Chapter 7

The noise coming from under Silas’s seat can only be described as croaking. Low, gurgling, somehow both wet and crackling. When I finally rip my gaze from the reading Ethan’s sent me to glare at him, he has headphones in and his eyes closed.

“Silas.” Magnolia is sitting a few seats past him, Google Calendar pulled up on her tablet. She’s not having any of this, either. “Silas.”

“Mmm?” He pulls out one earbud and raises his eyebrows at her. The croaking sounds again, melancholically determined, and he jumps a little.

“Oh, shit. Puddles.”

Half the people at our gate watch as he doubles over, pulling a soft-sided dog crate from underneath his seat. In all the commotion his phone slips from his lap onto the floor, plane ticket illuminated there on the screen: SILAS ACHESON. The croaking intensifies when he crawls onto the nubby airport carpet and sits cross-legged in front of the crate’s zippered flap.

“Hey, girl,” he says. His hair’s tied back again, mostly hidden under a green baseball cap with GG’s Gardenshare embroidered on it. He nudges up the brim and unzips the carrier. “We don’t need to share our bad attitude with the whole airport, do we?”

With one mollified little croak, a hopelessly wrinkled animal emerges from the bag. It’s—um. I watch Silas lift it to his chest and run a hand over its back. Okay, it’s a dog. It turns its furrowed face toward me, cloudy gray eyes finding mine from beneath the canopy of a prominent forehead wrinkle.

“Hey,” someone says, a pair of white leather sneakers appearing next to Silas. We both look up to find Dr. Stone reaching down to pat the dog, backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Oh, hey,” Silas says, glancing at me in the same moment Dr. Stone says, “Have you met—”

They stop simultaneously, looking at me and then at each other, and I realize they were both about to introduce me.

My eyes flick between them. “You know each other?”

Silas glances at Dr. Stone and unfolds himself from the carpet, one hand on the dog and the other held out to steady himself. “Sadie’s my bonus mom,” he says incomprehensibly, offering absolutely no context.

When he reclaims the seat next to me, she settles on his other side. I’m mortified about how Dr. Stone and I met, especially now that I’m staying on the tour for real, and more mortified still when she says, “I used to look after Silas and his sister when I lived in Michigan.”

“Like a babysitter?” I say, and Silas looks at Sadie.

“Sort of,” she says, and the dog lets out another rickety yowl that makes me physically recoil.

“It’s okay,” Silas says, though I can’t tell if it’s for my benefit or the dog’s. He looks up at me. “Puddles has some flight anxiety.” She’s pressed against his T-shirt, one of her paws half-tucked into its pocket. She’s the size of a butternut squash and completely tubular, as rotund at the front as she is at the back. Every inch of her fur is wrinkled. Her squat black face is silvery and solemn-looking, and as we stare each other down she lets out a demure little burp.

“Why?” is all I can think to say.

“Why what?” Silas adjusts the dog against him, leaning back so one of his shoulders bumps mine. I shift in my seat.

“Why did you bring that here?”

“That?” Silas repeats, hiking his eyebrows so dramatically he looks like he’ll give himself a headache. Next to him, Dr. Stone stifles a laugh. “She is my dog.”

He says this like it’s a complete explanation. But we aren’t at a backyard barbecue, we’re in the domestic terminal at LAX with twenty minutes until boarding. We’re at the start of a two-month book tour. I’m at the end of my rope, and he’s going to get all of it.

“Yes,” I say, “and we are working this summer, so why is it here?”

“First of all,” Silas says, turning so we’re facing each other, “it is a she, and her name is Puddles. Second of all, she’s eleven, and you can’t leave an old lady behind. Third”—he looks down at the dog, rubbing one hand over its grubby head—“she’s incredibly polite and you’ll barely notice her.”

I blink at him. Wild tangle of his hair, hideous rubber hiking sandals strapped to his feet, threadbare T-shirt stretched across his shoulders with a streak of slobber shimmering at the collar. Noisy, vaguely fish-smelling dog already snoring against his chest. This. This is what my summer will be.

“Fourth,” Silas adds, looking back up at me, “we aren’t just working this summer.”

“Excuse me?”

That’s exactly what we’re doing. If I can compartmentalize this summer, file it away how Ethan did—it’s something tangible for your application—I can get through it. I’m here to learn, to land the ICU position, to stay focused and keep my head down. And Silas should be, too. He’s here with two other rising sophomores from American; they all won some media scholarship to staff the tour. Camilla went to American three decades and a full lifetime ago. She likes to give back to her alma mater frequently and with as much fanfare as possible. Silas is the videographer; there are two others managing photography and digital media who are running so late I’m concerned they’ll miss the flight.

But, no—I’m not concerned. I don’t need to concern myself with anything this summer except studying with Dr. Stone. Dr. Stone, who’s apparently known Silas since he was a kid.

“I mean, we are working,” Silas says. “But also seeing the country, right? Eight weeks of travel. I couldn’t let Puddles miss out on that.”

Eight weeks. Hearing him saying it out loud turns my stomach all over again. San Francisco, Santa Fe, Austin, Chicago, Denver, Nashville, Miami, Boston, DC. And at the end, a pinprick light in a two-month-long tunnel: Baltimore. My life back. It’s so bleak—so goddamn long—that I can’t even respond to him. But Silas, apparently, is happy to carry a conversation all on his own.

“Speaking of working,” he says, though I’ve already turned back to my reading, “where’s Camilla?”

“She’s hiding.” I don’t look up. “Probably in the corner of the Starbucks with giant sunglasses on.”

“You riding with her in that lush first-class cabin?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” I say, finally looking up at him. “I’m reading, okay?”

“Reading what?” He says it so easily, so casually, that ridiculous dog snoring away on his chest like a baked potato.

None of your business, I want to say. Instead, I bite out, “An article.”

He nods. “Heard of ’em. What’s it about?”

“Is that Puddles I see?” A voice booms through the gate, and we both look up. A short, dark-haired guy in a black Adidas tracksuit is cutting toward us, pushing a silver suitcase in front of him. “My favorite girl?”

The dog starts quivering on Silas’s chest, a full-body tremor that makes her nub of a tail jitter so quickly it practically blurs. The guy scoops her away from Silas and holds her up like Simba in The Lion King.

“Ravishing,” he tells her. “You look absolutely stunning today. There’s never been a more beautiful pug.”

I’m watching in horror as Puddles licks the guy’s entire face—mouth included—when a girl sidles up behind him.

“Hey.” She swipes one hand over Puddles’s head before dropping into the seat between Dr. Stone and Magnolia. She’s taller than the guy and much more angular, wearing black platform boots and a leather minidress. “Cleo,” she says, nodding at me across Sadie and Silas. She points up at the guy holding Puddles. “And you’ve met Mick.”

“Oh, sorry,” Mick says, finally holding Puddles at a distance so he can see me over her wrinkled head. He’s half laughing, his face wet with slobber. “You’re Audrey.”

“I’m Audrey,” I say flatly. When I turn back to my article, Mick takes the hint, brings Puddles with him to sit down. But Silas presses on.

“Why aren’t you sitting with her?”

“What?” I look up at him, five shades past exasperated. His T-shirt is covered in dog hair.

“Your mom.” This morning’s rain has come and gone—a cloud parts outside, sending sun into his eyes. They’re so light brown they nearly shine gold, flecked with the same green of his baseball cap. “Why aren’t you sitting with her in first class?”

“Would you want to?” It’s out of my mouth before I’ve thought it through. Next to Silas, Dr. Stone looks up at me. “Spend an hour and a half trapped next to her in a hurtling metal tube?”

Silas’s eyebrows lift just the tiniest distance. What I don’t tell him is I’m the reason we’re in this airport at all: if it were up to Camilla, we’d be flying private all summer. But those tiny jets terrify me. The fragility of them, their propensity to fall out of the sky. It was one of my conditions, that we fly commercial, and now my mother has to disguise herself at a public airport. Now I have to field questions about how, no, I don’t want to sit next to her in first class.

“Okay,” Silas says slowly. “What’s the deal with you two? I mean, this feels maybe related to what went down in the alley at—”

“Silas.” He glances back at Dr. Stone, who’s watching us with an inscrutable look on her face. “There’ll be plenty of time to interview Audrey this summer, okay?” She meets my eyes, but I look away. This isn’t how I want her to know me—the flustered daughter of a woo-woo celebrity. “Let her breathe.”

I can feel Silas look back at me. I stare at the same word in my article until my eyes burn.

“Sure,” he says finally. “Yeah, okay.”