Moth shook his head.
“Not K.A.”
“No, brother. Not K.A. It would have been nice, but no, not him.”
Nix’s eyes narrowed. He thought of all of them there at the party: Ondine, Moth, K.A., Neve, Jacob. Even Bleek. The proximity was both completely random, born of life in a small city, and perilously meaningful. His mouth went dry and what came out was almost a whisper:
“Morgan?”
Moth smiled. “Yes. Yes, Morgan. Of course Morgan. Morgan needs to be tamed, true, taught, but yes, Morgan, too. But you. You are very precious. You are the most precious. Now, how are you with your … supply? You won’t need any for the gathering, of course, and then afterward we’ll start weaning you. Only when it’s the right time, though. Only the right time.” Moth’s voice faded. “Oh god, she’s going to be so happy with me. She’s going to be so proud….”
For a moment Nix thought Moth was talking about Morgan. Then he realized he was referring to someone else. Something about the remove of Moth’s face — its glassiness, its vacancy — panicked him. Was he high? What had they just been talking about?
Ondine walked up. Nix calmed, erasing all expression. He knew he had to protect her — at least for now, until he knew more. At least until the Ring of Fire.
She was angry and shaking her head.
“Well, you did it, James Motherwell. The cops are here. The house is a total mess and there are about a hundred people here I don’t know. Morgan’s probably getting abducted somewhere between here and Southeast. She left without a car, you know. Pissed.”
Moth’s mouth was tight, but his eyes stayed unworried. “I thought she might.”
“You know, you have a lot of nerve coming into my party, disrespecting my friends, then smiling and laughing at life’s rich pageant. Who invited you, huh?”
“Morgan did, if I remember correctly.” Moth rubbed his lips together as if to erase a smile. “All right, all right, my lady. It’s all good. I’ll make sure she gets home all right. And don’t worry about the mess.” He looked around at the carpet of plastic beer cups, cigarette butts, red wine stains. “Moth will make sure this all gets cleaned up.”
She turned to Nix. “Don’t you love it when someone talks about himself in the third person? It’s so cool.” Then she shook her head, screwing up her face. She was about to let Moth have it, but something in Nix’s eyes short-circuited her anger. “Right,” she managed to spit out. “Whatever. The freaking cops are here. I’ll probably get arrested. My parents will get called, and since they’re somewhere in Colorado right now, I don’t think they’re going to be too pleased —”
“Your parents aren’t going to hear anything.”
Just then K.A. walked up. He had the too-earnest look of a drunken kid trying to appear sober. “Hey, did you she where Morgave — Neve — Morgan went? I saw her, I mean, I saw Jacob, and Morgan went …” The boy’s voice trailed off in confusion. “Hey,” he said then, “the cops are here.”
Moth threw back his head and laughed. “Go home, hero boy. Your sister and your girlfriend will be fine.”
“Who are you?” K.A. scowled.
“Moth.”
“Moth,” he mimicked. “Where’s my sister, asshole?” K.A. started toward the older boy, but quieted when Ondine put a hand on his arm. “I saw you macking on her earlier. Where is she?”
“Morgan went home,” Nix interrupted. “On foot. I think you should go try to find her. Neve got taken home by her dad.”
For a moment K.A. looked confused, then he straightened up and stepped again toward Moth. “Man, if anything happens to Morgan — to Neve — to either of them, you are hosed. By me. Personally.”
K.A.’s words would have been more effective if the last word hadn’t come out pershonally. Before anyone could say anything else, a siren wailed and the doorbell rang. Too much, Ondine thought. There was too much happening. She was confused. Too many pieces — she needed time.
“Let me deal with this,” Moth said.
Ondine was about to tell him to go screw, but remembered the scene at the liquor store, the cashier’s sudden pliability. She stopped and quieted, her hands falling to her sides.
“Yeah, all right,” she heard herself saying. “Yeah, why don’t you tell them you’re Dr. Mason. Dr. Ralph Mason, the geneticist. Dr. Mason, perhaps you’d care to offer a scientific explanation for the color of your daughter’s eyes —”
Ondine’s taunt trailed mid-word. She had no idea why she had just said the last few things — other than that she had been looking at Moth while she spoke, at his green eyes, and they made her want to lie down, as if in cool, soft grass, and weep.
His face was bland. He leaned in, whispering.
“You know why you’re different from your parents, Ondine.” She stiffened and he moved closer, his voice still lower. “Now listen carefully. Highway ninety-seven south out of Bend. The twenty-mile point. Paulina East Lake Road. The Little Crater campground. Park there. The Ring of Fire.”
For a moment she could only stare. Her jaw hung open and she could feel K.A.’s and Nix’s eyes on her. K.A.’s expression was confused, but Nix’s was steady. She swallowed the lump in her throat and shook her head.
“You’ve ruined my house, screwed me, and definitely screwed Morgan, and you want to tell me about a party? A rave? So I can hang out with all the cool kids? Get the fuck out of here!”
Moth touched her. “I’m going. I’ll take the cops. Don’t worry —”
She fought back the urge to scream.
“Don’t worry? Get out, Moth. Just get out —”
K.A. was between the two of them.
“It’s all right,” he began. “I’ll make sure he goes.” The boy turned to Moth. “I think you’ve done enough damage for one night.”
Moth’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”
K.A. didn’t blink. He seemed very sober all of a sudden. Very sober, or just drunk enough to pull this off.
“I said, let’s go.”
Moth put his hands up and smiled.
“I’m going, I’m going.” He backed toward the door and his eyes found Ondine’s one last time. “You will need me,” he said, speaking over K.A.’s head — over the music and over the thrumming that filled the space between Ondine’s ears. Though she knew he was almost whispering she felt as if Moth were talking right into her head.
“You will need me and I will come.”
It was hard for her to speak but she felt she had to. Her voice emerged, jagged.
“Need you? No one needs you, Moth. You’re extra. Good for nothing. The kind of thing you leave on the side of the road.”
“Jesus. She’s going to love you.” Moth shook his head. Then he moved toward her one last time, too fast for her to withdraw. “You’ll need the password. It’s ‘exidis.’ E-X … I-D … I-S. You can remember that. And by the way” — he wasn’t whispering anymore — “you did invite me, Ondine. Or at least Morgan did. I never fly to a light that’s not lit.”
With that James Motherwell bowed and slipped out the back door.
THERE WAS A SHITSTORM TO CLEAN UP and Ondine wouldn’t let her imagination freak her out any more than it already had. She made her way to the kitchen to check out the damage, which was significant: broken glasses everywhere, beer all over the floor, cigarettes stubbed out on the counters. Even one of the cupboard windows had been smashed. She threw cold water on her face, tied back her braids, and tried to shake off her mounting terror. One thing she knew: This party was over.
By the time she made it to the front door with Nix and K.A., most of the kids, spooked from the sirens and blue lights, had filed out the back. It didn’t matter anyway. When Ondine opened the front door the cops just stood there smiling. The house smelled like beer and pot smoke and there were still drunk under-aged teenagers milling past, but the police acted as if they were there to sell raffle tickets. They smiled, asking if everything was all right.
�
�Yes, sir,” she said, and tried to look them in the eyes, but it didn’t seem to matter. They were blank. She had seen the look before — from the guy at the liquor store.
“Well, all right then!” Both cops turned on their heels to leave.
Ondine looked after them, stunned. She felt like calling out — Hello, I’m underaged! Hello! Alcohol is being consumed! — but instead turned to Nix and K.A. behind her. “What the hell just happened?”
They shook their heads, just as confused.
“Did Moth talk to them?”
K.A. nodded. “I saw him out here for a second. But not that long. I don’t know. Maybe he knows somebody on the force.”
Moth didn’t know any cops. It was something else. She just couldn’t figure out what. Something about the way Moth controlled people, the way he rendered them powerless without lifting a finger — well, maybe a finger, remembering the way he raised his hand before the cashier in the store. The intensity, if not the gesture, was familiar. She recognized it in herself.
What the hell did he mean, She’s going to love you? Who? How?
Ondine felt sick. She had done something wrong and hadn’t had to fess up to it. James Motherwell or no, she should have gotten in trouble. Hell, she wanted to get in trouble. Her parents would have been called, they’d have been forced to come back, she’d have gotten grounded. Normal teenaged consequences. But instead Ondine’s parents had left her alone for a whole year, she threw an out-of-control party on the first night of their absence, and except for some heavy cleanup and maybe a couple hundred bucks in repairs, she hadn’t had to pay for what she’d done. It wasn’t right. At the same time, she was relieved to have gotten off, and that relieved feeling made her feel guilty. This, too, was familiar.
After a few awkward good-byes and vows to find Morgan, K.A. drove away, promising to come back the next morning to help clean. Then it was just Ondine and Nix, sitting on the second-floor landing, their legs hanging through the balcony bars, surveying the wreckage below. A dozen or so passed-out bodies lined the living room floor. It looked like a crazy Jackson Pollock painting, all squiggles of stains and dots of forties bottles and entwined bodies.
Ondine hung her head.
“What a mess.”
For a while the boy was quiet, then he turned and faced Ondine, his raspy voice low.
“He told you about it, didn’t he?”
“What?” Ondine pretended not to know what he was talking about.
“The Ring of Fire.”
“The Ring of Fire? That awesome rave near the solstice? Where all the cool kids are gonna be? Jesus. Yeah. He told me about it.” She scoffed, wanting to avoid the entire subject. All she wanted to do was be angry at Moth, think about how she was going to clean up the mess, and then go to sleep. But she couldn’t. There was someone next to her who wasn’t seeming to go away — nor did she want him to, which was sort of unbelievable since they were nearly strangers. But why Nix? Why all of a sudden was it just the two of them? Ondine let out an uncharacteristic sigh.
“Why? Are you going?”
He shrugged.
She grabbed the railing and shook it. “There’s something weird going on. Something — I don’t know what —”
She pointed to two boys in black baseball caps nestled side by side on her mother’s favorite white leather couch.
“I don’t even know those cats.”
Nix laughed. “Hey —”
“No, I —”
Ondine looked at him. He was looking back at her, studying her, almost, though his eyes were kind and calm. She released her head and stared at the ceiling.
“What the hell am I doing? My parents just left today and already I’m in trouble.”
“You’re not, though.”
She stared. “Right.”
“Anyway, it’s freedom. With freedom comes responsibility.”
“Oh, please. Are you going to tell me to rock the vote now?”
Nix thought about his own conversation earlier that night with K.A. — You can’t run away from yourself — and laughed. Karma was a bitch.
“Ondine. I’m your friend.” He’d never said those words to anyone.
“My friend?” She felt her eyebrows rise. “You don’t even know me.”
He stared and she felt sorry she’d said the last words.
“I mean —”
“Call it friends at first sight.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Ondine put her hands over her face and sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve always wanted to fuck up. I never fuck up and I’ve always wanted to.” She pulled her hands away. “I guess I got a good start. God, I hope everyone makes it home okay. Indra really dropped the ball.”
Nix nodded. “I think this might be your first and last party.”
“Wanna help me clean?”
“I’m all yours. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
She reached for the boy’s hand and squeezed. “You’re nice.” Opening an eye, she still failed to address what was on both their minds—the Ring of Fire, the solstice. “James Motherwell’s a prick, you know.”
“Yeah.” Nix cast his eyes down. He seemed to want to say something — both of them did — but without knowing what.
“I mean, I never fuck up. Never.”
He laughed. “I do all the time.”
“Then we make a good pair.”
“Yeah.”
Thoughts whirled inside her head. Faces. Words. Ring of Fire. Exidis. She’ll love you. Moth had said these things aloud, she was pretty sure, or had they been there, inside her head? Waiting for her to hear them?
It was too much. She dropped back onto the white plush carpet, her legs still dangling from the side.
“What a mess.” She sighed and closed her eyes.
Nix stared at Ondine’s face. My god, he thought, you are so beautiful.
Which made him again think of Neve. K.A.’s Neve, his friend’s, well, if not girlfriend, then steady crush. Lovely Neve. And the sweetpea girl, and what he’d felt in the dark, and how he’d run away from her before the light showed up, as it had around his mother, and Jacob, and all those people in between.
Ondine. Her eyes flickered behind her eyelids; she was asleep. Nix realized how tired he was. Tired of running, tired of being scared. Tired of being alone. He lay next to her, nestled his arm around her small shoulders. The girl’s body was warm and cold at the same time, as if two forces were at war inside her. He knew that conflict, had known it all his life. It was peaceful, lying beside her, and he let himself close his eyes. He thought of the people in his life: Jacob and K.A. and Bleek — and Neve, the common link between them. He saw Neve’s flushed cheeks when she swayed on Tim Bleeker’s lap and he saw the edge of her lace underwear when she made out with K.A. on the couch and he saw her pale, pale hair disappearing into the light that emanated from her father when Jacob had taken her in his arms, as if the tiniest bit of the light had transferred to her.
No! He pushed the thought away.
Light stayed. That was the one thing he could count on. He looked down at Ondine again. Somehow he knew the light would never appear around her.
His hand groped in his pocket for the dust, but before he found it he relaxed. His right hand was in his pocket, inches from the roll, but his left arm was around Ondine. He was in her house. He knew he was safe there.
He managed to think before he dipped into the darkness that it was the first night in a year he wasn’t afraid to dream.
II
RING OF FIRE
CHAPTER 7
MORGAN D’AMICI WOKE UP the morning after the best party of the year to the sound of someone banging pots in the kitchen. Or was that her head? Something smelled good. Bacon, she thought. And pancakes. She heard the familiar sound of her brother’s lumbering shuffle and turned in her bed to face the window. Pain. Light. Pain. Sunlight grazed her face and she wiggled her toes against the silky smoothness of four-hundred thread-count sheets. Despite her headache, she re
gistered that K.A. was making breakfast, just like the old days, and it made her happy. She nestled deeper under the all-white covers. She was warm and safe and —
Her eyes opened and her stomach seized.
Last night. What happened last night?
Her last memory was of dancing with James Motherwell. She asked him to kiss her and he walked away. She yelled at Ondine. Then she left the party. The road was black. Streetlights. A car passing.
That was it. Everything after that, she realized, was a wash of nothingness. She must have blacked out, or —
No. Moth wouldn’t have done that.
Or would he have? Would she have let him? She put her hand between her thighs. Panties still on. Nothing out of order. The thought of James Motherwell taking advantage of her while she was drunk made her angry, but the thought of him keeping a trophy made her crazy.
How could she have drunk so much? Morgan never drank. She didn’t like how out of control alcohol made her feel, and she certainly never blacked out. So how did she get home?
She looked out the window at the yellow roses her mother had planted beside her window years ago, just after her father had left. To brighten your day, Yvonne had said. Normally the flowers cheered her up, but today Morgan could only notice the leaves that had been eaten; the dead petals; the way the scraggly, thorny canes never managed to disguise the fact that she lived in a house one step above a trailer. Tracing a finger along a stray lock of hair on her pillow, she felt clogged, fuzzy, scared. A stick was lodged there. She looked at it then felt the back of her head, finding a speck of dried leaf. She pulled herself out of bed. Her legs and her feet were mud splattered; tiny red scratches flecked her arm. My god, she thought. Had they done it in the dirt, like animals?
She’d pretend as if she hadn’t seen anything. It’s a Sunday like any other, Morgan told herself. I’m home. Kaka’s making breakfast. Everything is fine. She went through her normal routine. Walked over to her vanity, yanked on a pair of paisley-print pajama bottoms, dragged a brush through her tangled hair, ignoring the bits of leaves and sticks that fell from it, then put on her favorite Japanese blue-and-white yukata, tying it neatly at the waist.
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