Welcome to Bordertown (39 page)

When it finally did, that vibrant blue surrounded by a halo of darkness—probably a metaphor in that, or at least a line Allie could put into a song—Psyche put down her pen. “Well?” she said. “What’s your wish?”

“Is there a time limit on this thing?” Allie said.

“Ah … no. As far as I can tell, the star will appear nightly until you make a wish. Why? Do you need more time to think?”

“Nah.” Allie lay back, hands laced behind her head, looking at her star, which she thought would become a familiar friend in time. “See, I was thinking. If I wished to become the biggest rock star in the world, I’d never know if I
earned
it. I wasn’t even willing
to sleep with Alaunus to get a shot at being a star, because it seemed like cheating. It wasn’t the right way to do it, and I don’t really think
wishing
my way to the top is any better than
sleeping
my way there. I’d always wonder, what if my band really sucks? What if people love me not because Allison Wonderland is the greatest band of all time, but because of some stupid magical compulsion? I never thought about it much before, but maybe the path you take is as important as the place you’re going.”

“So you’ll wish for … something else? For more talent?”

“No, that’s no good, either, because I’d never know if I
could
have made it on my own. It’s still cheating. My awesome rock-star life would be just as bad as Alaunus’s. Hollow.”

“Then … what will you do with the wish?”

“I was thinking: One thing real rock stars are is
fearless.
They do whatever they need to do, and screw the consequences. And what could make me more fearless—totally rock-star fearless!—than knowing I’ve got a wish held back in reserve, a way to save myself if shit gets too real? With something like that up my sleeve, I wouldn’t be afraid to try
anything.
And being willing to try anything is totally rock and roll.”

Psyche laughed. “When you put it that way, I can see your point.”

“Sure you can,” Allie said. “My point is the pointiest. While we’re on the subject of rock and roll, do you know any unattached, totally kickass drummers?”

“L
et’s have the halfie girl do our portrait,” said the woman in the garish, sparkled gown. Her male companion, who looked like he belonged in a middle-school production of
Robin Hood
, clutched the pouch at his waist as if I were the one who was a robber.

I shrugged off my irritation at the term “halfie” and motioned the couple over to my pitch. Even in Bordertown, you can’t live on dreams and wishes, so since I have a knack for likenesses, I spent my nights at the corner of Ho and Carnival, sketching tourists. It earned me coins from places I’d never been, patterned trade beads, and silver studs—enough to buy almost what I needed, never as much as I wanted.

These two were noobs with money—gauche nouveau merchants, fresh from the World, probably with a renovated house on Dragon Tooth Hill—looking for an “authentic” Soho experience. Cameras don’t work right in Bordertown, so they can’t take snapshots; the next best souvenir was a quickie street sketch done by a colorful character. I smelled sale, and why should I explain to them that I wasn’t half elf, if it was to my advantage?

They had different names for it in the World, but that thing about my looks has followed me since I was born. In Bordertown, though, because I am tall and my eyes are silvery gray, some people make the wrong assumption about my parentage. My mother was white, not an elf. Whatever, I still hate the term “halfie.” What is that—half a person? You could tell the old-time townies from the noobs, though: They didn’t question me about my looks, about why my ash-blond hair curls so tight, why my lips are full and my nose broad but my skin so very pale. They didn’t look at me cockeyed with the thought “What are you?” clear in their eyes. The sad thing was, most of the time they didn’t notice me at all. I was merely another runaway kid.

These two stared, but I guess I still did my share of staring, too, like when Wolfboy passed on the street. I’d been in Bordertown for only three months myself. I posed the couple with The Dancing Ferret in the background so I could capture the club’s spell-powered neon sign behind them, progressive views of the namesake creature flashing in sequence. I sat on a milk crate and used my watercolor pencils to sketch the couple, then smudged the lines and painted washes with a brush and water. I lightened the woman’s hair and added the hint of a slant to her eyes to make her look a little elfin.

I sympathized with them, really. I mean, who doesn’t yearn for magic? I had, back in the World, back when I had a mother and a father who were always disappointed in me and a pretty younger sister who got all the boys, back when I wondered if Bordertown might or might not exist. I was the plump one who was taller than the boys, who made poor grades, who was more interested in doodling in her sketchpad than cramming for a math test. I was the one who couldn’t answer when anyone my age talked to me at school. My sister laughed at me and said we were Beauty and the
Beast. I loved her, and hated her, and longed for that day when magic would turn me beautiful and
she
would be the beast in my shadow.

I wasn’t plump now—hunger had made sure of that. Hunger and stupidity. But the elves I had longed to meet turned away from me as if I were beneath them.

The woman giggled when I showed my picture to them, so I knew she liked it. “You must have inherited some magic,” she gushed.

A passing elf in tattered finery and feathered magenta hair stopped and glared at her and then at me.

The noob man pulled a silver bangle from his pouch and dropped it into the kerchief I held out. I stuffed the bangle into my jeans pocket, before the elf could tell him he’d overpaid. Who did he think he was, the vendor police? I handed the woman the picture, and the couple swept off, he smiling proudly, she flapping the paper in the air to dry their lying portrait.

“Go back to your mother and father and stop pretending to have the True Blood,” the tattered elf growled at me.

Was that why elves were always so snitty to me? They thought I was trying to pass? “Dude, I didn’t claim to be half elf, did I?” I wanted to say,
Who died and made you King of Bordertown?
But what if he cursed me? Anyway, maybe he
was
some kind of prince; although I was dubious about those elfin claims to royalty—what about all the Russians who had fled to Western Europe after the Revolution, saying they were related to the czar and weren’t?

The elf’s eyes widened. Had he read my mind? They couldn’t do that, could they? He spat words in Elvish.

I fluttered my eyelashes and took a chance. “You think I’m cute, don’t you?” I concentrated hard to make him believe me.

He snorted and walked off. That sort of suggestion worked on
humans sometimes, but I could never persuade elves of anything.

An alley kid with mucky face paint and a missing front tooth screeched laughter at me. Her gaggle of spike-haired minions joined in. I narrowed my eyes and hissed at them. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know exactly what I look like when I do that, but it must be nasty, because they scattered. I might not sass an elf, but I knew where I stood with humans.

Every other person who walked by was a singer, an artist, a poet, or a dancer. The Bordertown air pretty much shimmered with creativity. That pisses me off sometimes, and other times it makes me feel like anything could be possible. The alley kid in the face paint caught my eye again. She sat alone now, slumped on a doorstep. Her eyes gazed on far-off places and things that I would never know. I picked up my pencil and began to sketch her.

The evening was shirtsleeve warm, but I always felt cold, so I wore a shabby denim jacket over my T and the black fingerless gloves decorated with pink skulls on the back that a customer had given me. They matched my high-top sneakers with skulls on the sides. I hoped the weather would hold. People joked about changeable weather in the World, but here that was no joke—balmy in the morning and an unexpected wizard blizzard in the afternoon. What I loved, though, was when the wind came from the north or northwest, bringing a sweet smell from over the Border—wildflowers and brandy, or maybe the fruits of Goblin Market.

Right then, that north wind must have sprung up, because a delicious scent enveloped me.

“That’s really good,” a soft voice said from behind me, as if the wind spoke. I turned my head to discover the most beautiful elf I have ever seen, examining my half-finished drawing of the alley
kid. It was the first time an elf had actually said anything nice to me. I couldn’t answer. He nodded, then strode off with a carryout box of burritos in his hands while I mentally kicked myself. I swear every girl on that street watched him walk away. It was a fine view.

“Who’s
that
?” a girl with green dreads and a touch of elf asked the boy at the taqueria wagon next to my pitch. She fiddled absently with her eyebrow piercing.

“Sky something,” the boy answered. “He’s playing at The Ferret tonight.”

Now I know where
I’ll
be after work
, I thought.

When I returned the milk crate to Crazy Eddie’s Street Vendor Supplies, I pocketed my deposit to trade for the cover at The Dancing Ferret, then crossed the street.
I hope his band doesn’t do Trueblood rap
, I thought. Hip-hop elf rants don’t do it for me.

It still amazed me that I could walk on into a Bordertown club. There are people in the World who don’t believe in elves. They see the fine clothes and impossibly beautiful gold and silver jewelry and say Bordertown is a promotional gimmick. The government likes things that way, I bet—that means they don’t have to answer questions about what they plan to do about the Realm. I expect it relieved them when the Way to Bordertown closed, which is funny, because Fox News treats Bordertown like a government conspiracy. They say the government is behind the rumors to keep the economy unstable. I have no clue how that works.

I first heard about Bordertown from a drunken friend of my mother’s at one of my parents’ parties. He said he’d been there as a kid. “It’s up the northern highway, but the last time I tried to go, I always found myself back here. Maybe Borderland didn’t want me back.” Because, of course, it was all about him.

Things had been bad at home. I embarrassed my mother because I looked nothing like my so-called father, and my so-called
father didn’t like me. I was the result of my mother’s “mistake,” but he had married her anyway, as he reminded her more than once. I shut myself in my room with my painting and drawing. I began to cut myself. I threw up to lose weight. They didn’t notice. Maybe that crazy Bordertown would be better than this, I had thought, but no one could find it anymore, so I headed for a regular city as far away as I could go, somewhere I could try to make my own magical transformation, but the city wasn’t fun without money or friends, and I was hungry and cold.

One wet night, a kid asked me if I needed help. He said there was a warm, safe place I could stay with lots of food. He knew this doctor who took in runaways. It took me a while to figure out the runaways were all sick. By that time, I was sick, too.

I didn’t realize what the doctor’s game was at first. He was smart and handsome and looked after me. He called me pretty. He asked for my advice. He gave me interesting books and didn’t sneer at my questions. So what if I sometimes fell asleep as he talked to me and woke up with a stiff neck? But soon I couldn’t eat, even though I wanted to, and I grew thinner and thinner. My warm skin faded to ivory, and my blue eyes lost their color. Dr. Vee told me I should kiss necks now, because I’d feel better—yes, that’s what he called it, the smarmy bastard. He put me on his “special diet,” and I hated that, but I did it because he made me feel important and safe. He said we had a bond now and that he could find me anywhere. He said one more kiss from him and I would be able to live with him forever—I would be his best girl. But he was old and I didn’t think of him “that way,” and I didn’t want to live with him forever. I decided to tell him that, but I saw him snap the neck of a kid who disagreed with him, so I ran away again. Maybe I shouldn’t have set fire to the house before I left, though.

The streets were tough, and I was alone and abandoned and betrayed, but I had grown much stronger and much faster. I stalked my food successfully through trash-filled alleys and paved backyards. I stole spray paint and took to the walls. I scrawled warnings about Dr. Vee and signed them with a black bat that dripped with blood. Plenty of others had used those walls before me—there were multicolored names, faces, symbols, flowers, syringes, and giant sperm, and someone had tagged “Bordertown LIVES” over and over.
That
was a joke.

I didn’t hang in one place too long, because Dr. Vee’s kids were everywhere, and if someone tried to befriend me, the friendship didn’t last long. I got into fights. They ended badly—for the other kid. I guess I should have had more sense than to leave a trail, but I splattered the walls of the city with blood and hate.

All the time I worried about that “bond” and wondered where I could go where Dr. Vee couldn’t find me.

One night I had to run hard and far to dodge a couple of Dr. Vee’s kids. By the time I evaded them, I was in a fancy part of town with high-class stores. Some paintings in a gallery window drew me close to the pressed glass. They depicted street scenes full of elves and humans not much older than I was. In the pictures, people laughed, danced, and gave one another the finger. Motorbikes raced through the night up unknown roads—one of them didn’t have wheels. A card propped up on a tripod proclaimed the painter’s name was Patrick Hale, under the title
Life on the Border.
I wanted to be there so badly.