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“Well. Now someone has.”
Jericho had not experienced much happiness since he was a kid working his parents’ farm. That was one of the reasons he’d clung to Evie. Being with her was such a big ride that it didn’t leave room for all the feelings Jericho pushed down. What did happiness look like when you didn’t know?
“What makes you happy?” Jericho asked.
“Oh,” Ling said, surprised by the question. “Um, science. The beauty of it, especially physics. My father’s soup dumplings—taking that first bite and the soup squirts into your mouth, hot and savory. Chinese New Year. This one dress my mother sewed for me that’s my favorite color of blue. Thinking.” Alma, Alma, Alma. “You?”
Jericho thought long and hard. “Reading, especially philosophy. Also thinking.” He let out a long breath. What he wanted to add to his list was the time he and Evie had been up at the top of the Ferris wheel, when he realized for the first time that he might be in love with her. “Ferris wheels,” he said. “The farm.”
“Which farm?”
“My family’s farm in Pennsylvania. It’s—it was—really beautiful. And there’s a satisfaction you get from planting a seed or a cutting deep in the ground and watching it grow. Knowing you had a hand in it.”
“Oh. Then why did you leave?”
“I caught infantile paralysis.”
Their shared affliction. But Jericho had escaped its ravages, it seemed.
“After that, I became a ward of the state. I spent a long time in one of Marlowe’s inventions, something he called an iron lung. It breathed for me. All I could do was stare up at the ceiling or look out the window at the changing seasons. I thought about what my family would be doing, whether it was planting or harvesting time. If there’d been a wedding or a barn raising. If my mother was pickling or canning. It was Marlowe who saved me.”
“This must be hard for you, then.”
“Not really,” Jericho said. “I wasn’t a real person to him.”
Ling could scarcely catch her breath. There were layers to Jericho she had not considered. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
Jericho shrugged it off. “You’ve had your share of hard luck, too.”
Ling cleared her throat. “Lupe likes you, you know.”
Jericho’s brow furrowed into a V. “Lupe who plays the drums?”
“No. Lupe the Pope. Yes. That Lupe.”
“Oh,” Jericho said. Then: “Ohhh. How can you tell?”
Ling wanted to resist making another sarcastic comment, because she was pretty sure that Jericho was sincere about not being able to tell. “I know through a magical radio wave only girls can hear and understand. I’m breaking my oath to tell you. I’ll probably be excommunicated,” she said, losing her battle against sarcasm. “Honestly, Jericho, anyone with eyes can tell.”
Lupe liked him. Jericho rolled it over in his mind as he watched her tapping out a steady rhythm on the high hat from his spot in the wings. She was smiling like she was having the time of her life. Guadalupe de la Rosa. Even her name sounded like music. Like Evie, she was outgoing. But Lupe wasn’t Evie, and that, Jericho knew, was Ling’s point.
His palms got a little sweaty thinking about it all. Jericho didn’t have a lot of experience with women. Not like Sam. He didn’t want to be like Sam, going from girl to girl. Then again, Sam had won over Evie. But Jericho knew he could never be something he wasn’t. He would never be Sam.
Guadalupe de la Rosa wasn’t afraid to travel the country and make her own way. That was very brave, Jericho thought. And she played the drums. What if she thought he was boring—a brooder? And what would she think if she knew about all he’d been through? If she knew about the things Marlowe had done to him, about the machinery keeping him alive?
“What do I do?” Jericho asked.
“You’re asking me for romantic advice?” Ling said.
“I suppose I am.”
“Just talk to her,” Ling said.
“What should I say?”
“You read a lot. You’ll think of something,” Ling said.
Jericho spent the next two songs, the band’s last, watching Lupe and working up the courage to approach her. What if Ling was wrong about Lupe being interested in him? Maybe she was just friendly to everyone.
