Stop, she told herself. Stop it. She couldn’t.
He hadn’t even spoken. When Ondine tacked up her painting, still wet, Raphael Inman was so moved he couldn’t speak. He had cupped his hand to his mouth as if his guts were caught there, and he hadn’t even spoken. The whole class just stood there, following Raphael’s lead like a bunch of stupid cows while Ondine stared at her shoes.
And blushed. The bitch blushed.
Morgan herself would never have shown something so messy, so unfinished, so raw.
With a trembling hand, she tucked her hair behind her ear and wiped away the veil of sweat that had gathered at her temples. It was hot in the room, odd since it was almost nine at night. She was about to throw up. At least she had been late and couldn’t assume her normal seat at the front of the classroom. At least there was that. But it wasn’t fair. Morgan wanted Raphael Inman to favor her. Not the skinny bitch at the front of the class. Spoiled brat. Was there anything Ondine didn’t get?
“Well, Ondine.” At last Raphael spoke. “Would you like to tell us about this?” Morgan swallowed hard to quell the sick bulge in her stomach, noting Raphael’s barely concealed smile, his proud-father look. That look should have been hers. That smile should have been hers.
Ondine looked at her feet, then at the painting. “I —” She faltered, uncomfortable with the attention.
Revolting.
“I was just thinking about what you said last time, about the heart and the mind. And our assignment was to use one color, understand one color. And I had been feeling, I don’t know … alone — and I understood that for me, blue was the color of that loneliness. Not a sad loneliness, but a loneliness that wanted company.”
Morgan couldn’t listen to any more of Ondine’s blather. The fey looks, the earnest nodding. Raphael’s devoted attention. She knew her teacher adored her work, she didn’t need to feel jealous, but she couldn’t help it. Everything had been so awful at home. K.A. busy 24–7 with Neve, then jetting off to soccer camp, her pathetic mother irritating her about school and college apps and whether she had called her dad. Her “dad.” The bastard took her to Jake’s Crawfish once a month with Bree, the “athletic dancer,” during which time he spoke entirely to the woman’s tits. They wanted to have a baby, he told Morgan in a rare moment of looking her way. A little sister for you, Morgue, honey! Just what Morgue honey wanted: a slobbering brat siphoning off what little Phil Jr. claimed to be saving for her and K.A.’s college education. Fuck them.
But what really bugged her was that she couldn’t get Bleek’s visit to the Krak and her own odd behavior out of her mind. She thought of the night of the party, the missing hours, creepy Tim Bleeker, and — once more — Moth. What did it matter if she knew where some lame, Red Bull–sponsored rave was if all it did was help a saggy drug dealer find it? She’d already made up her mind: no way she was going. The last thing she wanted to do on the longest day of summer was spend it driving to the middle of nowhere. Bend, ugh. Condos and housewives in Uggs and bear shit. No, thank you.
So she had stayed up late painting, working on her college applications, getting ready for her senior APs. Work started early at the Krak and she was exhausted. Everything was ass and Raphael’s class had been the summer’s only solace. Now Ondine was ruining everything — again.
Morgan slipped out the open door of Raphael’s studio. Not a head turned, though the sweet pair of black Sigerson Morrisons (two months’ tips at the Krak) she had worn to class clacked down the linoleum hall. She didn’t care. Legs were the animal part of a woman. Hadn’t Raphael said that about Ingres’s Odalisque? She wore miniskirts every day after that.
But even the most scandalous hemline couldn’t do anything about the stifling air that was choking her tonight. It was damn hot. Morgan felt another wave of nausea. She needed to get outside. She needed fresh air.
The car’s clock read 9:02 PM. Twenty-eight minutes left for Raphael to slobber all over Ondine. Morgan felt the rush of a dry sob but swallowed it, instead starting the used Lexus she had bought by scrimping and saving every penny of every job she’d had since her paper route at eleven, and screeched out of the parking lot. She was too distraught to even play the radio.
The road was clear. Instinct guided her home. Streetlights, darkened stores. She would not cry. Scratch that: She could not cry. What was wrong with her? All her life Morgan D’Amici had awaited her senior year. She would be class president. She was considered the most beautiful, intelligent girl in school and yet here she was at the doorstep of the rest of her life and all she felt was confused, and lost, and sad.
And angry. Why was she so angry?
She pulled into the long gravel driveway of the house on Steele Street. No one was home. K.A. was at Stanford; Yvonne was at Todd’s. And Morgan is in a trailer, where she belongs. She turned off the ignition. The lights faded. She let herself go.
She sobbed, grasping the steering wheel with her delicate hands. She hated crying. Not so much because of the weakness, though she resented that, too, but because nothing came out. No tears, no snot. Just cracking heaves. It wasn’t the way she used to cry. Before the nights spent sleepwalking, she had tears. Wet, luxurious tears. Then one day they went away.
It was dark, no one could see her. She sat and shook and wailed; she didn’t know for how long. Snatches of memory flashed. Scenes of death, of things she felt like she had seen, but how could she have? She was a nice girl. A good girl. Raphael told them to paint what was in their hearts, but how could she? How could she paint the tableaux of destruction that sprung, unbidden, in her mind? A wolf eating her young. Worms twisting in the earth under moonlight. The cruelty — the senseless, feelingless cruelty of nature? How could she paint the baby bird taking flight only to drown in a puddle an inch deep under the nest, to be gnawed on by vermin until there were only bits of feathers and bones left?
She stared into the blackness, at the even blacker forest beyond. How could she express what she knew was hidden there? How could she paint the dark things animals do?
CHAPTER 9
THE MORNING OF JUNE 20, NIX WOKE UP BEFORE DAWN. It was Wednesday. Ondine had gotten in late from class the night before and he didn’t want to wake her. It had been a hot night and so he’d slept downstairs on one of the couches that faced the backyard, and when the sun rose to reveal a coming storm — a bloody smear rising into a mounting anvil of gray — he knew it was the day. Moth had told him he’d know, and he did, though he wasn’t sure how. Something about the unusual weather. No kid who wasn’t invited was going to venture out to a rumored party in the mountains today. Not on a Wednesday. Not with a storm coming. He took a shower, packed water and blankets and a change of clothes, his pocketknife and a tent. He included a sleeping bag, flashlights, bug spray. Wrapping Ondine’s leftovers in sheets of tinfoil, he felt like a husband almost. Confident, excited. Prepared for anything.
In the kitchen he washed apples and carrots and celery for snacks, running his hands under the cool water, thinking about the events of the coming day. He let Ondine sleep. Getting her there was his job.
It wasn’t so much that he expected something in particular as he knew that whatever was at the Ring of Fire — whatever James Motherwell was leading them to — might be able to answer questions he’d harbored about himself all his life. Nix wasn’t sure what this meant to Ondine, but he felt a double edge of anticipation and anxiety. He’d been wandering in darkness. The loss of his mother, a father he never knew. Visions that terrorized him. Now he sensed he was heading toward something that would complete him — or at least chart his course toward completion.
He wasn’t surprised when Neve Clowes’s small face appeared before him, hovering above the sink. She wore a sparkling collar around her neck and she was crying. Then Ondine. Her eyes were closed, her face blank. Nix, she summoned. Nix, cover me.
He opened his eyes. He was standing at the Masons’ marble sink, an apple in his hands, the water running. The sun peeked over the trees at th
e border of the backyard.
“Nix?”
He turned to find Ondine behind him. She wore jeans, a hoodie mini, and a black RVCA jacket. Her hair was tied back in her red scarf and she wore a baseball hat. She held a backpack in her hands.
“I got a text from Moth.” She took a deep breath and stared. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
MORGAN AWOKE TO A MUFFLED THUMP on the windshield. A toad had plopped there from somewhere and was now trying to get off by scrambling across the dew-slicked glass. Each time it tried to hop it slipped. Just my fucking luck. Outside the sky was scarlet tinged with gray and the air seeping through a small crack in the driver’s-side window smelled swampy and burnt. A storm was coming. She felt achy and prickly and tired. The sandals she wore for Raphael sat muddy, straps broken, on the seat next to her. She didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that there would be sticks in her hair, that her feet would be dirty.
She turned the ignition and watched the headlights seep into the semidarkness. How was she going to get rid of the toad? On her fucking Lexus, which she had cleaned by hand just the day before? It tried to climb the windshield — when the lights came on it sensed something had changed — only to slip again on the sweaty glass. Stupid piece of shit. Dumb beast. She didn’t want to touch it. She turned on her wipers, thinking maybe that would dislodge it. All it did was confuse the thing, causing it to scramble faster. Find a stick, Morgan thought, push it off. Instead, she turned up the wipers and the blades started to whip faster across the glass. She wanted to punish it for being so dumb. For spreading its filthy toad-juice all over her car. It hopped for a while, avoiding the metronome of the blade, but soon it tired. A leg caught, then tore. She flicked again. It started to quiver. Pressed against the glass, its tiny heart pulsed. Good. Again, faster. It slipped under the blade. Green and brown guts trickled. Finally its flat, ugly head. Then it was dead.
She sat for a second. Couldn’t she have gotten a stick?
No. It needed to die.
She pressed the little button at the end of the wiper and a solid stream of fluid — Lexuses were good like that — skimmed over the bloodied glass. She waited and pressed again; the wipers wooshed, and everything washed away. Only when it was quiet did she hear the soft buzzing.
“RIGHT. NO LEFT. NO. THE TWENTY-MILE MARK. Linus Road? I can’t remember what he said. Something about a campground —?”
Nix glanced over at Ondine while she stared at the map, turning it around in her hands to get her bearings. She had let him drive, saying that she needed to be in charge of directions, though she hadn’t looked up once since Bend. They’d passed the town twenty miles ago and Nix was looking for Paulina Road, as Moth had promised. A few hundred yards more and there it was. He took a left. Oaks and feathery pines arced into the road, soon giving way to craggy rocks, thin combs of trees, and crusty black soil.
“I’ve been here before,” she said, looking around. “We’re near Sisters. The mountains. I came here in elementary school once to see what a volcano looked like. A flank was bulging or something —” She looked at Nix and they both smiled. “The area is due for an eruption any day now. Give or take a thousand years.”
“You don’t say.” He squeezed her knee, and Ondine smiled again and looked back at the map, tracing the contours of the volcano near the campground, its crater now filled with two perfectly round lakes.
“That must be Paulina Lake,” she said, remembering the twin sapphire lakes surrounded by black rock. “It’s beautiful there.”
The drive off the main road was longer than they expected and soon the radio was just static. Ondine checked her cell phone; a few bars still showed. When they got to the promised parking lot, they were already twenty or so miles in. Nix turned off the ignition and Ondine looked up from the map in her hands.
“Great!” She smiled. “We made it!”
Nix nodded. It appeared they were at the right place, though the thickening clouds behind them made him marvel again that a party would be held on such a crappy day. The presence of a few VW buses, dusty Toyotas, SUVs, and the like — the geeky-funky-crunchy mix of any Northwestern campground parking lot—confirmed that Moth had advised him correctly. Nothing was unusual about the scene except that the lot wasn’t full. A few people unpacked coolers and backpacks from trunks. No one looked much over twenty-five. Kids appeared in the lot as if they had walked down the dirt road, though Nix hadn’t noticed them on the way in.
A dark patch in the scrubby forest showed an entrance to a trail.
“I guess it’s in there.” Ondine pointed and Nix nodded again.
“Let’s go then.”
He didn’t feel much like talking. In the distance, black hills swelled and Nix smelled sulfur. A strange place for a party, he thought again, and as if in answer, Ondine said, “There’s a state park here.” She looked up at the gloomy sky.
“What a day for a party.”
The two ducked under the low branches. A few kids were ahead of them in rain gear and hats. She hadn’t seen any cars she recognized, but the air of the place felt familiar.
“Doesn’t seem much different from the Oregon Country freaking Fair.” Ondine scowled. “The silver statue people are going to come out any second.”
Nix turned. “Including the rain. Hey —” He stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I just thought this would be … different.”
He thought the same thing, but his anticipation stopped him from agreeing aloud. He wondered if he’d know anyone, someone from the squat or Jacob’s, but there weren’t enough people around, and the ones who had passed them in the parking lot kept their heads down against the rain.
“Moth said it was today. You saw it on the text.” He squinted up into the sky and then into the trees. “Where do you want to go?”
Ondine peered at the faces of a couple passing them on the path, but they had their hoods pulled up.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to … um … get comfortable?” She looked around at the rocky grass. “Anyway, this was the party everyone was trying to find out about? Am I missing something?”
Nix shrugged. Ondine could tell he was just as confused.
“Maybe it will pick up later.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Whatever. I don’t think you could get a Phish bootleg here it’s so lame. I guess we’ll just wait till Moth shows up.”
Another couple passed them on the dirt path, heading toward what Ondine imagined was yet another clearing like the one they were languishing in. Farther on, a group was setting up a blanket under a tree and unpacking a cooler, which was weird, since it had started to mist, and the clouds above them were making low, faraway rumbles.
“What?” Nix tugged at her wrist. She waited, then turned.
“Maybe … maybe we should go. It’s going to storm.”
His eyes shifted to the clouds. Shaking his head, he picked up the cooler and rucksack he had set down. “No. We’re here. Let’s go find ourselves a place to chill and I’ll look for Moth.”
They found a place under a spindly pine a few hundred yards down a twisting rocky path and started unpacking their stuff. Ondine was tired. The ride had been long. Not as long as she remembered from the field trip in second grade, which she identified now as the one time she had gotten scared and had to go back and stay in the bus with the teacher’s assistant. Despite its beauty, she hadn’t liked the queer, lonely landscape then and she didn’t now. Still, no harm in seeing, she told herself while Nix set up the tent, though the lack of people and the terrible weather unnerved her. What, exactly, had she expected? She watched Nix and felt the familiar warmth and understanding, the closeness they’d shared in the last few weeks. “Relax,” she whispered aloud. It appeared Nix was thinking the same, for as soon as the tent was up, they scrambled in. It was still morning. Whatever was supposed to happen didn’t have to happen now, Ondine reminded herself. She burrowed into her sleeping bag. Nix,
beside her, rolled over and did the same, mumbling, “I’ll look for Moth in a little while.”
They sank into a dreamless nap from which they awoke hungry, Ondine thankful that Nix had remembered to bring food. She despised falafel. That is, if they could have found any at this strange failure of a party. She looked at her watch. It was past noon. A few hours had gone by, and the area was as quiet as it had been when they got there that morning.
Ondine was starting to think it was just a crappy Rainbow Gathering fizzled when Nix looked up from his PB&J and said, “Let’s go look for him.” She nodded, happy that he’d suggested it. They left their camp as it was, taking the rest of the gear and heading down a path toward a deeper wood, where light strains of music floated through the increasing rain.
There was more activity in the forest, but it was still quiet. Small groups of people sat under tarpaulins or around modest campfires, not paying Nix and Ondine particular attention except for the one time Ondine had looked back and seen a short and somewhat stocky Asian girl peering after them. The girl had ducked into a tent from which Ondine thought she could hear the hum of a tattoo needle. After that, she didn’t see the girl anymore.
For a half hour they wandered. Incense trailed out of glowing makeshift tents stippled with the shifting silhouettes of their inhabitants, and a few tables seemed to be set up to sell something. People crowded around, but when Ondine tried to push her way through to see what was offered, she could never get close enough. She wanted to ask Nix to stop, but he was busy scanning the huddled groups for Moth and she felt shy to ask. A few boys passed her, juggling Hacky Sacks or twirling Frisbees, and there was even some music from what sounded like the ubiquitous Peruvian flute ensemble — though eerier in the darkening wood — yet most faces were averted, so she had a hard time seeing her fellow partygoers. No one laughed, no one danced. Mostly everyone seemed to be waiting, like she and Nix were. For the Flame, she supposed, though a concert was going to be hard in a downpour.
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