“Some face you got on you, Dean,” Brayden commented.
“You look like you got hit by a truck,” Sahalia said.
“Nope, he got hit by me,” Jake said, smiling at her. He flexed his biceps. “Feel that? Them’s the guns what wrought such wreckage!”
Sahalia felt Jake’s arm. She oohed and aahed.
“Jake’s got size, but I’ve got definition,” Brayden said, pushing Jake back and stepping up to Sahalia.
He made a muscle and she felt it. She pressed her body up against his and slid her hands up and down his bicep.
“Nice,” she murmured.
“Excuse me,” came Josie’s voice. “What is going on here?”
Brayden stepped back from Sahalia.
“Nothing,” he said.
“And what are you wearing, Sahalia?”
“Clothes, Josie,” she answered.
Josie’s face flushed and she grabbed Sahalia’s arm and spun her around.
“Enough!” Josie said. “We get it, okay? You’re sexy and you want to have sex with these guys. We get it. But, honey, it’s not going to happen because you are thirteen. Thir. Teen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I’m fourteen in less than an month,” Sahalia answered.
“Go and put some clothes on,” Josie commanded her, pushing her out of the aisle.
“Hey, guys—” Brayden said.
“People dress like this, you know,” Sahalia said. “It’s a style.”
“Yeah,
This sort of reminded me of the discussion a controlling father might have with his teenage daughter. Except the teenage daughter was thirteen and the father was being played by a high school sophomore.
“You’re not the boss of me!” Sahalia shouted.
“Oh yeah?” Josie countered. “I’m in charge of the little kids and you are one of them.”
“I know more about sex than you do, you stuck-up bitch!”
Instead of yelling, Josie got up real close in Sahalia’s face.
“You are a child!” she said.
Niko came jogging over. He was dirty and sweating.
“What happened?” he asked. “I heard shouting.”
“Sahalia is throwing herself at the older boys,” Josie said. “And the way they’re responding, I don’t know what could happen.”
“Josie, we weren’t doing anything,” Brayden protested.
Josie turned on me. Me!
“And he’s high! Dean, you of all people! You are the one we count on to be dependable.”
“Okay, let’s settle down,” Jake slurred.
“She is thirteen,” Josie said, turning to Niko. I could see the tears in her eyes. They were about to spill. “A thirteen-year-old child.”
“I don’t like it when people talk about me like I’m not here,” Sahalia said. “I’m as grown-up as any of you. Jake and Bray know it. You’re just mad because they like me more than you.”
Sahalia threw her arms around Brayden’s neck.
He got red in the face, then he ducked out of her embrace.
“Sahalia,” he said. “You’re a kid. We hang out with you, but we’d never, like, do anything with you. I’m sorry.”
Her face crumpled.
For a moment, she really did look like the kid that she was.
She turned and ran down the aisle.
“You’re a jerk, Brayden,” Josie said. “I thought maybe you could change…”
Josie stormed off in the opposite direction.
Brayden held his hands up.
“Jesus! I do the right thing and everyone is pissed at me!”
Niko glanced at the three of us and then turned and walked after Josie.
Brayden turned to Jake and me.
“I need some of whatever you’re on.”
I left them after Brayden took the pills. I didn’t want any more. I didn’t really want anything more to do with them, to tell the truth.
And I had to lie down. ASAP.
I needed a favor and I didn’t have anyone else I could ask.
He was working at a desk near the kids. He had three or four different electronic devices spilled out on the desk and was grafting parts of them together.
“Alex,” I said. “Can you please do lunch for me?”
He looked up at me, cool and hurt.
“I guess.”
“And maybe dinner?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up at me. “Niko needs my help. Actual, real help. To run this place.”
I shrugged.
“I just need a favor, Alex,” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
And I was.
I went to my berth and climbed in my hammock and slept and slept and slept.
Through lunch. Through dinner.
In the middle of the night, I thought I was dreaming that Astrid was in my room.
I was dreaming that Astrid was in my little berth, standing at my side, looking down at me.
Then I got a whiff of her and I jerked awake for real.
Astrid
She looked beautiful in the iridescent glow of my crappy alarm clock. But she really did reek.
Stupidly, my first thought was that I was glad Jake had helped me take out the last cotton wads from my nose before I crashed.
There’s vanity for you.
She grabbed my hair and wrenched my head up so I was looking in her face.
“Don’t you ever spy on me again!” she spat at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“A-hole.”
She let go of my hair and turned to go. The space was so small that her body was basically wedged against mine.
“And no more pain pills. They’ll ruin you. They’ll make you into an idiot.”
“Astrid, please,” I said.
“What?”
“I am really, really sorry.”
I sat up, awkwardly, swinging one leg over the side on my hammock. My leg brushed her thigh and she didn’t pull away.
“I was going to get my journal and I saw you two and… It was wrong. It was so wrong. Especially because…”
“Because what?” she said.
My mouth was dry. My heart was pounding.
