Page 65 of Fractured Ice

Footsteps on the stairs.

Rory appears at the bottom, phone in hand, already mid-conversation, the way she has a habit of walking into a room without fully arriving in it. She drops onto the couch on Knox's other side and starts fishing around for her other shoe with her foot and she doesn't look at either of us.

"I know, I know," she's saying into the phone. "Just do the hour and then you're done."

Knox and I exchange a look. He returns immediately to the video game with aggressive focus. Laura pokes her head in from the backyard and asks Knox if he wants to order pizza, and he grunts in acknowledgement. Luckily, Laura ducks back outside. The girl irritates everyone in this place except Knox. I think he cares so little that even she can’t bother him.

"Sienna, the cotton candy thing is not that bad." Rory finally locates her shoe under the couch and starts putting it on. "It's one afternoon."

My entire body goes very still.

"Okay, but Emma has the booth after you, so she suffers too." Rory grins at whatever comes back. "Yes, I know that doesn't actually help, but I thought you'd want to know."

Knox has put the controller down and is very quietly listening.

"The kissing booth is not—" Rory covers her mouth. She's laughing. "Okay, that's a lot to ask, I agree, but it's for charity and Emma already said⁠—"

I'm sitting up straight now.

"What time does the shift start?" Rory says. "Okay. Okay, listen, in one hour all you have to do is make it for sixty minutes at the kissing booth, then Emma has to deal with all the weirdos. One dollar a kiss. You count the money, you don't have to—" She dissolves again. "Sienna. Sienna, I cannot help you if you're going to make me—stop, stop, you are not going to die of embarrassment at a college fundraiser."

One dollar a kiss.

I look at Knox. Knox is looking at me. His expression is doing something that on any other face I'd call scheming, but on Knox's face it's just his regular problem-solving look with the volume turned up.

“I have somewhere to go,” I tell him.

“Me too,” he says.

"I need to make a stop first," I say, very carefully.

"At the bank?" Knox says, equally carefully.

We look at each other for a long moment. Neither of us says the obvious thing. Neither of us needs to.

"Let's go," I say.

“Let me just tell Laura,” Knox says, hurrying across the room and poking his head outside and saying something I don’t catch.

“I just hope she doesn’t want to come,” I mutter under my breath.

Rory wraps up the call and looks between us. Her eyes narrow. "What are you two doing?"

"Nothing," Knox says.

"Nothing," I say.

"You have the same face."

"We don't have the same face," Knox says. "We have completely different faces. My face is significantly better."

Rory looks at me specifically, with the look she's had since we were kids, the one that means she knows exactly what I'm thinking and is deciding whether to help or get out of the way. After a moment she picks up her bag.

"I didn't see anything," she says.

"There's nothing to see," I tell her.

"That's what I said." She heads toward the door, and just before she goes through it she adds, without turning around, "The booth is in the east section of the lawn, near the food vendors. Bank’s on the way."