Read Online Nothing to Lose by Alex Flinn - Free Book Online Page B

you needed to win something.”
    “Yeah?” I edged away, but not too far. “So it was a mercy win? How about the kiss?”
    “What about it?”
    “Was it a mercy kiss?”
    “You looked like you needed someone to kiss you, too.”
    That made me laugh, but sort of pissed me off, too. “You always walk up to guys you don’t know and kiss them?”
    “It’s none of your business who I kiss,” she said, drawing away.
    I stopped laughing. As soon as the words left my mouth, I’d known I sounded like Walker, calling Mom a slut or something. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
    She relaxed. “I know you didn’t. It’s just … so many guys are like that, like the guy tonight with that girl. I didn’t think you would be.”
    “You really didn’t know, though.”
    “I thought I did. I saw how pissed off you were, watching him. I just wanted to … I’ve never done that before, kissed someone like that. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I’m no angel. I’ve done stuff I’m not thrilled about, but I’ve never…” She fidgeted her hands in her lap. “Michael, do you believe in destiny?”
    “What?” But I’d heard her fine.
    “Destiny. Ever meet someone, someone new, and know there was something going to happen between you—something good, or even something bad. But something that has to happen?”
    I nodded.
    “I saw you there,” she whispered. “And you had to win so we could meet. I knew it. I don’t let people win. My game isn’t gaffed. But you had to win. I had to meet you.”
    If some other girl had said that, I’d have laughed. Destiny. How dumb. How overly romantic, like when girls see you at school and build this whole fantasy life around you and write notes to their friends without knowing one real thing about you.
    I didn’t laugh when Kirstie said it. I took her hands in mine. She let me.
    But who knew what it meant to her, someone like her? Some things I’m not thrilled about. Maybe she met some guy who was her destiny every night, or in every town.
    And part of me wanted not to care. But the rest of me smiled when she said, “I never felt that way before.”
    We sat there a moment, saying nothing, and when the ride reached its crest, she pointed out into the night and said, “Look.”
    “Look at what?”
    “At everything.” She spread her arm to indicate it. “Isn’t it beautiful? Flat places like Florida the double Ferris wheel’s the highest thing for miles. So you get up here, you can see forever.”
    “Flat places?” I said. “What about other places?”
    “I worked a carnival in Seattle once. In Washington there’s a mountain. Mount Rainier, that you can see a hundred miles away, even from the ground.” She looked at me. “You’ve never been anyplace else?”
    “Kennedy Space Center with my class at school once.”
    She laughed. “Last time I looked, that was still in Florida.”
    “Right.” I looked away.
    “Hey,” she said. “I didn’t mean… I mean, before I started traveling with the fair, I’d never been anywhere either.”
    “And now?”
    “I used to keep a map with me, X out all the states I’d been to. A few times—like with Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri—I cheated and walked across state lines just to say I’d been there. But after a couple of years, I’d been in just about every state, except Alaska and Hawaii. I’d like to go to Alaska someday.”
    “And where’s home?” I asked.
    The wheel had made most of a rotation, and we were near the top again. She pointed at something. When I looked, I realized it was clusters of trailers, lined up like molars, hidden behind the rides. I’d never noticed them all the times I’d been to the fair before, even though they were in plain view. “That’s home now. That’s where I live.”
    “But, I mean, before that?”
    “Another town, a little north of here.”
    “But I meant…” I stopped, remembering what she’d said about need to know, about secrets. Who knew what she’d