Paula Stokes - The Art of Lainey

“Should I be offended you brought a book on our fake date?” He sounds amused.

For some reason, I don’t want to tell him the truth. Probably because I don’t feel like being made fun of at the moment. “I’m just getting a head start on our summer reading list.”

The music switches to something dark and slow that matches my mood. The song is an instrumental, with piano and violin layered on top of the rock guitars and bass. Something about it makes my heart beat funny. Tears form out of nowhere, hot behind my eyes. I turn my head completely to the window, swallowing hard to dissolve the lump in my throat.

Micah switches lanes and breaks gently as he prepares to exit onto a different highway. “Is it a sad book?”

He looks over at me again. There’s something different about his voice. It’s so gentle, so smooth, like rain falling against stained-glass windows. The image freaks me out. This music is apparently making me crazy.

“I’m just thinking about something,” I reply.

Now he’s got both eyes back on the road. “I thought maybe you were going to start crying on me.”

“Don’t worry.” I try to infuse my voice with sarcasm. “The last thing I plan to do is break down on our fake date. I am all business.” The dreamy instrumental song ends and something more upbeat comes on. It’s got a catchy hook but the guitars are a little shrieky for my taste. “This music is giving me a headache,” I mutter.

“You’re giving me a headache,” Micah says, but he turns the volume down a notch.

The afternoon sun blasts me head on. I don’t usually wear sunglasses because they make those ugly red marks on my nose, but today I wish I had some. I turn my face back to the side to protect my eyes. Strip malls slide past me, one after the next. Gaudy billboards line the highway. UP TO 50% OFF. ONE DAY ONLY. THE BIGGEST DEALS ARE HERE. Lies. All lies.

“I remember when this whole area was fields,” I say, immediately regretting it. I sound like my grandpa.

But for once Micah doesn’t jump on an opportunity to make fun of me. “Me too,” he says. “My dad used to take us camping out here.”

“Oh,” I reply, startled by the mention of his dad. Micah’s father, a guitarist for a local rock band, was killed in a convenience store robbery back when Micah and I were in fifth grade.

It was big news in Hazelton. Everywhere you went in school, people were clustered together talking about it, how terrible it must have been for Micah, who was waiting out in the car when the robbery occurred. Micah, who wandered into the store right in time to see his dad bleed to death. Those were the rumors anyway. No one ever dared to ask if they were true.

What do you say to someone who’s dad has just been shot and killed? If you’re a member of Mrs. Simonson’s fifth-grade class, not much. You tiptoe around the person, trying not to make physical contact in case “dead dad” is contagious. You offer timid smiles and awkward greetings until eventually the person snaps, knocks over a couple of desks during class, gets in a fight with the security guard, and then disappears until the beginning of the next school year.

We didn’t talk much in middle school. Micah didn’t talk much to anyone. I feel the urge to apologize for the shitty way I treated him back then, but I can’t quite make the words come out.

“I’ve never gone camping,” I say finally. I lick my lips and peek over at Micah.

He catches me looking and misinterprets my distress as being about our fake date. “You’re not going to freak out if this plan doesn’t work, are you?” he asks. “Because I’ll be fine either way.”

And just like that, the moment passes. It’s probably for the best. I bet he doesn’t even remember the way everybody acted back in elementary school. Or if he does, he wouldn’t want me to bring it up. I stare through the smudgy glass. A megamall. An electronic sign. More empty promises. I tuck the book back in my purse.

“I’ll be okay,” I say without turning to face him. It’s the least convincing answer ever, but Micah doesn’t question it and I’m glad. How am I supposed to explain to him I won’t be okay if our plan doesn’t work? That without Jason I’m not even sure who I’d be anymore.

Kendall is the one who is going to really freak out when she finally hears about the breakup. Jason must not have told her or else I’m sure she would have called me. The three of us spent a lot of time together last year because her boyfriend, Nicholas, went off to college in California at the start of our junior year. When they broke up officially a couple months later, Kendall decided high school guys were lame and college guys were only out to score. I hated seeing her alone, so whenever Jason and I went out—to the movies, to the soccer park, to someone’s party—I always invited her along. Jay never seemed to mind and Kendall loved it. Maybe if she stays in New York for most of the summer, I can win him back before she even hears about the breakup. I don’t want her to feel like she has to pick between us, because I know I’ll lose.

Micah’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “Hey. Thanks for telling my mom I don’t smoke.”

“You thought I would narc you out on our first fake date?” I force a smile. “Don’t you think she knows, though?”

“Probably. But I try to hide it. My grandma died of lung cancer and if Mom even smells smoke on me, she gets pissed. I plan to quit . . . eventually. It’s just been hard.”

Micah pulls off the highway. The outer part of St. Louis is all industrial buildings and vacant lots. As we head toward the river, we pass Union Station and the hockey arena. On the left is a green space dotted with random modern art and panhandlers. The courthouse looms in front of us.

“We’re almost there,” Micah says.

I focus on my lap, wishing I could rewind to before Bianca and I came up with this silly plan. This can’t be what Dead Chinese Warlord had in mind by deception and leveling the battlefield. This is like me putting down my weapon and going to grab a bite to eat with a random nomad who accidentally wandered into the war, isn’t it?

I need to get it together. Don’t be a coward. Don’t worry too much. I remind myself of the five deadly faults I’m supposed to be avoiding. I’m just nervous because I’ve never gone out with another guy before.

Micah turns left onto a one-way street. He switches lanes to avoid a parked delivery truck and then dodges a giant pothole. He’s a really good driver, but the stop-and-go traffic is making me queasy. I watch out the side window as the city flies by. Through gaps in the skyline, I see the sun reflecting off the top of the Arch. Jason and I went there together last year for a history class field trip. There’s a museum at the base of it and a tiny elevator goes up to a viewing area where you can see the whole city. We went up to the top with most of our classmates and kissed every time our teacher wasn’t looking.

Micah cuts through a decidedly seedy area of North St. Louis where the redbrick houses sit so close together you could probably reach out your window and into your neighbor’s house—if it weren’t for the bars on the windows. A man sits on one of the porches, drinking straight from a whiskey bottle. A pit bull paces back and forth in front of him. I slouch down in the car. A train whistle blows from somewhere nearby and I flinch.

As Micah slows the car to a stop, I peek out the window and see a two-story house that is straight out of a horror movie. The bricks have been covered in white paint that has worn away in uneven scabby patches. My heart thuds against my rib cage as I check out the boarded-up windows and the field of three-foot-tall weeds in the front yard.

“Are we lost?” I ask hopefully, double-checking to make sure my door is locked. “Or have you brought me here to kill me?”

Micah grins as he shakes his head and points toward a wooden sign half-buried in the high grass. I can barely make out what it says: MIZZ CREANT’S HOUSE OF TORTURE.

“House of Torture?” I ask through clenched teeth.

Micah laughs, a big belly laugh like Trinity. “Read the fine print,” he says.

I squint. Underneath the big, bloody word torture, someone has stenciled something in black ink. “And pancakes?” I turn to him. “Seriously?”

“Trust me, we’re only indulging in the food today,” Micah says. “Unless you’re into—”

I lash out with my fist and it connects with a pyramid tattoo on his right bicep.

He doubles over in pain. “Ow. That tattoo is brand new.”

“No it’s not.” My eyes turn to slits. “You’ve had that for, like, a year.”

He gasps in mock surprise. “Why, Lainey. And here I didn’t think you paid me any attention.”

My face flushes. “I don’t,” I insist, but it just sounds defensive. “How many tattoos do you have anyway?” I ask. “Your mom doesn’t care?”

“I have three. When I turned sixteen, she told me I could get whatever I want, as long as she gets to do them.”

Besides the pyramid, he’s got a tattoo of three overlapping circles on his neck. For a second, I wonder where the third tattoo is, but that’s probably one of those “Don’t ask if you don’t want to know” questions. “Wow. Your mom must be really cool.”

Micah fiddles with his barbed-wire bracelet. “I think she sees it as safe self-destructiveness, you know? Better for me to get a tattoo or pierce an eyebrow than to go buy drugs if I’m feeling like shit.”