“Did you teach yourself?” I asked, testing my theory.
He glanced my way. “Yeah. I went into camp pretty late and had plenty of time alone, bored out of my mind, to figure things out.”
Naturally, the next question was: Were you in hiding? But I wouldn’t be able to ask that without him asking about my history and how I was caught.
This had to stop. My hands were shaking like he had just told me he was about to strangle the life out of me. Nothing he had done up until now had proven him to be anything other than nice. Hadn’t he shown me, time and time again, that he was willing to be my friend if I was willing to let him?
It had been so long since I’d even wanted a friend that I wasn’t sure I even remembered how to go about making one. In first grade, it had been stupidly simple. Our teacher had told us to write down our favorite animal on a sheet of paper, and then we had to go around the room until we found someone with a matching animal. Because making friends was supposed to be that easy, apparently—finding someone else who liked elephants.
“I like this song,” I blurted out. Jim Morrison’s voice was soft and barely reached us from where it was filtering through Betty’s speakers.
“Yeah? The Doors?” Liam’s face lit up. “‘Come on baby, light my fire,’” he crooned in a low voice, trying to match Morrison’s. “‘Try to set the night on fire.…’”
I laughed. “I like it when he sings it.”
Liam clutched his chest, like I had wounded him, but his recovery was quick. The radio DJ announced the next song; it was like Liam had won the lottery. “Now this is what I’m talking about!”
“The Allman Brothers?” My eyebrows were inching up my face. Funny, I had pegged him for a Zeppelin fan.
“This is the music of my soul,” he said, nodding his head in time with the music.
“Have you ever actually listened to the lyrics?” I asked, feeling the anxiety lift off my shoulders. My voice was growing steadier with each word. “Was your father a gambler down in Georgia that wound up on the wrong end of a gun? Were you born in the backseat of a Greyhound bus?”
“Hey now,” he said, reaching over to flick my hair. “I said it was the music of my soul, not my life. For your information, my stepdad is a mechanic down in North Carolina and, as far as I know, still alive and well. But I was born in the backseat of a bus.”
“You’re joking.” I honestly couldn’t tell.
“Am not. It made the newspapers and everything. I was the Miracle Bus Boy for the first three years of my life, and now I’m—”
“‘Trying to make a livin’ and doin’ the best I can’?” I finished.
He laughed, the tips of his ears tinged with a faint pink. The song went on, filling the air between us with its rapid pulse and relentless guitars. Every piece fit together effortlessly; not quite country and not quite rock and roll. Just warm, fast, Southern.
I liked it even better when Liam started singing along.
When the flow of gas had stopped, he carefully pulled the hose free and replaced the gas cap. Before he stood, Liam knocked his shoulder into mine. “Where in the world did you get that dress?”
I snorted, picking at the skirt. “Present from Zu.”
“You look like you want to throw it into a fire.”
“I can’t promise there won’t be an unfortunate accident later on,” I said, very seriously. When he laughed again it felt like a small victory.
“Well, Green, it was nice of you to put it on,” Liam said. “Though be careful. Zu’s so starved for girl time that she might turn you into her own personal dress-up doll.”
“Kids these days,” I said. “Think the whole world belongs to them.”
He grinned. “Kids these days.”
We moved from car to car, working our way down the parking lot. He didn’t ask for my help, and I didn’t ask him any more questions. We could have stayed together in that comfortable silence for hours, and it still wouldn’t have been enough for me.
THIRTEEN
CHUBS AND ZU WERE NOT HAPPY to be woken up at five thirty a.m., and even less enthusiastic about Liam forcing them to make the bed while we freshened up the bathroom and replaced the used towels. Not exactly clean of us, but it was better than alerting the management they had hosted a bunch of squatters for the night.
Chubs took one look at me as he marched out to the minivan and stopped dead in his tracks. He wore his thought plain as day on his face: You’re still here?
I shrugged. Deal with it.
He shook his head and let out another one of his sighs.
Once we were settled, Zu and Chubs in the middle seats, we all watched as Liam closed the hotel room door, cup of crappy hotel coffee in hand.
That’s right, I thought, glancing at Zu out of the corner of my eye. She had curled up on her seat and was using her gloved hands as a pillow. Didn’t get much sleep, did he?
Liam ran through his usual routine of checking the mirrors’ position, adjusting the recline of his seat, buckling himself in, and turning the keys in the ignition. But Liam’s next order of business upon returning to the minivan wasn’t to answer any of the number of questions Chubs threw his way about where we were going. He waited until his friend was good and snoring before calling back to me, “Can you read a map?”
The embarrassment and shame that washed through me painted my face red. “No. Sorry.” Wasn’t that something your dad was supposed to teach you eventually?
“No problem.” Liam patted the empty passenger seat. “I’ll teach you later, but for now I just need someone to watch the signs for me. Come on up to the copilot chair.”
I jerked a thumb in the direction of Chubs.
Liam only shook his head. “Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown.”
I unbuckled my seat belt with a sigh. As I climbed over Chubs’s outstretched legs to the front, I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes going to his too-small glasses. “Is his eyesight really that bad?”
“Worse,” Liam said. “So, right after we got the hell out of Caledonia, we broke into this house to spend the night, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid’s baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to beat someone’s head in for us to make a clean getaway. Then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of the drained pool.”