by Leah Raeder
Blush. “I didn’t look.”
“Give me your mobile.”
I gave it to her. She seemed like the kind of girl it was pointless to say no to.
She laughed again when she saw her pic. When she showed Armin I caught a better glimpse of him: the lean lines of his face, the smokiness around his eyes, as if smudged with coal dust. His hair was a rich brown streaked with rust. Latino, maybe, or Middle Eastern. As Janelle would have said: fuckhot. The two of them bent their heads together, and I realized they must be a couple.
“I look wretched,” Blythe said. “You got me without my mask on.”
“ ‘I like a look of agony, because I know it’s true.’ ”
Yes, Laney. Totally fucking nerd out on them.
But she surprised me. “Emily Dickinson. The woman in white.”
“English majors,” Armin groaned.
“The plot thickens.” Blythe returned my phone. She was looking at me differently now. “You know poetry.”
“A little.”
“A little is dangerous enough.” She shot Armin an arch glance. “He only reads textbooks and image memes.”
“Not true. I read your stuff.”
“It’s crap anyway.”
“Oh, the false modesty. Blythe’s good, and she knows it. Don’t compliment her, though. Goes straight to her head.”
“He thinks I’m egotistical.”
“It’s called pathological narcissism.”
“They don’t even have a clinical term yet for what’s wrong with him. What about you, English major? You write?”
I was trying to follow their rapid-fire banter. “Sort of.”
“Sort of how?”
“I’m working on a novel, but it’s terrible.”
Blythe laughed. “A girl after my own heart. What’s your name?”
“Laney.”
“Well, Laney, terrible novelist,” she said, hooking one arm through mine and the other through Armin’s, “you are cordially invited to join a bloody know-it-all and a pathological narcissist at Umbra tonight.”
“I’ll keep you away from bad influences,” Armin said.
“He means me.”
“She knows, Blythe.” He eyed me over her head. “Coming?”
As if that was even a question. These were the smart, charmingly weird people I’d dreamed of meeting my whole life. Dad said college would be different, but adults just tell you that so you don’t kill yourself. It gets better is the biggest lie they’ve sold to our generation, unless it means the meds. But here were a girl and boy too brainy and bizarre to fit in with the red-cup-and-condom crowd, and already I was half in love with them both.
These were the people I’d been waiting for.
How could I say anything but “Yes”?
———
I sat between them in the cab, though Blythe was the natural center of everything. Listening to her banter with Armin was like standing between two ballet dancers in a gunfight. They circled each other elegantly, feinting, pirouetting, setting up the fatal shot, and Blythe was usually the one to fire it point-blank to Armin’s chest. He accepted his wounds with a gentleman’s grace, and the dance resumed. I sank into the seat and let their voices hum on my skin. Ribbons of light threaded through the streets, cars flowing like pulses of illuminated blood into the city’s steel heart. When we crossed the river Blythe grabbed my elbow and made me look: the water was a thick black stroke of ink speckled with gold flakes and silver chips, the shattered reflections of a thousand bright windows, shimmering. Her eyes sparkled the same way, filled with a thousand tiny lights.
“You’re not looking,” she said.
But I was.
Armin nudged my knee. “So who were you hunting, detective?”
If I wasn’t still so high, I might’ve reacted more viscerally. Instead I felt it in a scientific way, his touch like an electromagnetic pulse, disturbing something in me at a particle level.
“Nobody.”
“You took my picture,” Blythe said.
“Wrong person.”
“Who’s the right person?” Armin said.
“Nobody.”
They both laughed.
“How fun,” Blythe said. “I love a game.”
“It’s not a game,” I said.
“Oh, but you’re wrong.” Armin spoke to me, but he was looking at Blythe. “Everything is a game to her.”
For the first time she didn’t have a witty comeback. She just stared at him, eyes glittering, and somehow I knew he’d fired the lethal shot that round.
We cruised through dead streets where neon perfused the air like colored smoke. Traffic lights blinked on and off, emerald and citrine and ruby splitting in dazzling shards across our faces.
“So you guys are Greek?” I said to break the silence.
“I’m a Pi Tau alumnus,” Armin said. “But those days are behind me.”
“I’m Australian,” Blythe said. “We don’t pay for friends.”
Armin leaned into me and stage-whispered, “Her culture is far more advanced. They wrestle crocodiles.”
“Please. You Yanks are the worst. My first week here, I was propositioned by a porn director.”
“It was not porn,” Armin said, laughing.
“It totally was.”
“This guy was casting students for an ‘erotic art film,’ ” he explained. “It was tasteful.”
“Art film, my arse. Like, literally.”
“Blythe has little appreciation for cinema nouveau. I had to bail her out of jail. She was almost deported.”
“What happened?” I said.
“Caught this perv filming my bum and smashed his camera. Should’ve been his face.”
“She’s a hands-on problem-solver,” Armin said.
“Pervo kept talking about my ‘star quality.’ FYI, Laney, that is a euphemism for fanny.”
“What she’s failing to mention,” Armin said, “is she tried to negotiate a higher rate. He didn’t have the budget. Only then did she break his camera.”
Blythe eyed him coolly. “But enough of my misadventures. Let’s regale her with the enchanting tale of Armin buying Australian porn.”
“It was ironic,” he protested. “I didn’t think you were actually in it.”
I started giggling. Legit giggling.
“Holy shit.” Blythe touched my chin, turning my face. “Look at her eyes. She’s high as a fucking kite.”
“No drugs,” the cabbie barked. “You leave.”
“Relax, mate. We don’t have any drugs.” She leaned closer. “They’re all in your bloodstream, aren’t they?” Her breath was warm on the side of my neck. “I’d have to be a vampire to get them out.”
“Blythe,” Armin said, suddenly stern.
“Christ. Everyone’s a judge.” She pulled away.
Another charged, tense silence. There was something I wasn’t getting about the two of them. Some subtext. I moved my bag to my thigh, brushing Blythe’s leg. She glanced at me, at my curled hand, and her eyes lit up. No one saw her take the pills, not even Armin. Good girl, she mouthed.
If you’re keeping score, that’s the first time I sided with her against him.
Then the driver turned and there, tucked between high-rises, was an enormous mansion like something out of Poe. All black granite and gables, brimming with ominousness. The marquee read UMBRA. Behind it the logo glowed, a circle of shadow slipping over a white sun.
Armin paid the driver and popped his door. So did Blythe, and I froze when they both offered hands. Choose a side. Make a statement. High school all over again. I took Armin’s and got out quickly. Blythe’s gaze followed us, and something snagged behind my ribs, a fine, sharp wire catching hold. Of what, I didn’t yet know. I just felt the catch.
We e
ntered through a side door and followed concrete hallways until we emerged into a haze of noise and sweat, cool and murky, subterranean. The foyer was a massive marble-floored space carved up by stone arches. The air thrummed with voices, cologne and liquor and dry ice mingling in a heady scent. An electric chandelier hung overhead; the wrought-iron torch sconces were stuffed with glow sticks. Music came in tidal waves, swelling and ebbing.
“What do you think?” Armin said.
“Pretty sweet.”
“And the best thing,” Blythe said, turning and spreading her arms, “is that we’re fucking gods here.” Her eyes flashed at me. “Welcome to the underworld, Persephone.”
I shivered.
Armin cupped my elbow and guided me toward a spiral staircase. This time the oxy didn’t stop the burst of static at his touch. We lost Blythe on the stairs, and when I looked back for her he said, “She does her own thing.”
We stepped onto a catwalk above the dance floor. Crimson lasers swept over the crowd, oscillating, hypnotic, bass pumping so thickly from every direction it felt as if we were inside a heart, the dense sea of bodies rolling like one muscle, beating with one pulse. Lasers caught split-second cameos: a head thrown back, a hand reaching for someone. Abandon and desire.
We stood at the railing, our shoulders pressed together.
“Are you guys still in college?” I had to half yell to be heard.
“She’s an undergrad. I’m working on my master’s.”
“In what?”
“Clinical psych.”
I imitated his groan from earlier. “Psych major.”
Armin smiled, a perfect crescent of porcelain. The man had fucking dimples. Ridiculous. “Not a fan?”
“Doctors fuck your head up more than it already was.”
“That’s a somewhat biased view.”
“I’m somewhat biased.”
“Why is that?”
Nice try, doc. You’re not getting into the Chamber of Secrets that easily.
We gazed down at the dance floor. “Cold Dust Girl” by Hey Champ came on and I spotted Blythe right away, dancing alone. It was as if a spotlight shone on her, face upturned, eyes closed, swaying in slow motion while the world around her was choppy and frantic. Her hair lifted and caught the light, floating in frozen veils of gold.
“How long have you been with her?” I said.
“We’re just friends.”
“She’s not your girlfriend?”
“No.”
I waited a beat. “Do you like girls?”
Armin winced, his eyes crinkling.
“It’s just, you’re ridiculously hot, and you have a ridiculously hot girlfriend who’s not your girlfriend, so—”
“I like girls. But I’m not with anyone right now.” He seemed amused. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you like girls?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Does it look like I do?”
“You can’t tell by looking.”
“Then how can you tell?”
“Girls who like each other have a different energy. More intense. Furtive. They’re part of a secret world. They speak in code, like spies. Everything has a hidden meaning.”
“You sound like an expert,” I said, laughing.
“You sound evasive.”
“Like a spy?”
“You tell me.”
That wire inside me gave a little twang, as if he’d plucked it. I turned away. Wrapped my palms around the railing, soaking up the coolness of the steel. But my mind hung on the warmth of his arm and the smell of pine needles, clean and spicy and green, reminding me of Christmas.
“Why aren’t you two together?” I said.
“Stick around and you’ll see.”
“Does she turn into a pumpkin at midnight?”
“Something like that.”
“So this is what you do,” I said in a too-casual voice. “You bring an underage girl to a club. Your wingman—wing-girl, whatever—conveniently wanders off. Next you’ll buy me a drink, help me into a cab—”
“I don’t take advantage of girls, Laney.”
“You wouldn’t be taking advantage.”
I’d said it in my devil-may-care way, but the words shaved sparks from the friction between us. Our eyes met. Red light traced the bold line of his brow, the striking angularity of his face. The stubble shading his jaw glimmered like iron filings. He looked at me in a way that felt like being touched, like a blind man seeing with his fingers, mapping my bones and skin in his mind. I felt weirdly exposed. Seen.
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
“What do I think?”
“I’m not that good. I can’t read minds.”
Then read my body, I thought, but he only smiled.
“Tell me something.” He leaned closer, his voice raspy at the edges, charred. “If you hate human connection so much, why come with us?”
Because I don’t hate it. I hate how much I need it.
Because you’re the ones I was waiting for.
Because you smell like prey.
“Read any Kafka?” I said.
“Guy turns into a giant bug?”
“Right. The Metamorphosis. He wrote a bunch of other stuff. Vignettes, really. Just descriptions of feelings.” I sketched the golden arcs of Blythe’s hair with my finger. “There’s a story where this man calls for his horse to be saddled one night. He hears a trumpet blowing in the distance, but nobody else can hear it. The servants don’t understand his urgency. They ask, ‘Where are you going?’ And the man just says, ‘Away from here.’ ” I looked up at Armin. We were closer than I thought. “He has no supplies, no map. The servants warn him but it doesn’t matter. Every time they ask where he’s headed, he says, ‘Always away from here. It’s the only way can I reach my destination.’ ”
“Sounds like suicide.”
“That’s one way to see it. Suicide isn’t really about death, though. It’s about change. Release.”
“Release from life is a permanent change.”
“Sometimes all you know about where you’re going is that it’s away from where you are.”
Armin leaned on an elbow. “It’s you. You’re the rider, flirting with annihilation. Venturing into the night with strangers. Trying to find yourself by losing yourself completely.”
I liked that. But I didn’t tell him.
“You’re one of those scorched-earth types,” he said. “Burn it all to the ground and start over.”
“You’ve got to die to be reborn.”
“Like the phoenix.” He tapped his fingers on the railing. “Seems a bit masochistic.”
“I’m a bit masochistic.”
“Why?”
“If I’m going to feel bad all the time, I might as well enjoy it.”
“You don’t have to feel bad, Laney.”
“Let me guess. Your solution is to throw pills at people and call them cured.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I can’t even prescribe.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re a doctor. Or will be. Someday you’ll realize you can’t fix anyone, only dull the pain.”
He didn’t respond for a minute. Then he said, “Is someone in your family mentally ill?”
I looked away.
“I won’t pry. You don’t have to answer. It runs in my family, too.”
“I don’t care what runs in your family.”
Armin fell silent and I stood there with an anger churning in me, like the bass grinding deep in my bones, rising, bubbling up into a fever in my blood.
“You think you know me after an hour,” I said. “You think a few psych classes means you know shit about real life.”
“I don’t—”
“That’s right. You don’t.�
� I flicked him a cold glance. “Look at you. You’re a walking Abercrombie ad. We are not even on the same planet.”
“You’re angry.”
“Wow. You really are good.”
“And guarded. You’ve been hurt, but you still crave connection. Understanding. So you throw yourself into risk in a calculated way. You’re a paradox: a careful daredevil.”
The devil made me shiver. I hated that he had my number so fast.
“Spare me the Psych 101,” I said. “You know who else is good at reading obvious clues? Con men.”
“It’s intuition. I didn’t learn it in school. I learned it from watching people. From listening.”
“Yeah, well, listen to this. Whatever you think you know about me, you don’t. You don’t really care, and you can’t fix me.”
“What makes you think I want to?”
My mouth dropped.
He smiled, lessening the sting. “Nothing personal, but I have selfish motivations of my own. I’m not obligated to fix everyone.” His gaze drifted to the dance floor. “Most of us can’t even fix ourselves. We’re all saddling horses in the night, trying to outrun the darkness.”
Armin was not what I expected.
In a typical college romance novel, he’d be a gorgeous but troubled sex god who’d cure all my deep-seated psych issues with a good hard fuck. I’d smell his misogyny and abusive tendencies from miles off but my brain would turn to hormone soup because abs. That’s the formula. Broken girl + bad boy = sexual healing. All you need to fix that tragic past is a six-pack. More problems? Add abs.
It’s Magic Dick Lit.
But this was no bad boy. This was a boy who’d rather get into my head than my pants.
Most of the time romance isn’t even about love, anyway. It’s about escape. Fantasy. Salvation from the mundane. Save me from boredom, from exhaustion, from my undersexed body, from microwave dinners and reality TV, from going to bed alone or with a vibrator or a cat. Save me from my desperately ordinary life.
We’re all Kafka’s rider, trying to get away from ourselves.
Maybe I’m a little bitter.
And maybe this isn’t your typical college romance novel.
The DJ segued into a down-tempo track. Blythe had stopped dancing and was staring into the distance, waiting. A guy snaked through the crowd toward her, a hunk of silk and gel and gym-molded muscle, more product than person. She pivoted on her heel, the guy trailing in her wake. Before they disappeared she glanced straight up at us. Her face was cool and blank. In that moment I knew we were the same, me and her. Hunters.