Early to Death, Early to Rise - Kim Harrison [12]
As he glanced from me to Nakita, I could almost see his thoughts realign, wondering if he had a chance with her. Sure, that was likely. Not.
“Yep,” he said, still looking at her, and she suddenly smiled back and giggled like Amy, my earthly nemesis at school in designer sandals. Hearing that noise come out of her shocked the b-juice out of me, and I wasn’t surprised when Ace added, “I don’t have anything to do now. You want to hear some?”
“Absolutely!” I said enthusiastically, and he shifted away from the front door, hitting his shoulder on the side mirror and trying not to lose his cool.
“Get in,” he said, opening the door. “I live twenty minutes from here. You can hear the new stuff.”
For a moment, I looked in at the long bench seat, remembering the last time I got into a stranger’s car. I’d ended up at the bottom of a ravine, dead. Well, you can’t kill someone twice, I thought. Besides, Nakita was with me. Stepping carefully to avoid the CDs tossed everywhere, I got in, sliding to the far door. The truck was old, with cracked vinyl seats and a dusty, sun-faded dash. The CD cases made bright flashes when the light caught them, and I snatched one out from under Nakita before she sat right on it. It was clearly home-burned, with an art decal on one side. Josh had an old truck, too, but he at least kept his clean. I had a thought to text him and see how he was doing, but texting a guy in front of Ace probably wasn’t the best way to convince him to show me his illegal downloads.
“Is this your work?” I asked as Ace got in, slamming his door twice to make it latch. Just from looking at their cars, I could tell there was a big discrepancy between Ace and Shoe, and I wondered if that was where some of the anger was coming from. Jealousy, maybe.
“Shoe’s,” he said tersely.
“No, I mean the artwork,” I added, and his tight jaw relaxed as he cranked the key and the engine started. “I like it.”
Music blared, heavy on the percussion, and the singer screaming so you couldn’t understand what he was saying. “Thanks,” he said as he turned the music down so we could hear him. “My mom thinks I could get a scholarship, but what’s the point? It’s not like I can make a living with squiggles.”
I thought of my own dream of making a living with my photography, and a sigh of understanding slipped from me. “Maybe,” I said hesitantly. “But it’s easier to find a way to make money at something you love than to learn to love a job that you can make money at.”
He didn’t say anything, and feeling Nakita’s eyes on me, I rolled the window down. Jeez, it was a crank, and it was stiff, like it hadn’t been down in a year. Slowly the still air was replaced by new as we headed for the exit, pulling out to go the same way Shoe had. There had been a small town east of here when we’d flown in, right in the middle of cornfields.
Ace bobbed his head in time with the music, glancing at Nakita to see how she liked it.
My attention dropped to the CD I was holding, and I put it on the dash, fingering another one decorated with similar artwork. It was all swirls and stark, bright colors, making me think of Celtic knot work.
“This is good,” I said as I looked at the handful of discs within my easy reach. “The artwork, I mean. You should talk to your art teacher. I bet she knows of a scholarship.”
“People like them don’t help people like me,” Ace said, his mood tarnishing. “Besides, college…that’s not for me.”
My eyebrows rose. People like him?
“That’s mine, too,” he said, and I followed his pointing finger to the overpass we were going under. It was covered in graffiti with the same swirls and angles. Archetype symbols were worked into it everywhere, making it look like sort of a mix between a tattoo and a stained-glass window.
“Wow,” I said, turning in the seat to find that the other side of the overpass was decorated as well. “That’s beautiful.”
Ace smiled a bad-boy smile and tapped his fingers in time with the drums. “Almost got caught the last night I worked on it.