“Uh-huh.”
“That’s all.”
“Good. Sounds good.” Ralph’s voice had gotten patchy. “Listen, sweetheart. We’re headed into the cornfields now, so we’re probably going to get cut off. We just wanted to tell you we love you and we’re thinking of you and we’ll call when we get to the hotel tonight. Okay, hon?”
“Okay, Dad —”
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Well, good. I knew we could trust our little girl. Not so little though, now, huh?” Ralph laughed. “Anyway, sweetie. We’ll call tonight, from Chicago. Kay?”
“Okay, Dad.”
With that her father hung up. The conversation suited her father to a T, she thought, placing the phone back on its cradle. Unselfish in everything, but always efficient — even when it came to love. She realized that not only had her parents not heard anything about the party last night — cops and all — but looking around, it was clear everything had been cleaned up in the kitchen, too. Glasses sparkled on the shelves, floors and counters shone. In fact, everything was cleaner than it had been before, which was a hell of a statement in compulsively tidy Trish Mason’s house. Ondine opened the refrigerator. A single orange juice container sat on the shelf. One of the last things she had done before the cops showed up was make a pair of screwdrivers for a giggling couple she hadn’t recognized, and hadn’t wanted pawing through everything. The fridge had been a mess, splashed with beer, soda, red and yellow juices; crammed with a dozen empty cartons. Now there was just that single carton of unopened orange juice, sitting next to a virgin half-pint of half-and-half on the gleaming white shelf. The OJ was explainable, but the half-and-half was Trish’s. My daily indulgence, she’d always say, patting a stomach that was still as trim as her daughter’s, and Ondine had watched her mother pour the stuff into her coffee the morning before. Though she could imagine that she’d missed an unopened carton of orange juice when she’d pawed through the fridge last night, she had a harder time imagining a Portland high schooler bringing half-and-half to a keg party.
Ondine closed the fridge. Her eyes moved to the shelves over the counters. The glass pane that had been broken was now in one piece. She placed a hand on the butcher block to steady herself. What the hell was going on?
“Nix!” she called once more over the music. “Are you still here? Nix!”
She was trying to remember the night before. What had she and Nix done? They’d ended up in bed together, even if she woke up in her clothes. She knew she liked the mysterious dark-haired boy, but hoped she hadn’t gone there.
“Out here!”
A voice floated in from the backyard, and Ondine wandered through the sunny room, as if it were Nix alone that gave her direction. He was sitting on the steps of the slate terrace, staring at Ondine’s maple. He had one of Ralph’s Eddie Bauer jackets on and his long hair was pulled away from his face with Ondine’s signature red scarf. She followed his eyes. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn the lawn had been mowed.
He spoke. “The leaves are so red —”
Ondine stood over the boy. Both were quiet, and far more serious than the sunny day called for.
Her words came in a rush. “How did you clean the house up so fast? And that cupboard in the kitchen. That cupboard got broken last night. Smashed. I saw it with my own eyes. Casey Martin broke it. I saw it, Nix. How did you fix it? You have to tell me what’s going on.”
He turned to look at her, his eyes squinting in the midmorning sun.
“I just want to know.” She continued, faster now, almost hysterical. “There’s something weird going on. Ever since yesterday, since the party. Since I met you. Since …” Ondine stopped herself, because she knew she could keep going back and back with those sinces. Since she could remember. Since she had been born.
She took a breath. “I’m confused. I just want —” Her hands felt like pieces of meat, her legs, weak. “I just want to understand.”
She had a hard time focusing on his face, the tree, her own house. Something was in her vision — something making it wavy and incandescent. She felt silly asking him what was going on, as though she were in some ridiculous horror movie: Hey, let’s go down to the basement to check out that scary noise. No, we don’t need to put any clothes on. We’ll be fine in our underwear.
An undulating Nix looked back into the yard. He shook his head.
“Ondine, I didn’t do any of this.”
“What?”
“I didn’t clean up. I didn’t —” He turned back to her. “I woke up in your bed; music was playing. I came downstairs and everything was clean. Everyone was gone. I walked out here and a few minutes later you came out. That’s all I know.”
“But I was in bed. We fell asleep on the landing. There were bottles everywhere; the house was a mess. I remember all of it.”
“Yeah, me too.” He shook his head. “I didn’t put you there. So either we sleptwalked together, or someone — and I think we both have a pretty good idea who — came in and moved us and did” — Nix waved his hand at the house and yard — “all this.”
She couldn’t help herself. She put her small face in her hands and started to shake.
“What’s happening? What’s happening? Why are you here?” She was wailing now, rocking back and forth, shaking into her hands. “I don’t even know you. And that creep. How did he get into my house? I — I don’t know what’s going on. I’m confused. I don’t — I don’t understand …”
She felt it. On her hands. The silken wetness. The taste, salty and heavy and sweet.
“I’m just —” She shot her hand out, pushing Nix away. She was crying. But why now? Why not when her parents left?
He moved closer, and though Ondine was still sobbing in shaking heaves, he held her. This time she didn’t move.
“I don’t know what’s going on either, but whatever it is, we’ve both known about it for a long time. I knew it the second I saw you. How I was supposed to … How we were supposed to …” Nix faltered.
“What? Supposed to what?”
“I have no idea what’s going on, any more than you, but I do know something. It has something to do with Moth, and that … that party around the solstice that everyone’s been talking about.” Nix looked away, almost ashamed. “The Ring of Fire. I know. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we might as well sit tight here until —”
Ondine stared, her red-rimmed eyes seeming to fill her whole face.
“Till?” she whispered.
“We’re not going to get any answers until then. So look. I’ll split. You go back to your life. Try to forget about this for a while and in three weeks —”
“No!” Her choked voice fell in the empty backyard. “No! I want everything to just go back to the way it was before my parents left. I don’t understand what’s happening …”
Nix pulled her closer, trying to calm her. “Things will be clearer after the Ring of Fire.”
“How do you know?”
He didn’t answer.
She ran a hand over her hair and across her eyes. “You’re going to stay here,” she said.
“Here?”
“Till then. You’re staying with me.”
Ondine pulled Nix to her and leaned on his shoulder. She felt the solidity of his flesh, and beneath that, something warm. She was crying — for the first time in her life — and she needed a hug.
“We’ll know then.”
Nix nodded, though he didn’t know anymore what was right. He just remembered Moth’s words, how he had to get Ondine there, how she got lost easily.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and drew her closer.
They stayed that way for a long time.
CHAPTER 8
THE NEXT TWO WEEKS PASSED QUIETLY. Though Ondine’s had been, as Morgan divined, the party of the year, summer had started, days were getting longer, and Portland’s kids were heading to the mountains, to California, to summer jobs at res
orts along the coast, or on fishing boats in Alaska. Morgan called Ondine and apologized — she had been so drunk, she said — and Ondine forgave her. They didn’t make a plan to meet again, though, and while they stayed friendly in Raphael’s class, Morgan always begged off hanging out afterward. She had to work, she said, or help her mom at home. Ondine let it pass. She needed to clear her head, too. As Nix said, there was no use asking the same questions over and over when there was no possibility of answering them. She worked on her painting and helped Nix study for his GED. She also bracketed off his habit of using dust, just as she didn’t acknowledge the glass of wine she’d drink while cooking dinner, or the glass she had while eating dinner, or the glass she’d have after, talking to Nix in the backyard with the lights off, the leaves of the maple shaking in the night breeze.
In the darkness they whispered their stories to each other, unsure of whether they were awake or slumbering, or somewhere in between. Nix told her about Sitka and fishing with his grandfather. Ondine told him about the first time her mother took her to Italy, to Venice. They slept side by side; sometimes facing each other, sometimes apart. Ondine might rest a hand on his back; he might cuddle close enough to smell her hair. There were times when Ondine would look at Nix’s lithe body stretched out beside hers, covered only by his boxers, and she would want to reach out and pull him onto her, but something always held her back. She could sense Nix felt the same way but he never made a move. They were chaste but loving. Neither brother and sister, nor Romeo and Juliet, but lovers all the same. It was as if they had found their other half, the wing that allowed each to fly.
Fly they did, at night. Next to Nix, Ondine’s dreams became electrifying, dizzying experiences. She plowed through colors, fields, flowers, forests. Creatures and beasts of great complexity and beauty formed and then disappeared. Whole worlds were created. Not ones Ondine had seen in real life, but ones that inhabited her mirages. Cities filled with people she’d never seen. Animals that spoke and trees that cried and people who sat as still as stones. Nothing made sense — quite. Yet it did, or seemed to be heading toward making sense. As if Ondine were learning something, like how she felt when she first learned to draw. Her ideas, her thoughts and strange imaginings interpreted, given meaning and shape.
She felt all-seeing, lucid, perfect — close as she had ever come to whole — and when she awoke she somehow knew it was Nix who had been guiding her. They were his visions, too, that Ondine was channeling, transforming.
Awake, they never said a word.
To Nix, those three weeks before the solstice with Ondine were the most peaceful time he had spent since leaving Sitka.
The girl calmed him, made him feel safe, protected, and most of all, she made him feel like he had a purpose. The nightmares did not come when he was with her. Nor did the lights. He used up almost all the dust he had bought from Moth and didn’t buy any more. He was even able to put Jacob out of his mind, though he could not erase the vision of Neve, frail little Neve, swaying on Tim Bleeker’s lap. He chalked it up to his fears about Jacob, felt that if he could just figure that one out — use whatever was going to happen at the Ring of Fire and with Moth to help Jacob — he’d help Neve, too.
He was full of Ondine. Her moods, the way she fingered her braids, her smell. He slept close to her, breathing her in. As if, in dreaming, he could become her. He never told her about Bleek and Jacob and Bettina and the lights, but when Ondine and he awoke in the morning, Nix knew they had communicated, shared something over the course of the night: something profound, something neither of them understood.
It felt a little like falling in love.
The Masons called every day. They had gotten to Chicago, settled into a big house in Evanston with a porch and a swing. Ralph liked his colleagues at Xelix there; Max had already started classes at the conservatory. Ondine had a bedroom if she changed her mind.
She didn’t tell her parents anything about Nix, but instead, how her art class was, how her summer job search was going. Ondine almost felt as if Nix didn’t exist as Nix. Rather, the mysterious boy was part of her, and she of him. They had Neve and K.A. over a few times for movies. Though Morgan was always invited, she never came. They passed the first part of June in a frothy dream state. Ondine painted. She listened to Nix. He cooked. They ate and slept and the next day it started all over again.
Somewhere in the back of her mind Ondine knew that she’d have to get back to her real life, the one that included working and Raphael’s class, finding that summer job she kept promising she was looking for in nightly phone calls to Chicago, her parents, her other friends, but for now she let it be. Something was happening. A chain was being forged between her and Nix, a link in preparation for —
Here was where she stopped.
Other than the gathering near the solstice, she had no idea what was in store. What would happen next was a line Ondine, for the first time in her life, chose not to step over. She and Nix didn’t speak of the Ring of Fire, though they both knew it held the key to the strange events of the last few weeks. To James Motherwell’s presence in their lives and to their meeting each other. But they had already said everything those first nights in their dreams.
DUDE, I HEARD IT’S OUT AT CANNON BEACH.
No man, it’s down in the tunnels.
They’re gonna hand out dust there, dude. It’s a government thing. They want to bust all the kids.
I heard all the chicks are gonna be naked.
The one thing everyone could agree upon about the Ring of Fire was that the Flame was going to play and it was supposed to be huge. People from all around the Northwest were supposed to be going — Washington, Vancouver, Cali, even. Yet no one seemed to know where it was. The connected kids pretended they knew, but even they were clueless. Dealers were paying dollars for any solid information but the leads all turned out to be wrong. It was anyone’s guess where the Ring of Fire might be.
Anyone but Morgan. She didn’t need to guess. What she did need to do was remember.
Just like on the PSATs: A perfect score the first time. Then in ninth, she “forgot” — consciously, unconsciously, she wasn’t sure. Just a few questions, a hypotenuse here, a fill-in there, but enough to keep her from getting tagged by Penwick or any of the other geekeries she had no interest in attending. She wasn’t up for any special schools stinking of nerd B.O. and the drool of overinvolved parents. No, McKinley was fine. Morgan liked being a big fish in a big pond. Any other role would have bored her, and the slower pace at Portland’s biggest high school left her time for her job as assistant manager at Krakatoa, which she pretended was a drag, but wasn’t. Morgan liked any position where she got to tell people what to do. She was good at it, and the owners trusted her to run shifts after school, adding a few mornings during summer break.
Though the seventeen-year-old was still too young to serve the wine and beer the Krak proffered along with the best macchiato in Portland, the place attracted a crowd Li’l Paul, her boss, liked to attribute to his “chill vibe,” but Morgan knew was due to her own policy of attracting — and limiting admittance to — Portland’s coolest. “Think of it as popularity by death stare,” she once confided to K.A. “It’s ridiculously easy. You just make the weeds feel as unwelcome as possible.”
“The weeds?”
“The geeks. The losers. The people that ruin the garden.”
Morgan needed only to raise an eyebrow to silence him. Anyway, the ends justified the means, or whatever. K.A. loved the Krak, and spent most school days hanging there when he wasn’t at practice or studying, as did any Portland kid who wasn’t stared out of the place by the impossibly hot girl behind the counter.
Morgan was proud of the scene, and though she enforced carding, she didn’t mind if there was a little dust passed around on weekends, just to enliven the mood. She’d even volunteered to work an after-hours thing on Saturdays, a party-before-the-party kind of thing. The place closed at eleven, but Saturday at midnight always found the Kr
ak full, someone DJing, Morgan keeping one eye on the door, one eye on the bar. They’d even gotten written up in Vice for “best place for a sprinkling.”
The night Tim Bleeker walked in looking for information on the Ring of Fire was no different. She spotted him slinking through the front door, turning his head both ways to scope out the room before he strode over to the bar, where Morgan was covering for Li’l Paul, who was out for one of the smoke breaks that always took enough time to get some “business” done — there was always a preponderance of handsome young dishwashers at the Krak.
Bleek smiled when he saw her. They’d met once before, and she knew the guy from a party he’d thrown down in Eugene. Morgan had been fifteen and it was the first time she’d gotten trashed. She’d even tried dust, which made her sick, and she’d vowed never to do it again. The party — and Bleek — skeeved her out.
She nodded but kept wiping the water glass she had in her hand.
“Morgan D’Amici — looking good as usual.”
Morgan said nothing and Tim Bleeker sat down at the bar.
“What can I get for you?” She wiped the countertop, where Bleek’s strawberry blond matted forearms were now resting. He had a lot of hair — except on his head. That and the puffiness around his eyes and gaunt look made him look old, almost rancid. And there was something weird about his teeth.
“Doppio, babe. I know it’s late but I’ve got some parties to improve.”
She let it pass, but inwardly she shuddered.
“Skim milk.” He smiled an oily smile and patted his non-existent belly. “Weight Watchers. I think it’s really the safest of all of them. Atkins makes your breath stink.”
“Huh,” she responded, noting Bleek’s did already. She turned to the machine behind her, tapping her feet in time with the music that drifted in from the other room.
“So, Morgan” — fake casual — “where ya been hiding? I used to see you around all the time.”
The girl shrugged, going through the well-practiced motions of making yet another espresso. Dump grounds, fill, tamp, lock in place, flip switch. Get little pitcher, fridge for milk —
Betwixt Page 11