“YOU’RE ALIVE!”
I whirl, mid-sentence, at Harper’s voice echoing through the alley, and half a second later she emerges into the orange light of the street lamp at a half-run.
“You stopped answering through the door and we thought you’d drowned in the urinal!” she goes on, practically falling on me to wrap me in a drunk bear hug.
“The urinal?” I ask.
“We didn’t really think that,” Victoria calls from behind her, walking like a normal person. “Obviously, we deduced that you escaped.”
“She was worried,” Harper whispers into my ear. “Though not actually about the urinal. We all know you’re much more likely to drown in a toilet, there’s more water. Or maybe the sink, though that probably depends on what kind of sink the men’s bathroom has. I wasn’t brave enough to go in there when I had to pee.”
“Can you let me go? I can’t breathe,” I whisper back.
“Sorry,” she says, and releases the hug as Margaret and Victoria walk up, and even though they’re both also drunk, they’re managing to play it cool a little better.
Sort of. All three of them are very obviously checking out my bathroom friend while trying to act like they’re not checking him out, and while I can’t blame them I’m the tiniest bit annoyed.
“Hi, guys!” I say, probably sounding a little too perky. “Check it out, I’m alive!”
“Did you go through that window?” Victoria asks, eyeing the window I just went through.
“I was getting claustrophobic, so I talked her into it,” Mysterious Handsome Stranger says.
It’s like he’s giving them permission to finally look at him, because three sets of eyes simultaneously swivel in his direction.
Harper’s the first one to find her voice.
“Well, thank you for your service, my good sir,” she says. Her voice takes on a haughty, formal tone that she only ever uses when she’s drunk and trying to hide it by sounding like she’s conversing with the Queen of England. “Clearly, Thalia here is deeply in your debt. My name is Harper, by the way, and I am her friend.”
She reaches out one hand, and Handsome Bathroom Man takes it.
“Pleasure to meet you, Thalia’s friend Harper,” he says, and in the low orange light, I can see one dimple sink halfway in a smile as Harper continues to shake his hand.
Then she clears her throat.
“And you are?” she finally asks.
Behind her, Margaret sighs.
Bathroom stranger cocks his head in my direction, eyebrows raised, teasing half-smile on his face, and looks at me.
Now they’re all looking at me: Handsome Stranger laughing, like we’ve got a secret, my friends just puzzled.
“All right,” I finally tell him. “I guess the mystery is over.”Chapter ThreeCalebThe corners of Thalia’s lips quirk, then pucker slightly, like she’s trying not to laugh and failing, and even in the ugly orange streetlight, I find it nearly impossible not to stare at that single, tiny motion.
I’m starting to wonder if there was something in the cherry coke I drank. Maybe the bartender used moonshine cherries by accident or slipped in a shot of everclear or something, anything to explain what’s happening.
Her friend tightens the handshake slightly, and I remember that there are others present.
“You could always cover your ears,” I tell Thalia. “If you like it better this way.”
“But what if you’re eaten by a giant carnivorous plant at the gardens?” she asks, her lips quirking again. Jesus. “I can’t just tell the cops that a mysterious stranger went missing near the Venus Flytraps.”
“Venus Flytraps don’t get nearly big enough to eat people,” says the white friend with sideswept dark bangs and shoulder-length hair.
“Read the room!” the black friend with a huge silver necklace hisses to her.
“But they don’t,” the first girl says defensively.
“We’re all in a great deal of suspense,” says the third friend — the blond still hanging onto my hand — in a very official tone of voice. “And this situation also seems steeped in sexual tension, which is certainly odd because Thalia’s never —”
“Just tell me your name,” Thalia interrupts her, stepping forward. “Also, Jesus, Harper, you can stop shaking his hand now, he gets it.”
Harper clears her throat, gives my hand one more jiggle, then lets go.
“Caleb,” I tell Thalia.
She laughs. I don’t know why, but she does, and I like it.
“All that for two syllables that aren’t even weird?” she says. “I thought you were going to say your name was Dinglehopper or Spacecraft or Egbert or something.”
“Spacecraft is my middle name,” I say.
“And yet, you choose to go by Caleb?”
She’s still laughing, her head slightly tilted, her hair draping over one bare shoulder, black strands against bronze skin.
“I’ve made a lot of puzzling life choices,” I tell her.
It’s true. I have a Ph.D. in mathematics. No one in their right mind goes to grad school.
“Like jumping through a bathroom window instead of waiting sensibly for rescue?”