7

After Emily almost froze to death, Sam went every day after summer school to meet her at Ferdinand’s. He couldn’t stand the idea of his girlfriend being in the world without the protection of his watchful eye.

It didn’t matter that he never knew when her shift would end. What was important was that he was watching there for her.

And then Destiny appeared on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

The girl was a little pixie of a thing.

She had on a short-short pink skirt and an oversize man’s dress shirt. She wore pointy orange slippers that came from Thailand and were not meant to ever touch the pavement.

Her hair, which was dyed the color of a blond baby’s—all shiny white—was piled up on her head and held in place by an ornamental chopstick. Little dark roots were visible at the base of her scalp.

The girl stared at Sam and said, “You look hot. If you’re going to be waiting for long, you can come hang out in the shop.” Her head tilted over to the door of a store called the Orange Tree.

Sam looked around. Was she talking to him?

The girl continued. “I saw you out here yesterday with the dark-haired girl from the French place.”

Now Sam knew for certain that she was speaking to him. He remained silent, but that didn’t stop her.

“I’m Destiny. Destiny Verbeck. I’ve got a job in there. It’s a whole-lot-of-nothing shop.”

Sam nodded and then hoped it didn’t look like he was agreeing with what she’d just said.

“We sell cards and T-shirts and toys that adults think kids would like, but they don’t. It’s all expensive junk, really. I mean just useless. But people buy it. Earrings made from bottle caps. Toilet paper with your fortune printed on one side. It’s just a bunch of crap.”

Destiny pulled on her skirt, not down but up, making it even shorter. She then continued. “We sell something called Earthquake-in-a-Can. You hit a button, and it shakes. Battery-powered. If that’s not junk, I don’t know what is.”

Destiny wiggled her toes in her tiny orange slippers and rocked back and forth on her heels. “We’ve got a couch in the store. You may as well come inside and waste your time talking to me.”

Sam wasn’t talking to her. But she didn’t seem to need any encouragement to carry on the conversation. She peered at him and suddenly seemed very serious.

“What did you say your name was again?”

He hadn’t said. Because he had yet to open his mouth. Now he did as he answered: “Sam.”

Destiny repeated it, and the word seemed to have two syllables.

“SSSSee-Aam. I like that. It fits you. It’s nice when that happens. I was born Amber, but I changed my name to Destiny. Amber didn’t work for me. It was too, I don’t know, ‘boring girl.’”

She was moving now, and Sam felt that he had no choice but to follow as she continued:

“I just wasn’t an Amber. But Destiny works. Everyone remembers it. You will, too. I guarantee it. Tonight, when you’re just about to fall asleep, you’ll think, What happened to me today? And then it will come to you. Destiny!”

And then she headed into the Orange Tree, and Sam found himself right behind the short-short pink skirt and the little orange slippers.

It was times like this, he decided, when it would have been a good thing to know more about girls.

Like how do you politely get away from one?

Destiny Verbeck might have looked like she could play the part of a baby wood nymph in a professional ice show, but she was tough.

She had to be.

Her mother had died of a drug overdose after being clean and sober for four years. Her one slipup ended it all.

After that, eleven-year-old Destiny, known up until that point as Amber, changed her name.

In a kinder world, Destiny’s father, while still grieving, would have stepped in to raise her.

If Ronnie Verbeck had lived a hundred years earlier, he would have been a horse thief. Instead, he ran a ring of crooks who only stole newish Hondas from Vegas hotel parking lots. Ronnie Verbeck knew how to ship a stripped sedan south of the border in less than six hours.

Only two months after his wife died, Ronnie was caught in a government sting that led to his conviction. He named names, giving up as many members of the stolen-car ring as possible, but it wasn’t enough. He still found himself behind bars.

No one on either side of the family came forward. And that left Amber-turned-Destiny Verbeck in the hands of foster care.

Four families and five years later, she walked out the front door of a house in Boise, Idaho, and didn’t look back.

She was almost sixteen, and she’d had enough of the spin cycle of schools, makeshift families, and disappointment. Despite all the obstacles that had been thrown in front of her, she knew that she could make it on her own.

A man named Wynn Lappe married Destiny on her birthday in Billings, Montana. He was twenty-seven years old and drove trucks for a living. He thought she was twenty-three.

Destiny didn’t have a commercial driver’s license, but she learned to drive a big rig. An eighteen-wheeler requires nerves of steel when you don’t know what you’re doing, and she had those, even though turning sharp corners still presented some problems for her.

Destiny traveled with Wynn for a year, seeing thousands and thousands of miles of moving blacktop and not a lot else. Wynn was fundamentally decent but also tragically boring. At least to a teenager with big dreams.

And that was why Destiny left him at a truck stop in Lebo, Kansas, hopping a ride with another driver while Wynn slept in the upper bunk of the big rig, above the cab.

She left a note saying she was sorry that it was over. She hoped he’d file the paperwork for a divorce, but if he didn’t, she’d understand.

Now, eight months later, the girl was working at the Orange Tree gift shop in an Oregon college town. She’d been there only a few days, and already the place seemed dreary.

And then she saw Sam.

With the tall boy at her heels, she pointed to the purple sofa next to the greeting-card display. “Take a load off. You can see the sidewalk, and you’ll know when your girlfriend comes out of the restaurant.”

Sam did everything he could not to look at Destiny’s short-short pink skirt as he awkwardly folded his lanky body onto the couch.

Destiny Verbeck was petite and very, very, very pretty. But she was too tiny to be called beautiful, because even wearing heels she still looked like a kid.

“I know I look young, but I’m twenty. Just turned.”

Destiny took a stool that was behind the cash register and pulled it around to the front of the counter so that she could be closer to Sam.

She hopped up onto the seat (and then crossed her legs, which caused her skirt to rise up another inch), sighing as if she’d just climbed ten flights of stairs.

“Have you ever worked in a gift shop? You wouldn’t believe how boring it is. I mean, it’s watching-paint-dry time in here. Just having someone else around makes it easier.”

Sam wondered what he needed to do to make her stop talking, and then a bell sounded on the door and a woman in her thirties entered the store. Destiny eyed her with obvious hostility.

The woman picked up a blue-and-white polka-dot hair accessory and held it in the air as she called out, “How much is the headband?”

Destiny made a face. “Two things to know before we talk price. The first is that those headbands give you a headache about five minutes after you put one on. I know. I tried to wear one yesterday. And the second thing is that they’re made of some piece-of-crap plastic underneath the fabric, because they snap in two like pretzels.”

The woman instantly put the ribbon-covered plastic headband down on the counter, murmuring, “Thank you.”

Destiny gave her a sweet smile. “No problem.” The woman headed straight for the door.

Destiny’s smile was now genuine as she called after the fleeing customer, “Come back again. We get new stuff all the time.”

Sam tried hard not to look amused.

He watched as Destiny crossed and uncrossed her legs a few times, swinging her perfectly shaped calves up into the air and then down again. She finally stopped swishing her limbs and pulled a package of Dutch coffee candy from a display and tore into the sparkling gold bag.

She held out the treats to Sam, who murmured, “No, thank you.”

Destiny frowned. “They’re good. Little coffee candies. Bitzie—she’s the owner—buys them at Costco and then puts ’em in these fancy little bags so people think they got flown over special from somewhere. Go on, try one.”

Sam was certain that Riddle would love to get his hands on a coffee candy. But he still shook his head no, adding, “I just ate.”

Destiny gave him a penetrating look. “Liar. I can tell, you know.”

Sam knew his face was turning red.

She continued. “I hate liars.”

Sam felt the need to defend himself. But before he could figure out what to say, Destiny cooed, “But I’ll get over it. You see, Sam, I’m looking for a new friend. And you’re going to do just fine.”