Grace and the Fever

by Zan Romanoff

  For a single, surreal moment, Grace feels like she’s sitting in a car with Cara and Lianne in the ninth grade, the three of them singing along to this song, then brand-new, on the radio, like their collective longing in that moment somehow transported her to this one. When she turns her head, though, of course her friends aren’t there. She probably won’t even tell them that it happened.

  George turns around in her seat and catches Grace’s gaze, and it snaps her back into now. Jes introduced them earlier, and something about the way he did it made it seem like George wasn’t someone he liked or trusted. Her pupils are so narrow that they look lost in the gray of her eyes.

  But her expression mirrors what Grace feels: joy, maybe, at the purity of their sound, at the feeling of being young and safe, wrapped up in a song while someone else drives them through the dark, late hours of the night. The boys were made to sing this song, and Grace was made to love them doing it. Cara and Lianne wouldn’t understand, she tells herself. And look at her: finally, she is right where she belongs.

  When it ends, George says, “It’s so good when they do that.”

  “Yeah,” Grace says. “That was—” But she can’t finish the thought.

  Instead, she looks at Jes, and lets him see it on her face.

  —

  When they get back to Solly’s, Jes says, “You should stay,” easy as that. “We all always crash here and do breakfast and stuff in the morning. Raj is good at pancakes.”

  “I’m the only one who knows how to cook,” Raj corrects him.

  “Ken can cook,” Solly says.

  “Ken’s not here,” Raj says.

  Everyone seems resigned to the fact of his drinking and his disappearance in a way Grace doesn’t totally understand.

  She told her mom she was watching movies at Cara’s. It’s the most normal thing in the world to send a follow-up text that says, too sleepy, gonna stay here tonight.

  Okay, her mom sends back.

  And just like that, she’s having a sleepover with a bunch of pop stars. Grace thinks about that instead of how she’s getting better and better at lying to people she loves.

  Katy must finally be asleep; there’s nothing from her. Removed from the party’s hypnotic pull, Grace starts to feel the first creeping tendrils of shame at what she’s done. It was none of her business. She stole a private moment, even knowing how it felt when someone else did the same thing to her.

  On the other hand, neither of the pictures is revelatory. Land and Solly aren’t doing anything they haven’t been photographed doing a million times before, in public, even: sitting together, holding hands. There’s early, blurry footage of Solly with his face pressed against Land’s neck while they were waiting to go onstage somewhere. He saw the camera just after, and passed it off as some kind of wrestling move, turned it into a joke, but it happened.

  They’ve been selling her their songs and their stories for years, and she’s been happy to buy them at nearly face value, content with a series of things that she’s just learning were definitely at least half lies. This little piece of Fever Dream—the band, which is different from the boys she’s starting to get to know—belongs to her now. She can’t quite bring herself to be sorry that she took it. Or that she gave it away.

  When Grace comes downstairs in the morning, George is sitting on one of the barstools in the kitchen, her legs drawn up to her chest, a too-big shirt pulled over her knees. Her headdress is a rumpled pile in the corner, and there are still a few stray white feathers laced into the tangle of her long red hair. She looks exhausted and frail and very beautiful with her smudged eyeliner and the dark circles under her eyes.

  Grace is wearing last night’s dress and feeling like an idiot.

  “Hey,” Grace says. “Do you know what time it is?” She should have asked for a charger; her phone died, and she has a noon shift at Coffee Bean she really has to make.

  “Um.” George taps absently at the phone in front of her. “Almost eleven.”

  Shit. She’s not late yet, but she probably will be.

  “Can you tell them I had to go?” Grace says. “I’m sorry, I just have this—thing.”

  George doesn’t strike her as the kind of person who’s ever worked in a coffee shop, certainly not a boring chain that requires khakis and a name tag. She wakes up with glitter in her eyelashes and feathers in her hair. Grace keeps a spare uniform in the back of her car, and her trunk always smells like powdered vanilla and chai and coffee.

  “Sure,” George says. “I might go, too, though. I think I’m sober enough to drive now.”

  “Did you, um, did you sleep?”

  “No.”

  George’s face is very white in the morning sunlight, so pale she looks unearthly, like the belly of something that crawls.

  It took Grace what felt like an embarrassingly long time last night to realize that George and Land were high, and she’s still not sure on what, exactly. They bobbed at the top of the party like helium-filled balloons, too buoyant to come to rest anywhere for long.

  George asks, “How did you end up here again?” She starts to stand and gather her things: the headdress, her romper, her purse and shoes.

  “Jes and I met by accident,” Grace says. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “Oh, right, you’re the girl from the pictures.”

  George can’t quite carry all of her things at once. She drops first one shoe and then the other, slipping her feet into the heels and wincing as she stands. It should look ridiculous: her ratty, enormous T-shirt and those silver platforms. Somehow, though, she pulls it off. She looks like she’s seen thousands of mornings after just like this one: like she belongs here, beautiful and exhausted in the early light.

  George says, “I thought Jes was supposed to introduce you to Row.”

  “He was,” Grace explains. “She couldn’t make it—missed a flight from San Francisco last night.”

  “Nah, that’s not right. Row’s been back in New York,” George says. “Booked a last-minute gig. Marc Jacobs something? She flew out yesterday morning.” Her words are interrupted by a yawn. “I know because we were supposed to hang out yesterday, and then it was just me and Land, and—” It finally seems to occur to her that she might have said too much about something. “Anyway,” she says. “Sounds like they got their wires crossed somewhere. It happens. You know. Assistants.”

  In that moment Grace stops envying her and starts hating her, just a little bit: the casual, arrogant way she lies, like Grace is too dumb to hear the difference in her voice, or will be too awed by the idea of assistants to wonder how someone whose job it is to get scheduling right could have messed up something this crucial. She can see George’s blue veins threaded like lace under her skin. She wonders what it’s like to be so full of yourself that you can destroy pieces of it casually, like it’s all just part of a game.

  She wonders what Land is running from when he decides to cram himself full of artificial fun for a night, winding himself up so that the rest of the evening will spin out around him. She thinks of Solly’s hand in his lap, Solly’s head on his shoulder, heavy with everything between them, and thinks that she probably, actually, already knows.

  “I’m sure,” she says, trying to sound cheerful. “Is the front door alarmed, do you know, if I need to head out now?”

  —

  Luck is not on her side: she sits in steady traffic the whole drive, calculating and recalculating how late she’ll be. There’s no time to stop at home. She makes it in to work under the wire, flying in in her slip dress and heels on her way to the bathroom to change. The clock ticks noon just as she joins a girl named Kendra at the registers, still snapping the last twist of an elastic around her ponytail.

  “Hey,” Grace says. “You don’t have a spare phone charger by any chance, do you?” There aren’t many other coworkers she could ask, but she and Kendra are around the same age, and they’re mostly cool with one another.

  “In my backpack, in the back,�
�� Kendra says. “I can hook you up when I get a break.”

  “Ugh,” Grace says. “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

  Kendra gives her a look. “Long night?”

  “So long.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  Grace doesn’t know how to answer the question. In some ways it was so much more than she thought it would be: Jes flirting with her at the beginning, and keeping her close all night. How he found her at the end, and told her some of the truth when she asked—or tried to, anyway. And Land and Solly—Land and Solly.

  But her mind snags helplessly back on Jes: Did he lie to her? Did he really not know until it was too late to turn back that Rowena wasn’t coming, or was he luring her into some kind of trap? But what kind of trap could it possibly be?

  She fixes the moment of the boys singing in her mind, her own private concert. “Yeah,” she says. And then, “Well, I guess we’ll see how I feel at the end of the shift.”

  “Amen to that.”

  Grace wouldn’t have said that her other coworkers are cold to her, particularly, but they aren’t all that friendly, either. She’s had this job for six months and it’s not like anyone’s ever invited her to hang out after work or anything.

  Apparently, showing up with seconds to spare and a mysterious long night is the key to getting their attention. Kendra plugs her phone in for her, and Benny, their manager, who’s usually a dick unless he’s trying to date you, sneaks her a shot of espresso with a sympathetic smile.

  Violet asks her about it while they’re loading mugs into the dishwasher, and Grace gives her the CliffsNotes version of her night, leaving out who she went with and why, exactly, she was there. In return, Violet tells her stories that nearly make Grace’s hair stand on end about her own nights out in Hollywood. It’s easy to get lulled by the rhythm of the work, and to let herself forget all of the complicated things she’d rather not consider.

  A few hours in, a bus full of girls shows up—some deep-Valley Christian youth group stopping on their way into Los Angeles proper. Thirty of them form a line that snakes right out the door, a wriggling mass of neat ponytails and matching baby-pink polo shirts. They’re a few years younger than Grace, mostly, and they all want the most complicated drinks on the menu.

  “Half-caf Vanilla Ice Blended, no sugar added, with whipped cream,” one of them says.

  “Name?”

  “Tori.”

  “Okay, Tori, that’s gonna be $3.67.”

  The girl finishes paying but doesn’t leave. She shifts from one foot to the other and then blurts out, “Um. Sorry. Can I take a picture with you?”

  Grace blinks at her. “Why?”

  “Oh, will they not let you?” Tori asks. “ ’Cause you’re, like, at work and stuff?”

  “No, I just—” Grace says, and then she remembers. “Oh. Um. Are you— Is this because of—”

  “We saw you hanging out with Fever Dream,” another girl says, stepping boldly out of the line. Behind her, Grace realizes that other girls, less brave or more sly, have started taking her picture without asking. She despairs about her dark-circled eyes and messy hair before realizing that if they recognize her—all of them—she’s probably in a bigger kind of trouble.

  “Pictures from last night?” she asks.

  She’s never understood the phrase deer in headlights as well as she does in this moment: when there’s something so big and bright barreling down on her that she can’t even see its outlines. All she knows is that it’s coming, and it’s too close and too huge for her to be able to leap clear of now.

  “Um,” Tori says, like Grace is an idiot. “Yeah?”

  “I haven’t seen them,” she explains. “You know. I’ve been busy. With work.”

  “I mean you were there, I guess,” Tori says. “Was it, like, was it amazing? Was Kendrick already that drunk when you guys left? And did Land and Solly really make out—”

  “Hold on.” Grace’s body is still tuned in to the rhythm of her work, trying to make drinks while she talks. Now she puts down the cup she’s holding. The little strings of adrenaline that have held her together all morning get snipped through, one by one by one. Her elbows land hard on the counter. “What about Kendrick? What about Land and Solly?”

  “I guess you and Jes were busy.” Tori smirks. “Here. I can show you.”

  Grace turns away from the phone Tori is handing her.

  “Benny,” she calls faintly. “I’m not feeling great. Can I take a break?”

  “Are you serious?” They’ve halved the line, but it’s still fifteen girls deep, and a few customers who came in after them are eyeing the sea of pink shirts and tan faces with mutinous looks.

  Grace pulls her trump card. “I’m on my period,” she says.

  Benny, in the time-honored tradition of men everywhere, holds up his hands like she might accidentally bleed on him. “Ten minutes,” he says. “Go.”

  Kendra had plugged her phone into a charger, but it didn’t turn itself back on. Grace drums her fingertips against the table as it whirs to life: blackness, blackness, and then text notifications start flashing so fast she can barely keep up. The most recent one is from her mom: you’re home for dinner tonight, right?

  But it’s rapidly swallowed by Katy, Katy, Katy. Grace sees Jes’s name, and then other friends, random school kids she barely talks to. Then it finds the wireless network it’s been searching for, and the scroll becomes a nightmare blur, the phone blinking like last night’s flashbulbs in miniature.

  It’s worse than she could have imagined. She has to piece together the story, flying backward through Katy’s texts, which somehow don’t prepare her for the reality of what’s been going on while she’s been trying to get through her shift. The first ones are pretty much what she expected: WHAT WHERE R U and THIS IS AMAZING and I’M TRYING TO HOLD IT TOGETHER BUT IFUCKIGN CANOT CANNOT CAN NOT GI GI GIGIGIGIGIGIGIG WHWTATTTTT!!!!!

  HOW DID YOU LET ME WAKE UP TO THIS

  CAN I TELL EVERYONE

  CAN I TELL ANYONE????

  YOU CAN’T DO THIS I’M DYING

  I’M SENDING IT TO NIX AND ORI YOU CANNOT STOP ME

  GEEG DID YOU EVER KNOW THAT YOU’RE MY HERO

  Then an hour or so of silence. Then: I told Nix and O not to fwd but they sent it to non-fandom friends just as like, I’m not crazy proof, just FYI.

  And then: oh shit, Gigi. I’m really sorry.

  All she has to do is Google Fever Dream to find the rest of the story. It was a big night for the band, last night. First there are the pictures of her and Jes walking into Holy Communion together: Brazen boy-bander flaunts his sidepiece, reportedly a high school student named Grace Thomas, while his model girlfriend is away, working, in New York. In the pictures Grace is clutching her phone, its case with a picture of her, Cara, and Lianne visible so that her face is doubled in the image.

  Then: Inside, his bandmates poured gasoline on fiery rumors that they’re the ones in an illicit romance when a partygoer snapped them canoodling in the dimly lit back alley of this local gay hot spot. Of course it doesn’t mention why they were at a gay club—because they’d been invited, because they were celebrating someone’s birthday—but of course it doesn’t.

  It was dark when she took the pictures. She didn’t realize exactly what it looked like, with Solly’s hand pressed high up on Land’s thigh like that.

  The last piece has nothing to do with Grace, but somehow she feels the worst about it, like if she hadn’t provided the rest of the story, this part would have escaped notice or scrutiny. Kendrick’s night ended with him stumbling out of an after-hours bar downtown, vomiting on the sidewalk, and swinging wildly at the photographer who caught him in the act.

  He was so drunk that the pap didn’t even bother ducking; instead, he captured the moment. He froze Kendrick’s body wild and twisting, eyes and mouth the same swollen, bloodshot red. He looks young and furious and lost, trapped and alone at the center of the frame.

  Grace’s heart i
s beating too fast, pounding so hard in her throat that she’s almost afraid she’ll choke on it.

  Kendra pokes her head in the door and says, “Don’t pull bullshit period crap with us, Grace, we need you.”

  She nods back wordlessly.

  Pretend it’s a spill, she tells herself. Something you know how to handle. Just clean it up. Get it done. She turns off notifications, sets all of her social media accounts to private, and sends Katy a curt text that says, fuck, okay, talk soon. To her mom: slept through my alarm, at work now, but yes see you tonight!

  It’s only with that done that she can bring herself to read the last text in her inbox, which is from Jes. He must have sent it before he saw, or else it’s the last twist in a truly cruel joke. It says, thanks for last night.

  His silence after could mean anything. He’s probably with the band, busy planning and strategizing, trying to figure out if there’s anything they can do to minimize the damage. Of course he’s too distracted to check in on her. But she can feel the tiny, reluctant flame of anger that caught on George’s casual admission—“Row’s been in New York…”—turning hot and strong.

  She puts the phone down again and squares her shoulders. None of this is her problem, not really. She didn’t make anyone do anything. It’s not her fault that Katy couldn’t keep big news to herself. It’s not my fault, Grace whispers, and wraps the words around herself like a cape as she sweeps back to the counter.

  Tori and her friends are outside, standing on the sidewalk and casting looks through the front windows at her and typing on their phones.

  It’s not my fault and I don’t care, Grace tells herself.

  It occurs to her that none of those texts were from Cara or Lianne.

  —

  One of the girls from the bus tweets about seeing her at work and it gets picked up; more girls start to filter in over the course of the afternoon, snapping pictures without asking, sometimes just looking at her, wide-eyed with awe. The youngest ones bring parents who look at her, too. Their gaze quivers with barely disguised contempt, as if fandom and celebrity and the speed of the information age and their daughters’ yearning, hopeful hearts can somehow be blamed entirely on her.