24

Aidan

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Oh. My. God.

If I thought Aster was red in the face after Lindo’s breath-stealing bear-hug, I was mistaken. Her cheeks are flaming right now, and I don’t know if it’s rage or embarrassment, but I don’t want to find out.

“So where should we do the interview?” I interject loudly. “Right here? Maybe in your truck? Or on another day?”

Lindo grins at me. The asshole knows what he’s doing. I’d failed to mention to Aster that he’s kind of remained my mentor, albeit infrequently, even after graduating and getting on with his life, so he’s fully aware of the situation. When I called to set up this interview I made him swear not to do anything to humiliate me, and ten seconds in he’s already broken his promise.

“Let’s go over there,” he says, indicating a half-finished house with no construction going on. “That one’s quiet.”

We trudge across the street and up the dirt driveway, trailing after Lindo through the non-existent doorway. The ground level is poured concrete and exposed wooden beams, construction supplies scattered around. He gathers up empty buckets and turns them over to use as stools, and soon enough the three of us are sitting in a weird triangle formation.

I’m expecting this to be awkward and strained, but to my surprise Aster pulls a notepad and pen out of her denim jacket and smiles at Lindo. He actually blinks at the brightness of her smile, the novelty of it, considering the story I’d told him about our fight and her enrolment in the program.

“Thanks for meeting with us,” Aster begins. “We really appreciate you taking the time.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and scribbles on her notepad, looking every bit the super keen academic I thought I’d met when I moved in with Jerry. I listen, perplexed, as she gathers Lindo’s background information, the year he started at Holsom, the year he graduated, his major, his work assignment, extracurricular activity.

Her ability to transform is astounding. This is not the woman I lost nine minutes talking to in the car before realizing she’d put in ear buds and wasn’t merely ignoring me. I’ve spent the past week thinking I might have broken her with my lie, shattered the perfect image she’d made for herself and sent her reeling. But that’s not the case at all. She’s either not affected, or she’s really good at hiding things.

I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

It’s what I do every day, after all.

“So now you own Lindo Construction,” Aster is saying. “Did you always want to have your own business?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lindo says. He props his huge arms on his huge knees and twists his wedding ring around his meaty finger. Last year he’d married his longtime boyfriend, Tony, and I’d gone to the wedding. Maybe the PPP makes you marriage material.

I glance at Aster.

Maybe not.

“I’ve never been good at following orders,” Lindo continues. “But I loved giving them. More than that, however, I loved making something out of nothing.” He touches his chest. “Case in point.” Then he looks at me. “Another case.”

Aster nods politely. “So you—”

“Did you know that when Shaw first showed up, I thought he was a girl?”

Oh shit.

Lindo pulls out his phone. “I took a picture, showed all my friends.”

“Lindo, no,” I say, reaching for the phone he’s passing to Aster. But she’s already snatched it out of his hand and is holding it away so I can’t touch it.

She laughs then, so loudly it bounces off the concrete and makes me freeze, arm extended. I’m not thrilled she’s guffawing at my move-in day picture, my scrappy concert T-shirt and tight jeans and hair halfway down my back, but it’s nice to hear the sound. I never thought I’d hear it again.

“You’re so skinny!” she exclaims, wiping tears from her eyes as she studies the phone and compares that me to this me, briefly forgetting she hates both of us.

“Well,” I mutter. “I was...young.”

“I got him to work out with me,” Lindo says. “First he was my water boy, then I bench pressed him...”

“Would you shut up?” I interject.

“Then he started realizing the guys at the gym were watching him like he was something they might like to take a bite out of, so he cut off his beautiful hair and got serious about bulking up. Don’t worry, Shaw. You’re still pretty.”

Aster returns the phone. “Thanks, Lindo. This has been worth the trip.”

* * *

An eternity later, we’re back in the car, Aster waving an enthusiastic goodbye to Lindo as I glare at him in the side mirror and pull away. He’d spent the entire interview half-answering Aster’s questions and half-exposing any embarrassing details he could drum up about yours truly. When he wasn’t embarrassing me he was praising me, which was more embarrassing than the outright humiliation. Do you know Shaw’s got a 3.6 GPA? Do you know Shaw helped cook thirty-seven turkeys to feed homeless people at Thanksgiving? Do you know Shaw fell down the stairs in the Student Union Building in front of hundreds of students and limped away, crying?

“Fuck,” I mumble, sipping the last of my cold coffee and wincing. “That was horrible.”

“It was awesome,” Aster replies distractedly. She’s jotting down more things in her notebook, back in her junior reporter role.

I turn left out of the subdivision, toward the main road that cuts through the center of town and leads to the highway. It feels supremely unfair that I was the one who was stoked about this errand, and Aster’s now the one who enjoyed it.

“Drop me off up here,” she says abruptly. The click of her pen punctuates the statement.

“Where up here?” I ask. The street is lined with fast food restaurants and gas stations; there’s nothing here she can’t find at Holsom.

“Never mind. Just drop me off. I’ll find my own way back.”

“To Holsom? It’s twenty-five miles from here!”

“I’ll be fine. Stop at the gas station.”

“What are you doing?”

“I said never mind.”

“Well, I don’t want to just abandon you somewhere. I’ll drive you back after you do whatever it is you need to do at the gas station.”

“I’m not going to the gas station, Aidan. Just stop.”

I pull into the next parking lot and idle in front of a laundromat. “What’s going on?”

“I have to run an errand.”

“How long will it take? I can wait.”

“No, thanks.”

“Well, how will you get home?” Holsom is in another town; there are no city buses or trains that run between them, just a long stretch of highway.

“I’ll hitchhike.”

My jaw drops. Sure, I’ve hitchhiked in my day and the mysterious new Aster probably has too, but it just seems so...unnecessary.

“Aster, that’s ridiculous. You don’t need to hitchhike with a stranger when you can ride with me. I’m already here. I can take you exactly where you need to go.”

She looks ready to argue, then picks up the donut still waiting for her in the cup holder and breaks off a piece. “Don’t ask me any questions.”

“Okay...”

“And don’t get out of the car.”

“Is this a drug deal? That’s against the PPP rules.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s against all the rules. It’s not a drug deal.”

“Okay, last question. Is it prostitution?”

“No, you ass,” she snaps, tossing the remaining donut back into the cup holder. “Now drive.”

She directs me through town, which, like my hometown, has its good parts and bad parts, until we come to a quieter section with official green signs pointing the way to a cemetery. I’m hoping we’ll cruise past it, but when we come to the entrance for the parking lot Aster says, “Turn here. Stop and stay in the car.”

“Aye aye.” I shouldn’t have agreed not to ask anymore questions. I have so many questions. But I know what happens when people lie to Aster, so I keep my mouth shut and watch her ass as she strides across the empty lot and disappears behind the wrought iron gate to the plots.

I don’t know this girl at all, I think. I thought I did, but I had no idea. The first day I saw her I judged her the way I assumed so many people judged me when I arrived. They saw the hair and the tattoos and the scowl and figured they knew me. I looked at Aster and saw how perfect she was and thought she had a charmed life. I thought I was dark and she was light.

I know I’m lucky to have been selected for the PPP, and every day I do just enough to qualify. I go to class, I study, I pass. I show up for work, I stack books, I go home. I play Frisbee baseball, laugh at their jokes, bail on drinks.

My promise and potential is something the judge saw, that Jim sees, but for me it’s always been a pile of kindling, waiting to be lit.

When I met Aster, I thought she was the light I’d been waiting for.

But I was wrong.

She was the spark.