Mixed Signals

by Alyssa Cole

  I looked over at Danielle, who was shivering, despite her warm winter jacket.

  “Can’t keep our adoring fans waiting,” I said. I climbed in and settled my guitar between my legs. Danielle clambered in the back, and when I glanced back she was carefully pulling her hat down on her head.

  The car started with a rumble, and we slowly pulled off.

  “We’re gonna have fun,” Devon said, as if he could command it. I hoped he was right.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We drove past the section of town that had been cleared for “rejuvenation,” which sounded like something out of a sci-fi film, and into the restricted area. Here, the buildings didn’t have to live up to even the most basic of health and safety codes. The stretched-thin police force didn’t come to this part of town unless there was good reason; it was the one place John had tried to pull big brother rank on me and forbidden me to go.

  Something hit me then that had been lost in my excitement to perform and the willful ignorance I’d been participating in when it came to Devon. “Most students aren’t going to travel all the way out here.”

  Devon scoffed. “Their loss, then. We’re still in town, just not the part some government organization has deemed safe. This is what the world is like in most places right now, and if students can’t deal with that that, they’re gonna have a hard time after graduation. Everything isn’t as safe and sanitized as government incorporated would have you think.”

  “Should we go back?” Danielle’s voice sounded hollow from the backseat, even though she was only inches away. When I turned to look at her, she was plucking at a frayed area on her hat.

  My eagerness to play in spite of Devon’s shortcomings as human being was fading by the moment, and I refused to force her to be any place she didn’t want to be. “We can go back if you want to,” I said.

  Devon glanced at her in the rearview. “How are you gonna do that without a car? Call one of your imaginary cartoon creatures to give you a ride? Because we have someplace to be, and I’m not turning around to take you back.”

  I’d been ignoring the niggling thoughts that told me something wasn’t quite right, but his words sent a different kind of feeling through me now—déjá vu. My breathing went wonky and sweat broke out on my scalp. I was in a car with a guy who was being an ass and could quickly become much worse. Again. My hands balled into fists. Danielle picked up on my apprehension, and her scared look matched what I was feeling. She was here because of me, and I couldn’t slide into the panic that was threatening to pull me under.

  I channeled that fear into anger.

  “News flash, Devon. We’re going to some shitty house that’s probably condemned, not the Rose Bowl. You’re being a dick right now, and for no reason.”

  “I’m being a guy who’s pissed off after waiting for you to make the final song selection for tonight’s set. For you to get your makeup done. For you to acknowledge me in the cafeteria, or not, or to only remember that I was your first love when it’s beneficial to you. I’m tired of waiting for—” He jerked to a stop behind a group of cars that were clustered in front of a house with warped aluminum siding. His voice was strained when he spoke. “I’m tired of waiting for your forgiveness.”

  “You’re gonna do this right here? Really?” Anger gathered under my skin, raising my temperature and making the several layers I was wearing suddenly too much. “Let me remind you of something—you’re not the victim here. You’re the one who lied to me, several times over. And now you want to act like you’re the injured party, even though I’ve done nothing but treat you like a friend?”

  He turned to me and the anger on his face was startling. “We’re supposed to be more than friends.” His words came out low and dark, so unexpected that I cringed away from them. There was a sudden rustling in the backseat, then a cool breeze and a loud slam as Danielle made her escape. The biting night air she let in cooled my skin and cleared my head a bit. There was too much going on in that moment, and Edwin’s warning about Devon echoed in my head.

  “If we were really more than friends, you would know I don’t owe you a damn thing,” I said. “And even if things did work how you think they should, nothing you’ve done thus far has earned you enough brownie points for forgiveness. I bet it never even occurred to you to just be a good person and see what happens.” I eased my door open and clambered out, pulling my guitar case onto my back as I stood.

  Danielle was a few feet away, picking at her cuticles. She bit her lip and then spit out what she was going to say. “Maggie, I know you’re excited to play, but I don’t think you should go to this party. It’s not okay for him to talk to you like that.”

  I slid my arm through hers. I was freaked out too, but I had to keep cool, for her. “He’s just being a jerk.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t stay in the car. It was like being back with my uncle, after the Flare. He would get so mad at me for everything.”

  She pressed her lips together as if trying to prevent emotions, or more words, from escaping, and I wanted to clutch her close and tell her she could confide in me. But not there, with Devon climbing out of the car with a sullen expression on his face. Not with a group of his eco club friends approaching with bottles of beers and goofy smiles on their faces.

  “If you want to go, just say the word.” I spoke quietly, as if we were being surrounded by jackals instead of people who were supposed to be friends. Maybe that should have been my cue to leave, but she shook her head.

  “We need a ride back. Staying here is better than walking through this part of town.”

  I often thought of her as flighty because of her age and her predilection for all things cute, but she was good at making quick assessments.

  “There is an option three, in which I hot-wire a car and we drive ourselves back,” I said. “My father taught me how, in case I was ever in a dodgy situation.” The wire cutters I kept for replacing guitar strings served a dual purpose.

  That got a small laugh out of her. “Of course you can hot-wire a car. Let’s just get through the next couple of hours. I’m fine. Are you? I meant what I said—he’s usually nice to you, but the way he’s acting tonight isn’t okay.”

  I watched Devon from the corner of my eye as she spoke. He plastered a smile on his face as he greeted his friends with fist bumps and handshakes. If I hadn’t been in the car, I wouldn’t have known that he was pissed off. There was something frightening about the fact that he could hide the emotion that had flared in the car so easily.

  “Is your girl ready to go?” The question came from a guy with long, thin black hair. He wore faded black jeans and a stained white T-shirt with the word Obey scrawled across it in marker. He had to be in his mid-thirties, not ancient or anything, but years older than everyone else at the party.

  I hadn’t met him before, but something about him wound a spring inside of me that was ready to snap when he did something to provoke me. When, because he had the smarmy look of a guy who was just waiting to push your button. Even an apocalypse couldn’t adjust that personality type.

  He looked me up and down slowly and gave me a deliberate smirk. “You didn’t mention your girl was super hot, Dev.” It was like he could sense that I didn’t like him and he was poking and prodding for a reaction. Worse, he was speaking of me like Devon and I really were a couple...

  My gaze flew to Devon, and he no longer looked like the carefree guy hanging with his bros. He was doing that hunched-shoulder thing, like a puppy did when it expected to be kicked. No wonder he’d been so upset with me. He’d had it all planned out—I’d forgive him, we’d hook up and I wouldn’t have to know he’d told these guys we were dating when we weren’t, and vice versa. It occurred to me that with just a few words, I could ruin his cred with these people. I wanted to give a shrill whistle and, once I had everyone’s attention, point out what
a lying creep he was.

  I was an inhale away from doing it when I managed to implement some of the impulse control I’d been working on. While humiliating him would be satisfying in the short term, it could also screw me and Danielle over. Like she said, he was our ride back. I had nothing to hold over him if I embarrassed him this early in the night, and he could easily ditch us, or worse. Given his earlier mood swing, I thought it best to save any petty acts of vengeance until we were back within the safety zone of the university.

  “‘Your girl’ is a very pretty name, but mine is Maggie, actually.” I squinched my face into a bright smile and held out my hand to Greg. He made a derisive little sound and gave a limp handshake that managed to be both hot and clammy at the same time. He gave my hand a tug in his direction before he let go, so I was already stepping in his wake as he turned toward the house, a petty display of dominance that threw me off-kilter for a second.

  Devon is hanging out with a bad crowd. Edwin’s words piped up again. I wished I’d listened then, but doing things right the first time around didn’t seem to be how I operated.

  “It’s show time,” Greg called as he walked through the metal cellar doors. Dozens of faces stared up at me through the opening.

  “The show must go on,” I muttered as I followed him down below.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We shuffled in behind him into a crowded, low-ceilinged basement and were immediately shoved toward a stage. Well, four palettes tied together with rope. It looked like these people needed my contracting skills more than they needed a singer, but the palettes were only slightly wobbly, so they’d serve their purpose.

  I turned down the offer of a beer, and then a shot of moonshine that was thrust at me in its place. Unlike a real rock star, I didn’t have an entourage to make sure I got home in one piece and I certainly couldn’t rely on Devon for that. I put my guitar down and scanned the crowd milling around the cramped room. Danielle had rooted herself in a corner at the bottom of the stairs. I tried to catch her eye, but one of the girls from the club walked over and started chatting with her. She smiled and launched into conversation, and I gave a sigh of relief. I owed her big-time.

  “Thanks,” Devon said as I unzipped my guitar case. “I didn’t tell them we were dating or anything, by the way. People just assumed...”

  “And you didn’t correct them.” I began tuning, trying to feel the thrum that let me know I was hitting the right note, since dozens of conversations were drowning out sound. I focused on that instead of the anger that built up in my head like a sinus headache.

  He looked away, and the anger was replaced by an unexpected sadness. Not for him—for the boy I’d thought he was. For the friends we could have been.

  “Look, let’s just get this show over with, okay? We have a captive audience.” I didn’t add that our first gig was going to be our last, although if he had any sense at all he could’ve guessed that. Maybe I should’ve left without even playing, but the music was calling to me as I began strumming chords, and I wasn’t going to let an entitled jerk who thought he deserved a cookie, my cookie, for pretending to be nice take that away from me. Our friendship had turned out to be a farce, but the music was still real.

  I’d been dampening the sound of the guitar, but I removed my fingers from the strings and played a loud chord that got everyone’s attention. All eyes were on me, and suddenly nothing else mattered but making music and getting these people to feel it as much as I did. I gave Devon a look, counted off and began playing, starting off with an oldie but a goodie that would draw everyone in. “Today is gonna be the day,” our voices launched into “Wonderwall” in unison, the notes threading through each other in perfect alignment as they spread out over the crowd like a fisherman’s net. As the song progressed, the talk died down and the crowd began to push in toward us. The net was closed—they were ours for the rest of the night.

  The next hour passed in a flash. My mouth hurt from opening wide against a smile to push the words out to the farthest edge of the basement. My fingers buzzed from being bashed against the strings as I tried to draw the most sound from my acoustic. My entire body thrummed from the noise and the unseeable but relentless pulse generated by the crowd’s enthusiasm. The anger and betrayal I felt were exorcised through my fingers and vocal cords, my endorphins pushing away the hurt. When we finished our last song, a cover of The Doors’ “Whiskey Bar” that I’d stolen from Arden’s repertoire, I felt as drunk as the song’s protagonist.

  I let out a loud whoop and fought against the urge to slam my guitar to the floor, like I’d seen in old concert footage. I jumped up and down instead, considering playing just one more song, my mind searching its mental jukebox for something that would leave the crowd even more crazed. I stopped myself; it was better to leave them wanting more. The urge to do something was strong, though, and I wasn’t the only one feeling it—I had just high-fived a girl in the crowd when I felt something snag me from behind. When I turned, Devon’s mouth was descending toward mine, his eyes intense with longing. He pulled me into a kiss, right there on the stage.

  The audience loved it, urging him on with hoots of encouragement, but his mouth against mine snuffed out the jangly energy left over from our set.

  I pushed him away, this time not caring about whether it made him look bad in front of his friends. To drag me into a kiss in front of a bunch of people seemed like yet another manipulation. I stumbled back, immediately turning away to search the room for Danielle. The space at the bottom of the stairs where she’d glued herself earlier was empty. I pushed through the crowd, clutching my guitar to my chest to shield it from the sweaty bodies that might crush it.

  “Where’s Danielle?” I asked the girl I’d seen her talking to.

  She blinked a few times, eyes glazed and smile slow. “She started freaking out in here when the crowd was pushing, so Greg gave her something to help her relax and took her outside for some air.”

  Relax? Fuck. My stomach churned with worry and I let the recriminations begin. I should have left before the gig, when I first got the weird, sticky feeling in the pit of my belly that signaled something was amiss. At the very least, I should have kept an eye on her throughout the show. My fears for Danielle propelled me through the people blocking the stairwell like twigs in a drainpipe. It was only when the cold night air ripped through my sweat-soaked T-shirt that I realized my jacket and scarf were in my guitar case, still downstairs. It didn’t matter. Danielle had come to this party for me, and I had to find her.

  I heard a man’s laughter and turned to find Greg clutching a barely standing Danielle to his side. The panda hat was twisted pitifully to the side, seeming to give me an imploring look as her head lolled. The way Greg’s hand was planted on her hip sickened me, because in that moment I realized it was the first time I’d seen anyone touch Danielle. Earlier that night when I’d linked arms with her was the first time I’d touched her for a prolonged period of time.

  “Tell us more about these cartoon cats that fight crime. They’re fascinating.” Greg pulled a face at the guys next to him, and all the muscles in my neck and back tensed in anger. Copping a feel off a passed-out woman was bad enough, but managing to be a condescending prick to her while doing so was a new height of assholery.

  His thumb moved over the thin curve of her hip, and all of the grown-up impulse control I’d been working on flew out the window. I didn’t think. I barreled forward and pulled her away from him, gathering her weight against me. I thought I would spin and walk off, but her body jolted in a sickening way; Greg had her by the wrist, his mouth was twisted in a smirk. If my hands weren’t full of passed-out Danielle and guitar, I could have destroyed him for that ugly curl of his lips alone.

  “I believe the phrase is ‘thank you,’” he said. His thumb was rubbing again, over the inside of her wrist. I refrained from tugging her because I didn’t want to hu
rt her—I could only hope she hadn’t already been.

  Fuck. Please let nothing have happened. Please.

  “Let go of her. And tell me what you gave her to get her like this. Are roofies considered environmentally friendly?” The words came out at a near shout, propelled by my anger as the full extent of what could have happened to her hit me. The groups of people scattered around the house looked our way with interest, sharks scenting blood in the water.

  Greg’s gaze narrowed. “I didn’t roofie her.” His voice was just as loud, making me realize I’d called him out on his own turf in a dangerous part of town. “Maybe next time don’t bring someone who starts freaking out just because things get a little tight. That’s what happens at a party, so I don’t know what she was expecting.” I thought about Danielle’s frightened cat drawing. “I gave her something to help her chill out, and I guess it made her a little sleepy. Don’t worry, it’s all natural, grown right on the farm where you work three days a week. When you’re not working with the maintenance crew or sleeping in Campbell Hall. Ground-floor dorm rooms must get a little scary sometimes, huh?”

  I was suddenly plunged into waters way over my head. Greg was obviously threatening me by dropping this detailed information about me, but why? Just because I was trying to take care of my friend? Even scarier was the likely source of his info.

  Devon.

  I wanted to shout fuck you. I wanted to hurt him, like my mom or Arden would have. But I was just Maggie, and as I’d learned on more than one occasion, trying to be brave or adventurous usually ended up biting me in the ass. I stood there seething, tears of frustration filling my eyes.

  Greg scoffed. “Get the fuck out of here. And don’t even think about trying to tell people I drugged this bitch. I don’t like attention, Margaret Seong, and you don’t want to be on the receiving end of mine.” I’d thought he was full of shit, his demeanor a parody of the bad boy every girl was supposed to love, but the look on his face frightened me. He was still a joke, but a guy with something to prove was often more dangerous than anyone.