A gold headdress with drop-like rubies sits at the bottom of the drawer, haphazardly wrapped in a cloth. The light inside is dead—there hasn’t been electricity here in years. That, I’m used to. There hasn’t been electricity anywhere except in settlements like the Palisade, which has one working generator—and even that, they use sparingly. I don’t even hesitate to grab the giant piece of jewelry. The gold is heavy and almost soft beneath my hands. I’d seen this so many times under the lights of the display. Even though I should be used to unlikely things happening—it feels strange to be holding it.
“You were right. It was there.” Dean’s voice sounds behind me. I jump, spinning around and backing up against the case. My hand hits the edge, and glass digs into my palm. I curse under my breath, and Dean rushes to me, swearing loudly as he pulls a bandanna out of his back pocket.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I grumble as he inspects the wound. I stop breathing, trying to stop the wood-spice smell of him from filling my senses. He’s close. He’s too close.
“I’m sorry! I thought you could hear me. This whole place has amazing acoustics.”
The cut is shallow, but it stings like a bitch. I whimper slightly as he tightens the bandanna across the wound and ties it around the back of my hand, just above the cuff of yet another mirrored band.
I look up at him, and he smiles down at me. A familiar twist in my gut coils around my spine as I meet his ice-blue eyes.
Dean is beautiful.
He was beautiful when I first saw him moving boxes into the house next to my grandmother’s when he was eight and I was six. He was beautiful when I was thirteen and he was fifteen, and he let me teach him how to braid hair so that he could help me with Vanessa in the mornings and we all wouldn’t be late for the bus.
He was beautiful when I found him kissing Harlow behind the snack bar at the pool two years ago. I’d never told Harlow how I felt, so I couldn’t blame her. Dean couldn’t have known, so I didn’t blame him, either. It’s almost worst, I think, when there is no blame. Maybe that would have been like a cauterizer on the wound or something. If I could be pissed at someone, then my feelings for him would have been singed up in my anger. But instead, they just curled up in my chest. Never dying, never leaving—just stirring at the worst possible moments.
Moments like this, when he’s standing close enough for me to see the cracks in his chapped lips, the ones he has because he always gives away any lip balm we happen to find. I wonder if they’d feel rough if I touched them. If he’d wince.
I pull my hands away from his, coughing as I adjust the straps of my backpack. I hold the headdress up between us, just so I have a reason to step back.
“You think we would have learned our lesson about treasure by now,” he breathes, looking down at the exquisite piece of gold. It contrasts strangely with the dirt smudged on my fingers, and I turn it over in my hands, staring at the red stones.
To think, it was a stone like this that started the whole thing.
Dean holds his hand out, and I look up. His face carries a hint of mischief, a smile that tugs on the corners of his mouth. The whole world has gone to shit, but I can count on that smile. The one that talked me into throwing a water balloon through the school bus window at Michael Precocci after he made fun of Vanessa for not shaving her legs yet.
That smile could get me to do almost anything. I hand the headdress over, and he lifts it to my head, setting it gently on my unwashed hair. The space between us is open again, and feels like it crackles with a dangerous promise. I ignore it, focusing on the ruby droplets as they skim the skin on my forehead. Dean raises his hands, his smile deepening as I turn to look at my reflection in the broken glass.
I think I look ridiculous. The headdress leans to the left, awkwardly balancing on my greasy ponytail. My eyes flit to Dean’s reflection. His brow is furrowed, his eyes narrowed like he’s thinking