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“If we stop at Starbucks,” Raven said, “don’t let Marc know.”
“Why don’t we tell him about Starbucks?” I asked.
“Marc thinks his coffee is better,” Corey said. “He’s always comparing.”
Raven got off the highway quickly and found a Starbucks drive-through. At the menu just before the speaker, Raven stopped the car. He turned right to me, looking at me in the face. “What would you like, little thief?”
Starbucks had always been out of my price range so I had to check. The way Raven was asking me felt weird. Intention filled his question.
I tilted my head to look at the menu, pretending not to be intimidated. “What’s good here, Corey?” I asked, redirecting the conversation. I wasn’t sure what Raven was getting at, but I didn’t want to take him head-on.
Corey studied the menu, seeming oblivious to what was going on. “How about we get a bunch of those sausage egg muffins? I want an iced mocha.”
“Anything else?” Raven asked. He’d never turned his focus from me.
I glanced at the menu again. “What’s a pumpkin bread, Corey?”
“I haven’t tried it,” he said. “Want one? Let’s get it.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Would you like a coffee?” Raven asked, his eyes narrowing but his lips lifted a little. He was amused. “Or do you want to ask Corey?”
I smirked. That was better.. “Corey, what’s a good coffee here?”
Corey looked back at me. “Hot or cold?” he asked. “I prefer the cold ones. The frappes are good.”
In the end, I got an iced mocha like Corey’s. Raven got a large regular coffee, six breakfast sandwiches and a slice of pumpkin bread.
“And…” Raven said, holding up the order and studying the menu. His head tilted and he smiled again. The lip ring protruding. “And a fruit cup.”
Raven didn’t strike me as a healthy sort of guy. Well, maybe he was. He had a stack of muscles. Maybe he felt like getting some vitamins in.
At the window, Raven paid and took the food. He passed the bag back to Corey, and placed the coffees in the cup holders.
When he got the fruit cup, he held on to it and started driving off.
He stopped the car just after the window, opened the fruit cup and then looked right at me.
He held it out.
“I got this for you,” he said, his eyes intent.
“Ah,” I said. Maybe he got it because I’d been eating a lot of junk. Hadn’t we all been eating the same things? Why didn’t he just ask me if I would eat one instead of ordering it for me? “Thank you,” I said, although it was almost a question. I took the cup.
He held on to it for a second, still looking at me. His smile broadened, “Good.”
I may have not had coffee yet, but this was a deliberate…something. “What?” I asked.
He inclined his head. “What what?”
“Why the fruit?” I asked. I may as well be frank. He was being weird. “Are you saying I eat too much junk?”
He grunted and rolled his eyes.
“Is it a Russian thing? You’re going to have to explain it to me.”
“Where I come from,” he said. “Girl sits at table in restaurant.” He pointed to me. Then he pointed to himself. “Guy buys her fruit salad.”
“What does a fruit salad mean?”
“Introduction,” he said. “Means … I would like to make your acquaintance.”
That doesn’t sound so bad. It’s how they ask to get to know a girl? I could go for that. Maybe he’s trying to start over. “What if she doesn’t want the salad?” I asked. I picked the top off the fruit cup. I pulled a strawberry out and then put it in my mouth, and talked while I ate. “What if she doesn’t eat it?”
He shrugged, smirking. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll talk to her anyway.”
“So it’s just a false premise.”
“Tradition.”
“It’s tradition for the girl to not have a choice?”
“She can say no. I’ll still talk to her.”
“And if she still doesn’t want to talk?”
He shrugged again, shaking his head. “Depends.”
I guessed it was a situational question. I didn’t imagine Russian girls to be compliant if they really wanted to not talk to a guy. She’d just have to say no a lot. No wonder they seemed so tough.
“Sounds weird to me,” Corey said from the back. He leaned forward and plucked a piece of melon from the cup. “What if the girl wants to talk to a guy? Does she buy him a fruit salad?”
“No,” Raven said.
“No as in it doesn’t happen?” Corey asked. “Or she doesn’t buy him a fruit salad?”
“Doesn’t happen.”
I looked back at Corey, sharing a glance with him. Corey smiled and lifted his hands up in a have-no-idea way.
Russians are complicated.
QUESTIONS
We split up the food. Raven pinched pieces off the pumpkin bread. Corey and I shared the fruit salad. We all had breakfast muffins.
The iced coffee was good. Marc’s coffee he’d made for me really was better, though.
When I felt almost human after coffee and food, I wanted to probe the guys with questions about the Academy. I couldn’t figure out an opening.
Raven put on the radio. Corey was in the middle seat, curled up with a pillow that had been in the back. They must go on these trips a lot. The back had a set of pillows and small blankets, along with other travel items.
I turned my head, catching how Corey fell asleep inside ten minutes. “How late was he up?” I asked Raven quietly.
Raven adjusted the rearview mirror. I imagined he was checking out Corey. “I don’t know.”
“How late were you up?”
“Late.”
“Doing what?”
He grunted, and passed a car, cutting the driver off without a blinker or a warning. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worrying. I was just curious.” I checked back on Corey again, but he was pretty quiet. His breathing was slow and even. “Can I ask you something?” I asked Raven.
“What?”
As soon as he said something, the opening I’d thought I’d prepared was gone. I went for blunt. “What’s this Academy thing? Really?”
He shoved his elbow against the door, and leaned with his head against his hand, propping himself up as he drove one-handed. “Nothing.”
“I know it’s a secret group already,” I said. “You’re a member. You use guns and you break into places. You blow up things.”
“That’s not what we do,” he said.
“You did it yesterday. Remember? I was there. We were jumping off the yacht and then you blew a hole in the ship. How did you do that?”
“Don’t ask me things.”
It was my turn to grunt. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about it, because the people in charge told him to keep it a secret.
Axel seemed to be happy I’d discovered as much as I had on my own. None of them seemed to have a problem with me being included. They wanted me in, but they couldn’t tell me about it?
I quieted for a while, staring out the window as we passed Savannah. After, Raven took I-95, and all signs pointed to Florida after that. It made me think he’d been this way before. He didn’t have to check a GPS or ask Corey for directions.
As the miles went on, the road signs and trees were less and less interesting. I pulled out the cell phone Marc had given me, fiddling with it. “Does this have Internet?” I asked.
Raven looked over at the phone and then nodded. “Yes.”
I opened a few of the apps, checking out what I had access to. It was a basic phone, and I could work the browser and text messages. If I wanted something else, there was a store app. I’d never had too much access to cell phones so playing with this one was strange. I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
I tried simply using Google to research the boys. I didn’t want to be too obvious, because the phone w
as theirs and Corey probably had some tracking thing on it anyway. Still, entering things I knew about them into Google didn’t get me anywhere; it wasn’t like they had a Wikipedia page. The Academy? Nothing, just local schools. Axel Toma living in Charleston? Nothing, not even a Facebook page.
Corey Henshaw had a phone listing but nothing else. I wasn’t sure if it was the same Corey. Looking up Raven in Charleston showed me nothing. What was his real name? Ravenstahl? I wasn’t sure I was spelling it correctly, and wouldn’t know how to spell it in Russian. Besides, it was his last name and I didn’t know his first. I looked over at him casually. “What’s your first name?” I asked.
“Raven.”
“What’s your birth name?”
“Raven,” he said. “Ravenstahl.”
