My Blood Approves (5 page)

“
What about your parents?”
I turned towards him and rested my head against the seat. The rush
of the world around us had made me a little dizzy.

“
Dead.” His voice was
emotionless, but his eyes got hard, which didn’t look right at
all.

“
Sorry,” I offered
lamely.

“
Nah, it was like fifteen
years ago.” He shook his head, trying to brush me off, and then he
turned to me, his face brightening again. “What about you? You have
family?”

“
My mom, and a younger
brother,” I answered. “But he’s more like an older brother
sometimes.” Jack laughed loudly at that, his wonderful laughter
echoing throughout the car and sending waves of warmth over
me.

“
Yeah, I can completely
relate,” he grinned.

“
Really?” I had always
thought of Milo as an oddity, but it was nice to know that there
was someone out there like him.

“
Yeah, but Peter’s
something else,” Jack said. “Really. I doubt you’ll ever meet
anyone like him.”

“
Well, I’d have to meet him
first,” I pointed out.

“
Maybe someday.” He sounded
weirdly far off, almost apprehensive.

“
You’re not married, but
does that mean you’re single?” I asked.

“
Uh, yeah.” Then, before I
could ask him more about that, he turned the tables on me. “What
about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

“
Hardly,” I snorted. Other
than a few drunken make out sessions at a couple parties, I had
nothing to show for a love life.

“
Why not?” Jack
pressed.

“
You saw my friend Jane,” I
said dully. “She has this way of completely stealing all the light
in the room.”

“
Oh, she does
not.”

“
Why don’t you have a
girlfriend? The ladies obviously like you.” I changed the subject
back to him.

“
That’s actually part of
the reason why. Everyone likes me without ever knowing me. It makes
it hard to have a real relationship with somebody.”

“
So… what’s the other
part?” I asked, and he didn’t answer. “You’re not going to tell
me.”

“
I think
there’s a midnight show of
Rocky Horror
Picture Show
in Lakeville,” Jack announced
randomly. “Are you up for it?”

“
Sure.” I glanced out the
window, watching the car glide through traffic. “So, why didn’t you
drive your car tonight?”

“
That’s not really my car,
either.” He didn’t really answer my question, but I was starting to
get used to that. “It’s my sister Mae’s.”

I noticed that he called her his sister, not
his sister-in-law, and I wondered if that was simply an oversight.
His insistence on being so mysterious was making me overanalyze
everything.

“
Do you even own a
car?”

“
Yeah, a jeep. I just
haven’t felt like driving it lately.” Then he flashed a sly smile
and looked over at me. “Besides, this is so much
faster.”

“
That doesn’t seem fair at
all,” I said tiredly after riding in silence for a minute. My mind
had been to trying to figure out all the things he wouldn’t tell
me. “You won’t tell me anything about yourself.”

“
Hey, I’ll tell you almost
anything about me.” He kept his tone light, but he looked a little
wounded. For the first time, I realized that he not telling me
bothered him just as much as it did me.

“
My favorite color is
chartreuse. I love the Ramones and the Cure. My bedroom walls are
painted dark blue. I had my first kiss when I was fourteen while
listening to ‘Rock Lobster’ cause she really, really liked B-52’s.
I should’ve taken that as warning sign that it would never work,
but I was awfully young and stupid.”

“
Chartreuse?” I questioned,
skipping over the remainder of his confession. “I don’t even know
what that is.”

“
It’s sorta like a bright
olive,” Jack explained. “It’s the color most visible to the human
eye because of where it sits in the light spectrum.”

“
You’re incredibly random.”
We turned into the parking lot of the multiplex, and I realized he
had managed to avoid really telling me anything. When he pulled
into park, I looked at him seriously. “So why can’t you tell me
things?”

“
Why do you think?” Jack
asked, not unkindly.

“
Witness protection.” It
was an idea I had actually considered but quickly crossed off
because it didn’t really explain anything. And just as I suspected,
Jack laughed.

“
Okay, that’s not it.”
Still smiling and shaking his head, he hopped out of the car, and I
quickly followed him.

“
Hey, does that mean you’ll
actually tell me if I guess right?” The movie had probably already
started, so Jack was walking rather fast towards the theater, and I
chased after him as swiftly as my short legs would carry
me.

“
I don’t see why not,” Jack
said, and that perplexed me even further.

“
If I can guess it then why
can’t you just come right out and tell me?”

“
It’s just the way it is.”
He opened the big glass doors of the theater for me, and I walked
inside, furrowing my brow.

When he went up to the cashier to buy
tickets, I started rummaging in my pockets for my own money, but he
just waved me off and paid for my ticket. If I hadn’t been so
preoccupied by this new development, I probably would’ve protested
further.

“
So, are you
Rumpelstiltskin?” I asked him, leaning up against the counter as he
got our tickets.

He laughed loudly, and the cashier blushed
at the sound. He was completely oblivious to it, and I hoped that I
would hurry up and feel the same way. I hadn’t really staked a
claim on him, but it was still irritating to notice girls drooling
all over him, especially when I was visibly with him.

“
That’s awesome!” He handed
me my ticket, and while I did feel overly happy about his minor
compliment, I only let the frustration show on my face. He walked
to the theater, slowing enough so I could keep up with him.
“Rumpelstiltskin. That’s really awesome. I’m gonna tell Ezra
that.”

“
Why? Are you guys like a
family of goblins or something?”

Jack laughed, shaking his head, and then
pushed open the door to the movie before I could question him
further.

The movie had already started playing but
just the very beginning. Many people were dressed up in costumes
from the movie and throwing popcorn at the screen, so for once
nobody noticed us sneaking into the back row.

Rocky Horror Picture
Show
was a pretty good movie and I did
rather enjoy it, but either Jack had ADD or he had being evasive
down to an art form.

Deciding to make the best of the situation,
I followed suit and watched the movie. Jack was a borderline
fanatic. He hadn’t dressed up in a black corset or anything like
that, but he shouted right along with all the lines.

When “Time Warp” came on, I thought he might
get up and dance, and he probably would’ve if there'd been enough
room in the aisle.

Towards the end of the movie, I had settled
back in my seat, and even his enthusiasm had faded a bit. My arm
casually brushed against his, and I felt struck by his odd skin
temperature again. His skin was soft and warm, but it felt more
like touching fabric than it did like touching a person.

It was such an odd sensation that I felt
like I had to get more of it. I pushed my arm over on the shared
arm rest, very deliberately pressing my bare skin against his. The
back of his hand felt impossibly soft.

He hadn’t pulled his arm away, but I felt
his gaze so I looked up at him, finding a very perplexed expression
on his face.

“
Are you trying to hold my
hand?” Jack asked, as if the idea were completely alien.

I was not trying to hold his hand, but I
didn’t appreciate the way it seemed so offensive to him. What would
be wrong with that?

“
What if I am?” I stuck out
my chin, ready to hold my ground and find out what would be so bad
about hitting on me.

Without hesitation, Jack called my bluff and
took my hand in his. It definitely felt like I was holding hands
with doll or something other than another person, but then it
started to warm up, his skin heating up unnaturally, and I pulled
my hand from his.

“
Okay. That’s just weird,”
I whispered.

In response, he just shrugged, apparently
deciding against explaining his abrupt temperature change.

We watched the rest of the movie in silence
(or at least I did – he continued shouting lines and singing). By
the time it ended, I had started yawning, and I knew that I’d have
to call it a night pretty soon.

Not that I wanted to. Bizarre handholding
and classified information aside, I really enjoyed spending time
with Jack and I didn’t want it to stop. Not ever.

“
I hope you had fun
tonight,” Jack said when he pulled up in front of my
place.

“
I did,” I nodded. Only he
could make frustration so much fun. “So… we’ll hang out
again?”

“
Of course,” he smiled,
holding his hand towards me. “Let me see your phone.”

“
Why?” I asked, but I was
already pulling it out of my pocket and handing it to
him.

“
One second.” Taking my
phone, he started scrolling through it and doing things that I
couldn’t see from my angle. A minute later, he handed my phone back
to me, looking rather mischievous.

“
What’d you do?” I flipped
it open and started looking through it, trying to see what he
could’ve done.

“
You’ll see,” he
smiled.

“
Oh, you are trouble.”
Shaking my head, I shoved my phone back in my pocket, and he
laughed.

“
You have no
idea.”

When I got out of the car, he was still
laughing. Being with him was strangely exhilarating, but it also
ended up a little tiring. Even when he wasn’t moving, he had so
much energy about him, and it seemed to take so much energy just
being around him.

I’d barely made it inside the apartment when
I saw Milo looking sheepishly at me, and I knew there was trouble
afoot. He leaned against the kitchen counter, all decked out in
pajamas since it was past his bedtime.

I was about to ask what was going on when I
heard the rather shrill voice of my mother, and looked over to see
her sitting in the tattered easy chair in the living room.

“
Glad to see you finally
made it home,” Mom said.

Her graying hair was a frayed mess spreading
out from her bun. Her eyes were unusually large, a feature that
both Milo and I had inherited, making us appear much younger than
we were. She lit another cigarette as she cast a cold glance at
me.

“
Why aren’t you at work?” I
asked.

“
They had a bomb threat to
the building so they shut it down for the night,” Mom said.
“They’re diverting all the calls to Edina’s station.”

“
Oh.” I stood awkwardly in
between the kitchen and the living room, waiting for someone to
tell me what was going on.

“
What were you doing out so
late?” Her voice lilted at the end, taunting me.

“
I don’t have school, and I
don’t have a curfew,” I answered cautiously.

In theory, I might’ve had a curfew, but we’d
never even talked about it and she always worked nights. On
weeknights, I tried to be in by midnight, mostly because Milo would
freak out on me.

The only thing Mom really kept track of was
whether or not we went to school and passed all our classes. As
long as I did that, everything else seemed fine with her.

“
So, you weren’t out with a
guy?” Mom asked pointedly, and I saw Milo looking ashamed out of
the corner of my eye.

“
Well, yeah, I was.” I drew
my shoulders back a bit, telling myself that I hadn’t done
anything, no matter what my mother’s angry glare said. “Is that a
problem?”

“
Who is he?” She flicked an
ash off the arm of the chair, looking down instead of at
me.

“
His name is Jack.” I
shifted uneasily, and stole a glance at Milo.

I felt very sorry for him. I had no idea how
long he'd been forced to stand here with my mother, and I couldn’t
imagine the kind of interrogation she had put him through.

Let me be clear: she wasn’t a bad mother.
She was just a tired, lonely woman that worked seventy hours a week
and hardly ever saw her kids. She barely had time to try to
convince us not to make the same mistakes she did.

“
I see.” Abruptly, my
mother put her cigarette out and exhaled deeply. When she spoke
again, her voice was sweet, much too sweet, and my skin wanted to
crawl. “I think I should meet this boy.”

“
How? When? You work all
the time.”

“
Well, he seems to be a
night owl, much like yourself.” She looked up at me, batting her
eyes exaggeratedly. “I’m sure that you could find a time within the
next two days.”

A million different arguments ran through my
head, but I didn’t want to set her off further. I just nodded
instead.

“
Okay. I’ll figure it
out.”