Page 25 of Rescue

Okay, so clearly there’s more to that issue than he’s letting on, but I have no intention of pushing it. I know what it’s like not to want to share more than you’re willing.

I gesture at the candy between us. “We’re kind of slacking in the game department.”

“Ooh, did someone say game?” I look up to see the black-haired girl from the party smiling down at us, and Lennon groans.

“I warned you,” he mutters.

“Hush, Lennon,” the girl—Paige—says, smacking him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m only asking.”

“We’re just messing around, Paige,” he says, pushing the bag of M&Ms into my lap, as if wanting them out of view. “No big deal.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Lennon Ransome, I was just asking a question. You don’t have to get all secretive.”

“Okay, babe,” a male voice says, coming up behind her. The drummer. Reed. “Let’s just move along, all right?”

“Fine.” She crosses her arms and heads back up the aisle. “I don’t understand why no one ever wants to play games with me,” she says, her voice trailing off as she leaves my hearing range. “I’m awesome at games…”

“Sorry,” Reed says, watching her go. “She gets a little… intense about games.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Lennon mutters.

“Anyhow.” Reed looks down at us, smiling. But it’s a strange kind of smile. Guarded. Or maybe… his eyes flick between his younger brother and me, and the smile tightens. Worried. That’s what it is. “How’re you guys doing?”

“Fine, Reed,” Lennon says. His voice is perfectly pleasant, but I detect a warning note in there somewhere. Again Reed’s eyes flick to me.

“I thought you were sitting with Levi,” he says, eyes on Lennon now.

“Levi is sitting with Dad.” Yeah, definitely a warning note.

“We were going to have a band meeting,” Reed begins, but Lennon cuts him off.

“Dad said we were supposed to get some rest on the flight. If you guys decide to have a meeting, I guess Levi will come get me, won’t he?”

Reed is staring hard at his brother now. “Okay, Len. I just… okay.”

“See you around, Reed.”

“Um, it was nice talking to you,” I say.

Reed manages a tight smile in my direction before following his girlfriend up the aisle.

“Well,” I say after a moment. “That was kind of weird.”

Lennon releases a huge breath, his eyes on his feet. He takes another breath, then another, doing that deliberate, calming thing he was doing before. After a few seconds, he looks up at me. “I’m sorry. He was kind of a jerk.”

“No, he was fine—”

But Lennon waves me off. “He’s just…” He groans, running his hands through his hair. “He’s just suffocating me.”

It seems a strange thing to say. “Why?”

Lennon looks down at the M&Ms. “I’m sorry, Haylee, that question wasn’t in the correct Never Have I Ever form.”

Okay, so he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. That’s fine. I’m good at distraction. I pick up the bag of candy, narrowing my eyes. And for the next ten minutes I toss out the most outrageous behaviors I can think of, drawing from my own history of shenanigans, as Lennon called them. By the time the flight attendant returns with our dinners, he’s laughing, the dark, angry look finally gone from his eyes.

As we eat, he tells me about other trips to Europe, what they did in various cities, what he hopes to get a chance to see this time. I, in turn, regale him with tales of our last half-assed tour in the States, staying in shit motels and searching daily for different ways to torture Louis for putting us through it. I’m surprised when Lennon offers stories of his own about less glamorous tours. Apparently Ransom had performed in half the dives in the Midwest, traveling in a broken- down van for weeks at a time. It’s strange to think about them before they hit it big. It seems like they’ve been such a huge name for so long.

Our dinner is cleared and the cabin lights dimmed. On the other side of the aisle, Layla watches a movie on the small touch-screen TV attached to her seat. She’s bundled up in a blanket, her seat lowered until it’s practically horizontal. One by one, the other passengers in our section recline their seats, some wearing sleeping masks, some watching TV.