Volition

by Lily Paradis

  I look around at our fellow Spirits of Hades. Everyone is holding a candle, and some are staring straightforward, standing as still as the Queen’s guards, while some are swaying lightly to the beat. The air is thick with sweat and mildew and the scent of lost time.

  I know we aren’t allowed to be down here.

  This is illegal.

  But I love it. It’s a city underneath a city, filled with brave souls who don’t mind living on the fringes—or in this case, below.

  This is why it’s a Colin and Tate activity, not a Colin, Tate, and Catherine activity. Hayden could never come here.

  If I were with Hayden, I couldn’t do things like this anymore.

  I’d become too high profile, and instead of opening doors, it might close them.

  Suddenly, I’m afraid of Hayden and everything he represents.

  Colin senses a change in the air as if he can read the vibration of my mood, and he puts an arm around my shoulder.

  We’re there for another two hours before we’re allowed to leave. I witness several panic attacks on the way out from people who can’t stand the claustrophobia of walking down a narrow tunnel with hundreds of other people.

  “There’s only one rule,” a wired man whispers in my ear as we clear the last ladder up.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Run. You just run as far away from here as you can.”

  We wait our turn to run, and Colin explains softly, “In New York City, you can’t have a gathering of more than fifty people without a permit.”

  “Let me guess,” I say. “We don’t exactly have a permit.”

  “Not exactly.”

  It’s our turn.

  Colin and I are expelled from Hades, and we run. He takes my hand, and we run into the night.

  I’m laughing.

  And I’m running. I’m running for my life.

  And I never want to stop.

  Now

  CATHERINE IS GOING to smother me with a pillow.

  Or so she says.

  “I swear, if your phone beeps again, I’m doing it.” Her muffled voice comes from the other side of her tiny bed, but it sounds far away to my sleep-drugged brain. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  What she doesn’t know is that I’ve just gone to sleep.

  I reach over to her windowsill and pull out my phone.

  Hayden: I hear if you get down to Barnes & Noble right now, they have one copy of Evanna Wyatt’s new novel.

  That’s not out until next week.

  Hayden: Better hurry.

  Hayden fell off the face of the planet after I canceled our non-date three days ago. He hasn’t returned the message I left at the bell desk, and he hasn’t called or texted me.

  Not until just now—at three in the morning.

  Bookstores aren’t even open at this time.

  Hayden: Look for Jane.

  I don’t really want to rip myself out of Catherine’s bed as tiny and uncomfortable as it may be. She tried to make it better with an egg-crate mattress pad, but she always shoves all the blankets on me. Half the time, I wake up tangled on the floor in between her bed and her windowsill, so it’s not like I’m getting a great night’s sleep to begin with.

  What the hell?

  I throw the covers back without regard for Catherine, and immediately, I feel her wrath as a pillow hits me in the back of the head.

  I whisper my apologies. I pull a sweatshirt on over my T-shirt and shorts and shove my feet into my favorite mint-green Vans. It’s not cold outside, but it’s a lot breezier than it is during the disgustingly hot daytime.

  I put the key to Catherine’s apartment and my MetroCard into my pocket and trudge the five flights down the stairs to the main floor. It’s not really an apartment. It’s a dorm for underclassmen at New York University. Her floor is the only one with graduate students who have been assigned there due to overflow in the allotted apartment buildings. I’m signed in as Catherine’s guest for a month, and then I have to be out.

  The lobby is cool, and I revel in it for a moment. Catherine’s floor isn’t air-conditioned, and the inside of the building doesn’t look like it’s been updated much since it was built in 1925.

  I wave to Majumdar, Catherine’s favorite night security guard. I’ve heard countless stories about him trying to fix Catherine up with his youngest son.

  “Where are you going, Miss Tate?”

  I sigh. “Everywhere.”

  I walk out the revolving door, knowing full well he thinks I’m crazy. I’m always disoriented the second I leave the building, so I take a couple of deep breaths before I decide which direction to walk in.

  I love New York nights. It’s when the city comes alive. It’s cool and beautiful and as serene as it can be with millions of people trying to survive in such close quarters from hour to hour. I wish it could be night all the time instead of the sweltering heat that plagues the city during the daytime.

  I want to be a vampire and live for the night.

  I already do. I just want an excuse to make it official.

  After considering my route for a moment, I realize that the closest Barnes & Noble that isn’t under construction is near Rockefeller Center.

  Of course.

  I quickly walk to West 4th Street and take the orange line uptown to Rockefeller Center. I have a love-hate relationship with this stop because it comes out under the building. It once saved Catherine and me from being drenched in a thunderstorm, but I also have to walk through the entire Rockefeller underground shopping center and terminal to get outside.

  There’s no one in the terminal tonight, but I glance inside all the store windows anyway as I walk past.

  My stomach grumbles, but I can’t do anything about it right now. Even if there were street vendors open topside, I wouldn’t risk it. Catherine once told me she saw one drop a hot dog on the ground, pick it back up, and put it in with the others.

  I guess they have to make their annual $250,000 permit payments somehow.

  Once I’m out of the building, I make quick time to the bookstore. It’s apparent as I’m walking up that there aren’t any lights on, but I peer in the window anyway.

  Someone scares the living daylights out of me as she taps me on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry!” A girl in her late teens stands before me, looking even more shaken than I am.

  I don’t know how I didn’t see her when I approached the windows.

  “You could kill someone, you know,” I spit out at her, angry that she snuck up on me like that.

  She casts her gaze downward, and she’s admiring my shoes.

  Mint—it’s so hot right now, I think to myself in a Zoolander accent.

  “Are you Tate?” Her voice is shaking now.

  I feel the slightest bit bad that I’m the one who made her feel this way when she wasn’t trying to startle me.

  “Depends on who’s looking.”

  She reaches into the bag on her shoulder and pulls out a book.

  I can’t help but gasp as she holds it out to me, but as I reach for it, she pulls it back against her chest lightning fast as if she’s a chipmunk and I’m trying to steal her food.

  “Only if you’re Tate.”

  Suddenly, the book becomes less important.

  “Why are you out here at three in the morning?”

  “I’m an intern,” she says as if that explains everything.

  I cross my arms and wait to hear more.

  “I’m Addison Rockefeller’s intern. She’s a good friend of Evanna Wyatt. Ms. Wyatt gave Ms. Rockefeller an advance copy, and I was told to give it to Tate McKenna.”

  I’m less concerned with what this has to do with Addison Rockefeller than how it connects with Hayden, and how he got it for me. He probably could have had it delivered, but somehow he knows I like things better when they’re mysterious.

  “At three in the morning?”

  The girl nods. “It had to be a secret.”

  I decide t
hat I really want to read Evanna Wyatt’s new novel more than I want to hear all of this, so I hold out my hands. “I’m Tate McKenna.”

  She still doesn’t give it to me. “Do you know who sent me?”

  I nod. “You just told me. Addison Rockefeller.”

  She shakes her head. “No. Who sent me after that?”

  “Hayden Rockefeller.”

  His name must be the magic password because she holds the book out to me, and I’m able to grasp it with my own two hands. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book in print and not on my Kindle, but I welcome it home into my arms like that’s what it was made for.

  “Thank you,” I tell her because I’m trying to be a good person and not myself. “Make sure you get home safely.”

  “I will, Ms. McKenna,” she says. She looks both ways on the street before she scurries across and into the darkness. She’s not a native New Yorker.

  Then, it dawns on me.

  I’m holding Evanna Wyatt’s new novel before it’s released to the public. I nearly skip all the way back home. I refuse to let myself read it on the train because I wouldn’t get off, and then I’d end up in Brooklyn. Then, Catherine would have to come get me because I’d be infernally lost.

  I make an effort to stare out of the train windows, so I won’t look at the book. There’s only one other girl in my car, and she’s crying, shrouded in her jacket with her knees up to her forehead. She gets off a stop before mine, and something flies out of her pocket. The rush of air as the doors close shoves it within arm’s reach, so I pick it up off the floor.

  It’s one of those photos that looks like a negative, but it has a baby as the subject instead of a flower or a person outside of the womb.

  Ugh. Children.

  Pregnancy makes me want to throw up. Nevertheless, I can’t take my eyes off the photo. It fascinates me in a morbid way.

  I guess I’m going to need a bookmark.

  I stick it inside a random page of Evanna’s novel.

  Once I’m at Catherine’s building, I wave at Majumdar and walk into the elevator before he can grill me on where I’ve been. Rule number one: Don’t talk to Majumdar unless you have to because he talks for a minimum of thirty minutes.

  It’s not until I’m in the elevator that it dawns on me to look inside. I bend back the front cover and look at the title page.

  Hayden had it signed.

  I think I’m going to pass out in the middle of Catherine’s hallway.

  You’re next.

  I hope she means I’m the next Evanna Wyatt because that’s what I want to think it means.

  She knows that I write.

  This is unreal.

  I drop to the floor in front of Catherine’s door and begin to read.

  Several hours later, I’m sure the sun is up, but I have no clue since I can’t see the outside world in this stuffy hallway. I shut the book and smile as I reach up to unlock the door. Catherine’s just getting out of bed, and the sun is shining high.

  I set the book down on the windowsill, curl up in her bed, and go to sleep for the night. Before I do, I send a text to his phone.

  Rockefeller perk?

  Hayden: Rockefeller perk.

  Somehow, I know this won’t be the last one I get to enjoy.

  Then

  EVANNA WYATT TORE my heart out. She ripped it straight out of my chest and threw it on the floor, and then she stomped on the bloody mess. As if that wasn’t good enough, she shoved it back in there and made me live with myself. Then, I had to walk around like that in the company of people who didn’t understand.

  “Tate, what’s wrong with you? You look sick. Are you sick?” Kara was too close to my face.

  I was still under the drug-like influence of Evanna, so I thought about all the ways I could kill Kara.

  “Tate, do you have that book review article done yet?” She got even closer.

  “Ants,” I mumbled to myself.

  “Ants?”

  “Ants.”

  “Um, okay, well, if you could have that to me by the end of the day, that would be great.”

  She was telling me what to do? I was the editor-in-chief.

  Ants.

  I swiveled my computer chair around and bought an ant farm on the Internet. I balked at my shipping options but ten business days would have to do.

  “Tate?”

  My eyes rolled in their sockets of their own accord. “Jasmine?”

  “Um, hi. I was just wondering if maybe you could come with me to get my cotillion dress fitted? Your sister texted me and said you were free today after school.”

  How the hell did Cece know when I was free?

  Jasmine was being too nice. She had something up her sleeve.

  All I wanted to do was drown in Evanna’s words.

  Maybe I would. Maybe I’d buy a thousand copies, tear all the pages out, and smother myself in them. Then, someone could Mod Podge her words in my casket, too. Maybe Jasmine would be up for the task.

  “Fine,” I told her because I knew it was best to keep my enemies close. “But you’re driving.”

  As I walked out of the room to find Colin, Jesse made no effort to hide the fact that he was watching my every step.

  You’re driving.

  Now

  I HAVEN’T SLEPT.

  At all.

  I’m curled up, facing the window, as the sunlight streams in and keeps me awake because it’s daytime.

  Catherine is creeping around her room in an attempt to not to wake me up, so I finally roll over and inform her that I’m not asleep.

  “Damn you,” she says, slamming her coffee mug down on her tiny countertop. “I’ve been trying so hard.”

  I shrug.

  “How was Evanna?”

  “How did you know?”

  She throws the book at my face.

  My bookmark falls out, and she picks it up.

  “Tate, what is this?” Her voice has an edge to it, and it makes me squirm.

  “An ultrasound.”

  “Tate,” she repeats more seriously and adds a pause. “Whose ultrasound is this?”

  I smile to myself, but she can’t see it. She thinks it’s mine, and I think that’s hilarious because she knows I’m not a child person.

  She’s not a child person—or a pet person. She should know it’s not mine, but I let her wallow for a bit longer because I find it entertaining.

  “Some unfortunate girl from the subway,” I say finally, putting her out of her misery. “She dropped it last night. It’s just a bookmark.”

  “You are so sadistic.”

  “I know.”

  “I love it.”

  “I know.”

  “Evanna ripped my heart out,” I say, finally answering her question.

  “What’s new?”

  “I expect it, but she manages to do it every time. She’s the female Stephen King.”

  She sips her coffee. “No, you’re the female Stephen King.”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “No, now.”

  “Okay.” I accept it because I don’t know how to argue with her, and I haven’t slept. I’m a zombie.

  I would say silence passes between us, but it doesn’t. This is New York City.

  “So, what is happening with you and Hayden?” She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, and I want to throw Evanna back at her.

  “Nothing.”

  I pull her comforter up to my face. I’m lying. There is something. To say there’s nothing is like ignoring the fact that a fire crackles and emits heat. That’s what we do. We crackle. We pop. I never crackled and popped with Jesse.

  I hate Jesse.

  But I don’t.

  But I do.

  So, so much.

  Catherine feels the tension because she knows I’ve gone dark while thinking about him.

  “So,” she says, palpably trying to change the subject. “Apartment-hunting today?”

  “Don’t you have to work on your thesis?” I know
she’s busy, and I don’t want to bother her.

  “I do, but I might be able to sneak out and help you for an hour or so.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll text you pictures. I’ll bring Colin or something.”

  She finishes her coffee and puts the green mug into her tiny sink. “Colin had to go back to Atlanta. He didn’t tell you?”

  She acts surprised, but I’m not. Colin is just as bad as me. He works at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because, somehow, he is a health-care genius at the age of twenty-three.

  She glances at her watch and goes to fluff her hair in front of the mirror.

  “Here I go.”

  “Here you go.”

  “Good luck today! Send me pictures. Don’t kill anyone.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  We don’t say, “I love you.” We say, “Don’t kill anyone.”

  She picks up her purse and leaves me in her room, cocooned up in her comforter like I’m five. For a brief moment, I wonder if the comforter would break my fall if I jumped out of this window. It’s five stories. Probably not. I’d be a jellyfish.

  My phone beeps.

  Buzz me up. - H.

  He knows I can’t buzz him up. What does he think this is? He knows I have to come down.

  I roll out of bed and shove myself together as I quickly change into a fresh set of clothes. I take thirty seconds to brush my teeth and braid my hair to the side. There’s still mascara caked on my lashes from last night, and I don’t bother with foundation because it’s going to melt off anyway.

  I don’t care because I don’t care what Hayden thinks of me.

  When am I going to stop lying to myself?

  When am I going to get a job?

  When am I going to find a place to live?

  I shove the key into my pocket, pull on my sunglasses while I’m still inside, and walk down the five flights of stairs to meet Hayden.