they’re not), and like we’re doing lunch and not a secret teenage wedding. Like we aren’t lying to Dad and Annie’s parents and the whole world.
The conversation is too mind-numbing, so I devote my attention to fiddling with the fancy backseat temperature controls instead. There’s only so much I can do with those, though, so I move on to messing with the windows, which are much more entertaining. I’m trying to get both right and left sides to stop exactly halfway at exactly the same time, the right coming from the top and the left coming from the bottom, when Annie tells me to knock it off and presses the child lock button.
I spend the rest of the drive staring out the window. This does nothing for the anxiety vibrating from my bones outward, and by the time we roll into Taylorsville I’m about to explode. Maybe it’s stupid to be so nervous for something that isn’t even real, but the lies will be real. They already are. There’s a hint of a smile on Mom’s face even though Annie isn’t saying anything funny, and I see now I was wrong about her seeming happy. She seems satisfied. Like she’s gloating. Because of me.
Taylorsville is an armpit—significantly smaller than E-town and smellier too, thanks to the slaughterhouse. It isn’t hard to find the courthouse.
“Mom, do you mind if I just talk with Annie for a minute?” I ask as Annie pulls into a parking spot.
“Not at all.” She turns and stares hard at me, her eyes saying unequivocally that I am not to screw this up by talking Annie out of it. Accidentally or on purpose. “I’ll be inside.”
We watch her walk up the sidewalk and disappear into the orange brick building before either of us says a word.
“You okay?” she asks.
“I think so. You?”
“Yeah.”
The courthouse looks like it’s burning under the morning sun. The flame-orange shimmer of hot brick forces me to look away. “Why are you still going through with this?”
She’s silent, and I contemplate punching myself in the face. If she backs out now I’m going to…I don’t even know what. Slash Chase Dunkirk’s tires. Set fire to the school. Kick a hole in every wall in my house on my way out.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she says, opens her door, and climbs out.
“Seriously. Why?”
“Because I can’t let bad things happen to you, Mo. Now quit being such a pantywaist and marry me.”
She opens my door, and I look down in time to see her rolling her eyes. I’m so relieved. She isn’t cowering. She won’t break.
“Pantywaist?” I ask. “What are you, seventy?”
“Stop stalling.”
“I feel like I might throw up,” I say as I get out.
“Would this be a good time to tell you I’m not a virgin?”
“Would this be a good time to tell you I’m in love with Maya?”
“Finally!” she says, and grabs my arm, pulling me toward the building. “Only took you four years to admit it. So prewedding confessions are out of the way. Let’s do this.”
“I really think I might be getting the stomach flu.”
She ignores me. “This is weird, but right at this second, I feel . . .” She pauses, squinting at me through the blinding sun. “I feel like this is right. You know?”
“No. Not at all. I’m about to piss my pants. I believe you remember the last time that happened, and they may or may not have black sweatpants in my size at the lost and found here.”
We’re almost there. Mom’s holding the door open for us, and Annie still has her arm linked through mine. At the last second I feel her fingers tighten around my biceps, like she’s finally afraid of whatever we’re getting ourselves into. Or maybe she’s just excited. Maybe both.
Chapter 15
Annie
Neither,” I say.
The registrar gives me a pained look, probably the seventh since we walked in the door. “Sugar, are you sure? You don’t want your mother or your father here?”
“We’re not close,” I say. “And I’m eighteen.”
“So I see.” She pulls my birth certificate toward her and inspects the date again.
I take advantage of the moment to turn to Mo and mutter, “Stop fidgeting.”
It takes him a second to respond. His legs are bouncing up and down the same way they do before a math test, and he’s staring at the dust-ball-filled crack where the linoleum meets the wall like it might hold the secret to the meaning of life. “I’m not fidgeting,” he says finally, blinking a few too many times to look normal.
“Here,” I say, passing him my phone. Games calm him down, but his phone is old school.
I turn to where Mrs. Hussein is standing staring out the window. She won’t know. She’s already signed the consent forms for Mo and the witness line on our wedding certificate.
I turn back to the registrar.
She’s staring at me, concern wrinkling her face. “But are you
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I’m sure.”
I hold her gaze through the awkwardness. And there is awkwardness. Her eyes are so watery they’re one tear from spilling murky eye-fluid down her cheeks. Her hand is still pressing down on mine.
“All right, then,” she says with a somber nod and leans back in her chair. She goes back to filling out her forms, while I ignore the whole-body sighs of her disapproval. I pull my hands into my lap and stare at them.
“We’re pretty much done,” she says.
“Really?” Mo puts my phone down and looks around, dazed, like he just walked out of a movie theater into bright sunlight. “That only took, like, twenty minutes.”
“Do you have rings to exchange?” the registrar asks.
Rings. It didn’t even occur to me. I look at Mo. He furrows his brow, and the scar that cuts his left one in half dips down crookedly.
“Is it a problem if we don’t?” I ask.
She blinks, but the milky eye-juice doesn’t clear. “Well, no.” Another soul-searching look is flung at me, and I look away. She has to think I’m pregnant or brainwashed or on drugs or maybe all of the above, and that if she can just look at me like that enough times she’ll be able to save me from these bad bad people.
“I’m not much for jewelry, ma’am,” I try. But then I realize I’m wearing the silver bangles. “I mean rings. They bug me.”
She clicks her mouse a few times. Maybe I’ve convinced her I’m an idiot, and that’s good enough to absolve her of whatever guilt she’s feeling for having performed this marriage. “Well. I guess by the power invested in me by the state of Kentucky, I now pronounce you man and wife. Sit tight while I go grab that last form out of the printer.”
She wanders off, and I turn to Mo. The phone is balanced on his leg, and he’s staring at me. I guess her words brought him back out. Man and wife. For one second, all the smirk and sass that hold Mo together are gone. His eyes are wide with naked gratitude. Nobody else looks at me that way.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Here we go,” the registrar says, taking her seat across from us again and handing me the paperwork. I give it to Mo so I don’t lose it. “You’re legally married,” she says in the same kind of voice you might say
