All Our Pretty Songs Part 6

When I wake up my bed is empty and the room is cool. I draw aside the curtain and look out. The patch of sky I can see is as black and starless as obsidian.

The skeleton man is where I know he will be, a shadow darker than shadow. He raises one bony hand to me in a salute, and I know, although I cannot see his face, that he is laughing.

"You are such a f.u.c.king goner," Aurora says at the beach the next day. She's coating her limbs with baby oil, running her hands up and down her legs carelessly while all around us people try not to watch and fail. "You'll never get a tan if you don't take your shirt off," she adds.

"I am not and I'm fine," I snap, hugging my knees and glaring.

"Oh my G.o.d, look at you!"

"I am fine."

"You're a pasty little b.i.t.c.h and you're in love."

I look around me for something to throw at her head but we didn't bring anything from the car except towels and Aurora's giant bag. She sees me looking, growls. She tackles me, limbs flying, knocking me back onto my towel. I get a mouthful of her hair and a baby-oiled elbow to the jaw. I'm stronger than she is and we both know it, but I'm scared of hurting her and so I yield without a fight. She straddles me, one eyebrow raised, blows hair out of her face like a gangster puffing a cigar. Behind her the sky is an impossible blue. "Uncle!" she barks.

"You won," I point out. "You're not supposed to say uncle."

"You say uncle."

"Aunt. Mom. Brother."

"Say you're in love!"

"Second cousin once removed."

"Look at me rolling my eyes. I am rolling my eyes so hard my face might break. At least take your shirt off so I don't look like a giant s.l.u.t sitting over here by myself, practically naked." She is shouting by "practically naked." I turn my head and catch a batch of frat boys gaping openly.

"We are definitely fulfilling some kind of girls-gone-wild fantasy happening over there right now."

"Stay frosty, motherf.u.c.kers!" she bellows at the frat boys, and then she kisses me. Familiar Aurora smell, vanilla and cigarettes; warm skin; soft mouth. Salt breeze on my bare legs, sound of boats creaking in the harbor. She breaks away. "Come on, take off your shirt," she says again, arranging herself on her towel. "For me. Tell yourself, 'Here is a tiny sacrifice I, repressed and angry as I am, am still capable of making for my very best friend in all the world.'"

"Why am I making this sacrifice again?" I obey, trying not to think about the folds of my belly next to the flawless length of her.

"So I'm not alone. You know I hate to be alone. Are you seriously still wearing that stupid thing Ca.s.s gave you?" I look over at her, but her face is turned away.

"Aurora. Remember, we covered this. There is no one I love more than you."

"I was joking." She wasn't, though, and I know it, and she knows I know it. "You didn't answer my question."

"I don't know. Maybe it is stupid. It makes Ca.s.s feel better."

"Huh." Aurora sits up, finds a plastic soda bottle in her bag, and offers it to me, smiling brightly now. "Dr Pepper?"

"That's not Dr Pepper, Aurora."

"How can you tell?"

"Dr Pepper isn't clear."

"Oh, nonsense." She uncaps the bottle and takes a swig, makes a face. "It is way too early for vodka, you're right. I'll wait an hour." She looks at an imaginary watch, tick-tocks her head at the imaginary second hand, takes another drink, stretches out on her towel. "Much better. What are you doing tonight?"

"What am I ever doing tonight? Hanging out with you."

"Then you're going to a party."

"Oh boy. Sounds great."

"You're a t.u.r.d. A bratty t.u.r.d. Come on, it's friends of Minos's. It'll be fun."

"Minos has friends?"

"Minos has lots of friends. Minos has very important friends. Can I ask you something really emo?"

"Shoot."

"How well do you remember my dad?"

The question is so out of the ordinary for her that I don't even register it for a second, distracted as I am by the thought of Minos: Minos and Aurora, whatever is going on with Minos and Aurora and whether I want to know or should know or should intervene or am powerless to stop it, is Jack coming to the party, do I want Jack to come to the party if it's Minos's party, will Minos steal everyone I care about and make them into creepy skeleton people also, am I insane, is Aurora sleeping with my boyfriend. No way. But if I were my boyfriend I would definitely want to sleep with Aurora, so there is that. Aurora's dad. Is Jack my boyfriend? Probably. Yes. No. Definitely. Aurora's dad. What. "Your dad?" I echo, confused.

"Yeah." Her eyes are closed, her face still. "Do you remember him?"

"Not really. You know that."

"I think I'm forgetting him. Like all the way."

"You were a kid."

"I miss him." She's as emotionless as if she is telling me the rest of the afternoon will be hot.

"Of course you do, Aurora."

"You don't miss your dad."

"I don't have a dad."

"You can have my dad."

I don't want Aurora's dad. Or maybe I do. What's worse: croaker or bailer? Does my dad even know I exist? That would be cla.s.sic Ca.s.s, cutting and running without even mentioning the pending stork. "I remember him in your garden," I say. I close my eyes, too, trying to project the picture against my lids like an old reel of film playing in a darkened theater. Haze and rain clouds, blurry as Super 8 film, the motions jerky. A sweater. His tangle of bleached hair, his face, his bony arms reaching for me. Green gra.s.s in the grey light. Dandelions an electric yellow. But it's so hard to know, now, if what I see is really what I saw or if it's pasted together out of magazine covers and posters in record stores. News footage clips and television specials and that doc.u.mentary someone made about him that none of us will admit to watching but all of us saw. I know Ca.s.s has a copy of it stashed away somewhere; I found it, once, when we were moving. I wonder if anything I remember of him is really mine to share with Aurora or if it's stolen from other people who didn't know him at all. "It's just a picture," I say. "I don't remember what we were doing."

"It's like that for me, too. Frozen moments. Nothing real."

"That's real."

"It's not the same."

"What about Maia? Do you ask her?"

Aurora snorts and doesn't bother to answer. "What are you going to wear tonight?"

"Aurora-"

"I want to talk about something else now."

"Changing the subject every time it hurts is going to catch up with you one of these days."

"Hasn't yet. Want to borrow something? It's a fancy party."

"I'll bring my fancy att.i.tude."

"You cannot wear that repulsive Misfits shirt. I will wail and gnash my teeth."

"I'll wear the 7 Year b.i.t.c.h one. It only has a couple of holes."

"You are impossible. Impossible."

"I learned from the best," I say, and take her hand.

Aurora doesn't get me in party clothes, but she tantrums at me that night in her room until I let her put makeup on me and festoon me with baubles. "At least look like you are wearing this awful thing on purpose," she says, scowling and tugging on my shirt. She leans in to draw thick black lines around my eyes. She smears the eyeliner with her thumb, checks her handiwork, shakes her head. "More." She goes after me with the pencil again. I duck.

"You always make me look like I got the wrong end of a fistfight."

"Hold still! Jesus, you're like a little kid at the doctor."

I acquiesce to her ministrations, tug on the crucifix of the metal-beaded rosary she's draped around my neck, grimace like a martyr. She mock-slaps me and then pats my cheek. "There, all better. Let's go pick up Jack."

Jack, Jack. I don't like to say his name around her, knowing the way my face lights up when my tongue shapes the word. I can't form the sound without thinking of the taste of him, his hands moving across my body, the way he likes to kiss the place between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and listen there for the metronome of my heart. I'm grateful she's ahead of me, leading the way to her car, so she can't see the flush that starts in my cheeks. I stumble at the first stair and she laughs without turning around. "f.u.c.king goner," she says, "I am never wrong," and not for the first time I think it is not a blessing to be known so well.

Jack hasn't dressed up, either. He's waiting on his porch, his house dark behind him. He puts his guitar in the trunk and folds himself into the backseat gracefully, kisses my cheek. "Hey, lovely," he says into my ear.

"What about me," Aurora says, and he kisses her cheek, too.

"You don't need anyone to tell you you're lovely." There's a hint of reproach in his tone. Aurora puts the car into gear.

"I tried to get her in a dress," she tells him in the rearview mirror.

"I wouldn't recognize you in a dress," he says to me mildly.

"I wouldn't recognize me in a dress either," I agree.

"Sometimes people put an effort into how they look," Aurora tells the steering wheel.

"I'm not going to put in an effort for Minos," I say. Aurora scowls.

"What is your damage?" she snaps. "He's fun. Jack likes him."

"You don't like him," I say to him.

"I don't think we should have this conversation right now," Jack says, although I don't know which one of us he's telling to stop. "Let's have fun."

"I'm having fun." But Aurora's voice is cold and the air in the car is charged now with some unfamiliar force and all the joy has gone out of the night. I look out the window at the dark empty streets. We're headed downtown. I lean forward to turn up the stereo, but Aurora slaps my hand away. "I mean it," she says, "I want you to stop saying s.h.i.t like that about him."

"Aurora, I don't think he's a nice guy."

"I don't need a f.u.c.king mother."

"I really think we should talk about something else," Jack says.

"I'm not done," Aurora says. "He's my friend, and my friends don't have to be your friends but you don't get to tell me how to live my f.u.c.king life, okay?"

"Minos isn't anyone's friend," Jack says quietly. Aurora ignores him.

"Okay?" Aurora is staring at the road, her mouth set.

"Okay," I say, although I'm not sure what I just agreed to. "Okay. I'm sorry."

Aurora stops the car in front of a high-rise downtown, one of those horrible gla.s.s and steel monstrosities that's sprung up here and there in the last few years out of the old brick buildings and shabby warehouses. A valet opens her door and she hands him the keys like she's done this all her life. I wonder if she has. Wonder what she's been up to on the nights I spend with Jack. She doesn't look at me as she gets out of the car. Whatever I did wrong, I am not forgiven. I want to go home. "Hey," I say to her back, "I don't feel great all of a sudden. I might go."

Aurora pretends not to have heard me. Jack's opening his door, stops with one leg outside the car, touches my shoulder. "Please," he says into my ear. "Please come." The valet comes around to my side of the car. He's wearing sungla.s.ses, and there is something about his still face and too-white skin that makes me uneasy. He offers me his hand and I take it. His skin is cold and I drop his hand as soon as he's helped me out of the car, resisting the urge to wipe my palm on my jeans. Aurora's already inside. "Please," Jack repeats. He's as nervous as I am. More nervous.

"What do you know that I don't?" I ask.

"Just come," he says. I sigh and let him lead me inside.

I can't shake my growing dread as the elevator climbs to the top floor. The sleek steel doors open onto an empty hallway, as white-walled and harshly lit as a dentist's office, with a single door at the far end. Aurora skips down the hall. Jack balks, then takes a deep breath and grabs my hand. I give him a rea.s.suring squeeze and he looks down at me. His face is serious and still. "It's a party," I say. "Not an execution." He flinches.

"Not for you," he says. I drop his hand.

"I would really, really like to know what it is you are not telling me."

He shakes his head. "Not now. I need you to understand-" He pauses. "Think of it like an audition."

"Audition for what?" He doesn't answer, turns away from me and walks down the hall, guitar case banging gently against his long legs. "Audition for what?" The door shuts behind him with a cool snick. "I am going to kill both of you," I mutter to the white walls, and follow them.

Behind the door is the biggest apartment I have ever seen. Apartment is the wrong word. Penthouse, I think. I am in a penthouse. At first I think the walls are made of gla.s.s, but then I see they're a series of enormous windows so cleverly installed that they are nearly seamless. Chandeliers filled with real candles hang from the ceiling. The room is dark. Despite the sweeping expanse of s.p.a.ce, it is very hot and very crowded. Throngs of tall pale people, holding winegla.s.ses or thick crystal tumblers, draped in fur and silk despite the summer heat. A silvery-eyed woman with a glossy curtain of dark hair spilling down her naked back. A broad-shouldered man with a fierce, handsome face and terrifying eyes. A group of girls who look more or less my age, heads bowed, whispering to each other. One of them turns to look at me and smiles a cold little smile without any kindness in it. Jack and Aurora are nowhere to be seen.

I shrink back against the door, whacking my elbow on the k.n.o.b. Pain flares through me, and for a second the room sharpens somehow, like before I was trying to look at everything through a haze of fog and now it's fallen away. But what I'm seeing now isn't real, can't be real-men and women with skulls where their faces should be. A woman wearing a dress that looks like it's made out of deerskin stumbles into me, laughs in my face. Jesus. Not deerskin. Parts of a deer. I can see the head with the tongue lolling, the neck smeared with blood. Her hot breath stinks of something awful, like rotten meat. She laughs again at my expression and dances away. I grind the heels of my palms into my eyes, look again. The pain in my elbow fades to a dull throb, and as it does, the faces around me go ordinary again; unfriendly, maybe, but not inhuman. I touch my shirt where the leather bag Ca.s.s gave me rests against my chest. I can feel the rea.s.suring lump of it through the worn fabric. I could turn around and leave, right now, leave this place where I clearly do not belong. Money, I think, these people have money, but it is more than money that smoothes their skin and gives their eyes an uncanny light, shapes their rich clothes so perfectly against the lines of their bodies. They are gorgeous, but there is the same cruel cast to all of their mouths and they stand too straight, hold their long slender limbs with a grace that is designed to make the observer seem graceless. I feel like a heifer at the racetrack. I catch a flash of white hair and wave, see it move toward me. "There you are!" Aurora yells in my ear. "Come outside! Jack's going to play." She's at home here, the beauty of the people around us no match for the light that shines from her, her lanky body, the luscious curve of her very human mouth. She takes my hand and pulls me through the crowd, leads me to a rooftop balcony that's easily four times the size of the apartment.

Out here the press of bodies is a little less, and I take deep gulps of fresh air. Far below us the city is still and dark. A darker shadow of mountains rings the black water of the sound. I want, more than anything, to be out there instead of here, rolling out my sleeping bag under a clear sky disordered with stars. Both of them with me, faraway and safe. There is still a chance for us, I want to say. We can go. We can walk away from this, from all of it. But Aurora's eyes are big with delight and she's pressing a gla.s.s into my hand, chattering away at me. In her element. So lovely that everyone around us turns toward her, moves closer, brushes up against her as if the magic she has is somehow transferable. I take a sip of what she's given me and the liquor courses through me, fiery as acid.

"Holy s.h.i.t!" I cough. "What is that?"

"Don't know!" she says. "Crazy stuff, right?" She whoops, throwing her head back, white hair flying. "Come on, I want you to meet someone." I finish the rest of what's in my gla.s.s and she finds me another. In for a penny, in for a pound, I think, and gulp it down, too. Aurora's hand in mine is cool and light. Whatever I'm drinking scrubs the fear right out of me, sends the edges of everything spinning. Aurora is at home here, Aurora will keep me safe. Aurora would never lead me into harm. I'm seeing things, foolish me, sent aflutter by a few rich people in a fancy room. I've been around rich people before. Rich people are very specific but not particularly harmful. Specifically dressed. Specific in a specific way, like they have weird parties in their clothes. This is profound. I'm going to explain to Aurora about rich people, but my whole body is blooming. Here we are, reckless and young and free as animals. If I jumped off the roof right now I bet anything I'd grow wings and fly. No wonder Aurora wants this. I want it, too, now, want to feel like this forever, want this the way I want s.e.x or music or the feeling of my muscles moving as I run farther and farther into the hills. The warm air buoys me up in the limpid night. My gla.s.s is full again and I drink, keep drinking. The air tastes like candy.

Aurora narrows her eyes at me, her mouth moving, saying something, laughing, is it important, probably it's not important, I don't care. The mountains are talking to me, the water singing, all the salt in the ocean calling to the salt in my blood, Aurora, I can feel my heart beating, I mean really feel it. Did I say that out loud, or not, I can't tell, is it important, probably it's not important, I don't care. Did I say that already? It's pretty funny, I'm laughing. She's laughing. The two of us laughing, together, arms around each other, laughing from someplace all the way in the soles of our feet, it's really funny. The no-longer sinister faces around me are suffused with a soft glow, rictus grins smoothing out into smiles of real warmth and affection. How could I ever have been afraid of this? I want to find Jack and drag him off into a corner, I want to tell him that I love him, but more importantly I want him right now. I want to tell Aurora I was wrong, wrong about everything, how nothing that makes me feel this good could be a bad idea, but she's talking to someone, telling him my name, pushing me forward. A white hand reaching toward me, long pale fingers on my skin. The touch of them burns like someone's thrown me naked into a s...o...b..nk.

The man in front of me is impossibly tall and so white he glows with a phosph.o.r.escent light of his own against the velvet dark. Eyes the watered-down blue of ice chips, hair as pale as Aurora's falling to his shoulders. Cold bores through me, cold mouth, cold still face. The twin vortices of his merciless eyes, filled with a hideous, intelligent cruelty. All the liquor in the world could not insulate me from the terror of this man, and the luscious haze runs out of me so fast it sets me reeling. His ice-colored gaze pins me where I stand. He takes his hand away, and I half expect to see blistered skin where his fingers touched me. "That's Minos's boss," Aurora whispers in my ear. "He's going to make Jack famous."

"Delighted," he says. The laughter in his eyes is infinitely more awful than Minos's dead stare. My mouth opens, jaw working, but nothing comes out. I'm saved from having to say anything by Jack's first perfect chord. Aurora tugs me away from the awful man and toward the source of the music. I can feel his stare on my skin even as the crowd closes in around us. I want nothing more than to lie down and let the balm of the drink wash over me again. "Come on," Aurora says. "He needs us." For once she's the strong one. "Come on." Her pupils are so huge they've nearly swallowed her irises whole.