Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

Still, it’s hard to pull up my fucking big girl panties and put all this Jay and dreams and demon shit behind me and pretend to be a normal girl. In fact, the last few days I’ve started to realize that the normal I’ve always wanted to be will now never be reached. It was always in my grasp . . . but it’s just smoke in my hand.

Silence falls between Jay and I as I get dragged into the depths of my head. He’s watching me, waiting for me to say something else, or maybe he’s not waiting at all. Maybe he’s trying to figure me out, to piece together the “me” he knows in my dreams with the me he sees before him. Maybe he’s just observing with tepid interest, like the way we watch animals in a zoo. We watch them because of how alike us – and unlike us – they are.

“Are you going?” he finally asks.

I sigh and slide the phone onto the table. “Yeah. I should. Get out of the house. Pretend the big bad wolf isn’t at my door.” My eyes flit to his and he stares back at me openly. “I’d invite you but . . .”

He shakes his head quickly, raising his palm to stop me from going on. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sure the Knightlys have some chore they want me to do. Or Jacob does.”

“So how does it work there? I mean, why are the Knightly’s letting you and Jacob stay there? Did they just move there for me?”

“It’s complicated,” Jay says, slowly walking over to my door. “As most things are.” He opens the door and gives me one last steady look, a gaze that seems to tip the room over, leaving me untethered, ready to fall. “Take care of yourself, Ada. I’ll see you later.”

Then he’s out of my room, closing the door behind him, and the room returns to a dusty chill, like he was never here at all.

***

“Hello stranger,” Amy says to me as I climb into the passenger side of Smartie. I breathe in her lavender air freshener that hangs from the rear-view mirror and immediately relax at the sense of normalcy it brings me. All lies, but I buy into it.

I give her an apologetic grimace. “Sorry I kind of dropped the ball on all of this.”

She gives a little shrug and clucks her tongue as she does a U-turn in the middle of the street, eying the Knightlys’ house as we go past. “You’re excused.” Then she gives me a sassy smile. “I mean, if I had a giant hunk of man meat living next door to me, I think I’d be a little distracted too. Don’t tell Tom I said that.”

I sigh. “It’s not like that,” I tell her and it’s the truth. “He’s just a friend.” Mmmm. Okay, maybe that part is a stretch.

“Sure, sure,” she says, tapping her fingers along the wheel to the beat of an obnoxious pop song. For once, though, I let it play, hoping the auto-tuned songstress can trick my mind into thinking everything is okay and life is as fun as it is in her song.

And it kind of works. As we drive into the city, Amy launches into the latest fight that she and Tom had, then starts going on about a show she started watching and before I know it I’ve completely forgotten about this morning, last night, the last few days. To escape, even for a car ride, is amazing.

It isn’t until we find parking and start the long walk to the concert, following hordes of music-lovers drinking beers out of paper bags, wearing large sunglasses and laughing loudly, that Amy turns the subject back to Jay.

“So how come you never mentioned him to me before?” she asks as we turn the corner past where the 24 Hour Church of Elvis used to be. In the distance, across the river, dark clouds are building up ominously. Even though the air is hot and muggy, I get a slight chill at the mention of his name. Or maybe it’s a thrill. It’s hard to tell these days.

“I honestly only just met him,” I tell her. “We went out for coffee, that’s all.”

“How old is he, twenty-five? Thirty? Like, a lot older than us, I know at least that much.”

I give her a wry look. “Then it’s a good thing he’s just a neighbor, isn’t it?”

She grins at me, the sparkles in her lip gloss catching the afternoon light. “You know, Ada, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you hooked up with someone. Even someone older. You’re eighteen, totally legal and shit. Why not hit that? Seriously, why not have a fling with someone, anyone?”

I roll my eyes, even though her remarks make me uncomfortable, just reminding me of things I don’t have. “No one interests me.” It’s something I’ve said again and again.