On a stage there are two girls dancing with scarves on their heads and contraptions on their hands, long wires extending from each fingertip and covered with burning wicks. They dance, their fingers transforming their hands into fans of fire. Orange light plays across their bare stomachs, each punctuated with a jeweled belly ring.
Above the stage is an empty balcony that rings the room. If I can figure out how to get to the second level, I’ll have the perfect vantage point to observe the crowd and hopefully to spot Taryn.
I slide through the bodies, dodging waitresses carrying precariously balanced trays of drinks and countless elbows and swinging hips. I see every gender configuration possible as I make my way across the floor: boys with girls, girls with girls, boys with boys, and mixed groups next to solo dancers doing their own thing. Several people make eye contact with me and nod in a way that suggests they may know Kailey, but I just smile and press past them.
Finally, I reach a staircase in the corner of the room, quickly stepping over the velvet rope that marks it as off-limits and darting up to the balcony. It’s swathed in shadows, and I hide behind undrawn silk curtains.
I scan the crowd for several minutes, but I don’t see Taryn anywhere.
She’s not here,
I finally admit to myself, disappointment curling inside my chest.
“I can’t believe you actually came.”
I whip my head around. There she is, in skintight leather pants and a ribbed white tank top, eyes just as vividly green as I remembered, like emeralds beaming from her gaunt face. The last time I spoke with her I was in a different body. And the last time she saw Kailey’s body, there was a different soul inside.
“How have you been?” I ask. She was close to killing herself that night.
Taryn curls her lip and laughs bitterly. “As if you actually care.”
“That’s not true,” I protest.
She shakes her head and wedges her hand in her back pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes. “I’m over it, Kailey. You don’t need to bullshit me.”
I’m not positive what she’s talking about, but the barest glance at her body language tells me that whatever it is, she is most certainly
not
over it. She lights her cigarette and takes a deep drag, crossing her arms across her chest.
“Why are you so angry?” I ask, knowing it will probably piss her off. I need her to reveal what she knows.
“Are you serious?” She laughs, a short, harsh sound. “You’re so hot and cold. One night you love me. And the next? You stand me up and make me look like a complete fool.” She takes a deep breath and blows a stream of smoke at my face.
“When did I stand you up?” I ask, processing the fact that Kailey loved Taryn, or said she did.
She fixes me with those incredulous, feline eyes. “A month ago. I waited around the bar for hours. We were supposed to go dancing.” She pauses, waiting for a reaction from me. But I have none. I’m replaying the events of that night in my mind. Remembering Taryn at the bar, how upset she was. How doomed she would have been without me to pull her
back from the ledge. How doomed Kailey was, regardless.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Taryn continues. “You are so manipulative, I never believe you.” She pauses, and her voice drops a few octaves. “I can’t even believe myself.”
I take a step toward her. “What do you mean?”
She shudders. “It was nothing. I was messed up. It was a dream.”
“Was I in it?”
She throws her cigarette on the ground, grinding it out with a steel-toed boot. Nods. “I imagined I saw you die in a car accident. It seemed so real. You were bleeding. There was fire. And there was this girl, with long brown hair.”
Now I shiver. “And then what?”
“I thought she was an angel at first. It wasn’t the first time I saw her. She—” Taryn breaks off. “She talked to me earlier that night. When I went outside. For . . . fresh air.”
She’s lying, but I understand why.
“I dreamed that she kissed you—and then she . . . turned into dust.” Her lip trembles.
I put a hand on her shoulder, feel the bone so very close to the skin. “I’m sorry I didn’t meet you. I wish I could explain why.”
She jerks away. “In some ways, I’m glad it happened like this. You know the phrase
rock bottom
? I was there, but now
I’m getting better. I’m writing, stories like that one about the angel girl and the car accident. I may even start blogging them.” She pauses again. “My stories are kind of like your art, actually.”
My heart catches in my throat. Taryn, blogging about car accidents in Jack London Square? About mysterious girls and electromagnetic kisses and bodies that crumble away and vanish on the breeze? Cyrus would see through that immediately. Taryn would be dead minutes after she’d clicked the button to publish.
“That dream sounds scary and dark,” I say carefully. “Maybe you should write about something else.”
“I’m not crazy!” Taryn snaps, and I worry that I’ve pushed her too far. “I found her stuff!”
“What?”
“That night! Up on the crane!” My heart beats faster as I remember that my book wasn’t the only thing I left behind—it was inside my getaway bag, alongside clothing, my car keys, and, worst of all, an ID bearing the name Jennifer Combs. The last in a series of false names I went by. A name, I recall bitterly, that Cyrus gave me.
“What did you find?” I press.
“Lots of things. The angel girl left a bag. She was
real
. I mean—she was, like, a real person. I have her ID, her money, her journal.” My breath explodes out of my chest. “At least I
thought it was a journal, at first. But the book dealer said—”
“Did you sell it?” I ask, grabbing her arm more roughly than I meant to.
She throws my hand off. “No,” she says, rubbing her arm.
“Can I see it? The book? Is it at your place?” My words come out in a rush, sounding as out-of-control as I feel.
Taryn stares at me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says levelly.
A voice interrupts us from the staircase. “You should ask her about the money she owes you.” The man who steps out from the shadows is familiar, but it takes me a moment to place him. He’s wearing the same leather jacket as the last time we met. The same nose ring, the same frayed knit hat.
He’d approached me at the coffee shop in Berkeley when I went with Leyla. I remember what he said:
Hopefully you make it back down to the club one of these days. I miss dancing with you.
I wondered then how he knew Kailey—he seemed so much older than her.
“What money?” I ask. Taryn doesn’t reply as she rushes to his side. My eyebrows rise as she gives him a long, lingering kiss.
The man locks eyes with me. “That’s right, Kailey. Sorry I stole your girlfriend. I guess that’s just how irresistible I am.” He laughs, and the sound rises above the din of music below. “But then again, I hear you’re into boys now, too.
Which is fine with me.” A chill runs up my spine. Has he been watching me? Seen me with Noah?
He takes a step toward me. I back up but run into the railing of the balcony, its sharp edge jammed into my lower back.
“What money?” I ask again.
He shakes his head, amused. “And that’s why
you’re
just the user, and I’m the drug dealer. I never forget a debt.”
What?
“I owe you money? For drugs?” This is certainly a new side to Kailey.
“You owe
me
money,” Taryn clarifies. “You were just supposed to hold on to it for me. You don’t remember?”
Damn,
I think, remembering the wad of bills I found in Kailey’s closet, the money I paid Lucia for erasing my records and procuring my fake ID.
“S-s-sorry,” I say reflexively, though I’m not. “I don’t have any money.”
The man inspects his fingernails. “You gonna take that for an answer?” he asks Taryn.
“I guess so,” she ventures.
He licks his lips and runs his eyes over my body. “Because we could
make
her pay you back.” I narrow my eyes. The way he says it sounds like a threat.
He pulls a flask from his pocket and takes a long swallow. “Amateur hour. No offense, babe. But you’re letting her walk all over you.”
I have an idea. “Maybe I could get the money together, if you could show me that book?” I direct the question to Taryn, who locks eyes with me, her expression full of . . . what? Sadness? Longing? “I can come by,” I continue, sensing she’s about to cave. “And we can talk.”
But the man steps between us, advances toward me. “No more talking. When you get the money, you give it to
me
.” His breath reeks, hot on my face.
I look past him. “Taryn?” But she just shakes her head. Her face closes like a door.
“Taryn’s done with you,” he answers for her.
“But—”
“Don’t try my patience,” he sneers. “I don’t care if you’re just a little girl.”
I am
not
a little girl. But his face is cold. And I suddenly realize how much bigger he is than me. The threat is written in his eyes, his body, the way we’re so close to the safety of downstairs and yet so far away.
“We’re leaving, Fisher,” Taryn says suddenly, her voice sharp as a whip. “Now.”
He reluctantly follows her toward the staircase. I don’t try to stop them.
“Hey, Kailey?” Taryn calls, turning back to look me in the eye.
“Yeah?”
“Stay the hell away from me.”
And then she’s gone, taking my one chance with her. Stomping out my plans to beat Cyrus, leaving me once again with nothing.
I slump to the floor and rub my throbbing temples. My loneliness hangs around me like a cloud of smoke. And then I start to cry—for Taryn, for myself, but mostly for Kailey.
Kailey clearly liked girls. And no one else in her life knew. Even in Berkeley, the most liberal place in America, she felt she had to hide who she really was. She sought refuge at The Wasteland, the one place she could be herself.
But even though I never met Kailey, I’ve lived as her long enough to feel certain that she never did drugs. The painting on her wall shows her as an angel, arms outstretched, trying to save Taryn from falling. That could be why she held on to Taryn’s money: She didn’t want her girlfriend to buy any more of the drugs that would ruin her life.
You don’t know that, Sera. She could have been doomed, even without the car accident.
But the world will never know how Kailey would have turned out. The world doesn’t even know she’s gone.
Eventually I pull myself up. I plod down the stairs and begin to drift through the crowd, jostled and slammed by dancers, by people in love with each other and with life. Complete strangers who smile at me and say “Hey, Kailey.”
And somehow that makes it so much worse. The loneliness gains strength, fills my eyes, and begins to spill down my cheeks. I shove through the people and make my way outside into the freezing rain.
“I know how you feel.” Surprised, I look up to see Echo. Her deep red dress is covered with tiny silver stars that sparkle in the muted glow of the streetlight. Her hair clings to her high cheekbones, drenched by the rain. And yet she seems somehow more brilliant than I’ve ever seen her, like a dried-out shell from the beach that shows its true color only when dipped in the sea. Echo is a watercolor, and I . . . I look like a drowned cardboard box: covered in mud and close to falling apart.
I’m suddenly embarrassed. I wrap my arms across my chest. “I’m fine,” I lie. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.
She studies my face, then smiles. It’s almost enough to penetrate my iced-over solitude. “That’s a good attitude, to remember that
everything happens for a reason.”
If Cyrus were here, he’d laugh in her face. But somehow, I don’t think she’d care. “I wish I could believe that,” I reply.
She shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter if you believe it or not. That’s the cool thing about life. None of us has any real clue what the meaning of it all is.”
“Good point,” I say with a laugh. And it is. I’ve been alive for more than six centuries, and I’m no closer to the answer. “Except—if everything happens for a reason, why try to do anything?”
“Because fate isn’t something that just
happens
to you. You’re part of it. For example, I felt incredibly lonely today. I couldn’t stop thinking about Eli—wondering where he is, if he’s okay.” Her face briefly darkens, and I remember that she was good friends with him. “So I came here to be less alone.”
“I can relate to feeling lonely,” I say.
She looks me in the eye. “The crowd makes it worse.” I nod. “But then again, if I hadn’t come here, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
I allow a small smile. Circular logic, to say the least. “So this conversation is my fate?” I ask.
“How else would you get home?” she tosses back, then plunges her slim hand into the leather purse that’s strapped across her body. She pulls out a set of keys that dwarfs her palm, exploding with more key chains and charms than I’ve ever seen in one place. No wonder she needs such a large bag. “You need a ride, right?”
I nod, and she loops her arm through mine. “Let’s go, then.”
“So, wait,” I muse, as we traipse through the rain, “if you hadn’t shown up here tonight, I would have been stuck without a way of getting home. Would that have been my fate?”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Of course not. It would have simply been fate telling you to get creative.”
She’s right. There’s more than one way to solve a problem. Taryn has the book. That’s all that matters.
Get creative, Sera,
I tell myself. There’s more than one way to get it back—especially if you’re willing to add breaking, entering, and robbery to an already extensive list of crimes.
TWENTY-TWO
On Monday, the school is deluged with a storm of rumors. That Eli killed himself, that he ran away to join a band in L.A., that he was spotted busking in the New York City subway. Several classmates try to involve me in conversation, but I stay out of it. I’m too busy thinking of how to convince Taryn to let me see Cyrus’s book.
A voice over the school’s intercom informs us that third period’s been canceled for an assembly. I turn around on my way to Art and change directions, glad that I won’t have to spend a class with Reed.