Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater

Author:Maggie Stiefvater [Maggie Stiefvater]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Teen Paranormal
ISBN: 9780545654579
Google: Sl5fAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 18406862
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-06-10T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

· cole ·

After we’d done the episode but before Isabel was off work, I hung out with Jeremy in his old beat-up pickup truck, parked in the middle of a beach lot. It was just the two of us. I’d sent Leyla back with the Saturn because I didn’t want to see either of them ever again.

The sounds were traffic and someone else’s boom box and the surf and the slap of arms on a volleyball. I lay in the truck bed on a dry, crinkly tarp, and Jeremy sat on a tire, looking at me and the ocean. Overhead, the sun pierced the jet trails, baking cracks into the asphalt down below. I was still wound up from performing and now would’ve been a good time for a beer.

Jeremy offered me some unsweetened iced tea.

“I don’t want your witches’ brew,” I told him, but I took it anyway and set the jar down by my head. For several long companionable minutes we did nothing together. Jeremy leaned his head back and watched the sky, looking like a wizened Australian guy in the full sun. I closed my eyes and let the heat bake my eyelids. Here with Jeremy, it would be easy to pretend the last three years of my life hadn’t happened, and I could restart without any of my sins. Only then I wouldn’t have met Isabel, and I wouldn’t be here in California. I wondered if there had ever been a more direct route to this place. Maybe I’d been on it and ruined it. Maybe if I’d just stayed on the straight and narrow all along, I would’ve met Isabel at a show.

No, because she didn’t like concerts, and neither did I.

I thought of those three topless girls in my apartment and how they would never be Isabel and Isabel would have never been them.

I couldn’t keep my eyes closed because my brain was moving faster and faster instead of slower and slower. I opened them and said, “All of the girls look old now. When did that start? All I can see when I look at them is what they’re going to look like when they’re forty. It’s like the worst superpower ever.”

Thoughtfully, Jeremy replied, “Really? I always see people as kids. Since I was in, like, middle school. It doesn’t matter how they’re acting or how old they are, I can’t not imagine them as kids.”

“How awful. How can you possibly flip someone off if you’re imagining them as a toddler?”

“Exactly,” Jeremy said.

“Tell me. Why is Leyla so unacceptable?”

“You know I don’t like to judge people.”

“We all do things we don’t like.”

He picked a nub of rubber off the tire and flicked it onto my chest. “She’s not really our thing. Style-wise.”

“Musically or ethically?”

Jeremy said, “I’d rather not perjure myself.”

“Do you even know what perjure means?” I wasn’t 100

percent

on it myself. I had a very specialized knowledge base. “I want to fire her. I really do. But what’s the alternative?”

I regretted saying it as soon as it was out of my mouth.

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