The Summer the World Ended (25 page)

“Uh, it’s up to my dad.”

Tense silence lingered for a moment. Dad clasped her shoulders and held her out to arm’s length. Her face got warmer.

“Are you sure, Riley? If it’s what you really want…”

What’s the big deal? It’s just dinner with the parents, not like I’m marrying him tonight.
“Uh, yeah.”

Disappointment drooped his face, but he nodded. “Alright.”

Riley looked down at her clothes, covered in dirt, and her hands reeking of gun. “I need to clean up.”

Kieran smiled. “Great.”

Riley ran to the house before he could get a good look at her red eyes. She did not want to send the wrong signal to Dad―or Kieran―and picked a Metallica tee shirt and black, skinny (full-length) jeans. She rushed through cleaning herself, showing up in the living room not quite twelve minutes after turning the water on. Dad and Kieran stood in the kitchen, both with a glass of iced tea. From the looks on their faces, their conversation had been civil, almost pleasant. Between her outfit and her sneakers, the only part of her not covered by black cloth were her head, neck, and arms below the bicep.

Dad smiled at her, holding up the puffy raspberry jacket Mom got her for her thirteenth birthday. “I assume you’ll be coming home after sundown. It gets cold.”

She took the jacket, surprising herself at not breaking down in tears at the memories of the party.
Mom, me, and Amber… some party.

“I’ll make sure she’s back by ten, sir.” Kieran set the glass in the sink.

“I trust you. I know where you live.” He winked. “Have a good time, Riley. I’ve missed my SpaghettiOs.”

She smirked at him.

“I’m serious. That’s not attempted guilt.” He shooed her at the door. “Go on.”

Kieran laughed and walked toward her. The look Dad gave the back of the boy’s head was scary as well as reassuring. She had no doubt he would come looking for her, likely with a gun, if she was late.

She jogged around the front of the shining car and pulled the door open, making startled noises at the unexpected weight.

“You okay?”

“It’s heavy.” She dropped into a black leather seat and pulled the door closed with a loud
whump.

“Heh. It’s a ‘78. They made stuff out of metal back then.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “That sounds like something my dad would say.”

Kieran grinned. “My dad said it.”

The engine roared to life, far louder when experienced from inside. She held on to the seats, expecting a wild ride, but he drove down the dirt road at a conservative thirty miles per hour. However, once they hit NM 51, he opened it up a bit.

“How fast are you going?”

“A little under ninety.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I’m going to be sick.”

Her weight shifted forward as he slowed. “Sorry. Straight roads, sports car… it happens.”

Being a passenger in a car driven by someone more or less her age was scarier than trying to drive without a permit. Even if she wasn’t legal, being in control felt reassuring. After a mercifully brief trip, he pulled around behind Tommy’s, slipped between a battered Taurus wagon and a pair of Neons, and parked in a one-car garage.

“Your parents let you have the garage?”

“It was actually my dad’s idea. Says this car looks too nice to sit out in the weather.”

A door in the far end opened to a short staircase that pulled a ninety-degree right turn after three steps, and a left after another four, leading to the second-story apartment above the restaurant. The fragrance of cooking permeated the little hallway, even with a closed door in the way. Walking inside made the scent many times stronger and more appealing. The place felt dark and cramped compared to Dad’s house, composed of narrow hallways and small rooms decorated in earthy colors.

Patches of cloth with intricate patterned weaves and a stylized bird symbol hung here and there, along with quite a number of wolf figurines and artwork.
His mom likes wolves… mine liked faeries. Am I going to collect little statues too when I’m old?

Two middle-aged women bustled around the kitchen. Riley watched them, intrigued by the smells of spices she couldn’t place. Perhaps if ever she got comfortable around these people, she’d ask if they’d teach her some new recipes. If the food they served in the restaurant was any indication, they knew what they were doing.

She draped her still-unworn coat over the back of one of the chairs and sat at the dining room table.
Kieran’s table isn’t covered with gun cleaning stuff.
His father got up from a collapsing brown recliner in front of a TV showing a football game and wobbled over, favoring his left leg.

“So this is the girl I’ve heard so much about?” He landed in the seat at the end with a heavy thud. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hi.” She shot Kieran a ‘
what did you tell them’
glare.

The women walked in with pots, which they placed in the center. Rice and beans, pasteles, and a bowl of small sausages. One of the women sat opposite her, the other at the end facing Kieran’s dad.

“Everyone, this is Riley McCullough. Riley, that’s my Dad, my mom, and my Aunt Dakota.”

“Hello.”

“Welcome to Las Cerezas, Riley,” said the woman she assumed to be the aunt. “So sorry to hear about your mother.”

Oh, kill me now.
“Thanks.”

“Oh, ‘Kota, I’m sure she doesn’t want to dwell on that,” said Kieran’s mother. She had the same high cheekbones as her son, and wise eyes. Something about her presence made Riley feel at ease. “The spirits work in strange ways. As awful as the reason, I think she was meant to be here.”

She made no move to touch any food until Kieran’s dad handed her the bowl with the beans and rice. Soon, everyone had a full plate and started in on their meal.

“So, you’ll be in the ninth grade this September?” asked Kieran’s dad.

“Mm hmm.” Riley swallowed. “I guess the school’s in T or C?”

“Yeah,” said Kieran. “Hot Springs High.”

“The town used to be called Hot Springs,” said Aunt Dakota. “They changed the name over some silly game show years ago.”

His mother offered a slight bow. “Well, I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”

Riley felt conspicuously white in her present company, and dreaded saying something they’d take the wrong way. “Uh, yeah. This food is amazing.”

The women fussed, trying to push credit on the other person.

His mother wagged a spoon at her. “You must not be used to real food wherever you’re from.”

“Jersey,” mumbled Riley.

“I hear the pizza is good there,” said his father.

“My mother liked to cook, but she made stuff like salmon and capers, and things with French names.”

A brief discussion between Riley and the women about cooking crossed paths with Kieran and his father going back and forth about the football game unfolding on the screen in the living room. Riley lost herself in a moment of feeling ‘normal’ for a while, the sense of being an outsider watching someone else’s family faded.

She got up to help collect plates, but Kieran’s mother waved her off. “Nonsense, child. You’re a guest.”

“Wanna play a video game or something?” asked Kieran. “My room’s upstairs. PC’s a bit different than Xbox though.”

I wonder if Amber is online.
As rude as it felt to want to talk to her friend while at Kieran’s house, she
had
to at least say hello. Riley grabbed her coat and followed Kieran through a narrow hallway. In order to get to his bedroom, they had to climb a fold-down ladder to a converted attic with a claustrophobic angled ceiling. Planets made of Styrofoam balls orbited in a mobile at the center, space-themed posters hung on the walls, though they looked more NASA and less
Star Wars
. A black-framed bed held a dark blue mattress against the far corner, with enough space between the foot end and the wall for a computer desk and a chair. Stacks of CD and DVD cases burdened the cheap particleboard furniture into a perpetual rightward lean.

“Wow, guess you were serious about the engineering stuff.” She spun around, staring at the decoration. “You wanna like be an astronaut or something?”

“No, I’d rather work on the ground designing and building the spaceships.” Kieran walked past her to the computer desk. “That would be a dream. Mom wants me to be a park ranger or something… stand between civilization and nature.”

“I dunno. That could be cool too.” She threw her jacket on his bed and sat next to it. Her eyes shot to three shiny plastic squares that spilled out of the pocket.

Condom packets.

Kieran had his back to her at the moment, reaching for the power button on the computer. Riley let out a scream and jumped across her coat, hiding the mortifying objects with her chest.

“What?” Kieran whirled around. “Are you okay?”

Red-faced and on the verge of crying, she waved her arm at a bookshelf past the ladder, nestled in the vee of the roof. “M-mouse.”

Kieran laughed. “You don’t look like the type of girl to scream over mice.”

She gathered the sheets to her chest, begging fate not to let him see what Dad did to her.

“Okay, okay…” He tromped over. “There’s no mice in this place. I bet you saw a shadow.”

As soon as he went by, she gathered the packets and stuffed them in the inside pocket, which had a zipper. She rolled to sit up, clutching the bundle of raspberry cloth in her lap. No doubt, her face was almost the same color.

I am going to kill him. Oh, My God! Dad!

Kieran studied the area around the shelf for a moment, moving some boxes out of the way. “Nope. No mice.” He approached, looking confused. “You okay? You look nervous as hell. If you’re not comfortable being here… I’m… I―”

“I trust you.” She couldn’t look at him. “It’s not… I mean, I’ve never been in a boy’s room before, but I’m not like, afraid of you or anything.”

He crossed by and sat in the computer chair. “I’m glad to hear that, but you look like you’re ready to scream and run if I twitch wrong.”

She shoved the jacket to her side―away from him―and took a few deep breaths. That explained the serious ‘are you sure this is what you want’ Dad gave her. “Uh, it’s not you.”

Kieran tossed a wireless controller on the bed. “Wanna do something co-op or versus mode?” He pointed at a stack of game boxes.

“Thought you were a ‘mouse guy.’” Riley tried to relax and not think about what would’ve happened if he’d been looking when she dropped her coat.

“For shooters, yeah. Everything else, controller all the way.”

“Can we pop into
Call of Duty
? I wanna say hi to a friend.” She flicked a fingernail at the controller.

“Your friend using an Xbox?” He raised an eyebrow. “No cross platform. Different sandbox.”

“Oh.” Riley frowned at the rug for a moment before looking up. “What’s that one?” She pointed at a DVD case. On the cover, a sad-faced teen girl stood behind a man with a rifle in the midst of a destroyed city.

He tilted his head, as if appraising her level of skittishness. She couldn’t help but mirror his little grin.

“It’s a post-apocalypse game with zombies…
The Last Outpost
. We can multiplayer the story mode if you want. It’s intense, but I don’t think you’re in the mood for jump-out-of-your-seat scary. How ‘bout a fighting game?”

“Oh. Whatever you want.” She scooted to the foot of the bed with the controller in hand. “I’ll go easy on you.”

iley got out of the Trans Am at two minutes to ten, and rushed through a thigh-deep dust cloud peeling away from the tires. Kieran’s eighty mile an hour trip down NM 51 rattled her less than the trip into town that afternoon. He trotted after her to the small porch. She whirled, handled about two point one seconds of eye contact, and found herself staring at his stomach as he walked over. Rigid, nervous, and probably blushing like hell.