bring me down a few pegs.”
Tean cut over to I-80, and he followed it east again, cutting up Parleys Canyon toward the Wasatch Back. Jem fiddled with the music on his phone, and after a few minutes, a familiar song came over the stereo.
“What is this?” Tean said.
“Music.”
“I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s Nirvana. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’”
“Huh.”
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t know.”
Jem sighed, but he was smiling as he sprawled in the seat. “Add it to the list. We’ll figure out what you like.”
“Maybe you should do some reading practice.”
“I didn’t bring my stuff.”
“On your phone. Why don’t you look up some articles about Joy, Zalie, and Hannah?”
The tires thrummed. When Tean glanced over, Jem’s cheeks were red, and he said, “Tean, come on. I’m reading at the Everybody Poops level.”
“Give it a try. We’re not in any rush, and there’s no harm if it’s as hard as you think. Besides, we’ve been slacking the last week because of all this stuff with Hannah.”
“Maybe I should just be the DJ. Do you think you’d like—”
“No. I don’t like anything. And I want you to do some practice.”
Jem muttered something.
“What was that?”
“I said I know one thing you like. When we used to—”
“Phone, Jem. Right now.”
But Tean’s face was hot, and he kept his eyes on the road winding up through the canyon.
When they turned south toward Heber, they left behind the cool shadows of the high rock walls, and the sun enameled everything with gold. The junegrass rippled, its blue-green stalks like waves. Where Indian ricegrass grew in clumps along the highway, it was already flowering. A cottontail, bold enough to venture onto the gravelly stretch, ripped a blade free as Tean and Jem drove past. Everywhere the valley was coming alive: the Russian sage blossoming in purple clusters, a shelterbelt of poplars with pale trunks the same color as the sunlight, ferns growing wild on the shady bank of a creek. It was the kind of day where the world opened up. The sky seemed impossibly big. Everything was light, everything floating like the world had jettisoned its anchor. Ten heartbeats, twenty, a hundred. He was part of it too: the light, the junegrass, the glowing poplars. And then the highway jagged around a spur of stone, and the Indian ricegrass was just grass, its flowering heads bobbing in the wake of a tractor trailer, and the world dropped anchor again.
Tean’s phone buzzed, and he answered without looking.
“Why haven’t you RSVP’d?” his sister Miriam asked. “It’s Mother’s Day. Mom really wants you to be there.”
“I might have a conflict.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I said I might.”
“Teancum Leon, you’re doing what you always do: you’re putting off the decision because you’re hoping someone else will make it for you or something will come up so that you don’t have to make a decision.”
“I don’t—” Tean was suddenly aware of Jem listening intently, although the blond man was pretending to be reading. “Mir, this isn’t a good time.”
“I’m telling Mom you’ll be there.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“She’s going to be so happy.”
“Mir, I honestly don’t know if I can—”
The call disconnected.
Tean threw the phone on the dash for the second time. He was thinking maybe he should just leave it up there.
“Was that your dentist?” Jem asked.
“Can you not, please?” Tean said, the double yellow lines blurring in his vision. “Why couldn’t I have been a black-tailed prairie dog?”
Jem nodded. “I knew you wanted a tail like Scipio’s.”
“They’re not really dogs; that’s just a name. They’re harem-polygynous squirrels. And infanticide runs rampant. And if I’d been a black-tailed prairie dog—”
“With a tail.”
“—I could have just been killed and cannibalized by my black-tailed prairie dog family—”
“Harem.”
“—instead of being slowly murdered by disingenuous kindness from these people I have nothing in common with except being mixed from the same genetic slurry.”