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Damn it. That scumbag was throwing me off so much that he was throwing me on.
“All right, this has gone too far,” I said. “You crossed the border into stalker territory a long time ago. I don’t mind talking to the police twice in one day.”
Quentin was “walking me home.” Or at least that’s what he’d asked to do as I left school. I should have told him off right away instead of giving him the silent treatment. Now any uninitiated observers would think we were hashing out a misunderstanding like civilized people.
“Go ahead and call them,” he said. “I’m told it’s a free country.”
Wait, had his E
nglish gotten better?
“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing,” I said, picking up the pace so that he fell behind and hopefully stayed there. “But it stops now. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Just because I found you getting your ass kicked doesn’t mean a thing. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
He snorted. “A lot of help you were. You didn’t even tell anyone at school it was me you saw getting beat up, did you?”
I growled in frustration. There were actually a bunch of things I wanted to ask—like how he’d healed up so quickly, or what had happened to his old raggedy clothes, or how his speech seemed to randomly fluctuate between a Bay Area teenager and a Confucian bard—but I didn’t want to encourage him.
“You dream of a mountain,” Quentin said.
I stopped in my tracks and turned around. We were completely alone on the block, a splintery picket fence hemming us in on one side, and an empty lot with more abandoned bicycles than grass across the street.
“You dream of a mountain,” he repeated. “Green and full of flowers. Every night when you fall asleep, you can smell the jasmine blossoms and hear the running streams.”
He said this with real drama. Like it was supposed to hit home for me. Forge some kind of a connection between us.
I smirked. Because it didn’t.
“Last night I dreamed I was floating in space and watching the stars,” I said, feeling smug. “But you should keep trying that pickup line. I know at least a couple of girls at school like cheese.”
Quentin didn’t respond for a second. Apparently I was the one who’d floored him.
He broke out into a gigantic, ear-to-ear smile. Under better circumstances it would have been gorgeous.
“That’s it!” he said, hopping in excitement. “That proves it! You really are mine!”
Okay. That kind of talk had to stop right here and right now. I inhaled deeply to unleash both a torrent of verbal abuse and a refresher in women’s history over the last century.
But before I could give him what he asked for, Quentin jumped onto the neighboring fence, taking five feet in one smooth leap as easily as you’d take the escalator. He laughed and hooted and cartwheeled back and forth on the uprights, balancing on a surface that must have been narrower than a row of quarters.
My head began to spin. Something about his uninhibited display made it feel like there was a light shining behind my eyes, or like I was breathing in too much oxygen. I felt all the nausea that he should have, flipping around like that.
He wasn’t normal. He must have been a gymnast or parkourista or whatever from online videos. Maybe a Shaolin.
I didn’t care. I kicked the fence in the hope that he would fall and crotch himself, and I ran straight home.
A few minutes later I crossed the finish line into my driveway, gasping for breath.
I hurried with the keys to my house, my hands clumsier than usual. The click of the lock never sounded sweeter. Finally, finally, I slipped inside and sighed.
Only to find Quentin sitting at the kitchen table with my mom.
4
I checked behind me as a reflex and banged my face against the door in the process.
“Genie,” Mom said, beaming like we’d won the lottery. “You have a visitor. A friend from school.”
I pointed at Quentin while holding my nose. “How did you get inside?”
