by Phoebe North
Back at her house, she strips down to her bra and jeans. I wear crinkly gloves. The bathroom fills up with the scent of chemicals. I sing to her as I work the dye in, soft ballads from another century. The mixture looks like hot red blood against her hairline and behind her ears and in spots on the sink that we rush to wipe up.
“It burns,” she says, wrinkling her nose and rubbing the heels of her hands into her eyes, but I can see when she drops her hands how she keeps catching sight of herself in the mirror and grinning, a secret smile. Like she is finally becoming herself.
When the timer on my phone goes off, I help her rinse her hair over the edge of the tub. The water runs bloody, then pink, like strawberry Kool-Aid. I keep a hand on her spine as I rinse and rinse and rinse but it never goes clear, even after we add a big squirt of conditioner. When we dry her hair on her mother’s seafoam-green towels, it leaves pink splotches in the exact shape of her head.
In a way, the color is awful. Dark burgundy at the ends and almost petal pink at the roots. It’s punk as fuck, and Annie is no punk. Just a nerd, really.
But in another way, at the same time, it is perfect; it is everything.
I run my fingers through the damp, unruly tangles. “Emperata Annit,” I tell her. She looks at me, smiling sweetly. “Eyes like water. Hair like fire.”
“Fists of fury,” she says, kissing me, and my whole world smells like conditioner and peroxide.
“Girls?”
We break apart. There is Annie’s mother, staring at us from the bathroom door. Neither of us had noticed the time, or heard her car coming up the driveway.
“Hi, Mom,” she says, angling up her chin like she’s spoiling for a fight. Even though her pale skin looks even paler now, somehow the pink brings out the gold tones in her eyes, which shine like a pair of chemical fires.
But her mother doesn’t fight with her. She just lifts a hand to her mouth. “You look so grown-up,” Mrs. [Redacted] says.
And then she starts weeping, right there.
Annie and I look at each other, my frown mirroring hers. Because we both know what is going unsaid, the words her mother won’t dare to speak.
Eighteen
A FEW WEEKS LATER, DAD comes in while I’m packing for the Madrigals trip. He awkwardly hovers around for a few minutes, nodding and kind of mm-hmming at all my makeup and hair ties on my dresser until I throw a bunch of T-shirts into my duffel bag and level my gaze at him.
“What’s up, Freddie?”
“You know I hate it when you call me that,” he says, giving me a Dad look.
I grin at him. “But it’s your name!”
“I’m Dad. I should be Dad. Or Daddy, or Papa. We’re not supposed to be friends.”
I push out my lower lip, doing my best not to laugh. “Are you saying we’re not friends?”
My dad scowls at me.
“So, Freddie,” I say, grinning. “Or Papa Freddie, if that’s how you have to be. What do you want, anyway? Have you come to bring me more shoes?”
“Hmm. I think you have enough shoes.” But he keeps milling around behind me, trying to catch my gaze in the mirror. Finally, he leans his weight against my dresser and gazes at me, stroking an invisible beard. “It’s about Annie.”
Oh God. I turn away, brushing my hair from my face. “What about her?”
“You know that your mom and I like her a lot.”
“Yeah?” I ask carefully, but hopefully, too. Because I want them to like her. Super-duper badly.
“But we’d still need to meet her parents. Or her mom, at least.”
Oh. That. I grab a fistful of underwear and stuff that into my bag, too. I don’t want to talk about this, but I guess I have to. I’m no good at lying to my dad. I make all the same lying faces he does. “Well, okay. We can ask. But there’s something you need to know.”
I don’t turn around to see my dad’s expression, but I can imagine it: an emoticon of arched eyebrows and gritted teeth. He’s bracing himself. I know it from the way his breath has gone shallow and pinched.
“Yeeeeah?” he prods.
I sigh. “Okay. Well. Annie is James’s sister.”
“James.” Dad says the name flatly, like he doesn’t understand.
“James [Redacted]. You know. My boyfriend. I mean, ex-boyfriend, I guess. From middle school.”
I turn slowly, curious to see Dad’s face. It’s his I’m-pretending-to-be-cool-with-this face. God, he’s such a shit actor. But then he kind of cringes, and the whole thing falls apart. “I know who James [Redacted] is. Was. I drove you to his funeral, remember?”
“Yeah,” I say, and my voice comes out soft and kind of babyish. “Are you mad?”
“What would I have to be mad about?” he asks, and it sounds like he’s really asking, but I honestly don’t know. I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t hurt anyone and I haven’t lied even if I didn’t tell the whole truth, not right away. Anyway, I’m not sure what to tell him. I shrug.
Dad comes and sits on the bed, rubbing his face with his palms for a minute, a tangled mess of visible anxiety. I sit awkwardly beside him.
“I’m not mad,” he says.
“Okay, good,” I tell him.
“But I’m not thrilled, either.”
“Okay?”
He taps his leg on the carpet, all jangly. Lets out a breath, like he’s trying to steady himself. Then he looks at me. I used to wish I looked more like him, especially when the other kids teased me, when the teachers stumbled over my name. I don’t anymore. I like myself, my wild, thick black hair and my name. Anyway, it’s not just the way we look that ties us together. It’s his worry for me, and his love. His concern, creasing the space between his eyebrows.
“I hated when they kept calling you down to the police station like you were some kind of criminal.”
I look down at my hands, my chipped nail polish. “I know. I hated it, too.”
I remember the way the interrogation room smelled. I remember the way my parents’ lawyer breathed, and the sound of pens clicking as they asked me question upon question, questions I had answered before, every question a new trap, and the way my mind raced and my heart pounded in my ear. I remember thinking of music: the songs James and I had listened to together, like the Manic Street Preachers, who he loved, an obsession I never really understood. And I thought about the songs we never got around to playing for each other. I remember “Help Me, Rhonda” screeching in my head.
It echoes through my mind now.
“I know his parents had something to do with that,” he said. “His father looked so sanctimonious during the news interviews. You got this feeling that they were looking for a key to explain how their sweet little baby went wrong, and you fit what they wanted well enough. They wanted you to be the bad girl, you know? And you used to wear so much black. And all that eyeliner. I know it was just clothing. I never cared—but other parents did. The [Redacted]s did. Maybe we should have taught you—”
“No, Dad,” I tell him fiercely. “You always made me feel accepted. That meant the world to me. They’re jerks if they care that I wore a lot of black eyeliner. I mean, they are jerks. Annie says so. James did, too.”
“Maybe I could have spared you some pain, though,” he says wistfully. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt and I know you did, anyway.”
“Not your fault,” I say again. But he sighs.
“I don’t want you to get hurt this time around, either.”
I look down at my hands again. My dad doesn’t understand. He can’t. Annie isn’t James, and she’s not her parents, either. Yes, what they did hurt me. But—
“She’s nothing like them,” I tell him.
My father is watching me carefully. “You’re young. It’s easy to think—”
“Dad!” I cry suddenly, surprising even myself. “Annie is wonderful. She really is. She makes me feel . . .” I trail off, because there’s no way I can explain it to him. How when I’m with her, music and magic flow throug
h me all at once. Life before her was ordinary, but now it’s full of something else—something like potential.
He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close, kissing my hair. “I know, Vidya. That’s the problem.”
I’m still tucked in against him. Warm. Safe. “What?”
“You’re sixteen. In love. There are a thousand tragic rock songs about this. It never ends well. You know, I was sixteen once, too.”
“I know. I’ve seen the pictures,” I tell him, grimacing and laughing a little. I have to laugh, because I don’t want him to know how deep they slice into me, his words. I don’t want to fall out of love with Annie. Sure, it’s always happened before. Either my heart gets broken, or the other person’s does.
Except for James, I guess. That’s one way out of the whole thing. You could just vanish into thin air. Then there’s no breaking, no tears, no bad poetry.
But Annie is different. We have plans. Not just this Madrigals trip, or her ritual, but after. We’ve started to talk about it in a vague, laughing way. How once she has James back, I’ll go to school for music in the city, and she’ll go to school for art, and we’ll make amazing things and be amazing people together.
“Be careful,” Dad says, kissing me again. I close my eyes, listening to his heart thump through his T-shirt. “Mom and I are here if you need us, but just be careful, okay?”
“Okay,” I tell him, but I’m old enough to know that I’m lying. There’s nothing careful about my relationship with Annie. It’s messy and it’s beautiful and it’s magical. And because of that, I know that I can’t promise him anything at all.
Nineteen
THE BUS LEAVES AFTER SCHOOL on Friday for our first Madrigals trip. We’re all excited, electricity bounding off us and sparking through the air. Mrs. Kepler tries to get us to practice, but nobody wants to. We’re too busy shouting and flirting and harassing each other, a real bunch of animals.
Annie sits next to me, her wild flame hair thrown back in a ponytail, her eyes squirrelly. I want to kiss her neck and wriggle my hand down into her jeans, but she’s not into that PDA stuff, not even under the cover of my wool peacoat. So instead I lean my head on her shoulder as Harper goads us into a game of MASH like a couple of third graders. Annie’s answers are terrible. Her top pick is Gillian Anderson, who, sure, can still get it, but random? Not that I can talk. I’m going to live in a swank beach house with Brian Wilson and our nine children. Annie’s face flames almost as bright as her hair at that.
“But he’s even older than Gillian Anderson,” she says, and then she adds, “And he’s got a cock.”
Harper thinks that’s hilarious. “I like this one, Vee,” she tells me. “Keep her around, okay?”
You could paint the sky red with Annie’s blushing.
The competition is at a state college a few counties away and begins as soon as we get off the bus. We file right into the mostly empty auditorium. Mrs. Kepler has to tap on the music stand over and over again to get us to warm up. I can see that the whole thing is wearing thin for her but it’s hard to care—I’m sixteen and happy, damn it. Even when we kinda bomb our first song, it doesn’t bother me too much until I see Southton High School get up there, dressed in head-to-toe period costumes, blowing us out of the water.
“Damn,” Annie says. “Well, we suck.”
And even though I think I love her, I hate her right then for wearing her heart on her sleeve, like she always does, and calling it like she sees it, like she always does, too.
Back at the motel after dinner that evening, Mrs. K reminds us that we have another competition early the next day, and the flat line of her lips is unamused. We check into our rooms, four to a suite, and bring our bags upstairs. I look at Annie, sprawled out in our double bed on her stomach, scribbling in her book, and I think, well, that’s one of the plus sides of dating a girl. No need to sneak around, not really, like I would have with James or any other boy. I lie down next to her as she draws a strange, horned hare in her sketchbook.
“Tell me about this,” I ask her. “It’s beautiful.”
She blushes almost instantly. I don’t think Annie is used to anyone looking at her art this closely. I don’t think she’s used to anyone looking at her this closely. But it is beautiful. She’s put down a soft layer of graphite, and then over that has begun to etch out individual pieces of fur with a mechanical pencil. It looks real, like you could reach out and touch it and feel the soft fur beneath. Instead, before she can answer, I reach out and touch the side of her face. Even though Harper’s only a few feet away, we start to kiss before Annie can reconsider.
“Get a room, you two,” Harper cracks. She’s sharing a bed with Meg Demeran and isn’t too thrilled about it. We know from last year that Meg snores like a jet engine.
I pull away from Annie and stick my tongue out. “We already have one.”
Some boys come knocking on the door, Davey Riener and Shepperd Anson, and Harper goes over, whispering to them. Annie is ignoring it, giving my neck little tender half bites. But my ears are pricked up.
“. . . party . . . Southton . . .”
“What’s up, Harp?” I call, squirming a little bit out of Annie’s grasp so I can sit up at the edge of the bed.
Harper glances over her shoulder. “One of the Southton girls is having a room party. You guys want to come?”
Meg does, and I do, too. But I see Annie’s face, how it’s practically collapsed in on itself. I squeeze her hand.
“Come on,” I tell her, “it’ll be fun.”
“I hate fun,” she tells me, but she gets up anyway, her hand in my hand and gently trembling as we follow Meg and Harper and Davey and Shepperd down the hallway.
It’s only an hour until lights-out, when Mrs. K will stick her head into our room and make sure that we’re all asleep. But I know from last year’s trips that an hour’s plenty of time to get wasted. Harper’s brought along her smuggled water bottle of vodka and one of the Southton kids gets out those little paper cups you find in the bathroom. Annie and I watch everyone take shots.
I don’t drink tonight. I’ve told her how much I hate it. It would look two-faced to go back on that now, so we only sit together, Annie’s arm draped over my shoulder, watching the rest of them get sloshed.
“Hey,” one of the Southton girls, whose name is Akilah, says, staring at Annie. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“I don’t think so,” she answers. Across the room, Shepperd mutters something, and you almost wouldn’t notice except Harper snaps, “Watch it!”
“What’s that?” Akilah asks. Shepperd blushes, like he didn’t mean to get caught. He’s not looking at me and he’s not looking at Annie.
“I said you might have seen her on the news,” he says, and everyone from our school snickers. Behind me, I feel Annie’s body stiffen.
“The news?” Akilah asks, all innocence and light, and the other Southton kids are elbowing each other. I kind of want to die, for Annie’s sake. I wish I could climb under one of the motel beds and count the springs popping through the mattress, something, anything, to distract myself from the heat of their eyes.
But Annie doesn’t care about the heat of their eyes. Sometimes I don’t think she cares about anything.
“My brother disappeared,” she says firmly, like she’s not even embarrassed. “Two years ago. Maybe you heard of him. James [Redacted].”
The laughing stops. The snickering and jostling and drinking stops. After a minute, Shepperd starts laughing nervously, until Harper elbows him in the ribs.
“Shit,” says Akilah. “Of course. James [Redacted]. I was obsessed with that when I was younger. I used to stay up way too late reading about him on Wikipedia, wondering where he went. I was kind of going through a hard time back then. It felt like something that could have happened to any of us.”
Her words kind of shimmer on the air. I see Annie’s expression soften, like she’s not used to anyone talking about James like he was just another sad
kid like the rest of us. She’s starting to relax beside me when Akilah holds out a bathroom cup of vodka.
“Here.”
She offers Annie the cup, but Annie shakes her head. “No, I don’t drink,” she says, even though she told me before that she does, sometimes. Wine at holidays, mostly.
“Smoke, then?” the girl asks. She goes over to her luggage and pulls out a plastic pencil case. Now it’s my turn to go stiff and awkward, because I know what’s going to happen and Annie doesn’t, not yet, not really. We watch together as the girl begins to roll a lumpy little joint. “I was going to save this for later, when everyone else has gone to bed, but I think we should share it. You know, for absent friends.”
She lights up. Everyone is watching, holding their breath as brown dragon fire curls its way out her nostrils. Maybe she senses that I’m the gateway to Annie, because she hands it to me next, and I take a small puff and hold my breath in. It’s scratchy and painful in my throat.
“Here,” I tell Annie, and I go to pass the joint to her, but she’s still all stiff and awkward behind me, hardly breathing.
“I can’t. I can’t,” she says, in a tiny, frantic voice.
“What?” I say.
Suddenly, just like that, Annie leaps to her feet.
“I can’t!” she says, a little too loud, and then she heads for the motel room door. People are snickering again, but I know that they don’t really find it funny. It’s mostly embarrassing. I hand the joint off to someone and rush to follow her, catching the door just before it slams.
Annie’s fast. She’s already well down the hall.
“I can’t. I can’t,” she says again as she slips into the stairwell. The lights around us buzz. “I took a vow, Vidya. I can’t.”
When she turns around, I realize that she’s crying. She keeps wringing her hands like she’s trying to take off some invisible ring.
“Okay,” I tell her. I want to comfort her. No, that’s not right. I want to tame her. She’s shaking like a wild animal. “You don’t have to. What you do with your lungs and your brain and your body are up to you.”