Page 52

Penny

“ARE YOU SPEECHLESS?” ALONSO ASKS.

He’s smirking, but there’s a hint of something else in his defensive smile. His eyes are locked on Penny’s face, watching her every reaction. He wants her to be speechless.

Seeing him, it’s hard not to be. He’s clad in a black suit jacket and pants, and his shirt is unbuttoned enough to show a few simple necklaces. His dangly earring has been replaced by a small silver hoop.

Penny gasps. “Your hair.”

Alonso runs a hand over it. He’s cut off the blue ends and combed it back, leaving a few blond strands to escape into his eyes. “You like it?”

Penny nods, but there’s a part of her that misses how it used to be. Alonso has always stood out, but his usual style feels like him. This feels like a costume.

“How did you get in?” she asks in a low voice.

“They’ve got security patrolling the woods, but those assholes didn’t grow up here. I can find every footpath with my eyes closed. Plus…” He holds out his hands, as if presenting himself. “Don’t I look like I belong?”

Penny doesn’t answer. He’s literally crashing the Barrions’ gala, and that makes the liquid heat in her stomach disappear. She looks around to make sure Julian is out of sight. Then she grabs Alonso’s wrist and drags him toward the trees.

“Whoa,” Alonso says. “How are you moving this fast in heels?”

“It’s amazing what fear can do,” Penny says, glancing behind them again.

“Calm down. After tonight, Corey’s whole family will be kissing my feet.”

Penny stops, and Alonso nearly runs into her. “That’s great, but if they catch you here, we won’t have a chance to even try the curse-breaker.”

“Is that why you didn’t tell me you’d be here?”

“I—I don’t know.” Penny keeps seesawing between panic and something even more consuming. She can’t look at him for too long without a blush rising in her cheeks. “Can we talk in the woods? I’ll feel better if they can’t see us.”

Alonso glares at her, but he doesn’t argue. “Fine. Come on.”

He grabs her wrist, and then they’re walking again. His hand moves down, and slowly his fingers interlace with hers.

Penny has to remind herself to breathe.

“You look beautiful, by the way,” Alonso says, glancing at her.

Penny mumbles something incoherent, but a waiter saves her from herself. He steps in front of them, a bright smile on his face. “Champagne?”

“I don’t drink,” Alonso says.

This is the second time Alonso has said that. The first time was at Village Blues Records, the first time they ever talked about curses and magic. It bothered her before, and she couldn’t put her finger on why.

Now she remembers.

When they reach the tree line, Penny lets go of his hand, putting a few feet of distance between them. “You don’t drink?”

“Nope,” he says. “My dad’s an alcoholic, so it never appealed to me.”

“I thought you were drunk when you wrote that message in my yearbook.”

Alonso’s face grows red. “Oh yeah. That was my story, wasn’t it?”

“Why would you lie about that?”

“You really don’t know?”

Penny presses her lips together. Because yes, she knows. She’s known since that night in the car, when they were at the gas station. He’s looking at her the exact same way right now. It’s how he used to look at her in the lunchroom, and in class. She used to think it meant something else, but now she sees it for what it is.

Does he see the same thing when she looks back at him?

“‘Mad Girl’s Love Song,’ right?” she says.

Alonso goes still. “What?”

“That’s the poem you wrote in my yearbook.”

“So what?” Alonso says, eyes narrowed.

“Did you know you get defensive when you get nervous?”

“Yeah, my therapist has told me once or twice.”

Penny swallows. “I make you nervous?”

Alonso works his jaw. Then he steps closer, until they’re inches apart.

Penny can’t stop drinking him in; the shadows of his face, the way his lips are slightly parted, or how his eyes make the night around them seem brighter.

“‘I should have loved a thunderbird instead,’” Alonso says. “‘ At least when spring comes they roar back again. ’”

Loved. Loved . The word rings in Penny’s head like a wind chime. But he’s only quoting the poem; she read it time and time again last night, trying to decipher Sylvia Plath’s words. To figure out how Alonso saw her in them.

“Thunderbirds aren’t real,” Penny says, her voice shaking.

“That’s how I felt when I looked at you,” Alonso says. “You always seemed too good to be true.”

“Always?” Penny repeats. “How long…?”

Alonso leans down. “Do you know how hard I worked to get you to notice me? It was exhausting. And then, if you did notice me, you didn’t see me. You saw what everyone else saw. Some asshole, I guess. It drove me insane. I thought… I thought if you couldn’t see any good in me, then there was no hope.”

All this time, Alonso was watching her. He never hated her at all. But something in his words makes Penny uneasy.

“So what, I was some fantasy to you? You projected all of this stuff onto me when you didn’t even know me?”

Alonso’s eyes turn sharp. “I think I know you pretty well.”

“No, you don’t! Haven’t you noticed that I struggle to do the most basic things? Do you know how hard I had to work just to have conversations with people? I’m scared of everything . I’m not like you, or Corey, or Naomi. You’re all so… so bright. You make things happen. I just let them happen.”

“Really? So that’s why we’re here tonight? Because Corey and I decided to try and break this curse all by ourselves, and you thought you’d tag along?”

“That’s different—”

Alonso grabs her shoulders. “Wake up, Penny. Everybody is scared all the time. But unlike most people, you never let that hold you back from doing the right thing.”

“I let people walk all over me.”

“You didn’t let me,” Alonso says. “And I’m scary. Ask anyone in Idlewood.”

The words come out in a rush before Penny can stop them. “You’re not scary, Alonso.”

Alonso’s expression turns soft. Open.

With him this close, memories of this summer flood Penny’s mind—not just of sitting at the hospital with her mom, but of the good things. Playing bike polo. Wearing his T-shirt after her own got soaked in vodka-cranberry. Sitting in the café as Alonso wiped down tables, head bobbing to faint music over his headphones.

There’s a distant boom , and tiny sparks of light reflect in the leaves above their heads—blue and gold and pink and purple. Fireworks. There are distant cheers from the guests at the gala. Under the trees, Penny’s own skin shimmers inside and out.

“Penny,” Alonso whispers, and she realizes she’s clutching the front of his shirt. “Can I…”

“Yes,” Penny breathes, and then his mouth crashes into hers.

There’s another boom overhead. Alonso presses her back against a tree, his arms tight around her waist. Penny’s knees go weak, and she clings to him as his mouth moves from her lips to her cheek to her neck.

Penny wants him to see every side of her. The good girl, the coward, the failure. And she wants all of him in a way she didn’t know it was possible to want anyone.

In this moment, nobody else exists.

“Penny,” Alonso breathes again, and she pulls his mouth back to hers.