Never Never
Page 30

He takes a step until we’re shoulder to shoulder, both staring at the taciturn street. “No you don’t. You don’t prefer either.” He says this like he knows me and I want to remind him he doesn’t know me at all, but he puts his hand on my elbow. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Go do something that doesn’t belong to Charlie and Silas. Something that’s ours.”
“You’re talking about us like we’re body invaders.”
Silas closes his eyes and tilts his head back. “You have no idea how many times a day I think about invading your body.”
I don’t intend to laugh as hard as I do, but I trip over my own feet and Silas reaches down to catch me. We’re both laughing as he rights me on my feet and rubs his hands up and down my arms.
I look away. I’m tired of liking him. I only have a day and a half worth of memories, but they’re all filled with me not hating Silas. And now he’s made it his personal mission to make me love him again. It’s annoying that I like it.
“Go away,” I say.
He raises his hands in surrender and takes a step back. “This far?”
“Farther.”
Another step. “Better?”
“Yes,” I smart.
Silas grins. “I don’t know myself well, but I can tell I have a lot of game.”
“Oh, please,” I say. “If you were a game, Silas, you’d be Monopoly. You just go on and on and everyone ends up cheating just to be over with it.”
He’s quiet for a minute. I feel bad for saying something so awkward even if it was a joke.
“You’re probably right,” he laughs. “That’s why you cheated on me with that asshat, Brian. Lucky for you, I’m not Monopoly Silas anymore. I’m Tetris Silas. All my pieces and parts are going to fit into all of your pieces and parts.”
I snort. “And the guidance counselor’s, apparently.”
“Low blow, Charlie,” he says, shaking his head.
I wait a few seconds, chewing on my lip. Then I say, “I don’t think I want you to call me that.”
Silas turns to look at me. “Charlie?”
“Yeah,” I look over at him. “Is that weird? I don’t feel like I’m her. I don’t even know her. It just doesn’t feel like my name.”
He nods as we walk toward his car. “So, I get to rename you?”
“Until we figure all this out…yeah.”
“Poppy,” he says.
“No.”
“Lucy.”
“Hell no, what’s wrong with you?”
He opens the passenger side door to his Rover and I climb in.
“Okay…okay. I can see you don’t like traditionally cute names. We can try for something tougher.” He walks around to the driver side and climbs in. “Xena…”
“No.”
“Rogue.”
“Ugh. No.”
We go back and forth like this until Silas’s GPS tells us that we’ve arrived. I look around, surprised that I was too engaged with him to notice the drive here. When I look down at my phone I see that Brian has texted me six times. I don’t want to deal with him right now. I shove my phone and wallet under the seat, out of view.
“Where are we?”
“Bourbon Street,” he says. “Most happening place in New Orleans.”
“How do you know that?” I ask suspiciously.
“I Googled it.” We stare at each other over the hood, and then both shut our doors at the same time.
“How did you know what Google was?”
“I thought that’s what we’re supposed to be figuring out together.” We meet at the front of the car.
“I think we’re aliens,” I say. “That’s why we don’t have any of Charlie and Silas’s memories. But we remember things like Google and Tetris because of the computer chips in our brains.”
“So, can I rename you Alien?”
Before I can think about what I’m doing, I send the back of my hand into his chest. “Focus, Silas!”
He uumphs, and then I’m pointing straight ahead. “What’s that?” I walk ahead of him.
It’s a building, castle-like in structure, and white. There are three spires jutting up toward the sky.
“Looks like a church,” he says, taking out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a picture…in case we forget again. I figure we should document what’s happening and where we go.”
I’m quiet as I think about what he said. It’s a really good idea. “That’s where we should go, right? Churches help people…,” my voice trails off.
“Yes,” says Silas. “They help people, not aliens. And since we’re—”
I hit him again. I wish he would take this seriously. “What if we’re angels and we’re supposed to help someone, and we were given these bodies to fulfill our mission?”
He sighs. “Are you listening to yourself?”
We’ve reached the doors to the church, which are ironically locked. “Okay,” I say, spinning around. “What’s your suggestion for what’s happened to us? Did we boink our heads together and lose our memories? Or maybe we ate something that really messed us up!”I storm down the stairs.
“Hey! Hey!” he calls. “You’re not allowed to get mad at me. This is not my fault.” He runs down the stairs after me.