Out of town. Will return it when I get back.
Pressing Send, I turn it off and stuff it back into my bag.
“What are you doing?” Rea cracks an eye open.
“Invading some chick’s privacy.”
“Hmm, cool.” He’s still half asleep. Otherwise the no-fun police would be all over me.
“Alice text?” I ask because it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Rea is going off the rails without her.
“Nah,” he returns, his tone a major downer.
“Should’ve taken my advice, bro. Bailey’s a cool chick.”
I tried to gently shove him in the right direction a few weeks ago––he’s got it bad for a girl he’s become good friends with, a cool girl too, a film major––but some dudes need to overthink everything and Reagan is one of those types.
He looks away for a beat, pensive. “You think I messed it up beyond repair?”
“No. Only thing beyond repair is death.”
My chest gets tight. Rea nods, as lost in his thoughts as I am in mine.
“What’s that?” Eyes cast down, he’s squinting at the phone in my open backpack.
“A phone.”
“No shit, genius. Whose phone? Last time I checked yours didn’t have a case with cartoon dogs on it.”
“Some chick’s. She dropped it in class.” I can’t tell him I think it may belong to Bailey’s friend. The no-fun police won’t allow it. He’d get in a huff and insist I return it tonight and that is not happening.
“So why do you still have it?”
“Because I’m strangely attracted to her and need to learn everything about her before I return it.”
“Stop fucking around. Why do you still have it?”
Nobody wants to hear the truth. Even when it hides in plain sight.
I shrug. “Haven’t gotten around to returning it. I’ve been busy.”
Satisfied with my answer, he fluffs his pillow, his head goes back down, and his eyes fall shut. They suddenly slam open again and he stares at me pointedly. Then his gaze shuttles to the row in front of us.
“I heard you talking shit with Q,” he says in the lowest possible volume. “His mother went to jail for soliciting.”
Fuuuck. I’m an asshole but not that big of one.
“I didn’t know,” I murmur back.
Rea shakes his head. It goes back down on the pillow and his eyes close again.
The pressure is back. I’m crawling out of my skin. No way am I getting any sleep now. I’m too restless, too messed up. I pull the phone with the cartoon dogs case out of my bag, dim the screen, and start flipping through it.
Punching the Photos icon, I watch as a bunch of memes and dog pictures populate the screen. Then I see it and the world comes to a screeching halt.
It’s a selfie taken in a full-length mirror…of a girl in a Cat Woman costume.
Kitten.
Chapter Five
Dora
“When did we get old enough to have a twenty-one year old?” my dad, Evan, muses out loud while he plays with my ponytail.
There’s more silver threaded through his sandy blond hair than there was last time I saw them. I tend to forget that time doesn’t stand still for them either.
“Not for another week––don’t rush it,” my other dad, Jay, remarks from across the table, his ginormous body barely fitting in the booth. He tugs on the collar of his navy polo shirt and glances around like he’s casing the joint.
My dad, Jay, is the Bureau Chief for the Southern California branch of the DEA and my other dad, Evan, is a high school art teacher. Which means I know everything there is to know about how to avoid getting caught committing a crime, and the difference between Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. Basically if you need to start a cartel or buy a really expensive piece of modern art, I’m your girl.
And yes, I have two dads. For the sake of clarity, I’ll refer to them by their first names, Jay and Evan. To me, they’re Dad and Daddy.
With the exception of this small difference, my family is embarrassingly mainstream. So mainstream my parents both drive Subarus and we have an honest to goodness white picket fence around our house in Del Mar. Up until this summer, before Iggy passed, we even had a Labradoodle. Like I said––mainstream.
“Thanks for the s-surprise, but why today?” Even though I’m always happy to see them, this unexpected visit on a Saturday morning strikes me as a bit suspicious.
“Have to travel to Washington next week,” the Chief explains.
“Did you find your phone yet?” my dad, Evan, asks.
“Not yet. But the guy who found it said he was out of town so…”
It’s been a week and I’m starting to get a little nervous that my mystery person, the one who found it, is playing me. I’m purely speculating it’s a guy by the tone of the text.
He frowns. “Let us know.”
“I think I can get you a new one off my plan. I don’t want you going anywhere without one,” says the Bureau Chief of my personal safety.