I shook my head at them. “My car wouldn’t start, so he gave me a ride.” I rubbed my arms. “I need to get the smell of thousand-dollar cologne off me.”
Beckett’s eyes widened. “His cologne cost a thousand dollars?”
“Are you and Callie having a gullible contest?” I teased. “It was a figure of speech.”
As if sensing my frustration, Rory changed the subject like the true goddess she was. “We were just talking about the Dulce Periculum stunt.” She lowered her voice. “Beckett said it should happen around nine.”
I squinted at Beckett. “Who’s your connection?”
“Give up,” Rory said. “He’s a steel vault.”
As if to prove his point, he lifted his shirt and hit his rock-solid abs.
Okay, Jordan, insert tongue back in mouth. That’s Rory’s guy.
Ginger put down her burger. “We should probably head that way, right?”
“Yeah,” Carson said and stood up from the booth so everyone else could follow suit.
Even though I hadn’t eaten since lunch, I got up too.
“Did you want to get something to go?” Callie asked.
I shrugged. “I can wait ‘til we get to Zara’s.”
“Here,” Ginger said. “Do you want the rest of my sandwich?”
“Sure,” I answered. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, free was my favorite flavor.
While they went to pay, I picked up the uneaten half of the sandwich and followed behind them. As we walked toward the register, Chester, the old guy who always hung out in the restaurant, perked up.
“Tough last game, huh, boys?” he said to Carson and Beckett.
“Yeah,” Beckett answered. “Rough break.”
Chester leaned forward conspiratorially. “And you heard about that girl who got dessert thrown at her? That was so sad. Kids these days are cruel.”
Beckett shifted awkwardly, and Rory made herself invisible behind the group. I swore I could feel how uncomfortable she was from here.
“Hey, Chester,” I said and slid into the booth across from him so I could eat my food.
He broke out into a toothy grin, the lines in his face deepening to dark wrinkles. “How are you doing, girl?”
I would have been offended at the diminutive, but he called everyone girl. He couldn’t remember anyone’s name long enough to call them anything else.
“I’m good,” I said. “My mom’s been keeping me busy with our cleaning business.”
His eyes lit up. “I used to work as a custodian in the hotel down the street.”
“Yeah? What was the weirdest thing you ever found?”
Leaning in, he whispered, “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
I paused for a moment, chewing over my food, even though the item was already coming to mind. He was eating this up, the anticipation. Finally, I said it. “This one kid in a house we cleaned had an old applesauce jar full of spiders.”
I shivered just thinking of it. There had to be at least a hundred in there.
“I can do you one better,” he said, lifting his finger.
Callie approached our table. “Ready, Jor?”
Chester gave a sly smile. “Guess you’ll have to wait.”
“Come on,” I said, actually curious. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
He pinched his lips together and shook his head. “A little mystery does the soul good. Come back and see me sometime.”
I gave him a two-finger salute and stood to follow Callie out. As we reached the swinging glass door, she whispered, “That was nice of you.”
I shrugged, because really it wasn’t. I was just talking to someone. Most people who went to Emerson Academy didn’t understand how sheltered their lives were. Kind people like Chester or the Gutiérrezes were everywhere, and I’d sooner ride home in a car with them than someone like Kai—bad eyesight and all.
The drive to the theater took about ten minutes, but finding a good spot to watch DP was more of a challenge. La La Pictures was on the outside of Emerson Shoppes, and across from it was an office park. With all the rocky landscaping, it was hard to find a decent hiding spot to watch from.
After walking along the sidewalk for a while, we decided one of the huge ornamental rocks at the office park would do. Using blankets from Ginger’s car, we hunkered down behind the rough stone and waited.
I sat between Rory and Beckett and Carson and Callie, and honestly, I just felt lonely. Even if Callie and Carson were just friends, their bond couldn’t be denied. Rory had her head resting on Beckett’s shoulder, and he held her close to his side. The love between them hit me like a sack of bricks. I used to feel like that about Martín, but our breakup had erased months of intimacy and left me feeling like a wound barely scabbed over.
“Look!” Ginger said in a hushed whisper.
I followed her finger—her white, freckled skin practically glowed in the moonlight—and caught sight of black figures moving across the theater’s roof. The people flipped, cartwheeled and spun over the surface, getting closer and closer to the edge.
My mouth fell open in a silent scream, worried they were going to get hurt. What the hell were they doing? I hadn’t quite believed DP was real until Rory told me she’d seen them, but now I knew they wouldn’t be real much longer. They’d be dead on the sidewalk in seconds.
One cartwheeled over the side of the building. I gasped, and Callie flat-out shrieked.
For a sickening second, he silently soared through the air as if he had not a care in the world, but then my eyes discovered what he already knew. A blue inflatable of some type absorbed his fall, and he rolled away, moving toward the next building, shouting, “Audentes fortuna iuvat!”
I remembered those words from Latin class: Fortune favors the bold.
They were bold alright, and apparently the phrase was true, because I didn’t know how they’d survived this long.
My eyes followed the others—four, five, six guys—tricking off the roof and leaping effortlessly through the air. They scaled the next building and moved over the next few roofs with ease. If my guess was right, they were going toward the manufacturing plants. Toward more adventure.
“That was amazing,” Zara breathed.
Feeling a little sick to my stomach, I whispered, “My nerves can’t take it.”
Still, I wished I were that brave—that I could go from this life, where I was constantly afraid of a car breaking down or having a medical issue, to a better reality. A life of freedom like I saw the DP guys living right before my eyes.
Beckett grinned at us. “Worth the frostbite?”
I nodded, but now I just felt sad. Kai had wealth. DP had freedom. Beckett and Rory had each other. What did that leave me?
Twelve
I woke up to bright light pouring through the window of a guest room in Zara’s house. I’d slept on one side of the king-sized bed, and Ginger still snored softly on the other end.
Rolling to my feet, I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and walked to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I felt like I’d been sleeping forever.
My screen came to life. Six in the morning.
I let out a quiet groan and set my phone on the counter. It would be hours before the others woke.