Page 130 of Lone Wolf

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“Wow. So you’re sitting here dirt-diving it in your head?”

“Yes.”

She let out a breath just shy of a sigh. Her shoulders were slumped, rolled forward, and her cheeks looked heavy.

Evan said, “How’d it go at the disco bowl?”

Joey placed both palms flat over her face and rubbed. When she lowered them, her makeup was smeared as if she’d been crying. Her features were full and open, and the solitaire diamond pendant glittered at her throat as if floating, the platinum filigree chain invisible in the semidarkness.

“We was out at the bowling place and there were some frat guys there and one of them got all gropey with Silvia…”

“Yeah?”

“So I punched him in the throat.”

“In the throat?”

“Uh-huh. Dropped him. And the cops came and since I’m a university girl student they were all like, ‘Do you want to press charges against Chet?’”

“His name was Chet?”

“What? No. Can you imagine, though? If they’da caught us on the street? Chet would be pressing charges on my brown ass.”

She drummed her bitten nails on the island, chewed her lower lip.

“How’d that go over with the sorority girls?”

“X.” Joey shook her head. “Those girls, they talk a big game about empowerment and shit. But when you do it? They’re horrified. They said … They said I’m not Chi Phi Alpha material. Not up to their ‘standards.’” She threw angry air quotes. “They looked at me like I was some other species. Except one of them.” She smirked her evil smirk. “Blond girl from Brentwood. Ms. Girl was all like, ‘Don’t worry about it. We all want to be you.’” The smirk faded. “So. I won’t be invited back.” Her cheeks were glittering. “It’s so stupid, I know. And—if I tell you a secret you can’t use it against me, got it?”

“Copy.”

“I wasn’t even sure I wanted to join the stupid sorority anyways. I just wanted to prove I could get in. That I could be asked in. I think … I think I just wanted to prove I could belong somewhere. That I could be an ordinary person. But I wanted to be the one…”

“To make the choice.”

“Yeah.” Her nervous drumming stopped. “Pathetic, right?”

“No.”

It took a lot for her to force the question to the surface: “Why not?”

“Because it’s brave,” he said.

“Rushing a sorority?”

“No.”

Joey was waiting, not patiently.

He tried to figure out the words but they all sounded wrong. He remembered pulling over on that dusty Texas road and vomiting the bile out of him.

He said, “To risk getting hurt in a way you don’t know how to defend against.” A pause. “Yet.”

The faintest upward tug at her lips. She blinked a few times, wiped at her cheeks. “Could you get me a glass of orange juice?”

He poured her a glass, dropping in a few block ice cubes. He eyed the stack of coasters on the island, didn’t make a move for it. A show of faith, bringing her a sweating glass, setting it down bare on the poured-concrete surface.