Chapter Twenty-one

“This is Dylan,” said Ellie. She was way more nervous than she’d thought she’d be. She’d imagined it a thousand times. Mom, Aunt Mariana, this is my boyfriend. It would come out as an inarguable fact.

Instead, she amended her first statement with “He’s my friend.”

She sounded like she was four, introducing her first playground pal. In a moment, she would arm-wrestle him and then they’d race for the sandbox where they’d avoid the cat poop and throw plastic shovels at each other.

“Who?” Her mother looked even blanker than she had been lately.

“Dylan,” Ellie repeated, as if that would clarify it. They didn’t know she’d stayed up late with him almost every night for the last month, talking in Addi’s hut about everything and nothing at all. They didn’t know she’d gone to meet him in Oakland when she’d said she was at Samantha’s, and they really didn’t know her first kiss from him had been in the back of a dimly lit bar located on a street her mother would have grounded her for being on at any time of day, let alone midnight. They didn’t know that she was in love (probably) for the very first time and that he—with his skinny face and wide eyebrows and long fingers—made her feel special and pretty and completely—utterly—unique.

“Hi,” said Mariana, leaping to standing from the blanket. “I’m Ellie’s aunt. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh,” said Dylan. “You two really do look like each other. Wow.”

Ellie’s mother, still seated on the picnic blanket, said, “We’re twins.” Her voice was as flat as her expression.

“Yeah. Ellie said fraternal but . . .”

“Mom.” Ellie didn’t know what to say next. She’d assumed her mother would take over with her normal welcoming and polite questions. Where are you from? Do I know your parents, maybe? What do they do? You look hungry, here. She’d press a sandwich into his hand, and Dylan would be charmed by her. Everyone always was, even Ellie’s friends.

“But who are you?” Nora’s lips smiled, but warmth didn’t reach her eyes.

“Mom!”

“Sorry, honey. But I don’t understand. We had something to tell . . . I don’t get it. Why is he here?”

Anger clawed at Ellie’s throat and she made a strangled noise.

Her aunt stepped forward and motioned them to sit on her side of the blanket. “Make yourself comfortable. Would you like some Limonata? Or a Coke?”

Dylan said, “I’m fine, thanks. I just ate.”

“With your family?” said Ellie’s mother.

“Nah. With some friends.”

“But it’s Mother’s Day.”

Dylan shrugged and stuck a leg out onto the grass. He actually moved like Dyl did in the game, with a loose swaying of limbs as if he were a marionette, his arms and legs tethered to strings. “Yeah. I called her.”

“You called her.”

“And sent her flowers.”

“A big bouquet?”

Dylan dipped his head. “The biggest I could get for what I had in my bank account.”

Ellie saw her aunt smile.

“It was Addi’s idea—I mean, Ellie’s idea. The flowers.”

“Addi?”

Dylan grinned. “I met her as Addi first, and it keeps coming out when I talk.”

“So you talk about her a lot?”

Ellie was going to die. Right here, she was going to have a heart attack and stop breathing. If she didn’t die on her own, she’d kill herself, hang herself with the playground swing’s chain.

But Dylan didn’t seem to mind. Did anything fluster him? Is that what his extra three years got him?

“I do. I like her.”

Ellie’s mother blinked. “So do I, as a matter of fact.”

“So we have that in common.”

“Eat.” Her mother thrust the container of chocolate cookies at him.

Mariana grabbed the plastic tub and set it on the blanket. “Sorry. You don’t have to eat. Nora’s congenitally programmed to offer food. I think what my sister is trying to ask is how did you two meet? Online, is that right? That’s why you call her Addi?”

“Addi Turbo,” said Ellie’s mother in a quiet voice.

“That’s it!” Dylan shot an invisible gun at her with a chhk noise. “Addi Turbo. Such a great name.”

“It’s a knitting needle.”

“Nora?” Aunt Mariana looked confused.

“She’s right,” Ellie hurried to say. “It’s a brand she uses. Even when I was kid, I thought it was a cool name. Like a superhero or something. It’s what I call my Healer.”

“You’re a kid now. Still.”

No, she wasn’t. Not anymore. “I’m sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

“You’re not seventeen for five more months.”

“Stop it.” They were the only words Ellie could grab out of her whirling brain.

Her mother turned to face Dylan, her eyes still as fiery as Queen Ulra’s. In a moment she’d spit flame and toast Dylan like a marshmallow, and none of Ellie’s powers would be able to stop her. “How old are you?”

Dylan, for the first time, paused. “I’m . . .”

“You’re over eighteen, right?”

They’d agreed what Ellie would say. It was important to her. Dylan had said he wasn’t a good liar and wouldn’t be able to back her up, but Ellie had said she’d handle it. She said, “He’s almost eighteen.”

Her mother didn’t even look at her. “Care to tell me that yourself?”

Dylan stuck his finger in a hole at the edge of his jacket. “I’m nineteen,” he muttered.

“Fantastic. Are you two having sex? Because that’s illegal. I assume that’s why you were going to lie about it? To avoid potential jail time?”

Ellie jumped to her feet. “We’re out of here.”

Dylan stood more slowly.

Then her mother stood. To anyone watching, they must look like they were playing a jumping-up game. “Why did you ask him here? Today?”

The question caught Ellie flat-footed. “Why not?”

“Because it’s our day. We do this together.”

“We can’t change anything? In the future, it all has to stay the same?”

The vein that jumped in her mother’s temple stood dark against her pale skin. “Yes.”

“Why? When are you going to realize we have to move forward? Out of the past? You treat me like a kid because you’re scared of the future.” It was the first time she’d thought of it, but Ellie knew it was true the moment the words left her mouth.

“I treat you like a kid because that’s what you are.”

“Come on, Dylan.”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Ellie slung her backpack over one shoulder. “He’ll drive me home later.”

“You do not have permission to leave.”

“Then stop me.” Ellie felt something catch at the back of her throat. Her breath, perhaps, or something even more important. She’d had plenty of fights with her mom. Tons. Weekly. Sometimes daily. But she’d never taken off like this, never openly defied her. It felt like the ground was about to open up, revealing a sinkhole that would dump her onto a winding pregreased slide directly to hell.

Instead, though, her mother didn’t try to stop her.

She did the opposite.

Her mother turned and walked away. She left.

“Mom?” No answer. “Are you kidding me?” Childishly, Ellie wanted to chase her mother down, pulling at her hand until she took it. Instead, though, she hurled the words, “Well, you sure showed me!”

Her mother heard it—her back stiffened, and it looked as if she almost stumbled on the bouncy fake asphalt of the playground.

Aunt Mariana just stood there, her mouth open.

“It’s okay. You can go. Choose her. She always chooses you, right?” Ellie’s voice was so acidic her throat ached. She hiked her backpack higher on her shoulder till her neck hurt. Dylan didn’t say anything. He just stayed next to her, his eyes surprised, his hands hanging open and loose.

“Ellie. That’s not true.”

How could her aunt say that with a straight face? Her whole life, when Ellie had heard those riddles—who would you save in a sinking boat if you could only save one: the old man with the wisdom of age or the child with the promise of youth—she’d thought of her mother and her aunt. “If the three of us were in a boat, you’d save each other.”

Mariana looked mystified. “What are you talking about?”

Her mother had Mariana. Her father had Bettina. Even her half sister, TeeTee, had her terrible cousin Roxy, the awful one with teeth as bad as her attitude. Ellie, though, she’d always been alone. One summer, she’d played so many games of solitaire her mother had bought her a book of a hundred and fifty of them. And she’d played them all. Ellie thudded her toe against a clod of grass. With enough kicking, she’d be able to dig it up with just her shoe, no shovel required.

“She’s . . . got something she needs to tell you,” said Mariana.

Ellie froze, her foot still lifted. “What?”

Mariana closed her eyes the way Ellie’s mother did when she was about to lose it. “I—can’t. No. Not without her.”

Ellie lunged forward and gripped Mariana’s wrist. “What is it? Is she sick? Was I right?”

“You . . .” Mariana looked desperately over her shoulder. Ellie’s mother was almost to the car in the parking lot now. “You have to talk to her.”

“No.” Icy terror flapped its way across Ellie’s shoulder blades. “You told me you’d tell me. You promised.”

Mariana looked at Dylan. “Maybe you should take her home after all. It’ll give me a chance to calm her mom down.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” said Ellie. Her mother was going to punish her for nothing by keeping the truth from her? How was that an acceptable thing for a mother to do?

Lifting one eyebrow, Mariana said. “He’s nineteen? You didn’t think she would flip out?”

“You’re not flipping out.”

“Oh, chipmunk. You have no idea.”

The space between Ellie’s shoulders and neck ached. Just a few minutes ago, when she’d walked over here with Dylan, his hand in hers, Ellie had felt light and open with happiness. She had imagined introducing him and then taking him over to the slide, where she’d make out with him at the top, not caring if anyone—even her mother!—could see. Dylan was a good kisser, an excellent one, no limp-noodle tongue, no sloppy dog licks. She’d kissed only two boys before, and both of them had been her age. Dylan was different. He was a man, and he made Ellie feel something different. When he’d kissed her inside the bar, he’d had . . . expectations. Not that he’d asked her to meet them. Dylan wouldn’t ask that. Not yet. But that expectation had lit something inside her, something that felt liquid and quaked nervously in a place she could identify only late at night, when she thought about doing more with him. If she kept dating him, she’d sleep with him. She would. She wasn’t even sure she was ready to, but what did that matter? Ellie did lots of things she wasn’t ready to do. She hadn’t been ready for calculus but she had the second-best grade in class. She hadn’t been ready in swim class to go off the diving board, but when she had—free-falling through thin air—she’d felt a freedom she’d never felt before. She’d joined the dive team the next day, the water polo team the next week. Sex would probably be just like that.

Hopefully.

Dylan leaned sideways so that his upper arm brushed her shoulder. She felt braver then, under Mariana’s gaze. “I’ll be home by eleven.” Her curfew was ten, and she knew Mariana knew it.

Her aunt’s mouth opened once and then closed. She gave a nod and then made that angry face that meant she was sad.

That face scared Ellie more than anything else had so far. She held her breath for a second too long and then felt light-headed. “Please,” she said. “Go get Mom. I’ll be fine.”

Mariana scanned her face, then turned and ran after Nora.

Ellie took Dylan’s hand. Overhead, dark clouds gathered, rolling over Mount Tam like she’d summoned them with her will.

She stayed in place, watching Mariana catch Mom by the shoulders. Their hands flew, four arms rapidly arguing about something—about her. Or about something worse?

Dylan said, “Come on. Let’s go fight evil.”

Ellie tightened her grip on his fingers and took a deep breath of the wet air. “Well. When you put it that way . . .”