Ella imagines the scene—not the ghost town it is now, but on a muggy night, crowded with teens, the smell of fried food and cotton candy in the air.
“You hungry?”
They go to Nathan’s to get hot dogs. She’d seen Nathan’s at the crappy food court in the mall so she wasn’t enthusiastic about the choice. But this wasn’t the same. This was the site of the original Nathan’s, he tells her with pride. The best hot dogs in the universe. And he’s right. Granted, it’s one of the few hot dogs she’s had in her life—she’s been to a Yankees game and had one there—but it’s delicious.
Soon they’re playing video games in the arcade, one of the only businesses open. They crowd into a photo booth. Afterward, he hands her the black-and-white strip of pictures.
They walk on the beach—the only souls braving the bite of the wind. The sky has turned pink.
He asks Ella about herself. Her plans for the future. He’s heard she used to go to boarding school, which seems to fascinate him.
She’s excited that he knows anything about her. That he’s taken the time to ask about her.
Walking in the sand, carrying shoes and socks, she says, “So, you and Katie…”
He gives her a knowing look. “It’s not like that.”
She cocks a brow.
“We’re just friends. She needed someone to talk to.”
This surprises her. Katie doesn’t talk much about herself. Ella knows more about her from Candy and Mandy than from Katie herself. And even then, it’s not much: that Katie moved away last year and recently returned. That her parents are super-strict. That her last relationship was a mess.
“Talk to her about what?” Ella asks.
“I wouldn’t be a very good friend to say so,” he points out.
Ella likes that he doesn’t tell her. That he won’t betray a friend’s trust. But maybe he’s playing her. Playing them both. She doesn’t think that Katie wants to be just friends.
She asks him his plans after high school. He changes the subject. She doesn’t know if it’s because he has no plans or because she wouldn’t approve of his plans.
Whatever the case, she doubts she’ll ever forget this strange day on Coney Island in the winter. She tucks the photo booth strip in her pocket.
Back on the boardwalk, the sun is nearly gone; it looks like the world in a disaster movie. She’s shivering from the chill but trying to hide it. He drapes his leather jacket around her.
They walk to the subway. The area quickly morphs into an urban neighborhood. It’s filled with street merchants selling their wares. There’s a man across the street yelling at the sky.
Up ahead, walking toward them, a pack of boys. They seem to be harassing people. One of them knocks a ball cap off a man, laughing; another smashes an empty liquor bottle on the sidewalk.
Fear is tingling her skin. She’s shivering, not sure it’s from the cold. She takes his arm, gestures for him to cross the street.
He takes her hand and looks down into her eyes. His are hazel with flecks of gold.
“Don’t worry,” he says.
Just two words and her fear evaporates.
Then the group of boys stops laughing. They seem to be contemplating the couple.
Instead of harassing them, starting something, taunting them, they do something unexpected.
They cross to the other side of the street. Car horns blare and there’s yelling as the group weaves through traffic, then hurries away into the distance.
Ella holds his hand all the way to the subway.
She’s never felt so safe in her life.
CHAPTER 50
CHRIS
Chris drives down the secluded road, only the occasional streetlamp lighting his way. The sky is overcast, the moon hidden. His thoughts meander. To nights like this, before the world fell off its axis. When Vince would steal the keys to the Monte Carlo—even before he had a driver’s license—and they’d escape the maelstrom of domestic life in the Whitaker home. They’d grab their rolled-up sleeping bags, always kept at the ready, and simply take off. To wait out the storm. Rusty was the eye of that tempest. But their mom had a volatile streak, and his parents brought out the worst in each other, which was always surprising since it was hard to believe that Rusty could possibly have more awfulness in him. He was a bottomless well of ugliness.
Whenever it became too much, they’d drive out to a patch of woodland near the overpass, not far from the old ship graveyard. From the outside, “the cave,” as Vince called it, looked like a tangle of overgrown bushes and vines. But, across a hidden path in the weeds and through a small opening, there was a hollowed-out section, like an igloo. They weren’t the only kids who knew about the cave. Sometimes they’d find empty beer cans, and once a used condom, which was gross. But on the bad nights it provided shelter and a place to sleep in peace.