Lily’s watching me drink the coffee drink that she ordered for both of us.
“You don’t like it?” she asks.
“No, it’s fine.”
“Do you even like coffee?”
It’s actually worse than coffee because it’s cold and sugary and gross.
“I can stand coffee.”
“But that?”
I move the drink back to her. “You can have the rest.”
She shakes her head. We’re on the second level of a double-decker bus that kinda reminds me of Harry Potter. It’s in the middle of the city. It’s a coffee shop, except the shop is a bus. Kinda cool, gotta admit. That’s why it’s crowded. We’re sitting next to each other in the cozy space, and I’m willing to down the whole cold coffee thing in order to stay here.
“Why don’t you ever speak your mind?” Lily asks me.
I shrug. “I’m not sure.”
“Is it because you’re nervous?”
I swallow and nod.
“Why?”
I scratch my cheek, look down.
“Chris—” She gently puts a finger on my chin to raise my head. “Look at me. Talk to me.”
“Okay.”
“Why are you nervous?” she asks.
“Because of you.”
“But I already told you—I want to be here.”
“I know.”
“Why are you nervous then?”
“I don’t know.”
Those green eyes don’t let me move. “Do you always get like this around girls?”
“No. Unless—”
“Unless they’re what?”
“Unless they’re gorgeous.”
She lets out a laugh, causing people around us to glance our way.
“Oh, Chris. You are something.”
“See—I say what I’m thinking, and I get mockery.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at—I don’t know—just how earnest you are.”
“I’m serious about what I said,” I tell her.
“I’m sure you are.”
She takes a sip and looks down at the drink. Then she glances back at me.
“You know—I always dreamt of being some gorgeous movie star when I was younger. I wanted to move to Hollywood. Become glamorous. Go to the Academy Awards. Have magazine spreads written about me. All of that.”
“Who says you can’t?”
She looks at me but suddenly seems far away.
I decide to do what she’s asking and keep talking. “Just because you moved to this place—to Solitary—doesn’t mean you can’t get out. I’m getting out.”
“Good for you.”
“I’m serious. We’re both seniors—almost seniors—so what—what’s another year?”
“Yeah.”
But something about that “yeah” doesn’t seem so convincing.
“Maybe you can at least go back to Atlanta.”
I see something in Lily’s body seem to stiffen when I say that. Her expression turns dark and serious. “I’m never going back there. There’s nothing left for me there.”
I nod, then shake my head. “Can I tell you what I’m thinking now?” I ask.
“Sure.”
“I’m thinking that whoever broke your heart back in Georgia really did a good job of it.”
She curses and shakes her head. “He didn’t break my heart.”
“Then what is it?”
For a moment she seems about to respond. For a moment.
“Come on—let’s get out of here,” she says. “I’m feeling cramped and uncomfortable.”
Sad, ’cause I was just beginning to feel totally opposite.
Maybe it’s those lights that seem to hover and glow and spin around me.
Or maybe it’s the coffee thing that Lily ordered hovering and spinning around in my stomach.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m following this girl around like a puppy and I don’t care.
She smiles at me and acts like she knows some big secret. But something tells me it’s just her, that a girl like her will always have secrets.
I don’t care.
She takes my hand. “It’s okay, you know.”
She can be answering a hundred questions and I know that yes, it is okay. It’s okay and it’s fine and it’s almost midnight and I’m out late even if it’s a summer Friday night.
“Come on,” she says, and she doesn’t have to ask anymore.
At the center of the city is a fountain that we walk around a few times. I don’t know how many for sure, because I’m following her and not paying attention to anything else.
“You don’t have a curfew, do you?”
“I’d break it if I had one,” I say.
Lily smiles.
And I wonder. What am I doing here? The middle of summer and there was a war going on and then suddenly she showed up and all the battles stopped.
I stopped.
“What are you thinking?” she asks me.
“I’m trying not to,” I say.
“Good boy.”
She talks to me like some little boy and all I can say is I like it. I like her and the way everything about her makes me feel.
She takes my hand and leads me down the sidewalk toward the somewhere I know I want to be.
I’m walking with her down a city street, dreaming of tomorrow and the next month and the next year.
But when Lily takes my hand, I’m suddenly dreaming of our future.
I know that this is all too fast and sudden and crazy, but don’t blame me. Blame the humid night and the still air and the passing strangers. Blame Lily and every round and wonderful thing about her. Blame her take-control attitude. Blame my let-go attitude.
The minutes evaporate, and soon I find myself back in Solitary, thinking foolish thoughts.
I don’t want this night—or early morning—to end.
Somehow she’s made this tiny town in the middle of nowhere suddenly come alive. I park the bike near the main strip, and we walk the rest of the way to her bed-and-breakfast. She holds my hand, and I’m not going to let go until she does.
We’re walking under an ancient oak tree and I’m laughing at something she says and then all of the sudden I hear her scream.
She’s screaming because I can’t scream. Because some dark, hideous figure has jumped out of the shadows on me. I’m sprawled out on the sidewalk while someone is kneeling into me.
I hear curse words.
Then I see him. A face I recognize.
Wade.
Jocelyn’s Wade. The guy living with Jocelyn’s aunt, the sleazy redneck guy I threatened and shot in a moment of outrageous courage.
A gaunt and grizzled face looks over me and spits. He laughs, breathing heavily like he just ran ten miles, then jams something stiff and blunt in my stomach.
“If you’re gonna shoot someone, you better kill him, because if you don’t, this is what happens.”
And before I can think of where he came from or what he’s doing here or what’s going to happen to Lily or my mom or anybody else in this town—