Little Kelly looked at him for a minute, jaw working, like he was trying to chew through leather. Then, abruptly, he pushed past Dodge and disappeared around the corner.
Dodge squatted and started to gather up all the crap Little Kelly had removed from the Dumpster. It was already hot, and the alley smelled. Just then he sensed motion behind him. Thinking Little Kelly had returned, he straightened and spun around, saying, “You really shouldn’t be back here—”
The words dried up in his throat. Natalie Velez was standing behind him, leaning her weight onto her good foot, looking clean and showered and pretty and like she belonged anywhere else but here.
“Hi,” she said, smiling.
His first, instinctive response was to walk past her, go into the house, slam the door, and suffocate himself. But of course, he couldn’t. Holy shit. Nat Velez was standing in front of him, and he was shirtless. And hadn’t brushed his teeth. Or showered. And he was holding tinfoil from the trash.
“I was just cleaning up.…” He trailed off helplessly.
Nat’s eyes ticked down to his bare chest, then up to his hair, which was in all probability sticking straight up.
“Oh my God.” Her face began to turn pink. “I should have called. I’m so sorry. Did you just get up or something?”
“No. No, not at all. I was just . . .” Dodge tried not to talk too forcefully, or breathe too hard, in case his breath was rank. “Look, can you give me a minute? Just wait here?”
“Of course.” Nat was even cuter when she blushed. She looked like a cookie that had been iced for Christmas.
“One minute,” Dodge repeated.
Inside, Dodge sucked in a deep breath. Holy shit. Nat Velez. He didn’t even have time to worry about the fact that she was seeing his house, his crappy little apartment, and had probably had to walk past the grease traps being emptied, had gone in her little sandals past the sodden bits of spinach that got trekked out of the diner by the cooks, past the Dumpsters and their smell.
In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and gargled with mouthwash. He smelled his underarms—not bad—and put on deodorant just in case. He ran water through his hair and pulled on a clean white T-shirt, one that showed just a bit of the tattoo that covered most of his chest and wrapped around his right shoulder and forearm. His hair was already sticking up again. He rammed on a baseball hat.
Good. Decent, at least. He sprayed on a bit of this man’s body-spray thing his mom had gotten for free at Walmart, feeling like a douche, but thinking it was better to feel like a douche than to smell like an asshole.
Outside, Nat was doing a good job of pretending not to notice that Dodge lived in a falling-down apartment behind a diner.
“Hey.” She smiled again, big and bright, and he felt his insides do a weird turnover. He hoped Dayna wasn’t watching out the window. “Sorry about, like, barging up on you.”
“That’s okay.”
“I was going to call,” she said. “I texted Heather for your number. Sorry. But then I thought it might be better to talk in person.”
“It’s totally fine.” Dodge’s voice came out more harshly than he’d intended. Shit. He was screwing this up already. He coughed and crossed his arms, trying to look casual. Really it was because his hands suddenly felt like meat hooks at the end of his arms, and he had forgotten what to do with them. “How’s your ankle?” An Ace bandage was wrapped thickly around her ankle and foot, which made a funny contrast to her legs, which were bare.
“Sprained.” Nat made a face. “I’ll live, but . . .” For a brief second, her face spasmed, like she was in pain. “Look, Dodge, is there someplace we can go? Like, to talk?”
There was no way he was taking her inside. Not an icicle’s chance in hell. He didn’t want Nat gaping at Dayna or, worse, trying too hard to be nice. “How did you get here?” he asked, thinking she might have a car.
Again, she blushed. “I had my dad drop me,” she said.
He didn’t ask how she’d figured out where he lived. Like all things in Carp, it was usually just a question of asking around. The problem was where to take her. He couldn’t go into the diner. His mom was working. That left Meth Row.
Nat walked slowly, still limping, although she seemed to be in less pain than she had been last night. But she took the first opportunity to sit down: on the rusted fender of an abandoned, wheel-less Buick. All its windows were shattered, and the seats were speckled with bird shit, the leather torn up by tiny animals.
“I wanted to thank you again,” Nat said. “You were so . . . You were great. For helping me last night.”
Dodge felt vaguely disappointed, as he often felt when interacting with other people, when the reality failed to meet his expectations. Or in this case, his fantasies. Some part of him had been hoping she’d come over to confess that she’d fallen madly in love with him. Or maybe she’d skip the words altogether, and strain onto her tiptoes and open her mouth and let him kiss her. Except she probably couldn’t stand on her toes with her ankle the way it was, which is one of the 2,037 ways his fantasy was unrealistic.
He said, “It’s not a problem.”
She twisted her mouth, like she’d swallowed something sour. For a second she didn’t say anything. Then she blurted, “Did you hear Cory Walsh and Felix Harte were arrested?”
He shook his head, and she clarified, “Drunk and disorderly conduct. And trespassing.” She shifted her weight. “You think Panic is over?”
“No way,” he said. “The cops are too stupid to stop it, anyway.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. “So what do you think will happen next?”
“No idea,” he said. He knew that Nat was asking him for a hint. He swallowed back a bad taste in his mouth. She knew he liked her, and she was trying to use him.
“I think we can use each other,” she said abruptly, and it was this fact—the fact of her acknowledgment, her honesty—that made him want to keep listening.
“Use each other how?” he asked.
She picked at the hem of her skirt. It looked like it was made of terry cloth, which made him think of towels, which made him think of Nat in a towel. The sun was so bright, he was dizzy.
“We make a deal,” she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were dark, eager, and sweet, like the eyes of a puppy. “If either of us wins, we split the cash fifty-fifty.”
Dodge was so startled, he couldn’t say anything for a minute. “Why?” he asked finally. “Why me? You don’t even—I mean, we hardly even know each other.” What about Heather? he almost said.
“It’s just a feeling I have,” she said, and once again he found her honesty appealing. “You’re good at this game. You know things.” It seemed somehow surprising that Nat Velez, with her thick, perfect hair and slicked lip-gloss lips, would speak so frankly about a subject most people avoided. It was like hearing a supermodel fart: surprising and kind of thrilling. She plowed on: “We can help each other. Share information. Team up against the others. We have more of a chance of getting to Joust that way. And then . . .” She gestured with her hands.
“Then we’ll have to face off,” Dodge said.
“But if one wins, we both win,” Nat said, smiling up at him.
He had no intention of letting anyone else win. Then again, he didn’t care about the money, either. He had a different goal in mind. Maybe she knew that, or sensed it somehow.
So he said, “Yeah, okay. Partners.”
“Allies,” Nat said, and stuck out her hand, formally. It felt soft, and also slightly sweaty.
She stood up, laughing. “It’s settled, then.” She couldn’t crane onto her tiptoes to kiss him, so she just grabbed his shoulders and planted a kiss on the side of his neck. She giggled. “Now I have to do the other side, so you’re even.”