To think, this had started as the best day of his life. He’d had the balls to snag the seat behind Holly in English way back on the first day of ninth grade, but there his courage had failed him. The longer he stared at the back of her head and examined how each strand of her rich brown hair caught the fluorescent lights of the classroom, the surer he became she was way too good for him. She lived in a mansion with her famous parents, who were the toast of the casino. Elijah lived in an apartment with his mom, who’d gotten him an unpaid apprenticeship at the casino after school so he wouldn’t get in trouble like his dad. It had taken him almost the entire school year to work up his courage again and ask Holly out, and she’d said yes. He’d bragged about her to the older guys on the lacrosse team, who’d turned on him and tried to hit him in the crotch with the ball for the rest of practice.
And now this. He’d been afraid of this when she abruptly stopped their long and funny text conversation a few hours ago. The casino didn’t allow cell phones during work. On his break halfway through his shift, he’d hurried back to his locker to check his messages. Nothing from her. He’d sent seven more hilarious one-liners into the abyss, because he was an optimist. And an idiot.
A giraffe elbowed him in the back, trying to get around him. Shoved off balance, Elijah nearly dropped his phone. The giraffe kept walking on four stilts as if nothing had happened. And that’s exactly how Elijah felt, staring at Holly’s message. He was the kind of guy to whom a beautiful girl could say yes and then no without a clear explanation. The kind of guy nobody noticed in a corridor full of musclemen and giraffes. A boy with no father. He looked up at the wide hall ahead of him, which was painted a dull white and ended in a vanishing point. This was his life.
His boss snapped him out of these thoughts. He was looking for Elijah because Mr. Diamond wanted to see him.
Elijah turned around and spotted his sawdusty boss a few steps behind him. “Why would the owner of the casino want to see me?” Everyone in the casino knew what Mr. Diamond looked like because his portrait was displayed in the entrances and the elevators and the bathrooms, but few employees had been granted an audience.
Elijah’s boss stopped in surprise. “How’d you know?”
“Know what?” Elijah asked.
“That Mr. Diamond wanted to see you.”
“You just told me,” Elijah said.
“No, I didn’t.” His boss jerked his thumb backward over his shoulder. “I got the call in the break room. I came to find you.” The faster he got rid of this kid and went home, the sooner he’d get inside his wife.
“TMI!” Elijah exclaimed. The guys on the job said filthy things under their breath about the buxom tourists strutting through the casino, but not about real people.
“What?” His boss frowned.
“Your wife,” Elijah explained.
His boss’s lips parted. His stomach dropped to the floor. There had to be a logical explanation. The kid was only screwing with him somehow—disappointing, because this one didn’t have a single tattoo or piercing and always came to work on time.
Elijah stared right back at his boss. A pleasant tingle spread throughout his body, which was offset by the horror that he could read his boss’s mind. Suddenly he was sweating in the cool corridor. “How do I get to Mr. Diamond?” he asked quickly.
His boss pointed one finger straight up. He thought, Top floor.
“Thanks. See you tomorrow.” Elijah slung his backpack over his shoulder, pocketed his phone, and hurried down the hall, away from those strange feelings and toward the elevator. Maybe he should find his mom behind a blackjack table on the casino floor and tell her he was coming down with something. But then he’d be acting like a baby. She couldn’t do anything for him that he couldn’t do for himself. Buy some cold medicine. And if Mr. Diamond wanted to see him, he’d better go.
He tripped over his own feet as the periodic table popped into his head.
He looked around. A showgirl in full costume sat cross-legged against the wall, an unladylike position considering how little she was wearing, with her feather crown balanced on her head and her UNLV chemistry book open on the floor in front of her. The showgirls’ standard line to tourists who tried to pick them up was that they held this job only to save money for medical school. The irony was that in her case, it was true.
She looked up at Elijah, blinked her false lashes at him just to give the teenage kid a thrill, and looked back down at her book. The group-six transition metals were chromium (Cr), molybdenum (Mo), tungsten (W), and seaborgium (Sg). Molybdenum. Molybdenum. She never could remember how to spell molybdenum.
Elijah passed his hand over his sweating brow as he walked on and the showgirl’s thoughts faded from his head. Clearly he was ill, but the elevator wasn’t far away. He could see it, and when he entered it, he could rest for forty stories.
The closer he got, the less sure he became that he could make it. A dealer passed him, fuming silently about a gambler who’d sat at his table for two hours and pretended not to know the rules. The customer was always right, his ass! A janitor pushed a wide broom in front of her, pining for her four-month-old baby and hoping he might be awake this time when she got off work. Each thought increased the tingling through Elijah’s body. He’d never felt this good in his life. It was so good he could hardly stand it.
One of the elevators opened. Twenty people poured out and headed straight for him. He flattened himself against the cinder-block wall as best he could with his backpack on. He closed his eyes and held his breath, waiting for them to pass. A cashier was going to divorce his wife if she wasn’t home when he got there tonight. A tourist had gotten lost and taken the wrong elevator, but as long as she was down here, she might as well explore until security kicked her out. A dealer recognized Elijah. Wasn’t that Jasmine Brown’s kid? Lord, he’d grown a foot since the last time she’d seen him. He looked sweaty and pale, on the verge of fainting. She reached out to him.
Elijah saw all this in his head, even though his eyes were closed. He saw the way he looked to this friend of his mom’s. It couldn’t be real. If she actually touched him, he was going to freak out completely.
He felt a hand touch his forearm.
He yelped and jumped.
“Hon, are you okay?” The lady leaned close to Elijah, gazing into his eyes with concern.
Elijah’s body tingled so delightfully that it almost hurt. Reading people’s minds was tearing him apart. “I’m fine,” he breathed. “Thank you, but I’m fine.” The crowd had passed. The elevator doors stood open, waiting. He tore away from the lady, dove inside before the doors shut, and pressed the button for the fortieth floor.