by Lily Paradis
“I’m sorry,” I said in my faux-pleasant voice. “Who sent you?”
“Catherine,” Jesse spoke up. “I think her name was Catherine.”
Now
CATHERINE’S APARTMENT ISN’T big enough for the both of us.
“Tate, do you sleep?”
“I sleep. I just don’t sleep when you do, Catherine.”
“I think you’re a vampire.”
“I am.”
She takes three steps over to her fridge and pulls out a carton of milk. “No, but really, I think we should go apartment-shopping today.”
I fall back onto her bed and groan in protest. I have some money saved up, but I gave up the right to my entire trust fund when I left Charleston. The only way to get it back would be to go and make up with Lara, and even then, it wouldn’t be guaranteed.
“I have a surprise for you, but you’ll have to get going sometime this century,” Catherine tells me.
“Fine, but if it involves Hayden, I’m killing you both.”
“Fine.”
“Catherine,” I complain, “why are we looking at apartments that Jay-Z and Beyoncé can afford? This is ridiculous.”
A leggy brunette real estate agent is trying to show me a giant penthouse placed inside of a clock tower. From the outside, you would have no idea anyone could possibly live inside. The views are absolutely breathtaking, but I’m not sure I could afford this place even with Hale help.
“I’ll let you two talk it over,” the real estate agent tells me as she walks into the next room.
Megan? Miranda? I’m not sure what her name is. I don’t really care.
“Where’s my surprise?” I ask Catherine impatiently. “Have you decided to buy this for me?”
“Shut up. It’s on its way.”
“It?”
“It.”
I tell Megan Miranda that I’d like to look at the next listing, but before I can walk out the door, I’m assaulted.
“Hello, love,” Colin says, engulfing me with cigarette smoke.
I take a deep breath.
Megan Miranda starts to wave her hands in front of her face frantically and coughs dramatically.
“Excuse me!” Her shrill voice could cut steel. “There’s no smoking in the building.”
“Oh,” Colin says, stomping his cigarette out on the million-dollar floor. “Excuse me.”
He’s not sorry at all.
I hug him tighter, pulling at the back of his coat as if to convince myself that he’s really here.
“Was this a good enough surprise?” Catherine gives me a look. She kisses Colin quickly and grips his now cigarette-free hand.
No one bends to pick up the ashes on the floor, and Megan Miranda stares at us like we’re all crazy. She throws her hands up in the air and walks away, muttering to herself.
Welcome to New York City.
“So, is this your new house? Can we have a party?”
Colin drags Catherine by the hand into the kitchen, which is bigger than her entire apartment.
“Oh, yes,” I tell him as I open a few drawers. “What can I make you to drink?”
“I’ll have a martini—shaken, not stirred,” he says in a British accent.
“Coming right up, Mr. Bond.” I pretend to make a martini.
Catherine shakes her head. “You two are ridiculous.”
“Just like old times,” Colin says. He looks just as dashing as always. “We might need some peyote.”
“Today was a complete and utter failure,” I tell Catherine and Colin as we walk back to her apartment on Fifth Avenue. “I’m never going to be able to afford living in the city unless I want to live in a cardboard box.”
“Now, I bet you feel bad for that cockroach you killed,” Catherine adds.
I give her a look because she’s trying to make me feel guilty for making a mess of her room in the process. “Not really.”
“Well, you can’t sleep with Catherine forever,” Colin adds, blowing out a puff of smoke. “That’s my job.”
She shoves him to the side, but I can tell he loves every second of it.
“Colin, why are you here anyway? Other than to give us all lung cancer?”
I pull the cigarette from his mouth and put it into my own, but Catherine quickly dislodges it from my lips and throws it into a nearby trashcan.
“You’re both going to kill yourselves.”
“That’s the idea,” Colin says.
I’m thinking it.
We pass Catherine’s research building, and she ducks inside, leaving me with Colin.
“Have fun at dinner.” She winks and gives a quick kiss on Colin’s cheek.
With that, I’m alone with possibly the worst influence in the entire world. If New Tate wants permanent residence inside my body, today will be the battle to see if she can beat out Old Tate in the presence of Colin.
“I’m only here for one day to see you, stupid. Let’s make it count.”
“I can’t,” I tell him, stopping to wipe my brow. “I have dinner plans tonight.”
“Right,” he says. “With me.”
“No, with Hayden.”
“Hayden Rockefeller?”
“How did you know?”
“How do you think?”
Catherine.
“I can’t cancel on him. I’ve already made a huge mess of myself.”
He stops and stares at me.
“Who are you? And what have you done with Tate McKenna? The Tate I know wouldn’t give a shit about anyone, let alone the richest man in Manhattan.” He feels my forehead. “Are you sure this heat isn’t getting to you? Are you on drugs? Can I have some?”
I shove his hand away. “I’m trying to be New Tate.”
“Well, New Tate, you really are going to have to cancel your date tonight because I have something for you that I think Old Tate would die for.”
“Fine, but it’s not a date.”
Colin scoffs and puts his cigarette out on his arm, and I watch his face as he relishes the burn.
“If that’s what you really want to tell yourself.”
That’s what I want to tell myself. That’s what I am telling myself. But we all know that I am a liar, and liars can’t be unmade.
Then
THE THING I hated the most in life was having Jesse near me at all times. I hated the fact that he somehow got a scholarship to the school where I was the evil queen. I planned on wreaking havoc my entire senior year, and I was distracted because there he was, sitting in his chair, looking at me in all sorts of strange ways during class. He was there in the hallways. He was there in the cafeteria, sitting all by himself. He was there in the dorms. I didn’t know where he lived. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him, but I didn’t have a choice because Jesse Elliott had crawled inside my skin and would most likely reside there for the rest of my existence.
“Tate?”
I hated her voice.
“Tate?”
Shut up.
“Tate?”
I wanted to slap her across the face.
“What, Jasmine?” I didn’t make any effort to hide my disdain.
“Well, I was just wondering if you could read over my article.”
I snatched the paper out of her hands and started to read. Without looking at her face, I made a motion with my hand that told her to walk away, but she didn’t.
“Tate?”
“What?”
“Why is Jesse looking at you like that?”
“He’s not looking at me in any special way. He’s staring off into space. Mark’s looking at me, too.”
I nodded directly at Mark, the entertainment editor, who quickly averted his gaze and went back to his work after being caught.
“See?”
She shook her head.
“Kara, don’t you think Jesse’s looking at her a little weird?”
Kara sidled up to Jasmine. “I think he looks at me like that, too.”
“Ew, Kara.” I looked
up from Jasmine’s article. “You’re despicable.”
I took a red pen off my desk and slapped Jasmine’s article down on it.
Ick.
I handed it back to her without a word and walked out of the room to go find Colin for a cigarette. As I walked out of the room, I could feel Jesse’s eyes burning holes through the back of my school-issued cardigan. I pulled it off and threw it on the floor without looking back. At best, maybe someone would trip on it during passing period.
When I found Colin’s classroom, I walked in without looking. The professor was still speaking as I stalked across the room, grabbed Colin, and led him out the door. He didn’t miss a beat, and neither did the professor. No one was surprised that we were ditching classes. No one cared. So long as our parents—or grandparents, in my case—paid the bills, we could do whatever we wanted, except stay over summer break.
Colin handed me a cigarette because he knew I needed it, and that held the tears at bay until we got outside to the parking lot where we got into his car.
“Let me have it, sunshine.”
I was all for the irony because sunshine was the last word anyone would ever use to describe me.
He threw my cigarette out the window and pulled me close as I started to sob.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do it anymore.”
He rubbed my back as I started to shake, and my stomach felt like it was going to escape from my body.
“I don’t understand what this is that you have with him, Tate. It scares the hell out of me.”
“I know.” I sniffled. “I want to be free of it.” I knew I would never, ever be free of Jesse Elliott.
“Colin?”
“Tate?”
“Do you think Catherine is your soul mate?”
He nodded. “Yes, but so are you.”
“You can’t have more than one.”
“Not like that, stupid. I’m not in love with you. I just love you. You’re my best friend.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I just want this to end.”
“We all want it to end.”
“I don’t think love is supposed to hurt like this,” I told him.
“It’s not. I think it’s supposed to hurt in a good way, but this isn’t good. This is like a virus taking over your whole body, and he’s just sitting there. He hasn’t even said a word to you, and you’re a mess. You don’t love him.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope.”
We sat there for two more classes until I finished crying. Then, he waited while I reapplied my makeup.
“What am I supposed to do, Colin?”
My entire body felt like it had been ripped from my bones and reassembled by a blind person.
“Just get through it, Tate. Just get through it. This too shall pass, and all.”
I wanted to start sobbing all over again. My entire life, I’d wished for someone who would share the same space as I did, on more planes than one. I wanted that one person who I’d feel everywhere, infused in my very existence. I’d asked for this, and now, I wanted to give it back.
Jesse apparently hated me, and I wanted to hate him with everything I had—except that I couldn’t. I would have to fake it until I actually did.
I stood on the sidewalk and threw up my lunch as Colin held back my hair.
I’d damned myself in selfishness, and now, I had to drown in it.
I decided right then and there that if Jesse Elliott was going to kill me, then so be it.
The bile burned my throat.
So be it.
Now
HAYDEN ISN’T ANSWERING his phone, so I have to cancel my date in person.
“Just walk right up and tell him you have plans with another dashing suitor,” Colin tells me.
I’m walking down the stairs to the subway, and I throw my phone in my bag before he can say anything else.
I wish it were that easy.
The hot air hits me, and it’s humid and stale and irrevocably vile. I love it.
I take a deep breath, and then I make my way to the train that will take me to Hayden. I’m not sure why I’m traveling this many blocks uptown just to tell him I can’t go to dinner tonight even though I was the one who did the inviting.
Yes, I do.
There’s something about him.
It’s not the same as Jesse.
Nothing will ever be the same as Jesse. I want to roll my eyes from just thinking about him, and something tugs at my stomach.
I’m not attracted to Jesse physically. He just feels necessary. Felt.
Feel.
Felt.
Feel.
I can’t stop feeling.
How unfortunate.
I don’t know anymore. My head and my heart want very different things.
Hayden is a much more pleasant visceral reaction. I don’t hate myself every time I feel his name on my tongue.
The train lurches, and I wade through all the people trying to get up the stairs first, so they can breathe oxygen that hasn’t been in the underworld for the past half century—breathed in by half the world, exhaled into oblivion, and then taken up again.
I reach Hayden’s building, only to be disappointed.
“Mr. Rockefeller is out.”
I open my mouth to ask when he’ll be back, but this doorman is worse than the first and won’t entertain even the look of me.
Lara would have his head.
But I would have Lara’s.
“Can I leave a message?”
A message would be good. It would prove that I was here and took the time to cancel. I braved the sun for him.
Colin’s date had better be worth it.
Colin: Wear comfortable shoes. Bring a flashlight. There aren’t any restrooms. Leave your phone with Catherine. We both know she’ll be asleep by then. See you at 11:46, darling.
I read Colin’s text and throw my phone on Catherine’s bed.
This is the most ridiculous outing he has ever proposed, and this is Colin Conrad we’re talking about. Nevertheless, at 11:46, I leave my phone next to Catherine’s sleeping body and walk downstairs to meet Colin. He’s standing in the street, wearing all black, and he’s holding an unlit flashlight.
I hear a man whistle at me from behind, and I hate him. I’m wearing dark jeans and a black top with sneakers, which is nothing to whistle at.
“Don’t worry,” Colin says as he slings his arm around my shoulders. “That was for me.”
He’s smoking a cigarette again, and this is the last one I’ll see in his mouth for a while.
“I swear, if you ever smoke another one of those, I’m going to put it out on you,” I tell him as we walk.
“Do it.”
So, I do. I take it out of his mouth and plunge the lit end into his arm. He doesn’t even miss a step.
“That hurt so good.”
“You’re a masochist.”
“So are you.”
“It’s a shame I’m not in love with you, Colin Conrad.”
He pulls me into a dark corner.
“Oh, Tate McKenna, all of night is in love with you.”
Only Colin and Juliet Capulet can say words like that and get away with it.
I don’t have much time to dwell on the compliment because we’re apparently at our destination.
“Where are we?”
“Shh…” he says, putting a hand up to my lips.
He leads me over to a man guarding a manhole cover and flashes something from inside his pocket. The guard says something into a lapel microphone and lifts up the cover.
“In.”
“Oh no, we are not going down there.”
“Oh, but we are,” Colin whispers. He makes me go first.
I shove the flashlight into the back of my jeans, and an unknown hand reaches out to me as I descend into the underworld.
Colin follows suit, and we’re in complete darkness until someone lights a candle and hands it to me. It’s hot on my hands, but it’s not unbear
able because the air is much cooler down here than I expected.
My eyes adjust, and I take in my surroundings. We’re in a small room with five or six other people. Colin moves me to the side as more people descend through the opening in what is now our ceiling. Another person with a lapel microphone leads us down a narrow passageway covered in graffiti where we come to a small opening with several ladders.
“Down,” he says, motioning that direction.
Oh, what the hell? If that’s where I’m going, I might as well start now.
I hand Colin my candle and start climbing down the ladder. He and the others quickly follow. Then, we’re walking down a tunnel for what seems like an eternity. I can hear whispers echoing off the graffiti-laden concrete walls, and suddenly, we’re surrounded by fifty of our closest new friends when our tunnel connects with another. Everyone is holding a candle, and this seems like some kind of zombie vigil.
I see a ladder coming up on my right, and a girl is climbing down. Her blonde hair is sticking to her face from the humidity, and I can almost feel how fast her heart is pounding just by looking at her. She doesn’t want to jump down the three feet to the ground from where the ladder ends, and I can tell one of the wired men is about to get impatient with her because she’s making too much noise and ruining the atmosphere.
I think he’s about to shove her down the ladder when a man swoops up to grab her in his arms, and I’m pretty sure I’ve just witnessed the beginning of a love story or Stockholm syndrome based on the way she looks at him as he carries her off into the darkness.
We walk until I see a metal track off to the side that connects to a platform at the end. When I shine my flashlight on the track and follow it, I see that it goes off endlessly in the other direction.
“The subway,” I whisper in Colin’s ear as I make him lean down to hear me. “We’re in an abandoned subway tunnel.”
“Bingo,” he says. He puts out my flame with his hand before relighting it with his candle.
The crowd stops moving, and a man steps out onto the platform.
“Welcome, Spirits of Hades. Enjoy.”
I’m immediately startled by the sound of drums from behind us, but they aren’t coming from that direction at all. The echo against the walls only makes it seem that way. Performers step out from behind the platform and begin playing strange rhythmic songs, followed by dancers. None of them are wearing a lot of clothing, and I vaguely wonder if any of them go to Juilliard with my friend Hollie.