‘You’re not sayinganything. That’s the problem. You make jokes. You flirt. You trash-talk, but you don’tsayanything.Can we please just talk about tonight? What was that? It was so messed up.’ Asta shuddered at the memory of Hummer with the branch, pushing Nat under the water over and over. ‘I mean, Hummer’s always been a shithead, but that was something new.’
‘New to you,’ Nat muttered.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Asta was appalled. ‘I seriously thought he was going to drown you.’
‘Me, too.’ Nat had the look of a pine grown into a cliffside, its roots wedged into a crevice in the sheer rock and barely hanging on.
‘This is what I’m saying! You don’t have to beokayafter that, Nat!’ Asta fought back the sob rising from her chest.
Nat’s face took on a steely look. ‘He wasn’t actually going to hurt me. You only made it worse.’
Asta stared at Nat in horror, but Nat wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘What if it had been me out there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If he had done that to me, would you have tried to stop him?’
Nat moved stiffly to one of the leather chairs by the door. Her jumpsuit was foul with algae, but she sat anyway. Asta watched her, unsure of what to do. Nat had completely checked out of the conversation.
‘Please, Nat,’ Asta said. ‘This isn’t fine. You’re not fine.’
Even with its soft nightlights, the room felt darker than any of the shadows they had crawled through tonight. Asta wished that Carmine was there so that he could blaze some light into the place, burn some truth into it.
‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Asta said, giving up.
‘He wouldn’t have,’ Nat said.
‘What?’ Asta asked. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘If it had been you, he wouldn’t have done it.’ Nat put her head in her hands. ‘Maybe the river, but not the stick. That was special for me.’
Asta’s throat tightened. ‘How do you know that? That he wouldn’t have done it to me?’
Nat talked to the carpet between her feet. ‘Because you’re not one of us. You’re just there to—’ But she didn’t finish whatever she was going to say.
Asta could fill in the rest. To push Natalia. To be a stick to flog her with, drown her with, until she was so afraid of losing that she would do anything to avoid it.
Asta looked at Nat, hunched over in the chair, hair clumped and dirty, tangled in her fingers. She went to her and sat on the carpet in front of the chair, placing her hand gently on Nat’s knee. ‘I’m so sorry, Nat.’
Nat didn’t say anything, but she reached out and stroked Asta’s hand, tracing her knuckles and fingernails one by one.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Asta asked after a minute had passed.
‘Sure.’
‘Why did you ask Felix to come with us tonight?’
Nat snorted. ‘I forgot I did that. Could you imagine?’
‘Did you want him to see it? Did you want him to stop it?’
‘God, no. I don’t want him up in my business. I just thought it would annoy you to have him there. I didn’t know it was going to be. . . whatever that was,’ Nat answered. She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. ‘I just wanted to blow off some steam.’
Asta rested her chin on Nat’s knee and looked up at her, waiting for her to say more. What if Felixhadcome with them? She tried to imagine how things might have gone differently. But it was too strange a thought to entertain. Even the idea of Nat and Felix having a civilized conversation felt far-fetched at this point. They were like oil and water in her mind. They pulled on different sides of Asta, brought different things out in her.
Nat sat forward and took hold of the zipper at Asta’s throat, catching Asta by surprise. ‘You know,’ she said, sliding the zipper pull down, one slow inch at a time, ‘I can think of other ways to blow off steam.’
‘Nat, come on.’ Asta knew what a bad idea this was, but there was a part of her that wanted to give in, to see what lay beneath Nat’s surface. There was more to Nat than just the bad girl and the show-off. Asta had glimpsed something there, and she wanted to know what it was.
