Page 63 of Road Queens
They followed him and had only gotten a few steps when Sidney clamped down (“Yow!”) on Amanda’s elbow.
“Fuck a duck, that’s a Suzuki TM400!”
“I have eyes, Sid.”
“Vintage!”
She pulled Sidney’s fingers off her arm. “And dangerous.”
“It’s not that dangerous.” Sidney’s euphoria was to be expected, given that her bike was almost as notoriously perilous as the Suzuki. She circled the motorcycle like a passionate fan worried about getting too close to a star. “God, I love these older bikes. Beautiful and perfect. The older lines, the way they stand the test of time ...”
“The way they’re prone to leaks ...”
Sidney was already shaking off the criticism. “... the skinny tires, the way they make your teeth rattle at speed ...”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “... the absence of all modern safety features ...”
“You want one, you fault-finding bitch.”
“Do you want me to take a picture of you with your new friend?” Amanda smirked and held up her phone.
“I know you’re being sarcastic, but yeah, actually, I’d love a picture with ... oh, shit.”
Sidney stopped suddenly, and Amanda did a quick side step to prevent a partial collision.
Then she saw what had startled her friend. No, friends, plural (right?). Cass had gone so white that her scar stood out as a vivid pink line slashing across her face.
“Oh,shit,” Sidney said again. Amanda didn’t blame her; “oh, shit” was about five times better than anything she could have come up with.
How long has Sonny been hiding a ghost in the back of his shop?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Five years ago ...
“You’re leaving town? Just like that?”
“S’not just like that,” Cassandra muttered. She was packing, though Amanda noted that she was mostly taking things from one box and putting them into another. Cass’s apartment, messy at the best of times, was a tsunami of half-empty takeout cartons, dirty carpets, empty bottles, Noxzema, and despair.
“You just have to give it more time.”
“I did. All summer. Nothing’s better. Not. One. Thing.” Cass laid still more tape across a box marked Regrettable Fashion Choices, and she did it over and over and over until it was more tape than box. “The opposite, in fact—things are so much worse. Because of us.”
“You’re using Scotch tape?” She knew it was the wrong thing to focus on, but yikes. It was soglaring. “Ye gods, you’re bad at this.”
“We can’t all be lucky enough to be Air Force brats who are expert packers.”
Amanda held her tongue, which was as unpleasant as it sounded. Like most military brats, she didn’t think four schools in seven years was “lucky.” Always being the new kid? Also not lucky. But given Cassandra’s upbringing, complaining seemed crass.
Cassandra’s apartment was three miles out of town, a two-bedroom, one-bath in pleasant (yawn) neutrals that looked like a twister hit, then came back for seconds. Or to put it another way, it looked the way it always looked. Except with loads of boxes in various stages of being filled.
OpStar was all over the place. With her mother currently serving a term in prison, and her father long out of the picture, Cassandra had been on her own the minute they arrested Iris Rivers. Except not really, because Amanda and Sidney wouldn’t have it. Cassandra had sold her parents’ house and much of the contents, but kept some of the furniture—the kitchen table, a bed, the hutch, a dresser. Some silverware, her mom’s waffle iron, her dad’s smoothie blender, a few photos.
None of the fake ones, though. None of the lovingly framed pictures of Cassandra and her mother and father beaming at the camera like all was swell. Those Cassandra burned along with her parents’ wedding album and her baby book.
(“What? Baby books are the worst. Even my mom thought so, though you couldn’t tell because she filled it with useless garbage. Why would I want to look at a lock of my baby hair now? Or ever?”)
Cassandra kept the pics of her friends and chucked the rest. “Oh God, here’s the one from when I had chicken pox. I look like the Fly in the early stage of disintegration! And Sidney’s eyes are closed.” Ah, the chicken pox saga. Amanda’s folks had really,reallywanted her to catch chicken pox from Cass. It didn’t work, even though it had been a slumber party weekend for the ages. And then Sidney was the one who caught the spots; her shrieks of outrage could have shattered windows.
