by Rowan Maness
But Kit texted, said he was on his way. It was going to happen.
Me: I’m nervous, just so you know. Fidgety
I went outside to wait for him, as ready as I could be in black jeans and a gauzy white shirt, wearing scuffed boots and lots of eye makeup. I sat on the curb and turned a topaz bracelet around and around on my wrist, rereading James’s last e-mail.
Dear flower, dear Rose,
Are you still considering it? Meeting?
What we have? Our thing? We have to protect it. It isn’t normal and it isn’t strong, not yet. It exists in what you call the ether. I love how you call it that.
How do you always know the right words? How are your thoughts so new and yet so familiar to me?
A text interrupted.
Believer: Anna.
Believer: Hey, Anna!
Believer: http://www.josslies.tumblr.com
There was a feeling like a car just gone. A new warmth in the air, an invisible oily cloud. Heat on my cheek, a humid mark.
One new post. A picture of Anna—or “Olesya V.,” the Estonian girl she really was—was on the Tumblr. Freckles, sharp features, wide green eyes. I’d chosen her for her eyes. Max projected his affection onto them like a movie screen.
Below the photo, in all caps—
VICTIM #2—MAX BLUMSTEIN
[email protected]
His work e-mail. He used a Gmail address with Anna—the work e-mail was monitored.
Believer was letting me know that Max could be reached.
But then Kit was there, the car rounding the block, looming larger in my peripheral vision as I stared helplessly at my phone. When I stood to meet the car, I realized I’d been digging my nails into my ankle, scratching four red tracks into the skin.
Kit’s serene face. I put my phone on silent and got in next to him, pushing Believer and the Tumblr onto the curb, resisting the urge to do it physically—pushing the air, making some kind of effort. Enough of the dread fell away, I felt lighter, sure of this direction. I would ignore the texts. I would go to the concert with a boy who was as close to James as I could find. This at least would all play out predictably, easily. No lies except lies of politeness. If I could get through it, it would be like ammunition, proving to the trickster god and the faceless yet familiar shadow that they hadn’t scared me.
The car was his brother’s. It smelled like moldy towels. He kept the windows down and the radio on a classical music station, driving with his seat pushed back impossibly far from the steering wheel.
“Did you get my text?” I asked.
He fished his phone out of the cup holder.
“Nervous?” he read, looking at me. “Fidgety?”
“Mhmm.”
“Don’t be. This is gonna be fun.”
“Is it?”
The streets were different from his passenger seat. Everything enhanced, good and bad. We left the suburbs and entered what passed for a metro downtown. Neighborhoods I’d never seen before, so strange to me they might as well be in another country. Families were out walking—chubby kids on scooters and babies in rickety strollers. I felt very warm toward them all, and wondered if it was a side effect of being near Kit.
We pulled up to the Marquee, Kit dealing with the parking lot attendant who took his money and taped a ticket to the windshield. He seemed capable of dealing with anyone, any situation.
The guy at the door knew him, and with a nod of acknowledgment, we were given 21+ wristbands and ushered inside. I followed Kit through the dark club and out to a patio, where a few people were smoking and drinking. Kit asked if I wanted anything.
“Uh, whatever you’re having,” I said, unable to remember the names of any drinks.
I watched him order at the bar, handing over his card, making small effortless movements to say “Keep the tab open, please” and “Two whisky sodas.” He tipped the bartender, smiling at her.
If I squinted a bit I could turn him into James. I knew it wasn’t fair to Kit, but it helped with my nerves. If he was James, I could be Rosie. Like practicing. I took my phone out of my purse.
Me: How’s your date going?
James told Rosie that she should say yes to the guy who asked her out. But he’d bristled at it, like he’d been cornered. His proposition that they meet was putting pressure on everything, too—I couldn’t keep distracting him with stalker stories. Rosie told him, hey, if you don’t like it, why don’t you ask a girl out? We can go on dates at the same time. Trade stories. Somehow he’d agreed to it.
Me: Mine looks like you if I squint.
“You know, I went to a party of his once,” said Kit, handing me a tiny plastic cup wrapped in a paper napkin.
“Who?”
“Conor Oberst.”
“No you didn’t.”
“We were doing a show in LA and somehow got invited. I think Eli’s cousin’s friend is their manager—anyway, we go to this mansion in Calabasas and it turns out Bright Eyes was working on their album there or something. I met Jenny Lewis, too.”
“Oh my God,” I said, sipping my drink too fast. “What was it like?”
“Space cakes and air hockey,” said Kit cryptically. “They were all really obsessed with air hockey.”
“Wow.”
“So,” said Kit, stepping closer. “Do you like me more now?”
“A little bit,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “I told that story to impress you.”
I laughed.
“I just thought you should know who you’re dealing with here.”
We were standing in a corner of the patio, watching the sun set slowly between two peaked mountains. Behind the Marquee, the mountains were colorless, a minefield of half-rotted saguaro, but the sky was marbled fuchsia and almost heartbreaking. Stripes of orange wicked out from the horizon where the last rays of sun broke into dusty, golden haze.
“Beautiful,” I said as the haze disappeared and bright, pale dusk took its place.
Kit put his arm around me and produced a tin from his pocket. I ate two chocolate-covered coffee beans that left the taste of weed in between my teeth.
Inside, the room was full. Kit weaved through the crowd as the opening band started playing, and I followed in his wake, holding on to his hand, one part happy to be the girl he was leading—aware I was being looked at by others, quick appraisals in the dim light—and one part removed from the entire scene, wondering what James was doing, who he might be attaching himself to.
In the front row, Kit and I swayed in our own few feet of space—nobody pressing, nobody forcing into our bubble.
“Hey, man,” someone shouted when the music stopped. A guy I might have recognized from another of Guinevere’s parties made his way toward us, greeting Kit with a hug. Kit introduced me, and I took the opportunity to step away, excusing myself to the bathroom.
I followed a group of sorority girls to the back of the club, and when I turned a corner after them, they’d disappeared.
I stood still in the velvet curtain–lined hallway, trying to listen for their voices.
Then, movement from behind one of the curtains—and Mr. Lauren appeared. I jumped, startled, expecting Ms. Carey or Mrs. Braddock to appear too, like I was trapped in a teacher-filled funhouse.
I recognized him a second before he recognized me, and I saw the recognition cross his face, saw what it did to his expression, how his body tensed and responded. He grinned.
“You’re here,” I said finally. “You showed up.”
“Funny thing,” he said. “I had tickets to go before you mentioned it.” He was weaving a bit on his feet, unsteady.
“You’re wasted,” I teased. He was wearing things I’d never seen him wear before—jeans, a Grateful Dead T-shirt.
He noticed my wristband.
“Twenty-one?”
“Umm—”
“Tsk-tsk.”
The sorority girls reappeared, moving down the hallway as a solid mass, forcing Mr. Lauren to step closer to me.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said, waiting until I shook my head What? before going on.
“Why do you enjoy torturing Leah Leary?”
I laughed. Mr. Lauren seemed pleased with himself.
“I don’t torture her,” I said.
“Oh yes, yes, you do,” he replied, and somehow he was even closer to me, close like Kit had been minutes ago, closer than we’d ever been.
“You don’t even realize it, do you?” he said.
I looked down at the floor, sticky with layers of spill and old wristbands.
When I looked up, his eyes were right there, gold flecks in light brown irises.
I don’t know if a line was drawn or crossed then, because his gaze flicked away and he moved, reaching his arm toward a woman who’d just walked up. She nuzzled into his side, rubbing his back.
I recognized her from the sketch and Mr. Lauren’s phone.
“Kirsten,” he said. “This is Joss Wyatt, one of my students.”
Some acknowledgment passed between us.
“How awkward,” Kirsten said happily. “Seeing your teacher out in public!”
I nodded.
“Perils of having generationally confused taste in music,” Mr. Lauren said, suddenly less drunk.
They left, and I regrouped, finally locating the bathroom behind one of the heavy curtains.
Inside, I texted Mary-Kate and Rhiannon.
Me: Mr. Lauren is here
Me: WITH A LADY
Rhiannon, immediately.
Rhiannon: Pic or it didn’t happen
Rhiannon: Maybe kill her?
Rhiannon: & how’s the dreamboat Kit?
The coffee bean started to kick in and I washed my hands twice by accident, then grabbed my phone with wet hands as the text chime sounded.
James: Mine doesn’t look like you
He sent me a screenshot of a Tinder profile—a dark-haired woman posing in front of a bank of lava lamps: Gia, 27
James: She’s nice. We’re getting donuts
James: In this experiment, do we take our dates home?
In the gilded mirror above the sink, Rosie’s face stared back at me. The bathroom’s red walls turned her skin a dusky purple. I knew, looking at her pained expression, that I could not allow James to go on another date. And I knew that the only way I could say that to him and have any ground to stand on was if I—if Rosie—agreed to meet him, once and for all. In person, as each other. To say hello, to connect two dots with a straight line, to answer a question.
Me: I can’t do this.
I dropped the phone back into my bag and hurried out of the restroom to find Kit before the show started.
I found him, still talking to his friend, just as the room went dark and the stage lit up. Lazy spotlights roamed, passing over a sea of faces. The crowd seemed to have doubled, necks craning up toward Conor and his band as they stumbled out from backstage, took their places, and started to play.
With the amps at ear level, I pressed into Kit, using his arm to block one ear, still looking around, searching the room—there he was—
Mr. Lauren, staring right at me, a strange stillness around him just for a moment before the chorus of the first song rang out and the whole room surged, blocking my view.
I let Kit shield me from the strangers brushing up against us. I put my brain on silent and tried to forget about James, though asking that of myself was like asking my body to forget a broken arm.
For their encore, the band played an old Bright Eyes song, and I sang along with the rest of the happy humans. A burst of black confetti and pink strobe lights made us roar, and every hand held up a phone—
I took mine out, snapping a series of blurry photos, sideways blobs of color, backlit backs of heads, trying to capture a feeling that would never translate in an Instagram picture, that was only special because it was fleeting.
Across the screen—
MAX IS CALLING
I ignored the call, swiped him away, only to find Anna’s in-box overflowing with e-mails—
ANNA, WHAT THE FUCK
ANNA, I CAN EXPLAIN
ANNA, PLEASE DON’T TELL MY WIFE
ANNA, WHO IS JOSS WYATT?
The music swelled to a deafening crescendo—
At the back of my head, a bass thrum—
Not from the amps.
From deep within the Dream Palace, Max pounding on Anna’s door.
The song ended, the lights went up, and the crowd started to come down and disperse, returning to themselves, individuals once more.
Kit found my hand, moving so swiftly that we were the first people outside. I gasped in the chill, surprised to find that the sun was gone.
Of course it is. You watched it set.
“See, that was fun, wasn’t it?” Kit was saying as we walked through rows of cars in the parking lot. Canine nails scraped the gravel somewhere out of sight.
The coyote, summoned by Max’s freakout—
His wife?
Max said don’t tell his wife.
Time moved in stuttering increments. One moment I was taking a picture of Conor Oberst, the next I was cowering in a corner with Anna, watching her room in the Dream Palace start to quake and disintegrate. Somehow Kit was already driving down my street.
And I’d opened the Tumblr again—there was a new photo.
Max, with a woman I’d never seen before at his side. The woman with a pregnant belly, Max pushing a double stroller holding two grim-faced children, shielding their eyes from the sun, dangling plastic Baggies filled with Cheerios.
A caption with a link to Meg Cahill Blumstein’s Facebook page:
VICTIMS #3, 4 & 5—MEG, MASON, NOAH
I turned the phone off as Kit pulled up to my house. Movement came from the shadowy far side of the driveway, and the motion-sensor light turned on, revealing Shane, standing there holding a pink-and-white-striped Hula-Hoop. He held his hand up in a lame greeting.
After our talk on the utility box, he’d asked for the Tumblr address. I could tell he’d seen the update, Max’s wife, the new element in play. I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking—that Believer might be her. She’d discovered Max’s secret. She’d suspected something was up. And somehow she’d found out that, cherry on the sundae, Anna was not even real. Her husband was cheating on her with a phantom.
“Who’s that?”
I couldn’t possibly have been acting normal during the car ride home, but Kit seemed as relaxed as ever, not even turning to me to ask the question.
“Shane,” I said, clicking the car door open.
“What’s he doing?” Kit asked, watching as Shane took the Hula-Hoop, passing it back and forth in his hands, and walked up to the nearest streetlamp.
“Driving me crazy,” I mumbled, out of the car, walking after Shane, Kit following.
Shane held the Hula-Hoop back like a discus thrower, and hurled it into the air—it ricocheted off the streetlamp and shot down. I grabbed it as it rolled toward me.
“It’s never going to happen,” I said, handing it back to him.
“Joss doesn’t think it’s physically possible to get this”—Shane held up the hoop—“around that,” he told Kit, pointing up.
All three of us stared into the light.
“Sure it’s possible,” Kit decided.
“I’ve done it before, but she missed it.”
I explained. “I bet him ten dollars that he couldn’t do it—and we were twelve, so he was like two feet shorter than he is now—and he tried all day and made me sit there watching so I could witness it. I went inside for one minute, and when I came back it was around the pole.”
“Yeah, because I did it,” Shane said.
“I told you to wait! You probably cut it and stuck it back together.”
“What, with my magical Hula-Hoop glue?”
“You don’t trust him?” Kit said, voice like a placid yogi.
I didn’t answer, just sat down on the curb
, unable to process the situation. Shane and Kit talking. Outside my house. Anna trapped beneath rubble. Max a liar too.
“Can I try?” Kit asked.
Shane handed him the Hula-Hoop and Kit threw it, missing. It landed soundlessly in the neighbor’s grass and he brought it back to Shane. Shane took another turn. The Hula-Hoop wobbled through the air, clipping the light, casting a spinning shadow across the street.
The boys kept taking turns, throwing harder and getting more careless with each miss, until Kit admitted, “It’s harder than it looks.”
“It’s easier during the day,” Shane said, trying once more.
We all sat together on the curb. I asked Shane if he had any Blue Dream. He produced a joint and lit it, handing it to me first.
“Is your mom home?” Kit asked.
Shane thought that was funny.
“No,” I said.
“I want to meet her,” Kit said.
“Why?”
“I like moms.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“Is she cool?” Kit asked Shane. “I bet she is.”
“Nina?” Shane said, making a face like he was really thinking hard. “Yes,” he decided. “Intense, but cool.”
“She is not cool, and she’s not intense,” I said, the head rush from the pot making me feel a little edgy. I stood up, wanting to see past the houses to the mountains. The sparkling black asphalt under my feet was a pool of diamonds.
The front gate shuddered in the breeze, the lock clanging. I spun around at the sound and caught the coyote there—white reflecting off the back of his shining eyes. He paused for a moment before vanishing, as if to say—
This will not go away without hurting.
CHAPTER 11
Anna and Max are standing in the ruins of her room at the Dream Palace. It’s not really a room anymore. It’s a bit of solid ground, a lighted-up square. Around it, the matte black suck of outer space.
The cold and impossible realm of Max and Anna.
Max’s eyes are ringed red from crying.
“She’s not going to let me back in the house,” he said. “My boys. They’re going to notice something’s wrong.”