Page 39 of Trade Me (Cyclone 1)

He squeezes me hard and I squeeze him back. We hug each other like we’re afraid to let go. I’m afraid that if I look at him, this will all disappear.

“What are we doing to do?” I finally ask.

He sighs. “Well. Let’s break this down. I obviously have to rethink tomorrow.”

“You mean, we have to—”

He holds up a hand. “Not your worry now, Blake. I’ve got it.”

He says it so calmly, so precisely, that I know it’s true. He’s got it.

“But—”

“This is why God invented caffeine,” he says. “Don’t worry. I’ve made bigger changes on less notice. Only wusses need twenty-four hours to craft a major international announcement. I’ll manage this one.”

“But—”

“But for now...” He gestures to the table. “For now we’re going to sit. And we’re going to eat. And we’re going to have a normal fucking conversation like a normal goddamned family. Because I’m still trying to convince Tina I’m not a complete fucking barbarian.”

“Give it up,” Tina says. “It will never happen. I know too much about you.”

Dad sits. He picks up his fork again. “Tina. Did you—were you—” He stops short, shaking his head. “Never mind. Stupid question. It’s obvious you knew. And that you helped him…get here.” He picks up his fork, cuts off a piece of the roasted tenderloin. “Thank you.”

That’s all we say about it for the rest of dinner. Dad tells a story about a hilarious translation issue that arose in our Singapore office, and we all laugh—a little too hard, more than the story deserves, as if the universe has earned our mirth. As if we’ve had one too-close escape, and we have to smile in the teeth of the future that could have been.

The food has grown cold, but I don’t pause between bites. I don’t have to ask myself if I want this food to turn into me. For the first time in months, I know the answer.

I don’t want to vanish. It’s going to be okay.

I look over at Tina, and I let myself feel all the wistfulness that I’ve been holding onto. God, I just want it all to be okay.

TINA

After dinner with Blake’s dad, after a leisurely dessert and coffee where we sit in the living room and Adam Reynolds tells me stories about Blake that embarrass him, but which I can’t help but find adorable—Blake stands.

“Still have something you want to show Tina tonight?” Adam asks.

Blake glances in my direction. “Yep.”

Adam waves a hand. “You kids have fun.”

“Are you sure? Because I can—”

“Fuck off, Blake.” He says it with a smile. “Seriously. I can handle this. I’ll have it figured out by midnight, tops.”

“Well, then. Wait here, Tina.”

Blake disappears. I glance at Adam, who shrugs as if to say that he has no idea what his son is up to. I don’t either. We had agreed that once Blake took over at Cyclone, this would end. Now he’s not going back, and I suddenly don’t know what we are. Where we are. I don’t even know what I want to happen. The future is an unknown, looming frighteningly over us.

When Blake returns, he has our coats. He hands me mine, takes my hand. “Come on.”

He leads me outside. Blake’s father’s house is near the top of a hill in a wealthy residential neighborhood. Palatial houses with wide windows line the streets, separated by fancy gates and stone walls. It’s dark out, but the night is lit by the golden glimmer of street lamps, of welcoming windows shedding warmth onto dark streets. Indirect lights catch the curve of a neighbor’s statuary, illuminating a dark silhouette corkscrewing up to the sky. Little LEDs embedded in walkways down the street scatter their own warm glow.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to look at constellations,” Blake says. He takes my hand and starts to walk down the road.

“That sounds…” Awful. I glance at him. But I already know what he’s going to say. I can almost imagine.

He doesn’t want this to end. He’s scoured Greek mythology and found me the one tale out of a thousand that doesn’t end in girls being turned into trees or chained to rocks. He’s going to show me that constellation, as if it will make everything better.

In other words, he wants to sell me a lottery ticket—and I’m so crazy about him at this point that I might be stupid enough to buy it at these long odds.

But instead of getting in his car, Blake starts walking down the street.

“We’re not driving?”

“Nope.”

I don’t know what we are. I don’t know what will happen. But I know one thing: for tonight, we’re still together. And so I take his hand and I follow him.

“Are you honestly expecting to see anything?” I look up. A thready overhang of clouds shifts dark blue against the heavens. That close cloud cover makes patches of dark against darker. Even in those spots where the night sky comes through, I can’t see any stars.

The swiftly-moving, blinking lights of an airplane. A bright glow that’s almost certainly a satellite. Maybe a few dim pinpricks that might be from another galaxy.

“I think there’s too much light pollution.”

“Oh ye of little faith.” He just keeps walking. The street twists and turns, undulating with the contours of the land. A patch of darkness opens to my right—a park, I see, as we come closer and the shapes of picnic tables resolve themselves.

He enters and pats a picnic table. “Come here.”

I sit, and he slides next to me, putting his arm around me.

“There. You see?” He gestures with his arm.

The view is magnificent, even at night. From this hill, the signs of civilization are spread out before us—streets, houses, laid out in a net of sparkling lights, interrupted by the dark emptiness that is the Bay.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, “but I think I can see exactly one star.”

“I never promised you stars. I promised you constellations.”

I don’t know what he means until he points down, to the right. “There. You see that, right there? That round thing and those things coming off it?”

I examine the twinkling lights. “Is that a stadium?”

“No,” he says with mock solemnity. “That’s Grood the zombie, the mightiest of all his kind. He ruled this place once, eating the brains of all who dared defy him. But one day, Pebble, the giant centipede dared defy him. Long did they battle. Epic was their fight.”

I tilt my head toward him. “Reversed was their word order.” But my heart has begun to thump.

“Reversed word order is a time-honored story telling device that makes everything sound more epic.” Blake’s fingers twine with mine.

“I see.” I squeeze his hand back. “Then apologetic I am for interrupting.”

“When Grood finally slew Pebble with a shard of bone, loud were the shrieks of the legged worm. But Pebble had managed to lash him with his tentacles—”

“I thought he was a centipede. Where did he get tentacles?”

; “The tentacle store. Stop interrupting.”

“Sorry.” I subside and lean against him.

“As everyone knows, no venom is more fatal than the poison let off by the many-suckered tentacles of a mighty worm.”

“Wait. How can everyone know that if he got his tentacles from a store? Is this a tentacle store with only one kind of tentacle? What is the point of having a tentacle store without a diverse selection?”

Blake sighs. “You know what you are?” He hasn’t let go of me. “You’re a story interrupter. A no-good, dirty…” He pauses, and his voice deepens. “…Sexy, clever, amazing story interrupter.”

“I’m sorry,” I say in a smaller voice. “I’m sensing a real market opportunity here in the tentacle-selling retail world. That’s all. Carry on.”

It’s more than that, though. I’m afraid to let him tell his own stories. I’m afraid to write mine.

“As I was saying, the zombie got smacked with venomous tentacles. I mean, smacked was Grood with tentacles of venom. Even as Pebble lashed the earth in his death throes, Grood knew he could not last. So he drove his shard of bone deep into the earth, deep into the marrow of time itself, thus pinning himself and Pebble in a timeless struggle. Now, every night, they battle it out.”

I look at the lights he’s indicating.

“Before you ask me about that,” Blake says, “yes, if you puncture the earth’s crust deep enough, you do find a store of time. Not magma. That’s a myth started by the great geology conspiracy. And before you start making snarky comments about how companies are going to start mining it and using it, I want to point out that Cyclone is already doing just that. How do you think we stay ahead?”

I take a breath. He doesn’t tell me why he’s telling me this story. He doesn’t have to. My mouth feels dry. “Sounds legit.” I try to sound unaffected. “It’s not any less plausible an explanation than a hunter and a scorpion.”