I release a breath I hadn’t known I was holding, and Anthony actually laughs. It takes us a few beats to find the courage to look at each other. But when we do, we both conceal smiles. Then he takes my hand and guides me back to the van. We don’t say anything, not a single word. We simply race away from the train station, from Mads and Ben, from the real world, back to our hideaway. I feel time slow down once more. We’re alone. Truly alone. Anthony turns up the music, playing our song, and I roll down the window to let in the fresh, warm air. If I could wish for anything right now, it would be to stay in this van forever. Sunlight filters in through the windshield, not bright enough to blind but enough to illuminate the freckles dotting Anthony’s cheeks. My own cheeks, I realize, are aching, and it hits me: I can’t stop smiling.
I’m happy. I never thought I would feel this way again. Happy. Free. I can hardly describe it, even to myself. It has everything to do with Anthony, and yet nothing at all to do with him, at the same time. I’m so light, I’m dizzy. Anthony reaches for me, intertwines his fingers with mine, and I know he feels it, too. The landscape passes in a blur. May this last forever, please, please, please, let us never reach a place where this will stop.
As we approach the end of the Strip, though, Anthony’s fingers slip from mine, and he pulls his hand away to switch off the stereo. He slows the van to point at Mrs. O’s store across the way. I try desperately to hold on to my sense of bliss, but the mood has already shifted. Then I see what Anthony is showing me: a white square fixed to the front door of the shop. Scrawled across the poster board is one word, the ink already fading in the sun: CLOSED.
It isn’t until we’re on the boat that Anthony breaks the silence. “He’s actually dead,” he says, like he can’t quite fathom it.
I don’t know what to say. Anthony clubbed Sammy with a rock. He can’t get the feeling out of his fingers, his arm, his body, just as I can’t get the image out of my mind. It’s tormenting him. But he was defending himself, like he said. He was defending us. If he hadn’t hit him, Sammy would have killed him. And the fact is, no one knows any of this except the four of us. This is something we’ll have to get comfortable with on our own. We are all responsible for what has happened here. I don’t worry if Ben or Mads will say anything, because they would have to explain their role in this, too. They could lie, I guess, but they won’t. Because they know, fundamentally, that they, too, are guilty. And they aren’t the kinds of people to sacrifice their lives to justice. That’s not who Anthony would ask to help him with this movie, and he picked his crew carefully.
I covertly wipe my sweaty hand on my shorts and reach for Anthony’s arm. I tug at his elbow, beseeching him to release one hand from the wheel. It takes him a moment, and he sighs almost imperceptibly before he obeys. His grip tightens on my hand. I watch the scars on my fingers turn a fluorescent white against my skin.
“It’s real,” he stresses, as he cuts the throttle. We drift toward the dock. As he ties off the rope, he adds, “Not just what happened with Sammy. All of this.” He guides me off the boat and peers down at me, his blue eyes almost disappearing in the sunlight.
“Are you okay?” I ask, even though it’s an empty question. Of course he isn’t okay. But I want him to keep talking. I want to know what he’s thinking.
He looks at me, as though he’s confused by the question. Confused that I’m even speaking. “Are you?” he asks me.
I can’t find my voice, so I pull him toward me, lacing my fingers in his hair. Distantly, I hear the lapping of the waves on the shore, the whistles of the birds, and the roar of fishing boats, but underneath it all is my own beating heart, pounding out a rhythm I can’t quite keep up with, because it’s tangling with Anthony’s. When we break apart, he whispers his next words into my skin.
“Betty,” he says. “Betty Roux.”
It takes a minute, and then it hits me: I’m not just Lola to him anymore.