Page 108 of Hellbent

Evan kept his voice low. “How do you talk to a teenage girl?”

“Very carefully,” Mia said.

“That much I’ve figured out.”

“She seems like a great kid. But she’s had it tough.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m a DA.” Mia set her hands on her thighs, tilted her head to the ceiling, took a breath. “Don’t push. Just be there. Be steady.”

He thought of Jack’s even pace through the woods, not too fast, not too slow, his boots stamping the mud, showing Evan where to step.

Mia pointed at Evan. “When it comes to kids, honesty matters. And consistency. That’s why I thought, you know, you coming for dinner once a week. It’s important to Peter. Stuff like that’s a clock they set their hearts to.”

He nodded.

“At the end of the day, all they really want to hear?” Mia ticked the points off on her fingers. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be fine. You’re worth it.”

He nodded again.

She studied him. “What?”

“Are they worth it?”

“Yes.” She rose to see him out. “But if you’re ever gonna say it, you better believe it first.” She shot him a loaded look. “Because she’ll know if you’re lying.”

* * *

Evan paused halfway up the spiral stairs to the loft. A clacking sound carried down to him, and it took a moment for him to place it: Joey working a Rubik’s Cube. Lifted halfway between floor and ceiling, he had a glorious view of downtown. The shimmering blocks, a confusion of lights shivering in the night air. Overhead, the cube clacked and clacked. He heard Joey cough.

It felt so odd to have another moving body in the penthouse.

He continued up to the reading loft. Joey sat in a nest of sheets on the plush couch. Her head stayed down, that rich chocolate hair framing her face, which was furrowed with concentration. The cube, smaller than the previous one he’d seen, was a neon blur in her hands.

She’d turned off the overheads and pulled the floor lamp close. It was on the lowest setting, casting her in a dim light. The cube alone was bright, glow-in-the-dark colors radiating in the semidark. Chewing-gum green and fluorescent yellow. Safety-cone orange and recycling-can blue.

At the second-to-top step, he halted.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“It’s your place.”

“But it’s not my room.”

Her deft fingers flicked at the cube, transforming it by the second. “Yeah it is.”

He noticed that she wasn’t trying to solve the cube; she was alternating patterns on it, the colors morphing from stripes into checkers and back to stripes.

He said, “Not right now.”

Her eyes ticked up. But her hands still flew, the cube obeying her will. It changed into four walls of solid color, and she let it dribble from her hands into her lap.

“Yeah,” she said. “You can come in.”

He stepped up into the loft and sat on the floor across from her, his back to one of the bookshelves. By her knee was the worn shoe box from her rucksack. The lid was off and one of the greeting cards pulled out. She’d been reading it. He remembered what Mia had told him and said nothing.

Joey picked up the cube. Put it down again.