Juliet Immortal

because I would
swear
I’ve heard him say the same thing before.
Swear it
, though I know it’s impossible. “You hear me?”
    “I hear you.” I swallow, pushing the strange feeling away. He’s familiar because he looks like the boys I grew upwith—olive skin, sparkling eyes, and lips sculptors would swoon over. This is just a nasty case of déjà vu. Nothing more. “I’m not scared. I wasn’t scared before.”
    “Then why were you running?”
    “I told you.” I lift one shoulder and let it drop. “It was a bad date.”
    “He smashed his hand
through a window
,” the boy says. “That’s not a bad date, that’s—”
    “Please, I’ll pay for the window, I just—”
    “I don’t care about the window!” he says, slamming his palm on the steering wheel. “I care about you!”
    “You don’t even
know
me!” My voice hits a sharp note that rings in the silence that follows.
    The boy’s jaw clenches, making a muscle there twitch. I fight the urge to still it with a finger to his cheek, ignoring the crazy feeling that I’ve done the same thing before, the certainty that I already know how scratchy-soft his skin will feel.
    This is ridiculous. I don’t have time to be distracted by this … 
boy
.
    “You’re right,” I say, determined to put an end to the conversation. “Dylan is crazy, and at
that
moment, he might have hurt me.”
And you
. “You helped me out. A lot.”
    He pulls to a stop at the last intersection in town, waiting for the red light to turn green, scowling at the empty road ahead.
    “I just don’t
need
to go to the hospital, and I don’t
want
to go to the police. It has nothing to do with being afraid of anybody. I just … don’t like police stations.”
    “Why? You got a criminal record or something?” he asks.
    I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Yes. I’m a carjacker. Give me all your money and I’ll consider sparing your life.”
    A surprised burst of laughter fills the car. The boy smiles, revealing crooked teeth that match his nose, making a crooked kind of sense on his face. “Then this really isn’t your lucky night,
chica
. I just spent my last ten bucks on gas.” I’m aware of an ache in my jaw, but it takes a moment to realize it’s inspired by my own smile. “All I’ve got is a coupon for a car wash and half a bottle of Mountain Dew that’s been in the backseat a few days.”
    “Well,” I say, keeping my tone light. “I
am
thirsty.…”
    “I already drank out of the bottle. It has my germs.”
    “Wouldn’t want to catch those.” I smile again, hoping we’ve left the subject of the police behind as he pulls through the intersection. “Guess I’ll have to settle for a ride home.” I take a moment to visualize the exact location of Ariel’s house in my mind. “I live in Solvang, behind the Natural Foods. On El Camino.”
    “The road named after a road.”
    “You know where it is?”
    “Yeah. I know. And I’ll take you there, even though you know where
I
think you should go.”
    “I do. I … Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome.” He accelerates past a line of antebellum houses with lights burning on cozy porches, driving in a silence that gets more comfortable as we leave Los Olivos behind. “That store by your house has really good
pan
.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. I’ll bring you some next time I go,” he says. “I only moved in with my brother a few days ago, but my sister-in-law already sent me to that store twice. The normal milk on our side of town isn’t good enough for my niece. She has to have the organic, hormone-free, milked-by-free-range-farmers milk.”His easy assumption that we’ll be friends, the warmth in his voice when he talks about his family, make me wonder how I could have thought he was dangerous—even for a moment.
    He’s actually sweet in a bossy kind of way. Ariel could use someone like him in her life. She and Gemma, her only friend, have been growing apart. It would be good for her to have someone else to turn to when she reclaims her body, even if her memories of meeting the boy with the crooked smile will be different from mine.
    None of the bodies I inhabit recall anything about me, Romeo, or the work of the Ambassadors and Mercenaries. Their minds take the memories I make, modify them, and claim them as their own, keeping our secrets from the world.
    “So do you have a name,
rubia
?” the boy asks, taking a left onto a narrow country highway.
    I’ve spent shifts in people