She looks at me for a long moment, and then she turns and leaves me sitting there, my head still pounding.
OLIVER
I LAUGH WHEN Amy walks into the shop that afternoon, her eyelids sagging, wearing a They Might Be Giants T-shirt for band shirt night, and looking like she hasn’t slept in a month.
“Would you shut the hell up?” she growls at me, which just makes me laugh harder.
“You’re cranky. How are you still hungover?”
She stops at the counter to glare at me. “I’m not still hungover. I’m just really tired.” Brooke comes out of the office, whistling, and Amy points a deadly finger at her. “And you. I blame you for this.”
Brooke grins. “Why, hello, sunshine. Is someone having trouble handling the consequences of their life choices?”
Amy groans and leans against the front counter. “I hate both of you.”
Brooke shakes her head. “You can work in the stockroom today. Try to stay upright.”
Amy rushes into the stockroom and slams the door behind her, and I don’t realize I’m smiling until Brooke slides past me, sending me a knowing look as she passes. I bite back my smile.
It isn’t until an hour later that the phone rings. Brooke is in her office and Amy hasn’t emerged from behind the closed door of the stockroom, so I reach for the cordless.
“Spirits. This is Oliver. How can I help you?”
There is immediate screaming, and it takes me a shocked second to realize that it’s children in the background of the call.
“Hello?”
Then a woman’s voice finally breaks in. “Cállate, niños! Sorry about that. This is Amy’s mother. Can you tell her that her stepfather is on his way to get the car? He needs it.”
I’m already moving toward the stockroom door. “Sure, I’ll just let you talk to—”
“No, no. Just give her the message. She’ll have to take the bus home.” And then she hangs up, just like that.
I stare down at the phone in my hand and then at the closed door in front of me. I can hear music playing behind it, and when I push it open, Amy, looking more full of life than she did when she came in, is bent at an awkward angle, looking sideways at a shelf of old CDs that are about to be put on clearance.
“Amy?”
She pops up quick and smacks her head on a shelf above her.
“Shit,” we both say at the same time, but oddly, after she’s recovered, she smiles at me. “Hey. Do you need me out front?”
I lean against the door and shake my head. “No. But your mom just called. She said your stepdad is coming to get the car.”
She looks at me, her face blank. “Seriously?”
“I could take you home.”
Amy’s eyebrows go up, her mouth taking on a funny shape. “Really?”
I shrug. “Sure. Why not?” It’s not as if I have anywhere else to be, and even if I did, would I care? Why would I let Amy take the bus home when I have a perfectly good vehicle?
Her eyes seem to smile, along with the rest of her. “Okay. Thanks, Oli.”
I try to ignore the way my heart pounds when she calls me that.
AMY
I WAIT FOR Oliver on the sidewalk. I glance over my shoulder at the tutoring center. It’s been closed for hours, the lights off behind the big front windows. I turn back around in time to see Oliver waving to Brooke, letting the glass door fall shut behind him.
We walk to his truck in silence, and when we climb in, I immediately have a flashback to that night, to his father unconscious in the back seat while Oliver tries desperately to pretend he isn’t there. He hasn’t spoken about his dad since, and I’m too terrified to ask.
Oliver cranks the ignition, the heater blasting, and before he even puts his seat belt on, he roots around in his console for a CD. After a second, he closes the console and reaches over and pops open the glove box, also stuffed with CDs. And then he leans into the back seat and produces a box from the floorboard and opens it to reveal even more CDs. I suddenly have an image of him sleeping in a bed made of stacks of thick jewel cases.
“Oh! I have the Amber Run album!” I say just as he’s getting ready to put a CD in the stereo, and I almost feel bad that he went through all that trouble. Before he can say anything, I’m digging around in my bag, pulling out my favorite Amber Run album and shoving it at him. “Put this in.”
He doesn’t seem offended by my command, just takes the CD from me and pops it into the stereo. “So, what are you reading?”
For a second, I’m not sure what he means, until I realize I took my copy of Ethics out of my bag when I was rooting around for the CD. Oliver adjusts the volume on the stereo low so we can talk over it, and then puts the car in drive.
“Oh. It’s Plato. I’m writing an essay on it for this scholarship I’m applying for at Stanford.” I lean my head back against the seat, looking over at him. “Have you ever heard of Plato’s Cave?”
I see his hands grip the steering wheel and release it again. “I don’t think so. Tell me about it.”
“Well, there are these people who sit in a cave, facing a wall. There’s a fire behind them, and the only thing they know about reality are the shadows that are projected onto the wall in front of them from the cave mouth behind them. And when they’re introduced to the real world, it’s scary. They don’t know what’s real and what’s fake. To them, what’s fake is reality. The shadows.”
Oliver lets out a little rueful chuckle. “Makes sense.”
I look over at him, his hair ruffling slightly in the breeze through the barely cracked window. He’s so cute, his red hair and the dimple in his chin and the freckles scattered across his nose. Those freckles travel all the way down his arms, peeking out at me from where he’s shoved the sleeves up on his hooded sweatshirt all the way to his elbows.
One hand over the other, he takes a wide turn. “This song is nice.” He reaches out to turn it up, but I almost don’t want him to. I want to ask him a million questions about his home life, mostly because the only thing I know is that his mother is maybe nicer to strangers than anyone else I’ve ever met, and that his father might be passing out in his back seat on a regular basis.
We drive in silence for a little while. I direct him toward my house and watch downtown Kansas City fly past as Amber Run’s smooth melody flows through the cab. The song reaches a crescendo, and my heart starts to beat loud in my ears, adrenaline pumping through me. I feel like I’m alive inside the song.
I feel a strange flutter in my stomach at all the sensations together—the cold biting my cheeks, the heat pressing against my fingertips, the open, clear sound of the electric guitar.
We stop for a long time, too long, and I open my eyes—when did I close them?—to see that we’re sitting at a stop sign. There’s a honk behind us, and when I look over, Oliver looks away from me and slams on the gas, rocketing us forward so fast, my stomach flips.
The song ends as we’re pulling into my neighborhood, and I don’t know what comes over me, but I say, “I’m not ready to go home. Can we just keep driving?”
For just a second, the truck slows, coasting right past my front door, but then we’re moving forward again, turning at the end of my street onto the intersecting street, the music still playing loudly over us.