The Gallery of Lost Species by Nina Berkhout Page B

obnoxious.”
    â€œMe? Then don’t be such a snot. I’m trying to help.” He barely missed my fingers as he slammed his window down.
    *   *   *
    T HE NEXT S ATURDAY , I met Nick Angel at the arcade. I’d tied the roll of bills Omar had given me with one of Viv’s hair ribbons.
    â€œHere,” was all I said, surrendering the cash.
    â€œThanks,” Nick replied, clumsily grabbing the money and shoving it into his army pant pocket. “Later.”
    That night, Viv went out. I pictured Nick breaking up with her in an unkind way, but when she got home she was unaffected. On Sunday night she came home late again. I knew she was high because of the skunk smell. She went straight to her room without so much as a hello to me.
    I saw them together skipping classes that week, probably blowing all the money I’d forked out to Nick. When they came back to school, I ran through the tunnel into their building, watched and waited for them to part ways, then followed Nick to his locker and cornered him.
    â€œWhat the hell?”
    â€œSorry,” he told me. “Your sister is persuasive.”
    I pulled the other three hundred from my backpack and gave it to him. “Leave her alone. I mean it.” He didn’t look so evil anymore.
    Just as Omar predicted, within a month Nick Angel overdosed. Viv came home hysterical. She made the movements to tear at her hair, but there was no hair to pull at. She sobbed so hard we couldn’t understand what she was saying.
    Nick had ignored her that week. She didn’t know why. She went over to his house. His combative father called her a Nazi and blamed her for his son’s hospitalization.
    â€œWho is this boy?” Con asked me.
    â€œNo one. A druggie,” I told her.
    Later, I went into Viv’s room to comfort her. “I did this to him,” she professed. “I made him sell exam answers out back. He somehow got some cash fast,” she said, wringing her hands. “He wanted to put it away for university. I got him to buy coke.”
    Nick Angel’s freckly face popped into my mind when I closed my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. I’d been reading Macbeth and I was sure his ghost would haunt me if he died.
    His parents wouldn’t let Viv visit him in the hospital, so I snuck into his room on her behalf. When he saw me, he went berserk, hollering that he never wanted to see me or Viv again.
    As soon as he got out, his father shipped him away to a military academy. Viv was inconsolable and her grades started slipping. I didn’t mention Nick’s last words or how awkward it was to see him cry.
    Omar said he would have gone that route regardless. That he would have found a way to OD with my money or without it. But I wasn’t convinced. What scared me was what I’d been capable of. And what Omar and I were capable of together.
    *   *   *
    W HEN MY FATHER asked me why I was quitting the Coin Shoppe, I said I was tired of watching Serena bring sleazy customers up to her room. Nothing was further from the truth. He was the only man I’d seen her with, but Henry’s pained expression satisfied me.
    Lying in bed at night, I wondered if I’d led my father to Serena, or if he knew her already and wasn’t so much intent on my learning about coins as he was on seeing her. This possibility hurt the most.
    My career as a thief consisted of stealing one gold coin. Since she was sleeping with my father, I owed Serena nothing. Omar didn’t ask for his money back and I didn’t offer. As far as I was concerned, he was partly responsible for what happened to Nick Angel anyway.
    I still went to tell him goodbye once I announced to Serena that I was leaving. “My mom is such a witch,” he said as he leaned out the window, looking down on me as I crouched on the snow-covered fire escape.
    â€œSo is mine,” I told him. “I hope you get that