SIX
On the drive over to Elias’s house, I take a lot of deep breaths through my nose. I feel like there’s no space in my lungs, or maybe there’s no breathable air in the car. I try blasting something metal with a heavy drum line through my speakers, but that only makes my thoughts skitter around in my head, banging on my brain and making my limbs jittery.
I roll the window down and try to steady my arm on the door. The sun beats down on it, warming my chilled skin with its light. A whisper of humidity lingers in the air, a fleeting remnant of summer. It weighs everything down.
Exactly what I need right now.
My breathing slows, and I can think again. Elias’s house for studying. Two other kids there. Pizza. Totally normal. Nothing to worry about.
I believe these self-reassurances while I drive through the suburb where everyone in Superior lives, where the houses all crowd together like an army lying in wait. When we cross through the suburb with the newest, largest houses, on the outskirts of town, my mind goes wild again. Where does this guy live?
I follow the caravan — Elias in his car, and Leni and Daniel riding together — over some rolling hills until we’re surrounded by cornfields. The sun makes them look golden too, and for a minute, I really love Nebraska. Even though I still think I would love it more if I could fly over and out of it.
I wish I had given Dad Elias’s address when I talked to him or even known one myself. No one really lives out this way, and there are no malls or groceries or anything out here, so I’ve actually never driven down this road out of Superior. Which is pathetic.
Anyway, Dad’s text sounded so freaking happy that I was doing anything with anyone after school, I didn’t want to kill his buzz. He didn’t even ask Elias’s name, which means he failed the overprotective parent test when I probably most needed him to pass it.
Elias’s bright blue sports car and Leni’s rattling station wagon turn into a long gravel driveway, which, when I check my odometer, is actually just a mile or so from our school. A sprawling ranch stretches out at the end of it. The central part of the house has the frame of an old farmhouse, but it’s been given a facelift to look far more modern. Aside from the slick black solar panels that line the roof, there are long extensions on either side of it, each of them about the width of our little house back in the Superior suburbs. All the outer walls are made of glass, and it almost doesn’t even look like a home — more like an office building or a lab. The dipping sun glints off its surface, and the whole damn house looks like it’s winking at me.
The driveway outside his house, protected by a large, domed carport, is the size of a small parking lot, which it certainly looks like right now. One of the seven cars is Leni’s and one’s mine, which leaves five cars belonging to Elias’s family. And they’re all late model and high model — I don’t even recognize some of the symbols they bear.
Elias’s family is swimming in cash.
“Okay, there, Merrin?” Elias looks up at me after bending down to plug his car into the charger strip, a fancy one that’s built into the concrete instead of the wire-jumbled hack job Dad rigged on the side of our garage. Once again, I can’t make anything come out of my mouth.
When I finally pull myself together, I swallow and say, “Never really driven out this way, I guess.”
Leni and Daniel are halfway up the driveway. They stop at the door to hug a middle-aged lady who I assume is Elias’s mom. Her cardigan matches the sweater underneath, and she’s wearing khaki pants and loafers. She’s even got a string of pearls and a perfect bob. When I get close to her, she smells so good, flowery and sweet, that I can almost see the perfume wafting off of her.
