Rival (Fall Away #2)(10)
Author: Penelope Douglas

“Fallon, I didn’t know that you’d be here, but I’d gotten you one anyway to ship to you. Here.” She handed both Madoc and me what looked like lanterns. They were black plastic on the bottom with a glass capsule on the top half. The bottom featured five rows of the alphabet.

“A cryptex!” I smiled at her while Madoc looked at his like it was an alien baby.

“But . . .” He pinched his eyebrows together. “You know I just wanted to see you in a bikini,” he told Addie.

“Oh, put a cork in it.” She waved her hand.

“What is this?” His eyebrows were still pinched together while he studied the puzzle case.

“It’s a Puzzle Pod Cryptex,” Addie explained. “You have to solve the riddle that I have taped to the bottom, and dial the five-letter answer to open the pod. Then you can retrieve the present inside.

Madoc read his out loud. “‘At night they come without being fetched, and by day they are lost without being stolen. What are they?’” His eyes shot up to pin Addie. “Seriously?”

He threw back his arm, raising the cryptex high above his head, when Addie reached out and grabbed him.

“No, don’t you dare!” she yelled, while he mock-scowled at her. “You’re not breaking it open! Use your brain.”

“You know I suck at stuff like this.” But then he started dialing letters, guessing at the answer.

I read mine to myself. “What gets wetter the more it dries?”

Please. I snickered and dialed in “towel.” The cryptex opened, and I pulled out a gift card to a skate shop I used to frequent in town.

“Thanks, Addie,” I chirped, not wanting to tell her that I no longer skated.

I looked over at Madoc, who was still working his puzzle with an eyebrow arched. He was struggling, and the more he struggled the dumber he was going to feel. Walking over, I took the cryptex out of his hands, my breath catching for only a moment when my fingers brushed his.

I looked at the puzzle and spoke quietly as I dialed. “‘At night they come without being fetched, and by day they are lost without being stolen.’” It clicked, and I met his soft eyes staring down at me, not the cryptex. “Stars,” I said, almost in a whisper.

He wasn’t breathing. The stern set to his eyes as he loomed over me reminded me of so many times I’d looked up at him, wanting things I was afraid to ask for.

But we were different now. I wanted only his pain, and judging from the girl he’d come home with last night, Madoc was still the same. A user.

I hooded my eyes, trying to appear bored, as I shoved the now-open cryptex back at him.

He took a deep breath and smiled, the intense concentration now gone. “Thank you.” Then he turned to Addie. “See? We’re getting along fine.”

And he left through the sliding-glass doors leading to the vast patio and pool area with his gift card to the go-kart track.

I swallowed, trying to calm the windstorm in my stomach. “So that’s it?” I asked Addie. “You’re letting him stay, after all?”

“You said you were okay with it.”

“I am,” I rushed to add. “I’m just . . . I just don’t want you to get in trouble with the boss.”

She gave a half-smile and started pouring batter onto the griddle. “Do you know that Madoc started playing the piano again?” Her eyes stayed glued to her task.

“No,” I responded, wondering about the change in subject. “His father must be thrilled.”

Madoc had taken music lessons since he was five, specifically the piano. Jason Caruthers wanted his son proficient, but when Madoc turned fifteen—around the time my mom and I moved in—he realized that Daddy really just wanted him to perform. Something else for Mr. Caruthers to brag about and show off.

So Madoc had quit. He refused lessons and threatened to trash the piano if it wasn’t moved out of sight. It was taken down to the basement where it sat with my half-pipe.

But I had always wondered . . .

Madoc did love to play. It was a release for him, or it seemed to be. He usually only practiced at required lessons, but he ran willingly to the piano when he was upset or really happy.

After he quit, he started doing stupid shit without that release anymore: hanging around that asswipe Jared Trent, bullying Tatum Brandt, breaking into the school to steal car parts, which no one knew about but me.

“Oh, I doubt his father knows,” Addie continued. “Madoc still won’t perform or take lessons. It’s more of an in-the-dead-of-the-night thing when the whole house is asleep and no one can see or hear him.” She stopped and looked up at me. “But I hear him. The light tinkling of the keys trails upstairs from the basement. It’s very faint. Almost as if it’s a ghost that can’t decide whether to stay or go.”

I thought of Madoc playing alone downstairs in the dead of night. What kind of songs did he play? Why did he do it?

And then I remembered the Madoc from last night. The one who’d insinuated that I was a freeloading slut.

And the rapid beat of my heart slowed to a dull thud.

“When did he start playing again?” I asked, looking out to the patio where he talked on his phone.

“Two years ago,” she said softly. “The day you left.”

CHAPTER 5

MADOC

Now I understood why Jared drowned himself in constant partying over Tate. Distractions were useful. If you had too much on your mind, then you could push your thoughts away with noise, liquor, and girls and keep moving forward at lightning speed. When my friend slowed down long enough to think, that’s when he got into trouble. But eventually things worked out for them. He pushed her, and she started pushing back. He kept pushing, and she finally knocked him on his ass.

Fallon and I were a lot like them. Only I didn’t love her, and she didn’t love me. I was infatuated with her once—and loved that she let me take my pubescent urges out on her—but we weren’t in love.

We were two people in a f**ked-up family taking our cues from f**ked-up parents.

And neither one of us knew how to do anything differently.

She stomped up to her room after pancakes, and I got ready for my party that was starting mid-afternoon but going ’til the next morning if I had anything to say about it.

I hoped that she’d show up, and at the same time I wanted her far away from me.

Fallon affected my body in weird ways.

But only because she’s different, I told myself.

The last time I saw her she was sleeping on the leather couch in the theater room wearing only my T-shirt. She had twisted her lips up as she rubbed her nose in her sleep, and I remember thinking how much I couldn’t stand her during the day but how much I wanted her when she put her forked tongue away at night.