Chasing Midnight (30 page)

“Hey.” A voice right above me.

I look up from my chemistry homework and my face explodes in warmth.
Cale.
He is standing by the door, looking down at me. His stance is hesitant and nervous, as if unsure whether or not he should have come.

Even then, he’s smiling.

A glint of surprise ripples through me, striking my emotions raw. Why is he here?

Before I move or say anything, he takes two steps and sits on the edge of my desk, swinging one of his legs back and forth like he’s not planning on leaving any time soon.

Don’t leave anytime soon.

“So I was thinking about making a trade,” he says with a wily smile, pulling out the Love and Rockets record from behind his back and handing it to me.

“You were?” I stand up, taking the record from him. But something feels off inside my heart. Last week I would’ve been ecstatic about getting this record back; now it feels just sorta eh.

Probably because I want Cale now, not the record.

My eyes fall on the white squares on the front of the album, pulling my thoughts backward to our joint art project now buried somewhere in the corridors of my mind.

“Lost your inspiration?” I say at last, trying to be witty.
Failing.
My comebacks sound so much better when I’m not emotionally invested in the dude standing in front of me, looking impossibly irresistible. Now, ever since I fell head over heels for this guy, I’ve turned into some weird, noodley wimp with probably zero chance of him noticing me.

“Nope. My partner wasn’t too excited about the record, that’s all.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling a pang of jealousy shoot through me, at the same time curious who his art partner is since it isn’t me anymore.

“Yeah. He’s more into literal stuff. He’s crappy at art too, but don’t tell anyone I said that,” he says, lowering his voice and glancing around the store for eavesdroppers. “So how about something else?” He stands up and sidles past me to the first shelf. “Maybe something a little more literal . . . you know, with actual people or something on the cover?”

“I don’t know.” I join him and start flipping through records too. But I can’t focus; all I can do is listen to the silence stifling the air around us.

“What about something like this?” he says, trying to temper a laugh. I lean over, wondering what he found. “I’m sort of into this kind of thing,” he adds, pointing at two girls holding guitars, wearing only red heels and bikinis.

I snatch the record out of his hand and punch him in the arm. “You’re banned for life now, you know,” I say, not even close to meaning it. “I warned you. Now you’re going to have to find your inspiration at another establishment. Good luck.”

His laugh eases into a smile, the creases in his face swallowing up a handful of freckles. “Awww, come on. That other record’s just a bunch of squares. This one’s so much better. And see how empowering it is to women? Red is a power color, you know.”

“Mr. Tabish hates that kind of thing, anyway. So you’re asking to fail.”

“You have Tabish, too?”

“Uhhhh . . . no. I just heard about him. He’s tough.”

“Oh, great then. Now I’m going to leave here empty-handed. And not only is my partner going to hate me, but Tabish is going to fail me too. Thanks a lot.”

“I have a feeling you already have something amazing in the works. You’re probably halfway done with your poster already. I wouldn’t sweat it.”

“How do you know I make posters?”

Oh, shoot. I keep forgetting which me knows what.

Let’s see . . . how to get myself out of this. “Just a feeling, that’s all. A good feeling, like your shirt.” I chuckle, trying to change focus by pointing to the words covering the front of his T-shirt—
WE GIVE GOOD FEELING.
“Who’s
we,
anyway?”

He takes a peek at his shirt. “Whoever you want.”

I inch closer to him by making it look like I’m organizing the cassette table behind him. “Well, that’s ambiguous.”

“That’s the whole point. At first glance these random sayings may appear to be nonsense, but in reality their vagueness is a personalized message to the reader. Get it?”

I’m still trying to digest what he just said.

He clarifies. “So the sayings end up meaning whatever you think they mean. Or
want
them to mean.”

“Or you’re just really gifted at making anything look appealing,” I say, thinking less about his shirt and more about who’s in it. “You should be a lawyer. Or a salesman. Oh, wait—I think they’re the same thing.” I smirk.

“Hey, you’re funny,” he says, mocking me as he slides a row of cassettes out of the way and sits atop the cassette table, his legs only a couple of inches from my arms. Whoa. I have to take a deep breath at his familiar sandalwood scent . . . so good. And he’s only inches from me . . . so close.

I can feel the heat of his skin.

Why is it so difficult to gather up my courage to get closer to him, yet so easy to banter back and forth with him like this all day long?

“You still don’t remember me, do you?” he asks with a deadserious look on his face.

What is he talking about? Of course I remember him! He’s practically all I remember (or want to remember) from my Struck life.

Oh, wait. Cale doesn’t know about my Struck life.

He’s not talking about that at all. Then . . . what’s he talking about?

His eyes continue to hold me hostage, staring me down like I’m his prisoner.

“What are you—” I start, but he cuts me off with one word. “Baggins.”

“Baggins . . . ” I repeat, wondering why it sounds so familiar . . . and then it all comes into focus—middle school! Except back then, Cale was way shorter, way stockier, and had a huge head of hair that was always a mess, sort of like a hobbit. Everyone called him Baggins. It didn’t help that he liked
The Lord of the Rings
either.

My eyes go wide. “That’s right! You were Baggins?” I can’t believe it. “Wow. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

“I’m not.” He chuckles. “You not recognizing me was the best compliment of my life.”

“Are you
sure
that was you?” I say, scrutinizing him, looking for any sign of his old self. Talk about being reinvented.

“If it wasn’t, then I went through three years of torture for nothing.”

“Did I—?”

“Relax. Everyone did. You teasing me wasn’t any different from anyone else.”

Still, why couldn’t I have been the one nice kid? The one who stood up for him? Even in this life as the old Mackenzie Love, without the baggage of being a lucky one, I would have hoped to have been the nice kid.

I guess nobody’s immune from turning into a jerk when everything’s going your way.

“So, tell me this,” Cale says, clasping his hands together, squaring his jaw and drawing his eyebrows together, like he is a lawyer about to offer me a plea deal. “How am I supposed to come see you again if I’m banned from the store?”

Flip.

He’s looking directly in my eyes now, and I’m so aware of it that all I can do is think about how he’s looking at me and I’m looking at him, which makes it impossible for me to say something coherent on top of that. “I—I think I can make an exception. Just this once,” I manage to say.

His eyes, still penetrating mine. “Sounds good, Love.”

Love.
He called me Love.

He stands up, finally breaking eye contact. I exhale for some reason, the tension in me somehow thinking I was holding my breath. Believe me, it was just as intense.

“Okay, I appreciate your help today,” he says, walking to the door. “Now I guess I’m off to find inspiration somewhere else, since you don’t approve of my tactics.”

I lose my train of thought as he edges past me, feeling my lips tingling as he opens the door.

“Bye,” I say, wishing he would come back already. Willing to give him a whole stack of bikini-clad women just for him to stay.

He waves, the door shutting behind him.

Me, standing there, watching him leave, not willing to let him go.

Not willing to wait for him to come back to me.

Now knowing what I have to do.

Go to him.

four

N
ate’s car is in the driveway, still warm. I race up
the walkway and burst through the front door, straight into the arms of my oldest brother. He tries to release me sooner than I’m ready, then pulls me closer once he must have realized how serious I am about this hugging business.

“Well, hello to you, too,” he says when I finally let go.

His thick hair stands up in a million directions, thanks to my attack. He is shorter and broader than Spencer or Dad, and always reminded me of a teddy bear with his dark hair and darker eyes and sweet disposition. Being six years older than me means we have less in common, but I’ve always looked up to him like another dad or an uncle. Just knowing Nate isn’t three thousand miles away anymore is enough to make me eternally happy.

“Did you have a good trip?” I ask.

“You know I’m only an hour away, right?” he says, setting plates around the table for dinner.

I grab a pile of napkins to help him. “But that’s still too far.”

Mom stands in front of the stove, an apron tied around her waist, a spatula in her hand. She is dictating spelling words to Indy and Ezra, who are both sitting at to the bar, kicking their legs against the cabinet. One of them is resting his chin in his hands and the other is laying his head on the counter
while mindlessly drawing cartoons in the margins of his paper instead of writing down the words. They both wear the look of being tortured on a Friday night instead of playing Minecraft on the computer. I want to rescue them but leave them to suffer their fate.

The back door slides open, spilling Dad into the house, his BB gun in hand. He’s covered in head-to-toe camo, and a smile swallows up his face. “Got ’em!” he says, pumping his fist into the air.

Indy and Ezra jump to their feet and start cheering, their spelling words forgotten as they high-five Dad like he told them we were going to Disneyland. Mom is silent; she only stares him down while shaking her head in disapproval with a rare respect for the loss that just took place on our property (though I’m pretty sure that tall and vibrant tomato plants are secretly shooting up wildly in her head).

Dad ducks back outside, returning to the scene of the crime with the twins for pictures and celebration just as Spencer walks into the kitchen. I leap in his direction, ready to smother him in a bear hug, but hold back when he passes by me and lowers himself in front of the computer. I forgot about our last moments together in my Struck life, that last conversation between us filled with resentment and anger.

But this isn’t that same Spencer.

That Spencer is gone.

My
Spencer is here again, strolling through the kitchen carefree and casual, a little less muscular than I remember—but a lot less angry.

“Hi, Spence,” I say nonchalantly, noticing he’s only coughed once this whole time. He turns his head briefly and then refocuses on the computer screen. “Are you feeling any better?” I ask.

“For five minutes, yeah.”

“Sorry I wasn’t much help last night. I forgot about the nebulizer.”

“It’s okay. It was my fault, anyway. I shouldn’t have let it get that bad.”

“You okay now, you think?” I ask, noticing the dark circles digging craters under his eyes.

He leans back in his chair and tips his head into his hands, finally looking at me with a barely-there smile. “Better, yes. Thanks for your help last night, Kenz.”

I blink, looking past him out the window. Feeling awkward. “Anytime.”

Mom’s cheerful, nagging voice intrudes in on our conversation. “Spencer, do you think that cough is still asthma now or has it settled into your lungs? I’m worried about pneumonia. Maybe I should call Dr. Shipley.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep you updated.”

“I don’t know . . . ,” Mom says before reminding Nate to put his clothes in the washing machine before somebody needs to take a shower and all the hot water is gone.

That’s right—we run out of hot water in this house.

I study Spencer’s profile, thinking about the way he avoided me all last week, how he regarded me with revulsion. I can’t stand thinking about it anymore. The thought of losing Spencer to apathy and anger seems just as bad as asthma or any of its complications, maybe even worse. In this life asthma is the monster, not Spencer; I can deal with that. We all can, together.

“I’m sorry you’re always sick, Spencer. I know it must suck,” I say, relieved to find the softness inside his eyes again despite those dark circles.

“Yeah, it sucks.”

“If I ever win the lottery, I’m giving it all to you. After I buy my own pair of Flyknits, though.”

He throws me a sideways glance, laughing a little. “Thanks.”

“I mean it,” I say.

His eyes reflect the computer screen, lighting up the sides of his pupils. But he doesn’t smile this time. Or even laugh. This time he simply meets my gaze again, and after a few seconds says quietly, “I know.”

five