Don't You Wish (16 page)

“Hey!” I shove him off, set off by a fuse deep inside. Not the fuse I thought would explode when a boy touched my bare chest for the first time. A fury fuse. “Don’t.”

“Come on,” he says, his voice shaking a little as he
switches tactics to open his pants, tearing the fly down. “Start with me, then. You like that.”

“No,” I say, alarm working up my spine into the base of my skull. “I don’t.”

“You told me you did last week, Ayla. What was that about in your pool?”

I have no idea. “I don’t remember,” I say honestly.

“Well, I do. You promised we’d do it on homecoming night.” He’s actually starting to whine. “You
promised
.”

“
I
didn’t promise.”

“Like hell you didn’t.”

I take a shuddering breath and fight to stay calm, trying not to think of the position I’m in. Nearly naked, alone with a very pissed off and horny kid. I have to try … the truth.

“Ryder, I didn’t promise.
Ayla Monroe
promised. And I know I look like her and live like her, but …” I manage to push him back far enough to look right into his eyes. “I’m someone else now.”

“What the
goddamn hell
does that mean?”

“It means … that my soul has changed.”

He’s speechless. Jaw dropped, eyes wide, body frozen. “What?”

“Deep down, I’m different. Something happened. I woke up a few days ago and I was here, but this isn’t where I belong. It’s where Ayla Monroe belongs, and I know you think you know her, but I’m not her.”

He’s still staring, and my words are running together like melted ice cream on hot pavement.

“It’s like I’m in a different universe or something,” I finish weakly. “Like a dream, only it doesn’t end.”

Not a word, just a long, unbroken gaze of … nothing. I wait for an eternity before he finally speaks.

“You gonna do it or not?”

I blink at him. That’s all he has to say? “Not,” I whisper.

“Cock tease.” He practically spits the words as he pushes off the bed.

“Ryder, I’m trying to tell you something very serious and very real and very scary to me.”

“Yeah, well I’m trying to tell you something very serious too.” He adjusts his pants, letting them hang open, boxers exposed. “I can have any girl in Croppe Academy. Shit, any girl in freaking Miami.”

“I’m sure you can,” I say softly.

He looks at me for a long time, then walks into the hall. “So get the hell out of here.”

“Will you take me home?”

“No.”

“Where are you going?”

I hear him snort. “To jack off.”

I stay perfectly still, pressed into a lump of sheets, cold and sad and more alone than ever.

I try Jade. I try Bliss. I even try Trent. All I get is voice mail as I stand on a shadowy street near the University of Miami at one in the morning, my wrecked Vera Wang dress riding up my thighs as I walk toward lights and traffic.
Maybe I can call a cab
, I think, when a noisy car rumbles toward me, slowing down as I blink into a high, narrow-set beam of headlights.

Instinctively I back into the shadows, until I hear the driver say, “Ayla?”

I squint into the zipped-down plastic windows of an old Jeep and see the outline of a hat. “Charlie?”

“What are you doing here?”

Charlie. The homeless boy who I’m not supposed to talk to. “Can I have a ride?” It never occurs to me not to ask.

“Yeah, hop in.”

I round the back of the Jeep, and the knot in my chest that was making it so hard to breathe loosens a bit. He reaches over to push open the door, an inviting move that touches me. “You okay?” he asks, his voice so kind I almost fold in half.

I didn’t realize just how bad off Ryder left me. “Yeah.” Although, I’m shaking.

“Need to sober up?”

I shake my head. “No, I haven’t been drinking. I’ve been … I need to go home.”

He gives me a funny look, and I know what’s coming—some smart-ass comment about why don’t I call my personal limo driver. Which I would totally deserve for the whole hat-drenching incident.

But he says, “You live on Star Island, right?”

I nod and pull on my seat belt.

“Think they’ll let a ten-year-old dented Jeep Wrangler into that place?”

“If I tell them to.”

He takes off his hat quickly, as though he just remembered he had it on, and tosses it into the backseat.

“Glad it survived the bath,” I say.

“Me too.”

There’s a long silence as he pulls onto South Dixie and heads toward downtown and the causeway. After a minute, I rest my head and then close my eyes.

“I thought the dance was at the Fontainebleau,” he says.

“It was. What are you doing out here?”

“Hanging out with some buddies in the physics lab at UM.”

The physics lab? “Sounds like good times,” I say with a little laugh in my voice.

“It was that or the party with the band nerds who don’t go to homecoming. You have
no
idea what fun is until you’ve been to one of them.”

“Actually, I do,” I say softly. The second-rate, not-so-cool, average nobodies can have a pretty darn good time wondering what it’s like at the cool kids’ party.

“So, your boyfriend lives around here, doesn’t he?”

“Ex-boyfriend.”

That earns me a surprised look. “And he sent you out without a ride?” Charlie shakes his head in disdain as he changes lanes competently with one hand.

“How is it that you have an after-midnight license?”

“I’m seventeen.”

“You are?” That doesn’t make sense at all. “Why aren’t you a senior?”

“I stayed out of school for a while,” he says vaguely.

Maybe homeless kids can’t go to school and advance grades. I drop the subject and study the scenery in silence.

“You wanna talk about what happened tonight?” he asks after a few minutes.

More than anything. “Not really.”

The uplighted palm trees and storefronts of the Gables remind me that I’m a million miles and another lifetime from the tele-poles and autumn leaves of Pittsburgh. And if Ryder didn’t get that, this guy certainly won’t. So, no talking for me.

“You want to talk about anything?”

I let out a slightly overdramatic sigh. “I want to go home.”

“You sound like Dorothy in Oz.”

I manage a smile, an unfamiliar weight settling on my chest. “Yeah, sometimes I know precisely how she felt.”

He stops at a light and looks at me. I turn to face him, taking in the angles and shadows bathed in reddish light. He really is a good-looking guy, even more so since he’s being so dang sweet when I’m feeling all tender and bruised.

“Shame about the breakup,” he says. “You two looked so … 
right
for each other.”

There might be a little sarcasm in that statement, but I ignore it. “Looks are deceiving.”

He’s still studying me, his skin turning greenish as the light changes. He doesn’t look away. Behind us, a car honks. He still doesn’t look away.

Neither do I.

“Green means go, Zelinsky,” I finally say.

“So it does.” Finally, he hits the accelerator, then shifts his attention to the road.

The car feels as cheap as a toy, but he cruises through the late-night traffic effortlessly, and soon we’re on the causeway toward the beach. Outside, a few massive, majestic cruise ships are docked, bathed in white lights, enough to cast a glow inside the car and light up a stack of books in the well between the two front seats. Textbooks.

I pick up the top one, a monstrous doorstop that weighs about ten pounds. “
Introduction to Elementary Particles
?” I can’t help but laugh. “Riveting.”

He smiles. “Actually, it is. It’s for my quantum mechanics class at Miami Dade.”

I can’t even spell
quantum mechanics
, let alone consider
taking a community college class on the subject. “So, you’re like a real rocket scientist?”

“Not exactly.”

“But you want to be?”

“I’m thinking about medicine.”

It feels like he’s creating a wall with vague answers again. Or maybe he just doesn’t know what he wants to be—or is embarrassed that a homeless kid is thinking about being a doctor. Whatever, I’m kind of intrigued.

“What is quantum mechanics, anyway?” I open the book to a sea of incomprehensible words and diagrams. “Besides boring?”

“Part of quantum physics. Deals with atoms and stuff. You know, string theory, particle colliders, and cosmic catastrophes. You know what they are?”

“Cosmic catastrophes?” I give a dry laugh. “I’m living one.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, the beautiful rich girl breaking up with the hotshot jock. That would be a real catastrophe for the entire cosmos.”

A jolt of resentment makes me slam the book closed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I know. I can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to be you. Just like you can’t imagine what it’s like to be me.”

“You’re wrong about that, too.” I return the textbook to the pile, right on top of another called
Light and Matter: Newtonian Physics
. “I know more about your life than you can imagine.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

I open my mouth, then shut it. He’s right; I don’t know about … living in a box. And why am I dropping all these hints? He’s the last person I want to confide in, despite how desperate I am to do so.

Fortunately, we’ve arrived at Star Island before I go any further. The guard steps out of the gatehouse when the Jeep approaches, an older man, frowning, hands on hips, no doubt ready to shoo the rattling bucket of bolts away.

“The help probably isn’t allowed in this late,” Charlie says to me.

“I hate to break it to you, but the help have better cars.”

He grins at that, showing a decent sense of humor that I find surprisingly attractive. I shove that thought into the mental trash where it belongs and lean over to show my face to the security guard, whose expression brightens when he recognizes me.

“Good evening, Miss Monroe.” He presses a button to allow the gate to open.

“Hi …” I spot his name tag and smile. “Bruce. Thank you. Have a nice night.”

As Charlie drives through to the exclusive island, he’s shaking his head like he’s confused.

“It’s easy to find the house,” I say. “There’s only one road around the island, and you’re on it.”

“That’s not what I’m wondering about.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m just trying to figure out … What happened to you?”

I don’t answer, but I have a pretty good idea where this is going.

“Did you find out you have a month to live? Make a bet with someone? Deal with the devil?”

“What are you talking about?”
Just play dumb, Annie. Don’t let this cute, sweet boy steal any secrets from you
.

“Why are you being so nice to everyone?”

“Because I am nice.”

“Mmmm.” He’s not buying it. “Which house?”

“Keep going, around the bend, toward the back.”

He glances at the grounds and gates, which, for the most part, are all you can see of the mansions hidden along the edge of the island. “Everyone’s talking about it, you know.”

Oh, great. “Everyone?”

“Even the invisible people,” he says, no bitterness in his tone. “Especially the invisibles.”

The invisibles know that’s what we call them? Of course they do. The nobodies know they’re nobody at South Hills High. More universal laws of high school.

“You know what’s sad?” I ask, trying not to sound scared, because deep inside, I know I’m messing with those laws. “What’s sad is that people don’t have better things to think about than my personality.”

“Evidently not, but it’s not just your personality,” he says, slowing as he rounds the curve in the road.

“This gate,” I tell him as we approach the wrought iron fence that surrounds our property. “What else has the invisibles gossiping about me at the band parties?” I try to sound condescending and disdainful, like I know Ayla would, but it comes out kind of pathetic. Like I
care
what they’re saying.

Because I do.

He looks at me again, scrutinizing my face one more time. “You really are different.” I don’t know if he means different from what I was or different from what he expected or just different from all females. I don’t want to ask.

“Maybe I’m getting more mature,” I say. “You’ll need a code at that box.”

“You want to trust me with it?”

It’s trust him or reach over him, smashing my whole body between the steering wheel and his chest to punch in the pass code. And while that idea doesn’t strike me as being as horrific as it should, I’ve been pressed against enough boys for one night.

“It’s ten-thirty-two,” I tell him.

He opens the gate and heads up the winding stone drive until his headlights illuminate the house.

“Nice crib.”

“Yeah.” I reach for my door handle but can’t find it, my fingers stabbing at torn leather and a rickety metal bar that might have once been a latch.

“Here, I’ll get it.” He reaches across me, his arm accidentally brushing my chest. I flatten myself against the seat to give him room. In the soft light I see color rise to his cheeks. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

The door pops open, and I give him a smile. “Thanks for the ride, Charlie.”

He nods, still a little embarrassed by the close encounter, I can tell. So different from Ryder. I try to ease the moment by putting my hand on his arm. “You go home now and read all about that quantum … stuff so you can be a doctor or rocket scientist or something amazing.”

“I plan on it,” he assures me, relaxing a little. “And don’t you make any more deals with the devil.”

For a flash of a crazy second, I wonder if that’s what I’ve done. Is that how I got here, with my every wish come true?

“What’s the matter?” he asks, reading the change in my expression.

Everything in me wants to tell him the truth. I can feel the words bubbling up, the ache inside me to share this situation with someone. Someone understanding. Someone who might actually believe me. Someone I trust.

And that wouldn’t be this formerly homeless kid who probably hates everything about Ayla Monroe.