Perv—Pete—shook his head. He didn’t look mad. Just surprised and a bit disappointed. “You really think I’d steal underwear from Chloe?”
Gemma tried to make a joke out of it. “Are you saying you’d steal it from someone else?”
She was relieved when Pete—she would only think of him as Pete from now on—cracked a smile. “Maybe,” he said, “under the right circumstances. Like, for the good of social justice.”
“Why would stealing underwear be good for social justice?” she asked.
“Politics are complex, Gemma,” he answered solemnly, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
They agreed to meet back in the car—or rather, Pete decided they should have a race to see who could get back to the car soonest, claiming he had once ordered a McDonald’s meal, peed, and purchased several plastic figurines from one of the twenty-five-cent machines that always cluttered the rest stops, all within a record four minutes.
Gemma didn’t like to eat in front of strangers, ever since the time in seventh grade when Chloe had made pig-snorting noises when she’d carried her tray at lunch, and half the class had joined in. Instead she followed Pete into the rest stop and scarfed a granola bar while peeing in a stall, feeling pathetic and stupid but still too embarrassed to buy what she wanted, which was a Happy Meal. She didn’t feel so much like Ninja Gemma sitting with her pants around her ankles and granola bar crumbs on her bare thighs.
She made it back to the car first, and Pete emerged about thirty seconds later at a sprint, holding an enormous bag from McDonald’s. He stopped when he saw her and threw up his hands dramatically, nearly losing his soda cup.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “You beat me.” Then, unlocking the car and seeing she was empty-handed, he said, “You’re not hungry?”
“Not really,” Gemma said, even though she was. She turned away so he wouldn’t see her cheeks burning.
When they climbed into the car, he plopped the McDonald’s bag in her lap. She could smell the fries. They smelled like grease and salt and heaven.
“Share mine,” he said. “I don’t want you to starve to death. It would be awkward to explain to your parents.”
“I doubt I’m in danger of starving anytime soon,” she said. She wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her—compared to some of the girls at her school, she was a massive balloon that floated over the crowd at big parades—but it didn’t seem that way. The idea of her parents made her stomach turn a little. She checked her phone. One o’clock. Her mom would be home any second, would discover Gemma was missing, and would send out an Amber Alert.
“Fine. But you’re in danger of turning into a walking toothpick, like Chloe. Every time I see her, I feel like I have something in my teeth.”
She liked him a hundred times more for saying it, even if it wasn’t true. She couldn’t help it. Chloe looked like pretty girls were supposed to look, at least according to every fashion magazine and blog. And Gemma looked like the girl who’d swallowed the pretty girl.
She dug her hand in the bag and popped fries in her mouth. They were delicious. She didn’t care that when she leaned forward her stomach rolled a little over her waistband. Pete wasn’t even looking at her. He was busy scarfing his own burger. Gemma decided she liked the way he ate—with total attention, like the food was a complex math problem he had to solve.
“So you really didn’t steal Chloe’s underwear?” she asked after a moment.
“’Course not,” he said, although since his mouth was full it came out cough noff. He made a big show of swallowing. “Want to know my theory? My theory,” he said, without waiting for her to respond, “is that Chloe DeWitt was and is hopelessly in love with me, and when I didn’t steal her underwear, it drove her crazy. She had to pretend that I did.”
Gemma stared at him. There was a little bit of sauce at the corner of his mouth and she had the momentary urge to reach out and wipe it off. “You’re insane. Do you know that? You actually might be certifiable.”
He shook his head. His expression turned serious. “Those girls are clones, Gemma. They lack brains.”
She turned toward the window so she would stop noticing things about him—how nice and long his hands were, with freckles sprinkled across the knuckles. His funny Adam’s apple, which rioted up and down his throat when he spoke. Even if he was nice, he was still a cute boy, and cute boys did not go for girls like Gemma. She’d seen enough romantic comedies to know it.
“Clones have brains,” she said. “You’re thinking of zombies.”
“Zombie clones, then,” he said, and put the car in drive.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 6 of Lyra’s story.
SEVEN
THEY WERE NEARING JACKSONVILLE WHEN they heard about the explosion off Barrel Key, and the fire burning out of control on Spruce Island. Gemma had been searching the radio for something that wouldn’t tempt Pete to sing along. It turned out when he wasn’t talking, he was singing, usually off-key, and with some random jumble of words that had only a vague relationship to the actual lyrics. She was looking for gospel, bluegrass, hard-core rap, anything. The first hour of impromptu karaoke had been all right—she’d actually enjoyed his rendition of “Man in the Mirror” and had nearly peed her pants when it turned out he knew every word to Britney Spears’s “. . . Baby One More Time”—but after the second hour she longed for quiet, especially since Pete wouldn’t stop harassing her about singing along.