We All Looked Up (32 page)

A
ndy

“HOW . . . ?” ANDY ASKED, BUT LOST
track of his exact question as he stared out the window in astonishment.

From the freeway, Boeing Field glittered like some impossible fantasy kingdom. Hundreds of flames—tiki torches and huge blazing bonfires and even the delicate curl and flicker of individual candles—lined a long, snaking pathway that stretched from the empty runways (now a single unbroken ocean of parked cars) toward an inconceivably enormous hangar. There were electric lights, too: thousands of pale-white Christmas lights strung up like phosphorescent spiderwebs in an old attic; spotlights crisscrossing the sky as if they were searching for something up above the clouds; an ever-changing kaleidoscope of dance-club color coming out of the hangar; the red twinkle of brake lights providing a monochromatic fireworks show all the way across the tarmac. Andy rolled down the window. You could hear the music even up on the freeway, and a faint whiff of diesel sweetened the air.

If only the whole karass could have been there to see it.

They'd been up until sunrise talking with Peter's parents. Everybody had cried, though in his secret heart, Andy had been crying a little for Bobo, too. He couldn't remember falling asleep, but when he woke up again, the sun was already high in the sky, blaring like a megaphone. Peter's parents were passed out on the couch, looking grief-stricken even in sleep. Peter had been lucky to have them.

Andy found Anita in the kitchen, talking quietly with Misery and Eliza.

“Anita,” he said, “we need to go see your parents.”

He'd expected an argument, but she just wiped the crust from her eyes and nodded.

“Let me just get you something clean to wear, Eliza,” Misery said.

Eliza looked down at her clothes and seemed surprised to find that the bloodstains were still there. “Right. Thanks.”

It was past noon by the time they left Peter's house. Misery said she'd try to show up at Boeing Field that night, but Andy knew it wasn't true. Her parents needed her now, and she needed them, too.

The intercom at Anita's place wasn't working, so Andy had to nudge the gate open with the station wagon's bumper.

“They're probably not even here,” Anita said.

But only a few seconds after she let go of the brass knocker, her mom answered the door. Wordlessly, she swept Anita up into her arms.

Inside, Andy and Eliza met Anita's dad, an imposing statue of a man with a hand like cold marble and very little to say. There was a ton of homemade food ready, almost as if Anita's mom had been waiting for them. After they'd gorged themselves, they fell asleep all over again, in a little heap on the heavy pile carpet of the sitting room, exhausted by the combination of satiety and sadness and shock.

They didn't come to until after sunset.

“Shit,” Andy said, stretching like a cat, “we have to go.”

“Just let me change,” Anita said. “I don't care if it's vain. I've been wearing these clothes for two weeks.” She ran upstairs, and a few minutes later, came back transformed. She'd switched out her T-shirt and jeans for a formfitting red dress, black tights, and tall leather boots. Her hair was brushed and pulled back, and a wide silver necklace glittered at her throat. She looked gorgeous.

“You look gorgeous,” Eliza said.

Andy could only nod.

At the door, Anita's mom clung to her daughter like some kind of life preserver.

“You and Dad can come with us,” Anita said.

But her mom shook her head, wiping the tears out of her eyes. “You know your father,” she said.

“That I do.”

As the three of them were descending the steps between the front door and the driveway, they all saw it at the same time—a bright blue bird with marigold eyes bursting out from between the white blooms of a magnolia and disappearing into the night sky, as if it were carrying a message straight to Ardor.

As the car approached the off-ramp, Andy was finally able to make out the shadows of people down on Boeing Field, walking two or three abreast toward the wide-open mouth of the hangar. They wore necklaces and bracelets of opalescent neon—the kind that you cracked over your knee to release the chemicals that made them glow—and tossed them through the air like Frisbees. They flicked open butane lighters and touched the pointed blue flames to the ends of joints and cigarettes. They made dancing white circles on the dirt with the cylindrical lightsaber beams of their flashlights. Beneath the dome of stars, they created their own constellations, like an endlessly variable reflection of the sky.

Andy followed a line of cars past a spotlighted sign:
WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD
. By now, the dubstep had become another presence in the car with them, heavy as humidity. It took a good fifteen minutes to park.

The three of them walked toward the pathway that led to the hangar. Andy took Anita's hand, then Eliza's; if they got lost in a crowd like this, they'd never find each other again. As they passed one of the larger bonfires—a huge bowl of hammered bronze that glittered and danced with the flames inside it—Andy felt someone watching him. He glanced to his right, straight into a stranger's eyes. She was in her late twenties, walking with a man of about the same age and wearing a papoose on her chest. Inside, a baby bounced and cooed and looked generally unconcerned about the imminent apocalypse.

“Excuse me,” the woman said.

“Yeah?”

“Um, your friend?” She pointed to Eliza. “Are you Eliza Olivi?”

“What do you want?” Eliza asked.

“I can't believe it!” Without waiting for the all clear, the woman wrapped her arms around Eliza, squeezing the baby between them.

The woman's husband lingered at the edges of the hug, looking as nervous as if he were in the presence of royalty. “Are you showing up late for your own party?” he asked.

“It's not really my party. I didn't even think it would happen.”

“Everybody thinks you're dead,” the woman said, finally letting Eliza go. “They're going to freak out when they see you, like Jesus coming back on Easter or something. I can't believe we got to meet you. Thank you so much.”

“There's nothing to thank me for. I didn't do anything.” But the starstruck couple were already skipping off toward the hangar. Eliza shook her head. “I don't get it.”

“Don't get what?” Andy said.

Eliza didn't answer, but her face was thoughtful in the firelight. They walked on, through the overlapping Venn diagrams of luminescence put off by the torches and past an empty stage equipped with a piano and a couple of microphones. Farther on, a small cadre of volunteers in red shirts stood outside the hangar, helping to manage the foot traffic. A big Hispanic guy was holding a clipboard and shouting at people, so Andy figured he must be in charge.

“Hey,” Andy said, “we're looking for Chad Eye.”

The guy gave them the once-over. “You're Peter's friends, aren't you?”

“How'd you know?”

He pointed at Eliza. “I saw you once, through the window.”

“At Friendly Forks,” she said.

“That's right. Actually, Peter's the whole reason I'm here. Just before he stopped coming into work, he mentioned you were putting this party together. I never forgot about it. So a few days ago, I drove up and offered to make some food. They already had plenty, so they put me on door duty. Beats moping around at home, anyway. Hey, Gabriel!” He called out to another volunteer, a tall black guy with a long scar across his chin. “Come over here.”

“What's up?”

“These are Peter's friends. Can you take them up to see Chad?”

“Where's Peter at?”

A long silence. “He's gone,” Eliza said.

Gabriel nodded. “I see. Come on.”

He led them around the side of the hangar to an unmarked black door. Inside, a long staircase stretched upward into a darkness that was by turns purple and green and orange, shifting with the light from the faraway dance floor. Votive candles floated in glasses of water on every other step. They ended up on a latticed metal catwalk built into the very eaves of the hangar. Beneath them roiled a Pacific Ocean of humanity, rolling in waves, writhing in the shimmer of light and sound.

“How many people are down there?” Andy asked, but Gabriel couldn't hear him over the music. The thrum of the bass made the catwalk shiver like a ride cymbal. Halfway across the hangar, they came to another door.

“Chad's in there,” Gabriel said. “You come back down and let me know if you need anything else.” He took a few clanging steps back the way they'd come, then stopped. He turned to face them. “Peter was all right,” he announced. Andy waited for him to go on, but apparently he'd said everything he had to say. He turned around again and kept on walking.

The office beyond the door was lit entirely with candles. Kora music tinkled out of a small set of speakers, though it was mostly drowned out by the beats from down below. Chad, dressed in a suit of off-white hemp, sat in a cheap folding chair in front of a window, looking down on his party.

“Yo,” Andy said.

Chad swiveled his head toward them, and his face exploded with joy. Sid the beagle leaped off his lap as he stood up.

“You made it!” He took them all in for one huge hug. “I knew you would.”

“That's a lot more than we knew,” Andy said. He knelt down to pet Sid. “We thought you got locked up.”

“I did. But the guards let me out when they found out I was in charge of the party.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. There have been some nice surprises along the way, haven't there? Speaking of which, did you notice your stage on the way in?”

“The one with the piano?” Anita said. “That's for us?”

“Of course. You didn't think I'd forget, did you?”

“Kinda.”

“Oh ye of little faith! Anyway, you better get out there soon—a lot of people are already skywatching out back. Now”—he put a hand on Eliza's shoulder—“let's talk about
your
performance.”

“What do you mean?”

“You've got to say something to the crowd, Eliza!”

“Why would they want to hear from me?”

“Are you kidding? The only reason they're here tonight is your blog.”

“My blog? What good was my fucking blog?”

Chad stared hard into Eliza's eyes, like he was trying to find someone he used to know in there. After a moment, he turned back to Andy and Anita. “I set up a little greenroom for you at the bottom of the stairs. Go get yourselves warmed up. I'd like to talk to Eliza alone.”

Andy hesitated. It didn't seem right to leave Eliza behind. The end was only a few hours away; every parting felt like the last one.

“It's fine,” she said. “I'll see you down there.”

Andy walked back along the catwalk behind Anita, trying to make out faces in the crowd beneath them. There were more old people than he'd expected—little streaks of silver hair like patches of dead grass on a lawn. He wondered if Mr. McArthur or Mr. Jester or that security guard from Bellevue Mall had made it. And what about Jess and Kevin and the rest of the Hamilton crew? He liked to think they were all down there somewhere, surrounded by friends.

They'd almost made it to the bottom of the interminable staircase before Andy realized he was about to be alone with Anita for the first time since they'd kissed. He felt anxious and excited—her hips moved sinuously with each step, and that red dress clung in all the right places—but also weirdly guilty. Why had it taken him so long to figure out how he felt about her? How had he let himself get distracted by a girl who'd told him on day one that she wasn't interested? Why had he wasted so much precious time?

The “greenroom” was just an old office outfitted with a busted-up guitar and a couple of couches. Battery-powered “candles” with perfect flickering flames had been placed all over the room.