I sat there, intending to read, but I kept staring out into space. Metford’s library had floor to ceiling bookcases and two long tables that ran the length of the room, looking as if they belonged in a castle’s dining room. There were a couple of shelves of reference books, but the bulk of what made up the library was abandoned paperbacks. Residents left behind whatever they had brought to read, so there were ample copies of Stephen King novels, battered Agatha Christie and P. D. James mysteries, romance novels, and every sci-fi story you could imagine.
I was curled into a corner of the green velvet sofa by the window. The cushions were rock hard, and every time I shifted, ancient clouds of dust belched up. Yet I still felt as though I could have fallen asleep right there. I was exhausted. All night I’d tossed and turned, unable to shut off my racing brain. If I didn’t get sleep soon, I was going to fall apart.
I had finally broken down and tried to call Emily. She’s known me forever and she was the master at seeing through tricky problems. Granted, the worst moral quandary we’d faced so far was deciding if we should tell her parents about her brother planning a party for when they would be out of town. But when I reached the camp and begged the secretary to let me talk to Em, the woman had refused. I’d stared at the phone in shock. I repeated that it was an emergency and she’d laughed. She said that if she had to call camp counselors to the phone every time one of their friends had an emergency, they’d never get a thing done. Then she softened her voice and said they put through calls to counselors only from their parents. Camp policy. Right then, I hated Em for going to camp. Millions of summer jobs, and she had to choose one that might as well have put her on the moon.
I couldn’t stand being in my room any longer, and I also didn’t want to join everyone else in the cafeteria. So I’d headed to the library and grabbed a book, but it sat unopened on my lap. I was still staring into space.
Hands covered my eyes, plunging the room into darkness. I screamed and jammed my elbow back hard, connecting with someone who let out a loud ooph.
I leaped to my feet, ready to hurl the book at Nicki, but it was Alex standing there, rubbing his side.
“Note to self: never sneak up on you,” Alex said. “You’ve got a nasty hook.”
My heart vibrated at a thousand beats per second. “I didn’t know it was you,” I said, stating the obvious. Why did I have to constantly screw everything up? “I’m so sorry.” My eyes flooded with hot tears.
Alex came around the sofa, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Hey, it’s okay. I know I look soft, but I’m tougher than I appear. I can take a blow and keep ticking. It’s no big deal.”
The smell of him—clean laundry mixed with sunshine and something spicy—made my heart slow. He was like human Xanax in a sweatshirt. “Sorry, I’m being a freak.”
“You know mentioning your freak tendencies just turns me on, right?” I punched him lightly in the stomach. He backed up, laughing. “Just because I said you could hit me once doesn’t mean you can make a habit out of it.”
“Look, I feel—”
“I hate that th—”
We’d both started talking at the same time and then laughed. Alex held up a hand. “I was going to say that I hate that things are weird between us.”
“Me too,” I replied.
“Let’s just forget that all that stuff happened.”
I nodded. All that stuff were my lies and his need to run to Tasha and tell on me. I wondered how he’d respond if he saw the list I’d made of why I wanted to kill Connor. We both looked away from each other. Clearly neither of us was great at the whole talking-about-our-feelings thing.
“So, I had an idea and I made a plan for something for us to do. That is, if you’re game.” His mouth curled up at the corner and I felt a flutter in my chest.
“What kind of plan?”
“A surprise.” He bounced on his feet like a toddler. “Grab your phone. We’re going out.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to guess what he was up to. “Out where?”
“You do understand the concept of a surprise, right?” When I opened my mouth to protest, he turned me by my waist and pointed me toward the stairs. The heat of his hands felt as if they were burning through my thin shirt, marking my skin. “No more debating—get your phone, unless you don’t want to go?”
I liked the feeling of his hands on my hips. “I want to go.”
“Of course you do. Who doesn’t like an adventure?”
“Is everybody going?”
He shook his head. “Nope. This is just the two of us.”
I wanted to tell him I couldn’t care less about any adventure. We could sit on this stupid dusty sofa all night and he could give me a blow-by-blow description of some stupid role-playing game he liked and I’d be thrilled. It was his company that I loved.
“Count me in,” I said.
Alex pulled me down the street. I liked the feel of my hand in his, as though it belonged there. “C’mon, we don’t want to be late,” he said.
Alex weaved between people on the sidewalk and then stopped short. “Ta-da!”
We were at the base of the London Eye, the huge glassed-in Ferris wheel attraction right on the river. It spun slowly, impossibly high in the sky, its glass pods full of people.
“Are you serious?” My voice went up. My inner afraid-of-heights voice was already screaming, Hell no! “I heard this sells out a lot.” My guts were turning to water. Please let him not have tickets.
“Would I drag you all the way here and not make sure we were ready to go?” Alex pulled two tickets out of his pocket, fanning them out. “I even splurged for the VIP option. We get a glass of sparkling cider and chocolates when we’re at the top because we are very important people.”
“Wow, it’s really tall,” I said, shading my eyes to look up even though the sun was no longer in the sky.
“It goes up something like five hundred feet! It’s Europe’s tallest Ferris wheel.”
“Huh, how about that.”
There was no way I could do this. I would throw up or pass out. Or throw up and then pass out.
Alex bowed and pointed me in the direction of the entrance. Clammy sweat broke out all over my body. I forced my legs forward, marching like a stiff toy soldier. Alex passed over our tickets and we were moved to the next area to wait for our car.
“Are you okay?” Alex asked.
So much for thinking I was playing it cool. “Heights freak me out a little.” I managed a watery smile.
His expression crumpled. “Oh. I had no idea.” He stepped to the side. “We can do something else.”
I felt a wave of relief. And then tension swept back in. The tickets weren’t cheap. He’d planned this whole thing to do something nice for me, something special. I stiffened my spine. “No, I want to go.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind if you don’t want to do it.”
I sucked in a deep breath. It wasn’t just about the price of the tickets. Being scared was illogical. This thing had passed a million and one safety checks. The only thing in my way was my own fear. I had to stop being afraid of everything. And it wasn’t about doing it because he’d planned something special. I believed him that it didn’t matter to him. What mattered is that I wanted to do it. “No, I’m going.”
Our car coasted to the base, and the guide started to direct everyone in. The pod moved slowly enough that it didn’t have to come to a complete stop. Alex hesitated, but when he saw the determination in my eyes, he reached for my hand.
“You can do this,” he said, then squeezed.
I paused as I stepped over the threshold. There would be no getting off once I was on. They weren’t going to stop the whole thing just because I was freaking out. Once we were inside, my knees felt as though they were going to give out. I had a death grip on Alex’s hand.
“Do you want to sit down?” Alex motioned to the curved bench in the center of the pod.
“No. I want to see.” I clutched the railing as we—very slowly—started to rise. This was going to be the longest thirty minutes of my life.
Alex kept up a nonstop chatter as we went, talking about what we were seeing and random bits of related trivia. His words trickled into one ear and then disappeared in a fog, but they were still comforting. He didn’t pause for me to say anything. He seemed to know that I needed him to keep talking.
When we reached the top, I closed my eyes briefly. I was doing this. Then a zap of joy ran through me. I was doing this! I turned and noticed that Alex was watching me.
“Okay?” he asked.
I smiled. “Yeah. I am.”
At least I would be, as long as I kept my eyes on the horizon and not down on the ground.
He squeezed my hand. “You’re more than okay.”
“What is it Yoda says? ‘Do, not try’?” I said, getting the expression wrong on purpose to make Alex smile.
He shook his head in fake annoyance. “Close enough. I’m proud of you.”
I flushed. “Proud of me for basically doing a jazzed-up carnival ride?” I tried to wave off his compliment.
“No, for doing what scares you.”
I smiled back and stood up straighter.
After the ride, we walked across the river and ducked into a pub. We lucked out—there was an empty table just inside the door. Alex tossed his jacket onto the back of one of the chairs.
“Is this okay? You sit on the far side so you don’t get cold with people going in and out. I’ll go get us something to drink. Coke okay?”
I nodded and sat, wiping off the damp table with my sleeve. I felt almost high from the experience on the London Eye—no pun intended. I’d done it.
Alex was back a minute later, putting down two glasses. “I ordered some fries, too.”
“Chips,” I corrected him, grinning. “They call them chips here. If you’re going to collect slang, you’ve got to get that right.”
The pub was loud. A crowd of rowdy guys at the bar were cheering on a soccer—oops, football—game on the TV. Every few seconds they would scream out advice or heap scorn onto the players. Alex and I sat side by side at the tiny table, holding hands underneath it.
The waitress dropped a basket in front of us. The fries were molten lava hot, burning the top of my mouth right behind my front teeth when I bit into one. I sucked in a breath, trying to cool down my mouth.
“That’s what you get for being greedy,” Alex said.
I picked up two more fries, held them up in front of his face, and then stuffed them into my mouth, knowing it would make him laugh. Alex snorted, his shoulders shaking. I felt my heart surge.
Then something caught his eye and he waved madly at the far end of the bar, trying to get someone’s attention. “Do you know Erin?”
I shook my head. “Erin who?”
“She’s at Metford too. I’ve met her a couple of times. I want to thank her—she gave me the idea for tonight. I saw her in the laundry room and she mentioned how there was the VIP option.”
I turned, scanning the crowd for a familiar face from the cafeteria. “Is she from the U.S.?”
“No, she’s Scottish. Down here for a term doing something with art history before she starts university up there next year. You’ll like her.” He waved again.
I wasn’t really interested in having to make nice with a stranger. I wanted Alex to myself.
“Hey-ho, you came,” drawled a Scottish brogue. “Did you love the views?”
“It was gr—” My tongue locked into place. It was Nicki. I felt off balance, as if I were back on top of the Eye, spinning slowly over the city.
She held out her hand. “I’m Erin.” She squeezed into a chair. She smiled at me across the table.
“I owe you—it was a fantastic idea,” Alex said.
“Did you like it too?” she asked me. “Some people find it a bit too tall.”
I just sat there. What the hell was she doing?
“They overthink things, imagining risk where there isn’t any. You’re more likely to be hit by a train than fall off that thing.” Nicki smirked.
I’d told her at the airport I feared heights. She found ways to use everything I’d ever said. It was as if she could see into my brain.
Nicki shook her glass, the ice rattling at the bottom. Then she slowly wrapped her mouth around the straw, drawing in her cheeks as she drank the last of the liquid from the bottom. “I think I’ve sucked this dry,” she said, with a wink at Alex. And then she licked her lips.
My hands underneath the table clenched into tight fists.
Alex flushed. “I’ll get you another.” He took a few steps away and then came back to my side. “Sorry—did you want anything, Kim?” He motioned to my half-empty glass.
I managed to shake my head and waited until he was gone. Then I grabbed Nicki by the arm, yanking her close. “So now your name is Erin?”
She shrugged and then picked my fingers off her sleeve. “He’s adorable, by the way. Geek chic. I kept seeing you together, out and about, and I said to myself, Now, that right there might be what has Kim all aflutter. I made a point to meet him.”
“Leave him alone,” I hissed.
“Are you afraid I’m going to steal him away?” She let her mouth curl up and then patted my hand. “Don’t worry, he’s crazy about you. He makes moon eyes when your name comes up—I swear. It’s the cutest thing ever. Is this why you haven’t had your eye on the ball?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The crowd at the bar let out an anguished groan. Someone had missed the chance to score a goal.
Nicki shook her head. “No playing like you’re an idjit. It’s not that I don’t understand how intoxicating a new bloke can be, but you need to get your priorities straight.”
“You made him take me on the Eye.”
She sat back with a sigh. “I didn’t make him do anything. I simply talked about how this was such a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The kind of thing you should share with someone special.”
“I told you I was afraid of heights the first time we met.”
One perfectly tweezed eyebrow twitched. “Did you?” She tapped her lips with a finger. “You know, now that you mention it, you may have said something. But look at it this way: you confronted a fear and did it. I had a hunch you wouldn’t back down when he was around and I was right. It was like a little experiment and you passed.”
“You let him think you’re an art history student?”
Nicki picked at her nail polish. “What? I love art history. I might study it someday.” She looked up at me pointedly. “It depends on if I have any money to go to university.”
“I don’t know how to do it,” I said. My voice was tight, like an archer’s bowstring. “I’ll get caught.”
Nicki paused, letting a group of women teeter past our table in impossibly short skirts and incredibly tall heels. “I like that we’re discussing how instead of what. That’s progress, at least. Looks like facing down a fear might be moving you forward in general.”
“I keep trying to tell you—I’m not the person to do this. If I get caught”—I leaned forward—“which I will, it isn’t going to go well for you, either. The cops are going to want to know why I did it. The truth is going to come out. You’ll end up in jail right next to me. You need to hire a professional.” I lowered my voice even though there was no chance anyone could hear me in the loud bar. “You need a hit man.”
She laughed. “A hit man? You sound like you’re in a bad gangster movie. I must hand it to you: At least you’re no longer talking about how people don’t deserve it. And how it’s wrong. Blah blah blah. Honestly, all that morality was getting dull.”
“Being a decent person isn’t dull,” I said.
“Says the person who made a list of reasons why Connor deserved to die. Guess your morality was less exacting back then.” She tapped her fingernails on the table.
“That doesn’t mean I wanted him pushed in front of a train,” I fired back.
“No, that is exactly what you wanted; it’s just that you were too scared to do it. Or maybe you thought you couldn’t get away with it. But here’s the thing.” She tapped me on the shoulder, like a queen anointing a knight. “I believe in you. I know you’re smart. You can figure this out. But you’re running out of time.”
“I can’t—”
“I don’t want to hear any more excuses.” Her voice was tight and clipped. Her teeth looked sharp in the dim pub lights. “I’ll be out tomorrow night. This time I don’t want to be disappointed when I get back home.”
Alex approached the table with a glass in hand. Nicki jerked her head up, her lips peeling back into a jack-o’-lantern-size smile. “Oy! That’s my man.” She took the drink from Alex’s hand and took a long sip, then stood. “Now, I’m not going to stick my nose into your date any longer. I’ll let you lovebirds have some time alone. I’ve got to run.”
“Do you want to go back with us? It’s getting late,” Alex offered. I tried not to react.
Nicki smiled. “Aw, love a gallant man. He’s right—it is a dangerous city . . .” She let her voice trail off.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” I said.
“Oh, you know it.” Nicki tossed back the rest of her drink and walked out of the bar.