A minute later her fingers were under the edge of his T-shirt.
“Stop it,” he muttered quietly, but he didn’t push her away. He caught her maniac grin in the mirror and just shook his head.
They rolled down Division Street toward town, toward the river, in silence.
Sunny suddenly sat up and pointed at the big, rundown medical center on the east side of the street. “Drop me there.”
When Réal pulled into the parking lot, both girls got out. Sunny brushed her hair back with both hands, twirling it into a knot before letting it fall across her shoulders again. All for show, he thought.
Sunny said to Evie, “Text me if you go to the lake.” Then she spun off without saying goodbye—or thanks—to Réal.
He was left staring at the bright shape of the open door. Then he leaned across the front seat and said to Evie, “Come on, girl. I’ll take you home.”
5
E
Angry silence rolled off him in waves. Evie shrank in her seat.
Finally, Réal said, “You live on Shaun’s street, right?”
“Yeah, but at the west end,” she said. “Near the cemetery.” Then she added quietly, “Sorry we took your car. She told me you gave her the keys.”
He made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
Evie couldn’t think of anything else to say, and he was intimidatingly quiet, as always.
The late afternoon was almost sticky, and a haze had fallen over the streets.
Evie turned to him again. “Do you want to go to the lake tonight?” she asked. “Feels like it’ll be warm.”
Réal didn’t answer, didn’t look her way.
“Not just us, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he said, and then, “Sure. Why not.”
They turned onto Evie’s street. Shaun’s street. It was a long, single lane of rutted pavement and asphalt patches, buckled in the middle, with scrubby grass at the shoulders. One side had all the houses, and the other was just an empty field that had been for sale as long as anyone could remember.
“Did you know Shaun when you were little?” Evie asked.
Réal glanced at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Since I was nine. We’re in the same grade, but he’s older.”
“’Cause his birthday’s in the summer,” she said, watching the field go by.
“Yeah,” he said.
Evie could feel him looking at her again. He asked, “How you getting to the lake?”
She looked away from the field, mouth slightly open. She didn’t have a car. Shaun had always driven her in his beat-up, vintage green Challenger that, by miracle or more likely by bribe, was legally road-certified. She could still feel its cracked black vinyl biting her bare legs.
“Don’t worry, I’ll drive,” Réal said, reading her mind.
A little ways down the road, Evie pointed out her house, and they slowed, pulling into the driveway. Réal ducked to look through the windshield at her shabby white bungalow, chipped, dark-green trim around windows all shaded with mismatched curtains. She’d have been embarrassed if she didn’t know Ré’s place was about the same.
He sat back and stretched his arm across the back of the seat, fixing her with the same look he’d had that day outside the gym. Worried. “Is anybody home?”
Evie shrugged. “My mom works nights.”
“So you just hang out here all alone?”
“Yeah, except when Shaun—” she started. Her throat closed on the words, but Réal nodded like she’d said them anyway.
He said, “There’s supper at my place. I gotta go home anyway. We can just head to the lake from there, if you want.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, and he smiled.
“Beats coming all the way back here to get you,” he said.
She screwed her mouth up, then nodded once, turning away.
Without another word, Réal threw the Buick in reverse, and they slid out onto the street again, going back the way they’d come. Neither of them mentioned it, but they both knew he was taking the long way home.
The yard was a war zone. Toys exploded everywhere. Bikes, skateboards, tools, car parts, muddy boots. Réal swung out of his car and walked right through the middle of the minefield, while Evie picked her way along behind him.
A rusty loveseat swing hung from the porch beams, and more plastic toys were strewn across the deck. Réal held open the door for her. The smell of tomatoes and cooked garlic filled her nostrils, making her stomach kick.
“Come on in,” he said, heading down a dim hallway to a large kitchen at the back of the house, where he tossed his jean jacket at a chair and dropped his keys on the table with a thunk. He lifted the lid off a slow cooker on the counter, poking around in it with a spoon. “You okay with chili?” he asked over his shoulder. “It’s vegetarian.”
She nodded, though she wasn’t entirely sure she was okay with it, her stomach still uneasy. She stood in the doorway, looking around. There were knickknacks on every surface of his kitchen, painted handprints and photographs stuck on the fridge, a dog bowl in the corner with a radius of kibble spilled around it. Homey and chaotic, just like the yard.
“How old are your brothers?” she asked.
“Uh, Beni’s sixteen,” he said distractedly, shaking spice into the pot.
“Yeah, I had Geography with him last year,” Evie said, remembering the back of Beni Dufresne’s head. He had the same thick, dark hair as Réal, though Ré’s was clipped military-short while Beni’s was grown out, shaggy and wild.
“Oh, right.” He nodded. Turning to face her, he leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, his legs at the ankles. “So then Ivan. He’s fourteen, and Luc and Mathis are eleven. They’re twins.”
If it weren’t for his penchant for spitting sacres—those filthy Quebecois cuss words that always peppered his speech—it would be easy to miss that Réal’s first language was French. But when he pronounced his brothers’ names, Ee-von, Luke and Ma-tisse, his natural accent
