“Lucy?” Zack whispered. Deathly quiet. I doubt the front seat could have heard it.
I mumbled a positive-sounding noise into his chest.
“I’ve been thinking…adding, I guess.”
I frowned, but the expression was a secret between me and his sweatshirt.
“Okay,” I whispered. My heart started to hammer, something I had no way of hiding as my ribcage was practically on top of his. “Adding what?”
“Thoughts,” Zack said, annoyingly cryptic.
“About—”
“About our date,” he said. “The first one. The Guess-Who’s-On-The-Milk-Carton date.”
I smiled and frowned almost simultaneously. I’m not quite sure how I pulled that off, actually.
“What about it?” I asked. I had some idea what he might be adding together. Whatever had happened to me, my being a weirdo-freak, and shunning people didn’t start until after our date.
“I was thinking—well, I have a question. It’s kinda stupid though.”
I nodded, barely. I blinked, trying to clear my eyes of tear-distortion.
“Was that your first kiss?”
I couldn’t help myself. The sudden release of tension made me snort in laughter. I slapped my hand over my mouth. It didn’t matter. Both Morgan and Puck looked over the back seat and give me nearly identical looks of bemusement. I waved my fingers in a sort of
“Jesus, Lucy, it wasn’t that funny,” Zack said.
There was no mistaking the tone of his voice. Hurt but trying to stay manly. Very cute, in other words. I realized what it must have looked like, him asking me if he was my first kiss and me guffawing my brains out. The laugh made me look like some kind of kiss-whore. Not exactly the most fetching attribute in a future girlfriend/date/whatever.
“I’m sorry, Zack,” I said. I turned up to look at him, and his jaw could have been carved from marble. Veins stood out in his neck.
“I didn’t mean—” I snorted, then took a breath. The look he gave me was not forgiving. “—to say. Or imply. That I was a lip-slut. I just…I guess I thought your question was going to be a little more…hard hitting.”
Zack didn’t seem happy with my explanation. If anything, he looked sourer.
“Uh-huh.”
“Really! I thought—quite naturally—that you might ask about the creepy realm of doom you’re driving through.”
I didn’t. But the real subject I feared, concerning my possible demise, was really only a hop skip and a jump from that lie so I blurted it out without too much guilt.
“I’ve only been kissed three times, Zack, okay?”
Zack twinged at the words, but after a moment, began to loosen. Someone seemed to have pulled the metal bolts out of his neck by the time I looked up again.
“What three?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re being serious?”
Zack snorted. “If you don’t wanna answer. Then I’m joking. But if you’re going to answer, then I’m serious.”
“That’s not fair.”
Zack smiled sweetly. Well, evilly, but with a certain charming sweetness.
“Okay, Mama Theresa, are your lips virginal?” I asked.
Zack’s mocking smile faded.
“Well?”
“Well,” Zack said. “I’ve kissed five girls.”
“Me too,” I said, and the look of shock he flashed me was priceless. Oh, had I a camera.
“You mean—”
“I’m kidding,” I said. “You’re cute though.”
“You don’t care?”
I rolled my eyes and snorted. “And why, exactly, would I care how many girls you kissed? You can kiss all the girls you want.”
Zack looked hurt again—for such a witty guy, he wasn’t up on his banter. Then again, I gave him a free pass—considering his surroundings.
“I just meant. I guess I thought that would bother you.”
I grinned. “And why is that?”
“Well,” Zack said, gently. “I thought it would bother you because of…our thing. The… The
“We have a thing?” I asked.
“Don’t we?”
I cocked my head to the side. He imitated the gesture, and I snorted again.
“I thought. After the date, and the kiss…wow, the kiss. Especially the one outside of the counseling center. I mean, you freaked out and ran away after, so, certainly demerits on my end but… wow. You really knocked me out with that kiss.”
My sense of cat-and-mouse died. I had taken something from him when I kissed him that second time— something valuable. Something I couldn’t quantify. But after what Abraham had said, I knew I hadn’t stolen heat from people. I violated them. I robbed their memories.
I tucked my face into his chest.
“So I was a bad kisser...” Zack said, in mock melancholy. “I knew it. Was it fish lips? It was fish lips wasn’t it?”
I sobbed and clung to his chest, and I felt Zack’s body tighten. He tugged his arms around me and pulled me into him. After a few long moments, and after my sobs began to still, Zack leaned down and whispered into my ear.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I looked up at him, cry-face be damned. He gave me a little sweet smile and kissed my cheek.
“What for?” I asked him.
“About the fish lips. I’ll try to practice and—”
I smacked him in the chest, hard, and he laughed softly into the top of my head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I brought up something painful. I’m not sure what I did but I’m not dumb enough to think it wasn’t something I said.”
I shrugged. “Can we just sit?”
Zack nodded. “Yeah.”
I nuzzled back into his shoulder and let the hum of the engine radiate through my body.
I tried to enjoy the moment, so naturally, Morgan turned back to me and cleared her throat.
“So you’re dead then?”
The look on her face, the tone of her voice, and the content of the question didn’t come close to matching each other. The look, controlled anger. The tone, politely curious. The question—well, it’s
I turned to look at Zack’s face—still. Curious, but still. A hair shy of pensive. His beautiful eyes were sending me a message I wasn’t picking up on. The little twitches of his brow spoke volumes in a language I didn’t know.
I turned back to Morgan.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“When you disappeared, what happened?” Morgan said. That same combination of pissed-off and polite.
“I told you what happened,” I said.
I felt a twinge—something like guilt. Luckily, it wasn’t very strong—I’d more than half convinced myself that I
