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I looked over at Russell, trying to figure out if this was all just a normal occurrence for him. After all, he was a rock star’s son. Maybe he spent every weekend nearly getting arrested and having to be bailed out. Maybe his dad was even proud of it. I had no idea—because I had no clue who this person actually was.
“Thanks,” Russell said, his voice a little hollow.
Kendrick nodded and lowered his iPad. “I’ll see you back at the house. Either of you need anything?”
I needed a lot of things at the moment—a hair dryer, a sweatshirt that didn’t have Russell’s dad’s face on it, possibly a time machine. But even though Kendrick seemed very competent, I knew there was a limit to what he could pull off. So I just shook my head, and Russell shook his as well.
“Great,” Kendrick said, then headed out, leaving the conference room door propped open.
Of course, the second after he’d left, I thought of something I could have asked him for—a phone charger.
“What?” Russell asked, looking over at me. And I realized that just like I’d been able to read him, he could now read me.
“Oh,” I said, a little unnerved by this. “I was going to ask him for a phone charger.” I narrowed my eyes, suddenly thinking of something. “Unless you had one with you this whole time?”
“No,” he said, and I nodded, secretly relieved. “But hold on, I’ll grab you one.”
He hurried out of the conference room, and I took a cautious step over toward the “table.” I knew my tetanus shot was up to date—I’d had to get everything verified to send my medical forms to school—but even so, I had no real desire to get much closer to it.
“Here,” Russell said, returning a moment later with a phone charger and a plug. He slid them across the table to me, and I picked them up. There had been a line in one of the books my dad had read me when I was little that had always stayed with me, though I wasn’t sure I’d understood the significance until now. For want of a hammer, the kingdom was lost. As I picked up the charger and turned it over in my hands, that was all I could think of. For want of a phone charger… well, all this had happened.
I located the closest wall socket I could find and plugged my phone in.
“You can sit if you want,” Russell said. He was on one side of the table, and he’d already cracked open his can of sparkling water.
I took a step closer to the table. “What is this?”
Russell gave me a ghost of a smile—a pale imitation of the ones I’d seen earlier tonight. “It’s the siding off the Nighthawks’ first tour bus. Dad tracked it down in a scrapyard in Wichita.”
“Ah,” I said, feeling that my instinct to keep away from it had been correct.
“It’s been sanded and sealed,” Russell said, once again somehow intuiting what I’d been thinking. He ran his hand along the side of it. “See?”
“Okay.” I took a seat opposite Russell, and picked up the can of sparkling water. I looked across the table at him—this suddenly seemed so formal after our night of parking lots and football fields. It was almost like we’d been dropped into a different movie, like we were getting divorced in a divorce drama.
No more movies, Didi said sharply. That’s what got you into trouble in the first place.
She’s not in trouble, Katy protested. She’s just having an adventure. And sometimes those get messy.
I tentatively touched the table—sure enough, it was smooth, like it had been coated in plastic.
“Darcy,” Russell said, sounding more serious now. He took a breath, his eyes not leaving mine. “I really am truly sorry.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“Okay… what?”
“Okay, I believe that you’re sorry,” I said slowly. “But… it doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me.”
“Not about anything that really mattered,” he said. “Not about what I want to do, or my friends, or… how I feel about you. I was probably more honest with you than I’ve ever been with anyone.”
I looked across the table at him and felt a crack start to spread in my resolve to be mad at him forever. “Well—except for the lying.”
Russell nodded. “Except for that.”
The side of my mouth was threatening to rise in a smile, and the more I tried to fight it, the harder it seemed.
Russell was smiling too. “So maybe we could—”
