“Did I mention that English isn’t my first language? Much like with Girl, sometimes the nuances elude me.”
“Good thing you write poetry then.”
He laughs, throwing back his head like the force of mirth is too much for his neck to handle. It is an avalanche of a laugh, a zephyr wind that sweeps me back with its warm surprise, and I realize too late I am smiling and laughing with him.
Then his eyes meet mine and the warm desert wind zips away, leaving a vacuum in its wake, and there is no air in the room, no air between us, and I cannot look away. He leans in closer and his gravity-enhanced eyes flick down to my lips then back up to my eyes, binding me pulling me terrifying me.
“Isadora?”
“Yes?” I answer, but something’s wrong with my throat and it comes out strange and breathy. Does my name always sound like music?
“Could you maybe not point the nail gun at my chest?”
And there’s that air that was missing before. I thank the idiot gods for my dark skin as my face burns and I whip the gun back to the work that needs to be done. This room can’t be finished soon enough.
“How do you do it?” I ask Tyler, not looking up from the neon manicure I’m giving her. She’s spending the night so we can get an early start on painting the plywood boards tomorrow. And because Tyler convinced me we both needed a girls’ night or she would lose her mind. I’m so tired I can barely see straight.
“How do I do what?”
“How do you love Scott?”
“Whoa, hate my boyfriend much?”
I look up, panicked that I’ve offended her, but she’s still smiling. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. Scott is awesome. I mean, how do you . . . how do you let yourself love something you know will end? Don’t you feel sick all the time? Terrified? What will you do when you lose him? Even if you don’t break up, you’ll die. It won’t matter in the end.”
She takes the nail-polish brush out of my hands, screwing it back onto the bottle. “Isadora, sweetheart, that is the saddest thing I have ever heard. I don’t say this lightly, because my mom is a therapist and she drives me nuts with the analysis, but have you considered therapy?”
I shake my head, avoiding her eyes. “I don’t mean to be depressing. I just . . . I used to think I was part of something that would last forever, you know? And it didn’t. And I don’t want anything less than forever, because it feels so empty. I don’t ever want to be used again.”
She leans back against the edge of the bed and puts her arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “I don’t know about forever. It’s not something that concerns me. And maybe Scott and I will get married and have fifty babies and be old and wrinkled together. Or maybe we’ll crash and burn and break up, and if it happens it’ll be devastating, but what we have now makes me happy. And I can live in that happy, and feel safe there, knowing that even if things change, I’ll always have had this. You know?”
I nod my head against her shoulder, but it’s a lie. I don’t know. I wish I did.
The sky is achingly blue, the air achingly sweet, my hand achingly aching. I finish drilling the last of the stars on my section of the huge sheets of thin plywood that will be the new walls and ceiling. My stars are so accurate you could navigate a boat by them. Assuming you had a boat that needed navigating in the middle of an exhibit in a museum.
The sound of the drill whining higher and lower as Ry works on the already-marked pieces drowns out almost everything, including the laughter from the tarp by the pool where Deena, Sirus, Tyler, and Scott are painting.
I crack my neck, raising my arms straight up to ease the pain in my back from spending so many hours leaning over. It’s been nice to work outside, at least, and I’m glad that Sirus and Deena have a big enclosed patio and pool instead of a yard.
Ry is both fast and accurate, and only a few minutes after I’m done, he’s already finished with his much larger section. We walk over to the others to help there. So many things to do, still. I keep a running list in my head, going over it constantly. I will not forget anything. Everything will be perfect.
“Honestly? I don’t get it.” Scott holds up one of the plastic pieces—one of a thousand—that will go into the drilled holes to secure the tiny lights. “These are black. So why are we painting them . . . black?”
“Different shades of black. They have to be exactly the same.”
“I beg to differ on your choice of semantics.” He adds another freshly painted piece to the “done” section of the tarp. “They do not have to be exactly the same. You want them to be.”
Sirus laughs. “And what Isadora wants has to happen. You don’t know her very well, do you?”
I resist the urge to glare. I’m trying not to be angry. So I settle for sticking my tongue out at him.
Deena slaps her husband’s shoulder. “Hey, I admire a little perfectionism. I wish it would rub off on you in the area of, say, folding laundry.”
“If you admire a little perfectionism, you must full-on worship Isadora,” Scott says, “because this goes way past a little.”
This time Tyler slaps Scott’s shoulder, making his brush jump and smear black paint on his hand.
“Okay, that’s all the sitting my pregnant joints can take.” Deena pushes herself up with a groan. “I’m taking my mandatory Saturday nap.”
Sirus follows her. “Duty calls. You know what they say: the family that naps together . . . ummm . . .”
“Gets the clap together?” Scott offers.
Sirus glares. “Do I need to ban you from my innocent baby sister?”
“No, sir! I meant, uh, gets to clap together. To. Not the.”
With a stern nod, Sirus leaves. I scoot into his spot, but the work here is almost done anyway, and we can’t do anything else until these dry and we test whether it’s better to insert them and then paint the boards, or paint the boards and then insert them.
“So, are you going to school here in the fall?” Scott asks, finishing his pile, then painting a streak on Tyler’s pale-white arm. She keeps at her work, not even looking up.
“No, I already have my GED.”
“You graduated early? Or, wait, is that a normal time to graduate in Egypt?” He puts a curlicue on Tyler’s long, skinny bicep.
“I didn’t go to normal school. Homeschool, I guess, though I was mostly in charge of myself.” After I stopped wanting to learn the history of the gods, I set up my own course of study. I was quite rigid—I never wanted to be behind once I got out of my parents’ house.
“Ah. Boring! No wonder you’re willing to be friends with us. You don’t know any better.”
“I wish I’d been homeschooled,” Ry says, leaning back and stretching his face toward the sun with his eyes closed.
“Why?” Tyler keeps painting, though Scott has now started playing tic-tac-toe with messy black streaks on her bare calf.
Ry rubs the back of his neck, not looking at us. “Oh, you know. School can be . . . weird.”
“How so?” All I know about American high schools is what I’ve seen in movies, and I doubt it’s very accurate. Too many spontaneous, choreographed dances for real life. That or the American education system is seriously screwed up.
“Do you want me to finish yours?” Ry grabs for the rest of Tyler’s nearly gone pile.
“Don’t change the subject. How is it weird?”
“It’s kind of embarrassing.”
Tyler finally stops, leaning forward, the motion messing up Scott’s attempt at an x.
“You made me lose!” He paints an angry streak through the tic-tac-toe game.
“Shut up. Ry is telling an embarrassing story.”
“It’s not a big deal. There was just this girl, who got kind of . . . aggressive?”
“You got beat up by a girl?” Scott’s eyes light up with wonder and delight.
“No! She thought—do I have to tell this? We dated for a little while and then broke up, but she was really upset about it. It got so awkwa
rd I ended up eating lunch in the boys’ bathroom every day for the last two months of school to avoid her.”
“Oh, that’s so sad!” Tyler says.
“Was she ugly?” Scott asks, writing his name beneath the tic-tac-toe board.
“No, just not my type. She was pretty enough. Kinda short. Blond. Very . . . orange.”
Tyler finishes her last piece. “Fish-belly white is the new tan. But what is your type, if it isn’t short and fake-baked?”
He smiles, not looking at me in a way I swear is so deliberate it feels like he is staring right at me. He turns toward Tyler while he leans in closer to me, his shoulder almost brushing mine. “It’s a very, very specific type. And does not include the color orange.”
Scott brings his paintbrush up to Tyler’s face, tracing it along her jawline. “What’s your type, Tyler?”
“Half-Taiwanese, obnoxious, and soaking wet.” With a roar she grabs Scott under his arms, dragging him toward the pool. He stands and they wrestle back and forth until they both trip over the edge and fall in with a massive splash.
I watch them and laugh, loopy with fatigue and grateful that the tarp is far enough away from the edge that they didn’t get it wet. Tyler and Scott scream, pushing each other under the water. “We’ll have to have a pool party or something when we finish this,” I muse, mostly to myself. I want to buy strings of lanterns to give Deena and Sirus as a thank-you gift. They’d light up this area so pretty at night.
“So, we’re done here, right?” Ry asks.
I nod. “Thanks. You can go home. I’ll call you when we’re ready to paint more.”
“Who said I wanted to go home?”
I notice the twist in his smile too late. With a roar of his own, far deeper than Tyler’s, he throws me over his shoulder, runs, and leaps into the pool. I push him away, surfacing with an angry splutter as my hair funnels streams of water right into my eyes. Ry jumps up next to me, laughing as he shakes his head and sprinkles me more.
“You jackal! Why did you do that?”
He stops laughing and looks at me with utter sincerity. “You looked really hot. I thought this would help. It didn’t.”
“Ha. Ha.” I hook my foot around his ankle, yank it out from under him, and shove his head under. When I finally let him up, Scott jumps on my back, screaming, “Boys against girls!”
Tyler jumps on Scott on my back and we all go under, Scott with a death-grip on my tank top. I finally wriggle away, surfacing for air with a gasp. The last time I was stuck underwater . . . I remember. The dream. But it wasn’t a dream.
Isis had taken me to the banks of the Nile like she did most days. I was playing in the sand while she searched for whatever she needed to collect for our spells. A shadow blocked the sun and I looked up to see tall, tall Anubis.
“Hello,” he said, with his sharp teeth.
“Hi.”
“Do you know how to swim?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well then, time to learn!” He picked me up and threw me straight out into the middle of the river before I could even process what was happening.
I sank. I’d never been in the water without my mother before, and she wasn’t there, and I didn’t know what to do without her. The water was murky and stung my eyes, but I knew if I waited, my mother would come for me.
She had to. She always came for me.
And when my chest hurt so much I wanted to cry and I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, instead of inky blackness claiming me like in the dream, those hands I knew better than any others in the world grabbed me and pulled me up into the air.
It was the only time I’d ever seen my mother cry. I was upset and crying and she was, too, screaming at Anubis, who was laughing and telling her to calm down, it was all a joke.
That’s why he was banned from our house! I can’t believe I blocked that out. And I can’t believe that when I next saw him, just before coming here, he genuinely didn’t recognize me, didn’t even remember what he’d done. That’s how unimportant I am.
I wipe my eyes, stuck with so much remembering. Funny how something can trigger a dead memory. I can still taste the water, still remember the grit it left on my skin, still remember just how sure I was as I drowned that my mother would not fail me.
I can’t believe I let that nightmare replace the actual memory. My mother saved me. Of course she saved me. She would never have let something like that happen to me. She may have used me, may be replacing me now, but she took care of me.
I need to call her. I’ll call her tonight, just to see how she’s doing.
Someone laughs behind me, pulling me back into the present. I turn around to see Ry peeling off his shirt.
My traitor heart thuds. I am not thinking about the Nile, or Anubis, or calling my mother anymore. Because Ry isn’t wearing a shirt.
It’s just skin.
It’s just skin.
IT’S JUST SKIN.
I’m so busy not noticing Ry’s torso that Tyler tackles me from behind and I let myself sink to sit on the bottom. It’s quiet down here, aside from the thrashing legs of my wrestling friends. And I can see clearly, though everything is distorted. It’s nothing like the Nile. I can save myself now.
Then Ry sinks down, too, sitting next to me, his hair floating up all around his face as he smiles and winks. I can’t look away from his eyes, blue even through the pool-filtered light.
Thud goes my traitor heart.
Thud goes my brain.
Thud goes Scott, pushed down next to us as Tyler dances on his shoulders, finally breaking the spell of those ridiculous blue eyes. I surface for air.
I feel like I’m drowning again.
Chapter 11
Isis still wanted more power. She continually feared for Horus’s safety, and she envied Amun-Re his distance from the worries and strife of the other gods. And so she watched, and waited, and found the perfect method of poison delivery.
One day as Amun-Re walked the earth, a snake bit him. But it was not a snake he had created, and so he could not name it and remove the venom. Amun-Re, god of the sun, was dying.
He called on Isis, possessor of great magic and also renowned for her medicinal skills. Isis was waiting, as she had been since she put the snake in his path. She would heal Amun-Re in exchange for his true name—a name she could call on to use his power.
Amun-Re listed name after name, trying to confuse her, but she would not be deterred. And, knowing Isis, Amun-Re feared that telling her his name would be telling Horus his name as well. And, knowing Isis, Amun-Re did not doubt she would let him die.
In the end, he had no choice.
My mom would have let the sun die before she’d let Horus come to any harm. And yet I got to decorate my own tomb.
“RELAX.” RY LEANS AGAINST THE CHIPPED Formica counter, the long, lean lines of his body showing the relaxation he’d have me imitate. “We’re ahead of schedule. We can’t install the lights until the paint is completely dry on everything anyway.”
I nod, twisting our receipt between my fingers. It feels weird to be out, getting dinner instead of having Tyler or Scott drop it off for us. But Ry has a point—we have to wait. And thanks to his work the last four days, we can afford to.
That, and if I lose any more brain cells to paint fumes, I might not remember my own name.
Tyler had been very excited to get the afternoon off, and even more excited when I gave her Sirus’s tickets to the Padres game to take Scott out to. They deserve a fun evening together, and Scott’s obsessed with baseball, which Tyler inexplicably thinks is adorable. I couldn’t handle the idea of the crowds. A quiet evening with Ry was far more appealing.
Ry hands me a cup filled to the brim with Coke and ice. “You need this.”
“Floods, yes. Thank you.”
“We’re doing great.” He nudges me with his elbow, and I smile into my cup. “You’ve totally earned tonight.”
“But did we have to come here?” I’m not a snob, and
Ry has taught me that the best regional food is usually found in the sketchiest-looking places, but this run-down hole-in-the-wall Mexican eatery is not looking promising.
“Trust me. Once you’ve had carne asada fries, you will never go back. It’s like a burrito threw up on a plate of cheap french fries.”
“You do realize that’s the least appealing description of anything, ever.”
“Patience, young grasshopper. Soon you will understand.”
The girl behind the counter leans up to the open window between the cash registers and the kitchen area to grab our food. “That boy is the most beautiful man I have ever seen,” she says in low, sweet Spanish to the girl handing forward the containers.
The girl in the kitchen smiles, her dark eyes flashing. “Should I have messed up his food so he’ll have to come back to the counter?”
“Yes! I want to look at him more. Is it too late?” Her hands hover over the Styrofoam lids, like she doesn’t want to commit to handing us our completed order.
I snort into my drink, choking as the carbonation goes down wrong. If only Ry knew what they were saying. I get hit on, sure, but it’s nothing to what Ry has to deal with on a daily basis. The more I’m around him, the more I realize he wasn’t actually exaggerating.
The counter girl looks at me nervously. “Can I get you anything else?” she asks in English.
I answer in Spanish. “No, thanks, but if you want, we can sit where you can see him better.”
“Your, uh, boyfriend?”
“Oh, no. He’s a friend. But it’s okay to look at friends, right?”
She grins at me and nods. “Come back again soon,” she says, in English, with a lingering look at Ry.
He’s been staring studiously out the front window the whole time. “Hey, I forgot my notebook at the museum. Okay to eat there instead? We can have a picnic.”
“Sure.” I grab utensils and shoot an apologetic smile at the counter girl as we walk out into the warm, ocean-heavy, late-afternoon air.
“You speak Spanish?” Ry holds my door open as I climb into his truck, and he hands me the food.