Page 29 of Catcher's Lock

“What the fuck am I lying on?” he asks, squirming upright and tugging at the shapeless tangle of knotted rope.

“It’s a hammock. Your dad found it at The Ark the other day and thought it would be cool to hang it out here on the lot.”

“Really?” Shifting further to the side, he examines the splitter bars with interest. “Let’s go set it up.”

“Right now?” It’s almost midnight, and it’ll be pitch black under the trees.

“Sure. We can put it in Milla’s old spot by the dry creek. It’s still got all the fairy lights strung up, so we’ll be able to see fine.”

Using our phone flashlights, we dig some webbing straps and carabiners out of one of the box trucks and haul the hammock into the woods. The spot is close enough to the tent that the music of the party filters through, and the string lights create a feywild hollow.

Gem settles cross-legged in the dirt and lights a joint while I loop a strap around the first tree and stretch the hammock toward the second. The musky smoke curls in the air like temptation to ruin.

“How come you’re not more fucked up, Rocket?” he asks, voice already lazy from the weed.

“Because I only drank beer instead of downing shots like some people.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’ve grown up with a shitty drunk father and a mom who’s barely around, and you turned out perfect.”

This. This is exactly my problem. Why does he have to say this kind of shit to me?

“I’m plenty fucked up,” I assure him.I’m a complete mess over you.

He waves the joint vaguely toward where I’m now securing the second carabiner to the ring knot above the spreader bar. “You’re good at everything. You keep your shit together all the time. Meanwhile, I’m over here crashing through life from one disaster to the next.”

“Your mom left. You’re allowed to be”—reckless. Selfish. Wild—“sad.”

“Sad.” He spits the word without tasting it and uncoils from the earth, brushing pine litter from his ass. Closing the distance between us, he offers up the joint.

Maybe his recklessness is contagious, because for one lunatic second, I imagine leaning in and sucking a drag from betweenhis fingers. How his skin would be warm and rough against my lips, and how his eyes would dance with reflected revelry.

These are shark-infested waters.

I take the joint with my fingers and inhale, letting the pungent smoke create some much-needed distance between my neurons.

“I think you’re bored,” I tell him. “I think you miss your mom and the whole Big Top thing. Have you ever spent a whole summer in one place before?”

The hammock sways dramatically when he flings himself into it, but the straps hold.

“I don’t miss ‘the whole Big Top thing.’ I only did it because I had to. I’m not Milla. You getting in?” He wriggles to the far side of the hammock and giggles when it almost dumps him into the duff.

“You’re at least as good as Milla. Lack of focus isn’t the same thing as lack of talent.” I catch the swinging edge and lower myself down beside him, careful not to let our bodies touch, but as soon as my weight settles, gravity makes a mockery of my restraint. I breathe the next words into his hair. “You’re better at choreography.”

“Knowing what will make other people look good isn’t the same as looking good myself.”

“You always look good.” Fuck, I’m high, and his bare chest against my arm is frying my circuits. He smiles, luminous in the twinkling shadows.

“Then I don’t need a circus, do I?”

“Imiss it,” I confess. I’m not suffering the same sense of abandonment that Gem is, but I am bummed that Shilo left right when I was starting to feel like a part of something. “I wish I’d had a chance to go on tour.”

“It would’ve been more fun with you along.”

“Maybe we still could.”Maybe it’s not too late to save him from his restless self-destruction. “Hals knows all the same people your mom did. And he ran the tech stuff. What if we convinced him to do a show next year with us?”

“You wanna pitch a show to my dad?”

“Why not? You could come up with a concept. You could even help direct it. And I could design lights and sound. I bet it’d be fun.”