Read Online Never Missing, Never Found by Amanda Panitch - Free Book Online Page B

distant about it. “No redos,” he says. “That’s also a Five Banners company motto. Didn’t you read the manual?”
    He doesn’t duck in time to avoid getting smacked with a plush Blade.
    “Maybe I’ll still try to let you switch at lunch,” he says. “Maybe. If you’re nice to me. Kissing my feet wouldn’t hurt.”
    “The stench would probably kill me,” I say. “Which, come to think of it, is probably preferable to being stuck here all day. Go ahead, take your shoes off.”
    His laugh trails behind him as he leaves, fading into the screech of the singing hellspawn above.
    The wait until lunch is the longest four hours of my life. Connor makes it slightly more bearable, popping in every half hour or so to pick something up or authorize a return or let me hit him with one of many assorted plush weapons. At a hard-fought one o’clock, he returns, and with a guest.
    “Hi, Katharina,” I say cautiously. Of course he’d bring
her
to cover my lunch. I haven’t forgotten the feel of her fingers digging into my shoulder.
    Her smile is bright and cheerful. “Hey, Scarlett.”
    “So, don’t hate me,” Connor says, “despite your loss at our entirely fair wager, I still went and tried to get you moved. You’re welcome. But Cynthia—really sweet woman—told me I can’t move someone without good cause.”
    “Are my bleeding eardrums not good cause?” I clamp a hand to the side of my head, stretching my lips into the most grotesque grimace I can possibly form.
    He moves in closer and looks me right in the eye. I stare back, noticing, from the corner of my eye, Katharina staring too. “For your ears, anything.” He’s so close I can smell him again, though after all his running around in the heat, there’s a salty tinge of sweat to the scent of Connor. “Except my job, and that’s what Cynthia will take if I move you. Sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”
    I feel a smile twist the corners of my lips, like paper curling above a candle flame. “You’d better,” I say. “I’ll be waiting.”
    “Go ahead and wait,” he says. “I dare you. Hold your breath.”
    I would be tingling inside if Katharina weren’t still staring. “Well, if you’re going to make it up to me, I suppose I’ll come back after lunch.”
    “You’d better,” he says. “Because I’ll be holding my breath too, and I can only hold it for exactly one hour.”
    “You must be a star at pool parties.”
    Though Connor doesn’t come with me this time, I still take his regular table. Rob joins me. “Did Connor say you could sit here?” he asks, and he seems entirely serious.
    “He didn’t say I couldn’t sit here,” I say. I’m already eating my pizza, after having sponged off an entire five napkins’ worth of grease. I’m not moving now.
    Rob glares at me for another few seconds, then relaxes. “I’m just kidding,” he says. “You’re Connor’s new favorite person. Of course you can sit here.”
    “I can’t believe I’m still his favorite person,” I say. “I’m impressed. If I remember correctly, you told me he has a new favorite person approximately every seven minutes.”
    Rob stares at me a moment too long. “Yeah,” he says at last. “Usually he does.”
    All the rest of the way through lunch and all the rest of my walk back to Wonderkidz, during which I’m stopped no fewer than six times to give directions, I can’t keep a smile off my face.
    “Hey,” I say to Katharina, the smile still flitting about my cheeks and, I’m sure, making me look the fool.
    “Hey,” she says back. She is not smiling. She looks like she’s taken a big bite out of a ruby-red watermelon slice and discovered too late it’s a plush replica. “Have a good lunch?”
    “Great,” I say. “I ate with Rob. He showed me his tattoo.” A mountain of skulls, dripping with blood and topped with roses and spikes.
    “Gross, isn’t it?”
    “Terrible,” I say happily. “Just imagine what it’s going to look