Loud Awake and Lost

My throat closed up. Anthony. “Um, not so much,” I managed.

“Are you tight with any of them?”

“Actually, no. I mean, it’s not like I knew Anthony that well, either.” It had to be true, right? How does someone know anyone that well, in a space of six weeks?

“Okay, sure.” Maisie’s mask made it harder for me to tell what she was thinking. She glanced again at the painting. “At least they didn’t take it down. Anyway, it’s good to see you, Ember. Come by if you can. But I understand if…that’s too hard.” And then she was gone, floating out through the archway, her superhero cape paunched out behind her, just as Rachel cruised up on my side.

“Who was that?”

“Some girl I used to know. A dancer.” The heat in my skin seemed uncomfortably constricted under all my wrapped gauze.

Anthony must have been a regular at Areacode, too. There were reasons I’d been drawn to it. I shouldn’t have let Maisie slip away so quickly. “She gave me a tip. There’s a good party tonight, over at this club called Areacode.”

“Where’s that?”

“I’ve been there. It’s just a warehouse out in Bushwick.” I stared Rachel in the eye. “Might be better than here. We should go.”

“Go where?” asked Tom, joining up with us from behind, his cocktail napkin full of toothpicked shrimp.

“The good news is Ember sniffed out a party. The bad news is it’s way the hell out in Bushwick,” said Rachel. “Probably some crappy mosh pit.”

Tom rolled his eyes at me. “The day has come. I knew it was a matter of time before you’d go all club rat on us again. With the breakup boots and the attitude.”

“Shut up, Tom,” Rachel snapped. “This is a social emergency. Stay here and it’s your funeral.” But Tom was annoyed. I’d struck a nerve with him. Club rat. And what were breakup boots? I tingled with embarrassment, but I stood my ground.

“Even a mosh pit beats this party,” I said.

“Count me out,” Tom said. “I’ll freeze my nuts off outside. Meantime they’re letting us drink in here, and it’s not watered-down tap beer. And Lucia’s got some cute cousins. So, no, I’m not changing anything. I’ll tell Keiji and the others you’re both taking off.” And with a neutral shrug, he loped off.

“Buzzkill! Who needs him chaperoning us, anyway?” Rachel wriggled her eyebrows. “The painful truth is that Tom knows it’s too hard for high school guys to get into clubs. He’d have held us back. The night’s in our hands now.”

12

Manic Edge

It could be heard from the street, a tribal drumbeat that became a buzz saw of sound once we’d stumbled out of the freight elevator and into Areacode’s black-cave dance space. Five minutes later, I was pretty sure I’d gone half deaf from it.

“Now this is what I call a haunted house! Am I right?” a female voice blasted in my ear. Was she talking to me? I whipped around to stare into the face of a phantom. Her face was caked in white paint, her eyes were raccoon-smudged in eyeliner, and a black hag wig was perched like an actual raccoon on her head.

“What?” I asked. Do I know you?

The girl blinked and reared back. “Oops! Sorry! I totally thought you were someone else!”

“No problem.” A true stranger. Not a semi-stranger, like Maisie. It could make me crazy wondering who I knew, who I sort of knew. At least I had Rachel. Her lanky, poised presence was a buffer.

“You sure we never came here together?” I asked.

Rachel made a face. “No way. But since we are here, want to drop coats?”

We’d been holding on to them. But I gratefully tossed my pink-bubble-gum coat in with the others, in a huge corner pile. The nerdy LANDS’ END tag painfully visible. Obviously this had been another Mom purchase, for the version of me who hadn’t minded dressing like a Hello Kitty doll. I’d need to find a weekend job soon if I wanted to start saving for a cool winter coat.

“You see anyone you know?” shouted Rachel. “That friend of Anthony’s?”

I’d been squinting for Maisie since we’d come up. My body was on alert, waiting to be recognized. Wondering if any of Travolo’s people might approach. Their tentative smiles, my name spoken shyly—“Ember? Is that you?”

“I never, ever met that guy,” Rachel attested, though she’d told me this before. “It makes sense he was a club-scene kid. And I don’t know what kind of conversation you need about all this, Emb, but I’m not sure a nightclub Halloween party is the best time to go looking for it.”

She was probably right. But I hadn’t told her about the painting, and I couldn’t let Maisie glide off, either. On the freight elevator, I’d felt a spark of déjà vu. Something about the way the car had lurched and groaned, how the traction cables had stuck above the fourth floor, then bounced to the fifth, shuddering a moment before it fell plumb and was safe to manually unlock.

It was more of a sensation than full recall—and yet it stopped me from being scared. If I’d been here, it was because I’d wanted to be here.

“Be honest. Was I really a club rat last year?” I asked Rachel. “And what are breakup boots?”

“They were just motorcycle boots. Breakup boots is what Claude starting calling them. As in post-Holden. Hey, I thought they were badass, but you know guys like Claude. They always prefer girls in camis and ballet flats.” Like the prow of a thin ship, Rachel was guiding us into the overcrowded main space.

Two weeks ago, when I’d been on the outside peering in, Areacode had been an empty cave. But now it was painted in blacklight and Day-Glo from floor to ceiling, with dry-ice machines puffing fake fog to make it look like a Halloween graveyard. The corners were tangled with “webs,” dummy bodies dangled from the rafters, and rubber heads stared in anguish from their spikes along the bar. In the booth, a DJ in a grim reaper hood was spinning mash-ups.

Suddenly, for the first time in months, I wanted to dance. And yet I hung back, unsure. Ever since my kindergarten ballet class, my body had identified with dancing. Even after that uneasy blooming summer between sixth and seventh grades, when I’d gone from being tiny and twiggy to the weighted, curvy shape I lived in now.

It had been almost a year since I’d tried so much as a spin in place.

“This scene is on,” I commented softly.