Betting Blind (20 page)

Seattle Center was packed. The concession stand lines were twenty, thirty deep; little kids were screaming and running everywhere, and the folding chairs set out for the concert were already filled. A few of the musicians were onstage, tuning their instruments.

There were still twenty minutes left until the concert. My heart was banging in my chest, and I was sweating. Where was Irina? Backstage? I needed her
now
.

I pushed aside the curtain and went in. It was insane, with a skinny Asian guy yelling at everybody, none of them listening, paper music rustling, and everyone talking at the same time.

I felt sick.
What if she isn’t here?

Then I saw her in the back, rubbing her bow on that little block like pool players use.

She looked up and caught her breath. Then she put down her bow and practically ran over. “You were supposed to meet me by the restrooms at intermission!” she whispered. “What are you doing back here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“My dad is here! He knows all these people!”

“Irina, please. I need to talk to you.”

She gave me a strange look. “Are you okay? No, never mind.Meet me in a minute by the water fountain. It’s in the hall by the restrooms. Can you
go
, please?”

I left and went straight to the fountain. It was quiet back there, a long, empty hall of closed doors. I leaned against one of them and closed my eyes. I was getting an idea. It was a crazy idea, but it was running through me like fire.

A second later, Irina slipped into the hall, looking nervous. She pulled me into the family bathroom, turned the lock, and the light hummed on. It smelled like air freshener, and someone had left the changing table down. It seemed crazy to be standing there with Irina next to a changing table. I gave a laugh that sounded weird to my own ears, sharp and edgy.

Irina hugged me. Just feeling her in my arms made me breathe slower. She said into my shoulder, “Gabe, what’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you later.” I pulled back so I could look into her eyes. “Run away with me.” Damn. I hadn’t meant to say it so fast.

“What?”

I had to sound calm; I couldn’t scare her off. “Something went down. I can’t tell you about it right now, but I’m leaving. Remember how we talked about going to Vegas?”

Her brown eyes were huge. “Gabe, you know I can’t do that. What happened?”

“I can’t tell you right now. I’ll explain later. But don’t worry, it doesn’t involve the police.”

She stepped back and searched my face. “That’s crazy. You can’t ask me to run away.”

“Just for a few days,” I said, even though I wanted more, way more—I wanted her to run away with me for real. “I have money. I’ll keep you safe, we’ll just go have fun, I have that ID for you . . .” I tried to slow down. I
was
starting to sound crazy. But I needed her to say yes; I needed to know that there was one woman who had my back, who would take risks for me and be there when I needed her, no matter what.

“Just for a little while,” I said again, forcing myself to talk slow. “Please.”

She looked really worried. “You’re not thinking straight right now.”

I took her hands. “I am thinking straight. And I want to have this time where it’s just us, doing what we want. Nobody’s going to give it to us. We have to take it.”

She gave a half smile. “No, they’re not going to give it to us.”

“You were talking about staying at my house, remember? How is this different?”

She didn’t answer.

“You’re too perfect. All you do is work. You need to
live
.” I pulled her closer and said in a low voice, “I want to be with you. I know we’re not going to have sex, that’s not what I mean. I’m saying we have something real. You know we do. I never felt like this about a girl before.” When the words left my mouth, I knew I meant them.

Her hands tightened around my back, and she looked into my eyes. “Why can’t you tell me what happened?”

“I will. It’s about my family. It’s not a law thing, I swear. I just—I can’t.”

“You’re not ready to talk about it.”

“Yeah.”

There was a silence. Then she said, “My parents would kill me.”

I felt a burst of hope. “What can they do? You’re almost old enough to vote. I think you can decide if you want to go away for a couple days.” Suddenly I got an idea. I dug in my pocket and pulled out a quarter. “Heads or tails?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m not betting about this.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t bet about this kind of thing!”

I just looked at her, holding the quarter in my open hand.

She frowned. Her face was hard to read, but she had that fierce look she got sometimes. “Heads,” she whispered.

I threw the coin in the air, caught it, slapped it down on my arm. Heads. We looked at each other.

“I had already decided to come,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “Just two days, okay?”

I felt weak suddenly, and I almost leaned on the changing table. “Okay.”

“Wait for me in the parking lot at intermission. You know the one behind Key Arena?”

“I’ll go out there now,” I said. “Come when you can.”

“This is insane,” she said.

I thought I should kiss her, but then I decided,
No, get out before she changes her mind.
There would be time for kissing later.

As I jogged toward the lot, I replayed her voice.
I had already decided to come.
Hell yeah. She was crazy, a real head case—my perfect match.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

W
e drove with all the windows down, and Irina held her hair to the side with one hand and kept her other hand on my leg. We ate up the 90, blasting Tribe, and with every mile that we got farther away from Seattle, I felt Phil and school and the whole mess washing off me. We didn’t talk much; I knew Irina was waiting for me to tell her what happened. But I wasn’t ready.

Pretty soon it was night, and I focused only on the headlights rolling past, and the road disappearing under us, and the weight of Irina’s hand on my leg. I couldn’t believe she’d said yes. She had showed up when I needed her. That was so big, I almost couldn’t deal with it.

Around Ellensburg, Irina used my phone to send an e-mail to her parents. I don’t know what she wrote, except one time she looked up and said, “We’re getting home on Saturday, right?”

I said, “Whenever you want,” and she went back to writing.

When we hit Yakima city limits, Irina finally asked, “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

I tried to think how to explain in the fewest words possible. “My mom’s boyfriend is moving in.”

“Is he . . . ?” You could tell she didn’t know how to ask. “Does he hit her or something?”

“No, he’s married.”

Irina was quiet for a minute. “Well, if he’s moving in with your mom, he must be getting a divorce. Right?”

“Probably.” I had to force myself to say more, because Irina deserved it. “My mom always gets mixed up with losers. This guy is a complete asshole. He’ll cheat on her. He probably already has.”

Irina said softly, “And you’re mad that he’s moving in, so you’re running away?”

“Sort of. Neither of them gives a shit where I go, so it’s not really running away. But yeah, I need a break.”

“What about when we get home? Will you be able to live with him?”

I was quiet, because I was never going home. Maybe I would just buy Irina a plane ticket from Vegas to Seattle, and never set foot in Washington again. But if I told her that, she’d probably want me to turn around right there. Or she’d ask how I was planning to finish school, and I wasn’t ready to answer that.

“Gabe?”

“I’ll figure it out later. I just need to get away for now.”

“I feel like you’re not telling me everything,” Irina said quietly. “This guy must be really horrible for you to leave like this.”

I reached across the gearshift and squeezed her hand. “It’s a bad situation. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I want to go to Vegas and have fun.”

She tipped her head back, and I could see her white teeth as she smiled in the darkness. “I don’t really know how to have fun. You’ll have to show me.”

“Oh, I will.” I drove faster.

By four a.m., Irina had fallen asleep. I put up the windows and spread my jacket over her. She was breathing deep enough that it was almost a snore. I wondered how it would be to have a wife and see her every night like this, slobber coming out her mouth, snoring, makeup streaked on her face, but even more beautiful because she was mine.

I pulled into a gas station and got a couple Red Bulls. I had an idea that we would make a straight shot to Vegas, so when Irina woke up, we’d be there with all the lights around us, driving down the Strip, like she was waking up in a dream.

As we crossed the border into Idaho, streaks of purple lit up the horizon, and the outlines of trees started to show. Then it turned the corner into morning. Washington wasn’t short on pretty, but Idaho was big and fierce, flexing its mountains like muscles, with trees like teeth in the sky. We drove past Mountain Home and Grand View, and I started to think about stopping right there and taking Irina up into the woods to explore. I mean, the mountains make you a little crazy like that.

We kept going through Bliss and Wendell and Jerome, and in Twin Falls we got on the 93, heading straight south. Driving for so long made me think too much. I was tired, so my head was just running through the same depressing crap:
Nowhere to go. No future. Dropout. Can’t even go home.
I wanted to get to Vegas already and blow the thoughts apart with some drinks and games.

Irina finally woke up around ten. Girls are so pretty when they wake up. She stretched like a cat, rubbed her eyes, and said, “Where are we?”

I showed her on my phone, and she couldn’t believe we’d come so far. She looked at the empty Red Bull cans in the drink holders, and said, “You must be tired.” I didn’t say no, because I was starting to see floating dots that I couldn’t get rid of no matter how much I rubbed my eyes.

“Let me drive.”

I shook my head. “I got it.”

“Don’t be stubborn. You sleep and I’ll drive, and when we get to Vegas, we’ll both have energy.” She squinted at my phone. “We have
hundreds
of miles to go.”

I didn’t fight, because I thought I might start hallucinating if I kept going much longer. We took a rest stop, and I switched places with her and let the seat back. “Be careful. The brakes are sensitive.”

She smiled. “I’ll take good care of your baby.” She turned to a classical station, and I’ll say one thing for that music: it puts you to sleep.

When I woke up, “Nowhere” was a place, and it was flat and brown, with scrubby plants and rocks and cactuses and short, spiny trees. The highway didn’t seem like it belonged in this place; nothing belonged but coyotes and snakes and maybe outlaws, if they still existed. Off in the distance were red hills with stripes of white and brown and yellow. It was the hardest, emptiest place I had ever seen, and I thought it was even more beautiful than the mountains.

I shielded my eyes. The sun was bouncing off everything in bright flashes. “Are we in Nevada?”

“Yes.” Irina sounded proud to have driven all that way. “We’re getting close to Ely.”

I looked at the clock: Four! We’d been driving—and I’d been sleeping—all day. I straightened in my seat, felt my body waking up. Now that I had some rest, my problems seemed smaller. In my new car, in the middle of the desert with a beautiful girl, going to Vegas! This was how life should be. I rolled down the window, and the air poured in, cool and spicy smelling.

Suddenly I couldn’t wait a second longer to kiss Irina.

“Let’s stop and walk,” I said. “My legs are killing me.”

“Good idea.” She pulled onto the shoulder, which was nothing but a stretch of red dirt. We got out, and the wind blew more energy into me. It whipped Irina’s hair like a flag, and we held hands and walked into the nothingness. Irina was smiling huge. The ground was covered with rocks, sand, and scrawny plants. Big boulders stuck up here and there, streaked with sparkles.

“It feels so good to move!” Irina stretched out her arms.