I brightened, nodding. “Yes.”
Gabriel beamed. “Yeah. I’m getting the hang of this.” He nodded toward North’s fingers. “Go ahead and do the pink. I’ll need that back in a minute.”
I twisted the top of the pink polish bottle.
“Baby,” he said in a deeper tone.
I found his hand and drew it around, placing it on my knee.
“What are you doing?” North asked.
I picked out the pink polish brush, and hovered it over his pinkie.
“Nope,” North said, he pulled his hand away, tucking it under his thighs. “I have to draw a line at pink.”
“Oy,” Gabriel said, and he snapped his fingers at North. “You let her use the pink ...”
“Or what?” North asked. “You’ll kick my ass? Try it.”
“North,” Kota said behind us. “Let her use the pink if she wants.”
“You can’t be serious,” North said.
“Hey, I’m next after you. You wait, I’ll end up with something orange and pink or something.”
“That’s what I’m getting,” Gabriel said.
Nathan and Luke started chuckling.
“You guys are assholes. She gets what she wants. It’s her birthday.” Gabriel focused on my toes. “I’ll wear my favorite color and her favorite color together. The rest of you chickenshits can go fuck off.”
I held the bottle of pink, not sure if I should get in the middle of this.
“Fuck you, Gabe. You started this.” North shoved a hand onto my knee. “Get it over with so I can wash it off.”
“No one gets to wash off the polish tonight,” Kota said. I turned around to look at him. He was sitting back, his arms over his chest, though relaxed and half gazing at the television.
I didn’t want to make North mad at me, but I didn’t want to back down because Gabriel and Kota were both practically telling me to do it. I took the brush out again with an idea. I planted two small dots in the center of the pinkie nail, and slid them together to make a small heart. “There,” I said. “Just a little.”
North held up his finger, examining my work. “I almost want to say this is worse.”
“I like it,” I said, and it looked good on him. With all the black, with all the dour expressions, that little pink heart was like the tiny soft spot I knew he had.
North drew quiet, staring at the heart. While his eyes softened, his mouth drew taut. Whatever he was thinking, he wasn’t going to say it out loud.
“If you’re done,” Kota said, yawning. “I’ll go next.”
North grunted, getting up on his knees and crawling away. Kota took his place behind me. He sucked in a deep breath, wrapping his arms around my stomach as he drew me closer.
“Hey, hey,” Gabriel said. “I’m trying to work here.”
Kota ignored this, drawing me in. Gabriel moved closer, coddling my other foot.
Kota planted a palm on my thigh on one side and drew up his knee on the other, holding out his fingers. “What color do you want?” he asked close to my ear.
“Do you want green?” I asked.
“I’ll take pink or green,” he said. “It’s your birthday zombie party.”
“I haven’t been watching the zombies,” I said, leaning over a little to snag a hunter green bottle off the coffee table.
“That’s probably a good thing. You get enough nightmares.” He buried his face into my shoulder. “Can you tell me something?”
“What?”
“What did the mask look like?”
“You haven’t seen it?”
“Not up close. We’ve spotted him wearing all black but we only caught his back.”
“It was ...” I started to say, and then stopped. I didn’t know the differences in masks. “It covered all of his face. Just eye holes. There was a shaped mouth and nose, but there wasn’t much detail.”
“Japanese?” he asked. “Was it like an Asian style?”
“I don’t think so.”
He released my waist, twisting. “Nathan?”
“What?” Nathan called back from the kitchen.
“Don’t you have an old encyclopedia set somewhere?”
“You mean an iPad, don’t you? Who has encyclopedias anymore?” There was the sound of Nathan scuffling off to one of the rooms. He returned with a tablet. He held it out for Kota.
Kota took it, planting it on the floor beside us. He let me have his left hand. “Paint this hand,” he said. “Let me look something up.”
I used the deep green on his nails, covering the pinkie. When he didn’t move, and was still searching the internet on the tablet, I started working on his other fingers.
I had finished his middle finger and started his forefinger before he found what he wanted and tilted the tablet toward me. “Here,” he said. “Show me what it looked like.”
I scanned the tablet screen. He did an image search looking for white masks of various styles. Some were Asian, and it wasn’t those. I studied the masks and then pointed to one. “Kind of like this, but without the colors.”
He scrolled down the page. Finding a similar one. “This?”
I glanced at it and then pulled back the brush so I wouldn’t paint his hand. My heart smacked against my ribs. It looked almost exactly like it. “That’s it. What is it?”
Kota took the tablet back, tapped at the mask. “Venetian,” he said. “They used to wear them to carnivals.”
“Who wore them?” North asked.
Kota typed in a search looking for Venetian carnival masks and their meanings. “Looks like these were reserved for the lower class. The citizens.”
North snorted. “Citizen? Like he’s supposed to be an everyday person?”
“If he put any thought behind the mask at all. It might just be he found one he liked and used it.”
I leaned over, checking out the article and reading. “Volto?” I asked.
“The article says it’s Italian for face.”
It almost made sense, in a strange way. The masked man was just a face. “He wore all black. He could have worn something like a black ski mask or something similarly disinteresting. Instead he wore this.”
“He probably did it to scare you.”
“He wore it twice, but wanted me to trust him each time. If this guy ... Volto ... if Volto ...?” I couldn’t think of the question to ask.
Kota yawned, pushing his lips against my shoulder to cover it. “Are we calling him Volto?”
I tried to glance back at him. “If he’s not giving us a name. Are you tired? Should we go to sleep?”
Kota smiled into my shoulder. “I just got here and you’re sending me to bed.”
“You’re tired. And we’ve got school tomorrow.”
“Not bored with your birthday, are you?”
I shook my head. “I’m having fun. I feel kind of guilty since Victor isn’t here.”
“He’d be here if he could,” Kota said. He rubbed his free hand at my back. “I think North is right. You do worry too much.”
“You’re not worried?”
“I’m always worried.” Kota used my shoulder to nudge his glasses up. Then he traced his nose against my back for a moment before pulling up again. “But that’s my job.”
“What’s my job?”
“To let me worry about things for a while.”
I finished his forefinger and his thumb and he held his hand up, glancing at the color. “You’re not doing the other hand?”
“Not unless you want me to,” I said. “And you’re tired. Maybe we should sleep instead.”
“You’re not listening to me about not worrying.”
“It’s been a long day.”
He seemed to catch my hint. I loved what we were doing, but after the last two days and having to show up at school tomorrow, I was wearing out fast. I didn’t want the others thinking I was bored. I was just tired.
He patted my thigh to get me to scoot forward. “All right guys,” he said. “Let’s wr
ap it up.”
Gabriel groaned. “What? We just started. And she didn’t paint my nails yet.”
“We can do it tomorrow. It’s late. We need to be on top of things for school. We really should all go home tonight.”
Gabriel grunted. He glanced at me, his eyes wide. Did he expect me to argue? A finger hovered over my lip. I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’m staying here,” North said. “I’m not going home with fuck face lurking around out there waiting for her.”
“Me, too,” Silas said.
Kota sighed. “Okay. We’ll all stay here. Everyone start cleaning up.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Fine. Just hang on a second. I’m almost done. Don’t let her walk away with oddly mismatched toes.”
“Even though her fingers are like four different colors,” Luke said, grinning.
“Don’t remind me.”
Gabriel finished up my toes, while everyone else collected up the last of the cupcakes, of which I only counted five left. Luke and Silas opted to take showers tonight instead of in the morning, avoiding the rush.
When my toes were dried, I stood up, intending to help, but the others were already done with almost everything. Kota, Nathan and North were standing in the kitchen, talking about who would sleep where.
“Peanut,” Nathan said. “If you’re sleeping in that, go get in the bed.”
“Oy,” Gabriel came around the corner. “Let her sleep on the couch with me. Two of you can share the bed, and a couple of people can sleep on the water bed. Then—”
“Sang doesn’t need to sleep on the couch,” Nathan said. “I’ve had her and Silas in the bed before. She’s small so she leaves plenty of room.”
“Yeah, but ...”
“It’s fine, Gabe,” Kota said. He took my hand and tugged toward the bedroom. “You can have the couch. Nathan and I can share the bed with her.”
“That’s not really what ...” Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair, as if trying to figure out what to say and not knowing how.
“Just get some sleep,” Nathan said. “It’s been a long day for everyone.”
I glanced over my shoulder and Gabriel met my eyes. His crystal blue gaze was telling me something, but I didn’t understand it. I tried to share a sympathetic look with him, wishing I knew what he wanted.
Kota tugged me again toward the bedroom. I followed, because Kota was the boss.
The time I’d slept with Nathan and Silas in the bed, I’d been the first one to climb in and pass out, and didn’t feel either of them get in. Now that I was aware I’d be sleeping between Kota and Nathan, it seemed very awkward. I’d done it with Luke and Gabriel, in a way, but this felt different. Nathan slept right next to me usually and Kota sometimes slept really close, too.
I hesitated for a moment, but Kota nudged me forward and I obeyed. I crawled onto the bed and took my spot in the middle. Kota sat on one side, and Nathan stretched as he stood beside the bed. He pulled the blanket back.
The other weird thing was we were all in separate rooms. I understood with so many of us that it’d be difficult to have everyone sleeping in the same area. Even if the guys were going to sleep on the floor in Nathan’s bedroom, I wasn’t sure how they would all fit. Something told me they’d done this before, and they had a system. Outside of where to put me, there wasn’t a question as to who slept where.
Kota removed his glasses and planted them on the side table. Nathan waited until everyone was settled before smacking the light off. There were sounds coming from further in the house, and I imagined it was the others getting ready for bed.
“Did you have a good birthday?” Kota asked in a sleepy voice.
“Yes,” I said. “I liked it.”
“Did you?” Nathan asked. “I don’t think you’ve blown out a candle yet.”
“She’s still got tomorrow,” Kota said. “Besides, you’re the one blowing out the candles.”
“I thought I’d get one or two in,” Nathan said.
“Guess it’s fair since we skipped yours.”
I was almost sleepy enough to not catch this. Something in the last part caught my attention and I looked up at the shadowed ceiling, trying to piece it together.
And when I had it, I bolted upright in the bed. “Honey?”
“Yeah, Peanut?”
“You got to skip your birthday?”
“Uh ...”
That was a yes. “When was your birthday?”
While it was still dark, I could make out the frame of his body against the bed. “Um ...”
“Honey ...”
Nathan flipped over, propped himself up on his arm and looked over at the clock. I followed his gaze, noting that it was ten. “If you want to be technical, it’s still going on.”
My mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”
“Sang,” Kota said. He curled up further into the bed. “It’s not a big deal. Go to sleep.”
“Nu uh,” I said. “What was all this about? You guys made this big deal about my birthday and Nathan gets to skip his?”
“I told them to forget about my birthday,” Nathan said. He flopped back on the bed, his arms up behind his head to prop it up. “You know, since it was your first with us.”
“No, guys. That was wrong,” I said. It felt horrible. We’d just spent the entire evening fussing about my own birthday when Nathan got skipped over. “I don’t want to skip your birthday.”
“We didn’t skip it,” Kota said. “After we found out your birthday was the day after his, we asked him what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to do what you wanted to do. So he got what he wanted for his birthday.”
“But that’s not fair,” I said. “I asked to skip mine and no one listened to me.”
“We weren’t going to skip your birthday,” Kota said. “Go to sleep.”
“When’s your birthday?” I asked.
“In January.”
So we hadn’t skipped his at any time. I knew Victor’s was in January. “When’s Luke’s?”
“March.”
“And Gabriel?”
Kota sighed, he flipped over onto his back. “Sang.”
“When’s Gabriel’s birthday? I want to make sure we aren’t skipping over anyone else’s.”
“It’s in November.”
“And Silas?”
“June.”
“When’s North’s?”
Kota parted his lips to give me another casual reply, but he paused. “We should really go to sleep.”
“When’s his birthday?”
“Peanut ...”
Something in their hesitating made my heart flutter. “Don’t tell me it’s today,” I said.
“It’s not today,” Kota said.
“When is it?”
Kota glanced over at Nathan. Nathan shook his head.
I wasn’t about to go to sleep now. “North!”
“Don’t do that,” Nathan said. “He’ll barrel in here and think something’s wrong.”
“Something is wrong. North!” I called out, although my voice strained the louder I got. I got up on my knees on the bed, edging toward the foot of it.
There was the stumble of footsteps and the door to Nathan’s bedroom got shoved open. North’s figure loomed in the doorway “What, Sang Baby? What’s wrong?”
“When’s your birthday?”
His head tilted, he glanced at Kota and then at Nathan. “Who tattled?”
“We’re supposed to tell each other important things,” I said, using a voice that was a little louder than I intended, which meant I squeaked. “When’s your birthday?”
North shifted on his feet. “I’m really tired.”
“Please?”
North sighed. “September.”
My head rocked back. I knew them then. There wasn’t a party or a birthday or a fuss made and they couldn’t use my birthday as an excuse to skip his. “Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t anyone want to tell me? Why didn’t we do something then?”
/> “Because,” North said. “We didn’t do anything for it because ... because you were tied up in the shower that day.”
My heart that had been pounding so loud in my ears suddenly stopped cold. “So I’ve ruined two birthdays?”
North rocked back on his heels once as if I’d struck him. In a flash, he’d crossed the room and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Sang. Your life was more important and I’d give up all my birthdays to make sure that nothing like that ever happens to you again.” His grip loosened. “Besides, right after that we spent the night at Kota’s, remember?”
I nodded, afraid to say what I was thinking. Of how it had been all my fault.
“The guys asked if I wanted to do anything particular, but my answer was the same as yours. I just wanted to hang out.”
“Yeah, Peanut,” Nathan said. “I said the same thing. I said I didn’t care. I didn’t want to overshadow your birthday and I wanted to hang out with you. Besides, you were up for doing what we wanted, anyway.”
I supposed that was true. It still seemed wrong. Until they made such a big deal about my birthday, I hadn’t realized how much of a deal birthdays were. Why did they mean so much to me now?
Despite what Volto—the man in the white mask—had told me, I still cared about them enough to want to do good things for them.
Which made what Volto had said even worse. When North finally left, and I sank back into the bed and quieted for the night, I remained awake for a while. I’d said it to myself before that I wanted to feel a part of them.
In a strange way, Volto finally made me feel like I was. It was the small bit of doubt that crept in, a murmur in my heart that needed to be sure the side I was choosing was the right one.
A NIGHT RIDE
I don’t know how I sensed the air shift in Nathan’s room, since I was so dead asleep. But I was dragging myself to wake up when the air pressure changed.
I checked the time on the clock, almost two in the morning. My eyes slid over as the door was opening. My heart tripped over itself. Was Volto coming back for me? I thought of North. Was he worried again and here to watch me sleep, only he couldn’t because no one had phones?
I turned slightly when a gentle touch caught the end of my foot sticking out from the covers. It was the way the fingers slid quietly against the bottom of my foot that made me turn slowly so as not to wake Kota or Nathan.