Arya’s head snapped up, her eyes flaring as she took me in. For the first time in my life, I felt self-conscious. Up until then, I hadn’t cared about my big nose and Dumbo ears or that I had a good six or seven pounds to gain to fill into my frame.
Her parents were standing behind her, watching her play the piece. Her dad had one hand pressed against her shoulder, like he expected her to evaporate into air any moment now. I knew she couldn’t talk to me, so I ignored her, smearing the bubble gum I had stepped in across their floor. Mom and I stood like unattended grocery bags at the entrance, Mom kneading her blue apron nervously as she waited for Arya to finish the piece.
When Arya was done, Mom stepped forward. Her smile looked painful. I wanted to scrub it off her face with one of her bleach-fumed cleaning cloths.
“Mr. Roth, Mrs. Roth, this is my son, Nicholai.”
Beatrice and Conrad Roth stirred toward me like evil twins in a horror flick. Conrad had the dead, beady eyes of a shark, trimmed silver hair, and a suit that reeked of money. Beatrice was a model trophy wife, with a blown-out blonde mane, enough makeup to sculpt a three-tier wedding cake, and that vacant gaze of a woman who’d married herself into a corner. I saw the same look on mobsters’ wives in Hunts Point. The ones who realized money had a price.
“How darling you are,” Beatrice said crisply, but when I reached for a handshake, she patted my wrist down. “Lovely boy you have, Ruslana. Tall and blue eyed. Why, I would never.”
Conrad glanced at me for a fraction of a second before turning to face Mom. He looked ready to burst with anger. Like my existence was an inconvenience. “Remember what we discussed, Ruslana. Keep him away from Ari.”
A boulder the size of New Jersey settled in my stomach. I was right freaking there.
“Absolutely.” Mom nodded obediently, and I hated her in that moment. More than I hated Conrad, I think. “Nicholai will not leave my sight, sir.”
Behind them, Arya rolled her eyes and pantomimed aiming a gun at her temple. When she fake-shot herself, her head jerked violently. Any concern I had of her forgetting about our alliance evaporated immediately.
I bit down a grin.
Hope was a drug, I realized.
And Arya had just given me my first, free-sample hit.
Mom didn’t enforce the stay-the-heck-away-from-Arya rule. She had too much on her plate to give a crap. Instead, she warned me that if I ever touched Arya, I would be dead to her.
“If you think I’ll let you ruin this for me, you’re wrong. One strike and you’re out, Nicholai.”
Despite that, the summer Arya and I were thirteen was by far the best of my life.
Conrad was a hotshot Wall Street wolf who ran a hedge fund company. Arya tried to explain to me what a hedge fund was. It sounded dangerously close to gambling, so of course I made a mental note to check it out when I grew up. Conrad worked crazy hours. We rarely saw him. And between her weekend-long shopping sprees in Europe and country-club luncheons, Beatrice seemed more like a flighty older sister than her mother. Quickly, Arya and I settled into a routine. We went to the building’s indoor pool every morning and raced laps (I won), then lay on Arya’s balcony to dry off, faces tilted up to the sky, the chlorine and sun bleaching the tips of our hair, competing over who’d get more freckled (she won).
We also read. A lot.
Hours spent every day tucked under the big oak desk in her family’s library, sucking on boba slushies, toe fighting with our legs stretched across the Persian carpet.
That summer, we read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Treasure Island, The Outsiders, and all the Goosebumps books. We devoured thick spy novels, trudged through history volumes, and even blushed over a couple of kissing books that made us declare in unison that touching someone else that way was super gross.
Though to be honest, the more time passed, the more the idea of touching Arya like that didn’t seem gross at all. Maybe even the opposite of gross. But of course, I wasn’t dumb enough to let myself think about it.
Our friendship didn’t go completely unnoticed. Conrad did walk in on us a few times while we were reading or watching a movie. But I think what was obvious to me from the beginning trickled into his conscious too. That Arya was way out of my league. That her beauty, strength, and sophistication terrified me, and that I could barely look at her straight on. She was in no danger of being corrupted.
“He wouldn’t know what to do with an opportunity even if your daughter would present him with one,” I once heard Arya’s mother say, letting out an impatient huff, when she thought Mom and I had already left for the day. It was one of the rare times she was at home. I found it interesting Beatrice knew what Arya would and wouldn’t offer me, seeing as she hadn’t exchanged one word with her daughter all summer.