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When I remain quiet, she explains, "Every type of science has its own vocabulary: biology, chemistry, astronomy, even computer science. We think of it all as individual, but essentially, all the specialized words are derived from the classical languages, Latin or Greek. Computer comes from the Latin wordcomputo, to count. Or here is another example: the vernal equinox is the one day of spring when day and night are equal.Vernalcomes from the Latin word forspring:ver,veris. Likepasta primavera...spring pasta, get it?"
What the—?
I am completely stunned by the speech she just delivered. I gape at her, resembling a goldfish.
She laughs out loud. "You didn’t expect that, huh?"
"Uh." I still can’t form a coherent sentence.
"Yeah, I developed a slight fascination with it after we had a short lecture in history last year."
Slight?
It sinks in that there is so much I have missed the last few years, and a wave of irritation that my parents have kept me from sharing all this with Lilly crashes through my body.
I endup napping for about an hour between questions ten and eleven. The game makes the time fly by, and we reach our destination a little after nine o’clock. We pick a motel close to the interstate to not lose too much time in the morning.
The room is simple. The bathroom is off to the right, the two beds are covered with floral quilts that have seen better times, and a small window is exactly opposite the entrance. Across from the beds is a desk and a dresser with a TV on it. The TV is the most modern thing in the entire room, even though it seems to be older than Natty. But it appears to be clean, which is all I care about for tonight.
We take turns in the bathroom, and I flop onto my bed, not even bothering with the cover. I’m about to doze off when I hear Lilly. "Rhys?"
"Hmm?"
"Thanks. For being here, I mean."
I smile into my pillow. "I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else."
Chapter Fifteen
Rhys’s alarmgoes off at five, and we’re back on the road by six. Seven hours of sleep is more than I’ve gotten most nights lately, but I am still grateful that we stop for caffeine before we hit the interstate.
Rhys takes the first shift driving, and I gaze out of the side window into the dark. My mind keeps replaying yesterday’s twenty question game. It was fun to get to know himagainand also see his reaction to some of my answers. His face was priceless when I explained why I would want to speak Latin.
I could’ve guessed maybe a quarter of his answers; the rest I had no idea. His response to his favorite song caught me off guard, though. When picking my song, I was between "Helsinki" and "Good Goodbye," and when Rhys said Linkin Park, I experienced this fluttery feeling in my belly. But I mean, it’s just a song—no big deal.
The morning stretchgoes by pretty quickly, and Rhys tells me this story about Wes dating a girl from another school that has me in tears—the laughing kind.
"She was cute and actually really nice—not like some of the other chicks he’d been seeing, where all that counted was their ass or the size of their rack." Rhys rolls his eyes. "Anyway, he tries to surprise her and sneak in her window one night; he’d done it before. But he doesn’t know that her grandmother is staying with them for the week, and the girl is bunking with the little sister across the hall. He ends up waking up the grandmother, who screams bloody murder and beats him with her cane until he just jumps out of the window and takes off running for a good five blocks. His car was still at the house." Rhys is cracking up while he talks, and by the time he finishes, I have tears running down my cheeks.
That could only happen to Wes. He could have almost any girl by merely snapping his fingers. With his naturally bronze skin and shaggy blond hair, he looks like he belongs in a surf ad. This year, he showed up with a mohawk on the first day of school, which gave him anAbercrombie-model-turned-bad-boyvibe. Every girl in a thirty-foot radius stopped what they were doing and instantly started drooling—well, besides Den and me. But even Denielle admitted that he looked smokin’—her words, not mine. Don’t get me wrong, Wes is absolutely gorgeous, but I’ve known him most of my life. I’m probably one of the few females that doesn’t want himthatway. He’s been Rhys’s best friend for a decade, and he was a good friend to me, even during the last two years. Though, I don’t think Rhys is aware of that. When we first moved back, years ago, he had started flirting with me, but I’m positive it was never anything serious. However, I can now see how it could’ve pushed Rhys in ways Ineveranticipated. Long story short, Wes and me—not going to happen.
I pull down the visor and see that I have raccoon eyes. I try to fix my mascara as much as possible without having my makeup bag in reach.
We talk about our sessions with Spence. Rhys explains how Spence has been incorporating wrestling moves into the sparring lessons, and I’m intrigued. Spence and I have been mostly working on defense moves, and now I realize that this must have been on purpose. I’m supposed to learn how to defend myself against an assailant. But I’m not sure if that means Spence is in on the secret or if he just follows Tristen’s orders. Either way, I don’t like it. That’s another part of my life that was manipulated. My teeth automatically clench.
I wish I had already called home. Now I have to make sure to sound calm and like someone who’s having the time of her life on her first real trip away with her best friend. I’m going to need mental prep time. And I’m definitely calling Heather’s cell; there is no way I can pretend with Tristen.
Rhys pulls me out of my internal rant. "Maybe we could start training together again sometime?"
The idea makes me smile. "I’d like that."
I really would; our joined sessions were always fun. We could spin it in a way that I need a different opponent whose moves I’m not used to.
Not anymore.
We stopat a small Mom-and-Pop diner attached to the local gas station for lunch. It’s almost noon, and between bites of my chicken sandwich, I suggest that we should push it as far as possible again. Rhys pulls up the route on his phone, and we settle on Salt Lake City. That’ll make the last day only around ten hours if everything goes smoothly.
We trade off every few hours, which allows both of us to nap some throughout the afternoon. As before, we settle on a motel close to our route, and the entire setup is similar to last night. Rhys gets ready for bed first today, and I use the time to dial Heather’s phone. I make up a story about Charlie tripping as we got off the lift and Den faceplanting in the snow. Heather laughs, and the entire check-in takes less than five minutes. Yet, it drains the last bit of energy I have left.
