It was so dark now, without even the weak illumination of a streetlight behind us. I struggled to hold back the hysteria building inside me.
“I don’t like this,” I said. “It’s too out of the way. Please turn around.”
He didn’t answer. He jerked the car a little to the right, shifted gears, and climbed another small incline until we burst out on a flat piece of land and stopped. I had my head down and was embracing myself so tightly that I could barely breathe.
“Voilà,” he said. “Hey, take a look.”
Slowly, I raised my head and looked out. The lights of houses and buildings twinkled below. The night had cleared enough to reveal most of the twenty-five hundred stars visible to the human eye without any sort of telescope or binoculars, especially since there was no moonlight to drown out any. Two commercial jets were also twinkling, as though they were moving stars.
“I’ve never brought anyone up here,” Troy said.
I hoped he didn’t see me taking deep breaths. “How did you find it?”
“I overheard a meeting my father had with some real estate investors. Their plan is to develop the side road we took and create a housing development. My father makes so much money that he’s always looking for different ways to invest. They raved about it, so I decided to make it one of my explorations. What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful, and it didn’t take us that long to get here.”
“Now you’re thinking like an investor.”
We really couldn’t see each other that well in the darkness, but I saw that he was sitting back, turned toward me, and looking at me not with a smile but with an intensity that, although I didn’t want it to, frightened me. Best to keep talking, I thought.
“Why do you take so many rides by yourself, Troy? Don’t you have any buddies?”
“Back to truth or dare?”
“No, just normal conversation.”
“I guess I’m just too particular,” he said.
“So why me?”
He sat up and leaned toward me. “I don’t want to sound like a broken CD, but there’s something about you that’s different. You’re not . . . obvious.”
“I’m a challenge, is that it?”
“Exactly. You’re a mystery.”
“So are you.”
He moved closer. “The very fact that you saw that rather than go with one of the labels your girlfriends assign to me convinced me you’re head and shoulders above them. I just don’t know why yet.”
He reached out to touch my shoulder. He wasn’t close enough to sense it, but I cringed.
“Maybe I’d rather not be solved,” I said. “And something tells me neither would you.”
He stopped moving toward me. “Maybe. Maybe we both would rather that wasn’t true. It’s all a matter of trust,” he said, and leaned forward again. “It begins with something as simple as this.” He brought his lips to mine, his hands gripping my shoulders firmly to hold me in place.
It wasn’t a violent kiss. It wasn’t even unexpected.
Any other girl would have simply kissed him back if she liked him or been indifferent enough to send a message that read simply NO.
But the feel of a man’s lips on mine triggered an explosion of horrid visions.
Once again, Anthony Cabot’s naked body was all over mine. Once again, I inhaled the smell of beer, an odor that seemed to spin my insides. Once again, I struggled to leave my own body and envision myself someplace safe. Once again, I felt the chain on my ankle. Once again, I screamed a scream unvoiced, a scream that echoed inside me. I was a child crying for her mother and father, a twin cursing her sister, a helpless girl about to lose everything that made her human.
My cry in Troy’s car was a cry full of pain. He recoiled like someone who had felt an intense electric shock.
And all the stars looming before us seemed to fall out of the sky like diamond tears.