Royce Rolls Read online

  “I gotta go,” Bent whispered to her brother, trying to keep her head lower than her toasting sister’s sight line.

  Bach looked at her like she was as crazy as she felt. “Go? Has it been forty minutes? We don’t get to go—do we?”

  “Something came up, and I have to meet a friend. It’s important.” She clapped her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Keep your eye on Mercedes.” She grabbed her bag and slipped past him.

  Hurrying away, Bent felt sick with regret, and not the kind you get from too much fried chicken.70 She had made a mistake. She had messed with her sister’s heart and mind and now she needed to make things right.

  She needed a new plan.

  One service elevator, one kitchen hallway, and one loading dock later, she was on her way.

  Bentley was still wearing her salmon party tunic when she climbed out of her Uber on Santa Monica and Seventh, at the Santa Monica Library.

  It had begun to rain, so she pulled off her twelve-hundred-dollar shoes (free to her; at least her feet were sample size!) and took the slick concrete stairs of the library so slowly, they might as well have been wet cement.

  Robert at the Help Desk offered her a mini water bottle.71 She declined. Ivy in the Teen Section pointed out a poster for Movie Night. She kept walking. Librarian Josh waved. She ignored him.

  Instead, she headed straight to the nearest empty monitor and flung herself into the chair in front of it. This wasn’t Wednesday, and it wasn’t five P.M., and she didn’t know if any of the regulars would be there, but she didn’t know how else to find them.

  And she had to. She had to talk to someone.

  No.

  Not someone—one person.

  Him.

  It was only five minutes until Venice rolled his chair up next to her. “What’s going on, Sweet B? How’s it hanging? You look—ruffled.”

  “Do you mean my clothes or my mood?”

  “Both, kind of. Now that you mention it.” He shook his head admiringly at the dress. “Those are some killer threads, though. You’re . . . really . . . clean.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I guess I am.”

  “I’ve never seen you in here on the weekend,” Venice said.

  “What, do you live here?”

  “I get around.” He shrugged. “So? Lay it on me.”

  “Lay what on you? It’s—it’s nothing.”

  Venice shot her a look, then rolled his chair closer to hers, pushing back his damp hoodie a few inches. Brown curls came springing out.

  He reached for one of her hands, then the other. His fingers were as warm as she remembered, and she exhaled.

  Slowly, he leaned forward, until his forehead was almost touching hers. She could smell the ocean in his hair, like always.

  When he spoke, his voice was low. “Baby B, you’re wearing a party dress, you came running up the stairs in no shoes, and you don’t even have your zombie book, okay? Whatever’s going on, you didn’t come here because it was nothing. You came here looking for me. So start talking.”

  She closed her eyes and let her forehead touch his. “I don’t know how.” Now she could feel his hair curling against her cheek.

  “I’ve heard you talk, B.” His arms came up around her shoulders, and Josh coughed in the background. Still, Venice didn’t move. “I know you can do that.”

  Bent’s heart was beating so loudly, she imagined he could hear it. She took a deep, steadying breath.

  “I don’t know how to say the things that matter, Venice.”

  I don’t know how to say the things that are true, because no one I know wants to hear them. And it’s been like this for so long, I can’t remember a time when I did.

  His words were so quiet now, they were practically a whisper. “Try. I think you can. I think you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know you could trust me.”

  I know, she thought. I don’t even know why I know that, and yet I still do. How crazy is that? Crazier than Porsche Royce falling in love with a TryCycle instructor? Who am I to talk?

  Slowly, gently, Venice pulled his head back from hers, until she could see the blue-blue of his eyes. “I’m here for you, B. What did you come all this way in the rain to tell me?”

  All this way.

  She nodded, but the words caught in her mind.

  All this way.

  She pushed her chair backward, opening up the space between them. “How do you know how far I’ve come?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “All this way. What way? Where did I come from?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just an expression.”

  “Venice. Don’t tell me to be honest with you and then lie to me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can tell me.” Venice pulled his hood back with one hand, exasperated. “This is about the guy, right?” he said. “Your sister’s hitch? Whitehead? Whitesnake?”

  “You know about him? Whitey?” Bentley’s eyes went wide. “You know about me?” She stood up, grabbing her bag.

  “Bentley—” He stood up too.

  “I trusted you. I thought we were friends. I thought this was real.”

  He looked frustrated. “It was. It is.”

  She kept her bag between them. “One real thing. Do you understand what that means to a person like me? Do you know how important this was to me? How important you were?”

  “Voices,” Librarian Josh said from the reference desk.

  Venice whispered. “Yes, I do.”

  “But you’re a liar,” she hissed back, still stunned.

  “Am I?” Venice looked frustrated. “Have you been a hundred percent honest with me?”

  Bentley stared at him. She knew it was over. She knew she already should have gone down the stairs. There would be nothing to salvage here. There never was.

  “Would you give me a chance to explain?” Venice whispered, tilting his head toward the reference room. “Come on.”

  Bentley followed him into the room. Josh stood behind the reference desk, watching with interest as they slipped past him and locked the glass door.

  Josh knocked on it. “You can’t do that.”

  “Five minutes,” Venice said.

  Josh gave up, pointing at his watch. Five minutes. He walked away in a huff.

  Venice sat down at the small table in the center of the stacks and pulled out the chair next to him. “Time out. We have to talk.”

  Bent sat down.

  She stared at him in disbelief. “You know everything? You know about the show too?”

  He sighed. “Yeah, okay. I should have said something.” There was a pained expression on his face now—not just embarrassed, but guilty. “Nobody here knows. Josh and the other regulars, they don’t have a clue.”

  “How did you figure it out?”

  “It was a newspaper kiosk, right outside the front door. There was a big headline, with your face on it, one day. It said ‘Why, Bentley, Why?’ And I thought, I have no idea who this Bentley is, but it must suck to have strangers talk like they know you. And when you walked over to the table and sat down that day, I knew right away it was you.”

  “Wow,” Bentley said. “And I thought I was playing it so cool.”

  “Come on, B. Even your raggiest clothes cost a hundred times more than a piece of that cake you like so much.”

  She knew he was right, but it didn’t make her feel any less betrayed. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Are you kidding? You would have bolted. At least, I would have, if I were you. And I used to be like you, you know? The big house. The fast cars. The pretty people.”

  She nodded. “I figured you had a story. You and your boats and your Latin and your operas.”

  Venice looked surprised. Then he drew in a breath. “Yeah, well, I did. Have a story. I mean, I do. A big one.”

  “And?” She looked at him expectantly. “Come on, it’s only fair. You and the rest of the world watch my whole life story on the news every day. I should get t
o know at least the Twitter version of yours.”

  He shrugged. “The Twitter version is, my brain sucks. It fell through a wormhole, kind of. That’s how I tried to explain it to my dad, anyways. Before I left.”

  “Yeah?” She was careful not to press him. For a year, he’d been as guarded about his life as she was about hers. She didn’t imagine this conversation was any easier for him than it was for her.

  “Oh yeah,” Venice said. “My brain just sort of freaked out. Big-time. Started playing tricks on me.”

  “What tricks?”

  He looked at her. “At first everything looked all wrong, and then it felt all wrong, and then it was all wrong. By the time I came out the other side—”

  She smiled. “Of the wormhole?”

  He nodded. “That’s right, the wormhole. By then, I figured out that I was on my own. Because no matter where I went, that’s how I felt. I was alonenotalone.” He said it like it was one long word. “See?”

  “Not really. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  Venice closed his eyes, trying to piece it together. “I’d walk down the street, and it was like everyone I saw, they were all together, they were part of one big thing, the same thing, or something.”

  “And you weren’t?” Bentley asked quietly.

  His voice was soft now. “And I wasn’t. I couldn’t feel what they felt. The together thing.”

  “Ah,” said Bent. “That thing.” Strangely enough, she knew almost exactly what he was talking about.

  He opened his eyes. “I’ve never known what that feels like. And the only thing I could feel was that, the feeling of not feeling it. The feeling that I wasn’t one of anything.”

  “Which didn’t help, I’m guessing.” Because it doesn’t.

  “Of course not. So I just kind of gave up. I stopped fighting it. I knew I was alonenotalone because I lived on the other side of the wormhole, the wrong side for everyone else. The alonenotalone side. I accepted that. Even with my friends, even with my family. I just gave up.” He shrugged again. “Probably sounds strange.”

  “Not entirely.”

  He slid his hand closer to hers, until their pinkies were almost touching.

  “Sweet B, that’s a bad place to be. Take it from me. You end up in a place like that and you start convincing yourself it’s better to be plain old alone. You tell yourself that at least actually being alone is real, you know? At least you’re not imagining it’s any different.”

  “I guess not,” Bent said.

  “But it’s not true. You can’t figure everything out all by yourself. Sometimes all you can do is all you can do. Sometimes, you gotta let people help you.”

  He reached for her hand, and she let him take it.

  It was still Venice’s hand—no matter how annoyed she was at him—and she still felt better holding it.

  “You think so?” she asked.

  He smiled at her. “Yep. Even when your sister’s marrying a punk or your brother is running a poker game. Even when you’re stuck on some crappy television show that makes you out to be someone you’re not. Even when your mom is scary as . . . well, scary.”

  Bentley looked at him for a long moment, then squeezed his hand. “I guess I should have known you’d recognize me sooner or later. It’s your crazy memory thing. The way you see every single detail of every little thing.”

  He laughed. “That. And also, because of your crazy face thing.”

  “My what?”

  Venice was still grinning. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I seriously don’t.”

  He shook his head. “Do I really have to spell it out for you?”

  “Yeah. You actually kind of do, I guess.”

  “Because, Bentley. Because you have the most unforgettable face on the planet, and not just because it’s in the news. Because you’re the single most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life, inside and out. Because you’d be friends with a guy who wears the same hoodie every day for a year. And a table full of homeless dudes. And a librarian with a stick up his butt.”

  “You’re delusional,” Bent said, but she found her face turning hot and red, all the same.

  “I’m not. And I never was. Not even when we were pretending, all that time. I know I should have said something, but I was scared. I was being selfish. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for you to be yourself around people, and I didn’t want to ruin what we had.”

  Bentley smiled. “Have,” she said. “I’m pretty sure we still have it. You didn’t ruin anything. You probably couldn’t, even if you tried.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” He ran his hand through his tangle of curls. “Here’s the thing. You can’t play their game, Sweet B. They don’t care about you. You have to find the people who do, and stick with them. They’re your team. No. Not team.” He searched for the word. “Tribe. They’re your tribe.”

  Bent looked at him doubtfully. “What if I don’t have a tribe?”

  “You do, Sweet B. You have a whole library full of them. Just like you have me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because, B, I have you.”

  Venice reached into the pocket of his ragged hoodie and pulled out a crisp white envelope. “Don’t open it now. It’s for later. Something you might find interesting, that’s all. If you need it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You ask too many questions, you know that?”

  His eyes were bright and blue, she noticed. The light almost seemed to come out of them, even in the fluorescent-lit glass cube of the reference room.

  “Fine.” Bent smiled and reached for the envelope—and he caught her by the hand again.

  “Not so fast, B.” He shook his head.

  “What is it, Venice?”

  “You gotta do one thing for me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Start talking.”

  “Venice—”

  “You gotta talk to someone. A person can’t survive on their own for that long. Not even when they’re alonenotalone. Not even when they’re stuck on our side of the wormhole.”

  She locked her fingers in his. “I can’t. Everything’s wrong. My brother—”

  “The card shark.” He nodded.

  She sighed. “The card shark is out of control.”

  “That’s not good,” Venice said.

  “And my mother is either pretending to be a mother for the first time in her life or having actual feelings—I don’t know which of those things is scarier.”

  He winced. “I’d say they’re both terrifying.”

  “Then my sister is in love with her fake fiancé.”

  “Okay, that sucks.”

  She nodded. “I don’t know how to fix any of it, and I don’t even know how to talk about it.” It was true. Not Bach, not her family, not even Dr. A. knew the kinds of things she was keeping to herself now.

  Venice smoothed back a strand of her rainbow-tipped hair. “But this isn’t the zombie apocalypse. Like I said, you can trust me, B. You want to know how you can tell?”

  “How, Venice?”

  “Because you already do.”

  And as Bent looked at him, the guy in the ratty hoodie, the one she’d only ever hung out with at the computer table in the public library with their homeless crew, she knew he was right.

  She could tell him anything. Probably everything.

  And so she did.

  * * *

  69 Mercedes Royce has asked that we delete this detail from the manuscript. “That little . . .” Pls. revise. —D

  70 Tough call, Jeff notes. A chicken binge could be pretty regrettable. —D

  71 Per JG: IQH2O water? Or similar. Check with sponsors! —D

  Sixteen

  NOTHING’S FREE

  March 2018

  Rampart Division, LAPD

  (110 North to West Sixth Street, DTLA)

  The Monday after Porsche’s pinksplosion of a bridal shower—not to mention a
different kind of fireworks at the library with Venice—Bentley was faced with an even bigger blowup.

  As Bent and Bach walked into the front hall of school, they saw some kind of police officer—maybe a detective, the kind who wears a cheap suit and a badge, rather than a uniform—standing idly by the Mulholland Hall head master’s office.72

  He was tall and serious-looking, with a leathery, lined face, like someone who spent all his time outside.

  “Wow,” Bent said.

  “I know. That’s a first.” Bach looked spooked.

  “A bust at Mulholland Hall. Kids today,” Bent said lightly.

  Bach moved next to the crowd that was rapidly forming around the cop; Bent followed. “Cheating? Or drugs?” She stopped to ask the nearest Mulholland-holic, Brynn Meyers, from her English class.

  “Nobody knows,” Brynn said. “The kid’s in Cumming’s office getting busted now. It’s, like, the biggest deal ever. He’ll probably get expelled. His life is over.”

  Bach was ahead of Bent, and she was looking at him the moment his face went dark. By the time Bent pushed through the crowd to catch up with him, she saw why.

  Through the glass pane of the closed door to Cumming’s office, she could see one face. It wasn’t a pleasant one, and it wasn’t one that meant anything good for her brother.

  It was the face of Jake Morgan, who was almost as bad at cheating as he was at poker, and who was even worse at keeping his mouth shut. The same Jake Morgan who had been playing at her brother’s regular poker games all year.

  Bach stared. “I’m getting busted, Bent.”

  She tried to stay positive. “You don’t know that. It’s probably nothing. Maybe he cheated on something. Again.”

  Bach shook his head. “The cops wouldn’t be here for cheating. Everybody cheats. They’d have to arrest the entire school.”

  “So he’s getting busted for something else. This isn’t on you.”

  “Unless maybe he’s not getting busted at all,” Bach said quietly, his eyes still on Jake. “Maybe he’s in there talking his head off. Maybe he’s a really sore loser—sore enough to rat out the rest of his game.”