Page 59 of Tricks for Free

“Pretty sure Michael Lowry would say we were the ones he built it for. The ones who needed it, and not the ones who wanted it.”

“Pretty sure Michael Lowry’s dead,” said Robin, and swung for my face.

By the time her fist was there, I wasn’t anymore. She overswung and stopped, looking puzzled.

“Come back here,” she snapped.

“What, so you can hit me? I don’t think so.”

She swung again. I dodged again. It would have been funny, if she hadn’t been getting so much more progressively frustrated. It was like sparring with one of my parents, back when I’d been an eight-year-old ball of rage and ambitions, with reflexes that couldn’t quite keep up with what I wanted them to do. They’d always given me a few easy ones to evade before they started really trying to hit me, letting me find my rhythm, letting me feel like I could win.

Only here, there was no “letting” about what Robin was doing. She was pulling out her best moves, and had no idea why I was evading them with such ease. There were tears in her eyes when she made her third swing, again missing me by a country mile. That seemed to be the last straw: she stopped attacking and stood there, glaring daggers at me.

“What are you?” she demanded.

“A former cheerleader,” I replied. “We learn to dodge.”

Robin shook her head in disgust. “You’re never going to be a Lowry girl. Never. You’ll always be an outsider, and we’re never going to let you in.”

“I don’t need you to,” I said. “I’ve got friends, and I’ve got plans, and right now, I’ve got places to be. Leave me alone, all right? That’s all I’ve ever wanted you to do.”

Robin sniffed, and for a moment, I thought she was going to do something else—apologize, maybe, or attack me again. It could have gone either way, and either way had the potential to be interesting, because either way had the potential to change things.

Instead, she sneered, “I have a shift,” and walked on down the tunnel, heading for Chapter and Verse. I waited until her footsteps had faded before glancing up.

Sam wasn’t there.

Panic had time to grip my chest, acid-bright and electric, before he stuck his head out of one of the electrical vents on the ceiling and said, in a loud whisper, “You could fit a whole squad of boy scouts in this thing.”

“Sam, what . . . ?”

“If you put her on the floor, I didn’t want her to look up and think she was hallucinating the giant monkey.” He pulled himself out of the vent, dangling by his arms for a moment before he got feet and tail wrapped back around their respective grips and had recovered his previous flat position. “Besides, it let me rest my arms for a second. Are all your coworkers that sweet?”

“She’s the sweetest,” I said. I started walking again. Above me, Sam matched my stride, moving with an inhumanly fluid ease. “I keep to myself, and I don’t play social games. For some people, that makes me weird, and possibly a threat. As long as they don’t start putting poison in my bag lunches, I don’t care.”

“You don’t like people much.”

“Neither do you.”

Sam laughed darkly. “I guess that’s why we like each other.”

I smiled, keeping my head down, and kept walking.

We reached the narrow, near-abandoned tunnel that Fern had shown me after the accident. After we had turned the first corner, out of view of the main passageway and well clear of anyone else looking to get to work, I glanced up.

“You can come down now,” I said. “It should be safe.”

“Thank God.” Sam dropped to floor level, landing in a crouch before straightening up and beginning to massage his hands. “I thought I was going to get a cramp.”

“On the plus side, your position on this season of American Ninja Gladiator is pretty much secure.”

“You don’t think they’ll call the tail cheating?”

“They may want you to tie a weight to it or something.”

“Fun for the whole family.” He looked at me sidelong, and smiled, almost shyly. “Thanks again for helping me out of here.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” I could feel my cheeks getting red. People being consistently glad to see me was a weird enough experience these days to be a little weird and embarrassing. I was going to have to get used to it if Sam was going to stick around—and I wanted Sam to stick around. I wanted it more than I would ever have been able to admit to myself two days ago.