Illuminate by Aimee Agresti Page A

and not just those beat-up ones you wear all the time—anything but those. Where’s your white V-neck T-shirt?”
    “In there somewhere.” My hand flitted at the dresser he was hunched over. I made no attempt to help. “Tomorrow’s our first full day here—I already have an assignment—don’t you think we should get our rest?”
    He wasn’t listening to a word of it though—or else he would have surely mocked me. With his back to me, he opened the top drawer, scanning quickly, then closed it. He tried the middle one—pulling out a pair of jeans and throwing them on his shoulder—and then dug into the bottom drawer, rummaging some more, locating a shirt. He tossed it and the jeans at me, and the shirt landed on my head like I was a coat rack.
    “Put that on. I’ll give you a belt. It’ll be sort of a rocker chick kind of look.”
    “You’re serious?”
    He gave me that exasperated look I knew so well, the one with the scrunched-up nose and mouth that said I was trying his patience, then pointed toward the closet, snapping his fingers.
    “Okay, okay, okay,” I said. I tucked myself behind the closet door, yanking a chain to turn on the bare light bulb above.
    “Thank you. You know I live for these rare occasions when you let me play stylist. And someone has always been very pleased with my work.”
    “I know, I know. So where are we going anyway?” I called to him, slipping out of my pants and button-down, and tugging on the jeans—of course he would’ve chosen my tightest pair. I pulled on the T-shirt, tucking it in. “Won’t I be cold in this? I’m sure it’s chilly outside now that it’s dark. I think I need—”
    “We’re not going outside,” he replied, cutting me off. “We’re going to . . . the Vault.”
    I burst out of the closet. Dante was curled up on the bed, tossing around a pair of socks I’d missed, but paused to give me a once-over. “Cute,” he said, clearly trying to distract me. But I was wearing the look I gave him when I was on the verge of vetoing one of his brilliant ideas—my signal that I was a flight risk.
    “I’m sixteen, not twenty-one,” I said.
    He waved his hands at me to halt my protest. “Please, so am I, get over it already. You know that secretly you totally wanna go. All the cool kids are doing it,” he teased. We said this all the time, usually when we weren’t about to do anything even remotely close to what the cool kids were doing. “C’mon, seriously, they said we’re allowed in, so let’s test it.” He leaned over and untucked my shirt all around except a bit right in front. “Sloppy chic, I like it.”
    I barely noticed. Arms folded across my chest, I weighed this possibility, knowing that it wasn’t something that should even require convincing. And then I surprised myself.
    “Okay,” I started carefully. “Suppose, hypothetically, that I did possibly want to see what this Vault business was all about—”
    “Really?! Wow, I was expecting I’d have to do a way bigger sales pitch. This is fabulo—”
    I held up a hand to hush him.
    “Hang on. Just suppose I said yes. You have to promise not to run off and leave me alone there when you get your groove on.” On the few occasions we had actually made it to a party, Dante usually inadvertently abandoned me at some point, his ADD kicking in, and I’d be forced to search for him, often finding him dancing—in his own world, not necessarily with anyone—or, more likely, he would have rounded up a group of poor, unsuspecting partygoers for a poker game and he’d be cleaning out every penny they had on them of their parents’ money. Being a mathlete did have its advantages, he used to say. Either way, I was left to fend for myself.
    He thought about it for less than a second.
    “Deal.”
    I studied myself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door.
    “So, is this really okay, do you think?”
    “Yeah, we’ve totally made lemonade outta lemons. I’ve got a belt