IT WAS A long four and a half hours home. We weren’t really speaking anymore. There was just too much to talk about. Too many revelations. Too many secrets. Too much confusion. Talk seemed dangerous.
I couldn’t tell if we trusted each other more now, or less. I couldn’t tell if I was relieved to have someone know about the synesthesia or if I hated it. My gut told me I hated it. I just maybe didn’t so much hate that it was him.
God, it was so confusing. Why was he so damned confusing?
Not to mention there was the whole drug thing. I believed with every fiber of my being that he was not taking or selling them. I knew he had a plan, because Chris Martinez always had a plan, and his plans were always For the Greater Good. My plans were usually to save my own ass.
Mostly, I spent the time under my hoodie, working out what might have been his reason for buying drugs from those kids. And the rest of the time was spent rehashing what Barb and Deb had said, and how my mind had lit up like crazy every time they said one word: Eleven.
A tomato-colored word, juicy and smooth and warm from the sun. Tomato, tomato, tomato.
I drove the last hour, and Chris slept. Or at least he pretended to sleep. He didn’t look particularly comfortable or restful. Maybe he, too, was working things out in his head. I dropped him off at the station, and we went our separate ways.
I couldn’t wait to get home.
“JESUS, YOU HAD me worried,” were the very first words out of Dad’s mouth when I walked into the house. He came eagerly downstairs as soon as he heard the door open. He was carrying an armload of laundry, but dropped it on the landing when he saw me.
“Sorry,” I said.
He wrapped me in a hug, and then held me out at arm’s distance. “What in the hell were you thinking? What friend? What was in Vegas? You’re eighteen, for Christ’s sake.”
“Almost nineteen,” I muttered, breaking away from him and taking my backpack upstairs. “And just a friend. It was a spontaneous thing.”
“Nikki.” Sharp. I turned. The backpack bounced softly against my leg. “I know you. Spontaneous and Nikki do not go together. Not without trouble. What was going on in Vegas? Who were you with?”
“Fun, Dad. Fun was going on in Vegas. Maybe you wouldn’t recognize it, since you seem to have dedicated your whole life to swearing it off.” I knew I was pushing it, but after everything I’d learned, I was in no place to play nice with Dad. Not anymore.
He pushed his glasses up on his nose. He looked stunned.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m young and I want to have a good time. And obviously I can’t have any fun here without having to look over my shoulder all the time. So I went to Vegas with my friend and we had one night of fun and now I’m back. And everyone is safe and everything is fine.” That last part was a bit of a stretch. Everything was so far away from fine I couldn’t even recognize fine anymore.
“And was this friend that guy Chris you were hanging out with before?”
I felt my face burn. “We stayed in separate hotel rooms, if that’s what you’re asking. Dad, we’re just friends. No sex, I promise.” Truth. That seemed like a barrier Chris and I would never, ever cross. “We wouldn’t even think about that. Not with each other.” Lie, Nikki. You know that’s such a fucking lie.
“I still don’t like it,” Dad said. But I could feel Concerned Dad retreating, to be replaced by the usual—Friend Dad. The dad who didn’t really want to be a dad. “Next time, just tell me beforehand, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. It was impossible for me to keep the sourness out of my voice these days, especially when it came to being honest and my dad. I continued up the stairs, but he stopped me.
“You want me to wash your clothes?”
The backpack brushed my leg again. I knew what was inside—a file folder filled with stolen newspaper articles. He would never understand why I had those.
“No, thanks. I’ll take care of things.”
IT SEEMED LIKE the man would never give me space now that I’d come back from an unapproved mini vacation. Everywhere I turned, he was lurking just behind, looking at me over his glasses, passing me in the hallway, asking me through the bathroom door if I wanted a snack. He did it under the guise of “cleaning house,” but it felt like more than that to me.
It felt like surveillance.
Did he already know? Had he seen that the articles were gone? How could he? What reason would he possibly have for noticing they were missing? Had Angry Elephant called him, told him there was a couple snooping around the studio, asking questions about Eleven?
I tried to keep myself busy to take my mind off it. I popped a bag of popcorn and parked myself on the couch and watched TV, every single show reminding me somehow of Chris.
That actor looks like Chris, only with blue eyes.
That police station doesn’t look anything like Chris’s station.
That girl is eating her fries in clusters of three. Just like Chris does.
It was disgusting, and the carpet began to puff up in brick-brown shame. I was such a hopeless freak. Introducing new Crush Nikki!* A Confused Asshole Doll with Trust Issues. *Understanding and kindness not included.
After what seemed like forever, Dad finally disappeared into his bedroom, and a few minutes later, I heard the shower turn on. I bolted from the couch to his office.
Tomato, tomato, tomato.
Eleven.
The number that never was.
I lowered myself to the floor and scooted on my belly under Dad’s desk until I could reach the black box. A part of me was surprised it was still there. Things had a way of disappearing—or dying—the minute I got a handle on them. I spun the dial.
Problem.
Eleven was one number. A tomatoey, juicy, delicious number, but still. One number.
Maybe if I split it up. Brown, brown. 1-1. Nope, I still needed a third number. I tried a third 1. The box didn’t open. Damn it. I put a zero in front of the eleven. Still nothing.
I heard the pipe rattle of Dad turning the shower off. Shit. Now I had to really move. Think, Nikki, think. Honeydew nagged at the back of my mind.
Ten. Of course. Ten. The player had murdered ten, but was working on eleven. What if the number was a combination of those two?
I tried 1-0-1. Still the damn box wouldn’t budge.
1-1-0. Nothing.
I spun the dial three times, thinking hard to remember what Barb had said about the movie. Eleven on his jersey. Ten people dead. Trying to catch him before he makes it eleven.
I dialed 11, spun to 10, and then back to 11.
It opened.
At first I just lay there staring in stunned silence. Then I almost cried out, I was so excited, but I could hear Dad’s footsteps upstairs as he dried off and got dressed. No time for celebration.
I reached into the box and pulled out . . . papers. No, not papers. Envelopes. A whole stack of them. I held up the first one. It was to my mother. From B. Carter.
Letters? Why would Dad lock up letters? Why would he even keep them in the first place?
I started to pull the letter out of the envelope but heard Dad’s footsteps hit the stairs.
“Nikki?” he called.
Jesus. Leave for one night and you become a prisoner. I stuffed the partially opened letter back into its envelope, shut the box and spun the dial to lock it again, gathered all the envelopes together, and stood. I had barely gotten back on my feet when Dad poked his head in the doorway. I was holding the letters behind my back.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked.
I smiled, trying to come off as nonchalant—my least believable act. “Looking for a pen,” I said.
“A pen,” he repeated, looking unconvinced. “For . . . ?”
“Does it matter?” I rolled my eyes. My fingers shook on the envelopes. “God. Okay, I was thinking about filling out some job applications. I didn’t want to tell you because you get all up in my business about it.” Fortunately, Dad was old-school enough to believe that filling out job applications was something you still did with a pen and paper.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he muttered. But he moved toward the desk anyway. I sidestepped out of his way, and while he was busy opening and fumbling around in drawers, I slipped the letters into my waistband, then pulled my shirt over them to conceal them. Finally, he handed me a pen. I smiled thinly.
“Thanks. Maybe a little faith in me next time?”
“I always have faith in you,” he said. “It’s you who doesn’t have faith in you.”
Ouch. That was a little too close to home.
Not true, I thought. It’s you I don’t have faith in anymore, Dad. That one was even closer.
I backed out of the room and hurried upstairs. I was halfway up when Dad called my name. I froze, my hand involuntarily going to the back of my shirt to make sure the letters weren’t peeking out. They weren’t; he was standing at the bottom of the stairs, holding the remote and the half-empty bowl of popcorn. “I just cleaned,” he said. “You could at least pick up after yourself.”
“Sorry,” I said, relieved. “I forgot.”
He grumbled and turned back to the living room. I heard the TV snap off as I hustled my way to my room, locked the door, and flopped belly-first down on my bed.
I had some reading to do.