Beas bends to draw half a dozen notes in the sand. She pushes her hair behind her ears. “Probably not until after the next Disappearance. My parents are being extra nuts lately.”
“When’s that again?”
She looks at him as if she can’t believe he would forget. “Two weeks.”
“Do you . . . have any guess for what might disappear?”
She shivers, then searches in her pocket for more Embers. She drapes them over him, then herself, and shakes her head.
“I hope it’s not something big,” he adds.
“Is there something in particular that would break the deal for you?” Her voice is suddenly brittle and high, and so unlike her. She tosses her stick in the sand.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Nothing,” she says. “I don’t want to do this now. It’s been such a nice night.”
“No, really, what do you mean?”
She blows up the fringe of her bangs. “I mean, what happens if it is something big? I’m going to keep losing things, and you’re not. Our lives are going to keep looking more and more different.” She says softly, “I’m going to be more and more different.”
He comes up behind her, hugs her to him. “It’ll be all right,” he says. “Maybe it won’t be a bad one this time. Maybe it will hardly matter at all.”
“You should find someone else, Thom,” she says softly. “There is someone else out there who would be better for you, and I know that.”
“But I love you, Beas. I don’t want someone else. No one else is like you.”
I move away from them, suddenly not wanting to intrude on their moment anymore. I walk toward the dock, toward Will. But I stop short when I see Eliza approach him. She cocks her head. Runs her hands through her long, glowing hair.
“Congratulations,” she says. She smiles. “Remember what you told me on the afternoon of December seventeenth when we were fourteen?”
“Um, no,” he says, and laughs a little.
“Well, I do,” she says coyly, and hands him something in a glass globe.
Then she melts into the shadows of the trees until I can’t see her anymore.
“Ready?” Will asks after we’ve returned the beach to the way it looked before.
“Ready,” I say. Beas and Thom have slipped away without saying goodbye, and I wonder if they’ve broken up. But I see them kissing again in the shadows as Will and I walk by, and I smile down at my boots.
Will takes a deep breath. “It’s peppermint air.”
“What’s that?”
“When it was this cold when I was little, I used to say it felt like a peppermint on the back of my throat when I breathed.”
“Peppermint air,” I repeat. “Cute.” The wind has blown wisps of my braid free, and I begin to unwork the rest of it. “How did it feel to win? I think the Clifftons are truly Sterling’s golden family now,” I say, shaking out my hair so that it falls down my back.
He smiles shyly. “I have to admit I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me that way. I mean, I’ve seen that expression before. It’s just always been for my father.”
“Has he ever seen you race?”
Will gives a short laugh. “No. And I doubt he ever will. He’d bust my chops if he found out I’ve bought Tempests and given money to the Larkins.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want to pull the wool over his eyes. He just doesn’t really understand, you know—?with the cane and all—?how it feels to run like that.” He falls silent for a minute, and all I can hear are our footsteps on the leaves. “We’ve sort of always just missed each other—?because I’d rather be running or building, and he’s perfectly happy to read about plants all day.” He clears his throat to change the subject. “But you enjoyed yourself?”
“I think I still have a buzz.” The words brighten out of my mouth like fireflies. “Can I go again? When’s the next one?”
“Usually every couple of months,” he says. “More frequently during the summertime. Or like tonight, when we all needed a distraction.”
