Robin and Jerry Jeff hesitated on the threshold, glancing uncertainly at each other. The kid in the curlers hustled after Jan: “She’s sleeping. You can’t wake her up!”
“Watch me,” Jan said.
“No! I mean, you don’t—you really can’t wake her up.”
“Nonsense. I’m her aunt. Robin, bring the ghost in here.”
Robin glanced at the girl in curlers, who rolled her eyes and said, “Sure. But you can’t wake her. She fell asleep doing homework about an hour ago. I dragged her onto the bed, and she didn’t even stir.”
“You didn’t think this was weird?” Robin said.
The kid shrugged. “Happened to her this afternoon. She gets these episodes sometimes—narcoleptic.” She looked proud of knowing the word.
Vicky lay, fully dressed, arms folded, on the bed, paler and more rigid than anyone Robin had ever seen sleeping. Jan touched her shoulder.
Vicky didn’t stir.
“Hey, kid, wake up. We got your ghost.”
No response.
Jan shook her shoulder. The ghost in Robin’s arms twitched and snarled beneath Jerry Jeff’s rope.
Jan shook harder. “Kid? Hey, Vick. Come on. Wake up.”
The ghost spasmed and jabbered.
Vicky’s lips twitched. Her fingers clutched the cross around her neck. But she didn’t open her eyes.
“Vick, come on, you’re scaring me.”
And as she shoved her, Robin remembered Vicky, earlier that day, in the lobby, talking with Yerodin—then napping on a sofa while the ghost knocked over Robin’s luggage cart.
“Vick, look, we caught it! It’s not a ghost, or a demon, just some sort of plasma thing. A local ace screwing around. And we got him.”
Robin turned to the kid in the curlers, and realized he didn’t know her name.
“Angelica.”
“Angelica,” he said. “Sorry. Did—did you say that Vicky took a nap this afternoon?”
“Yeah. Around three. I came in and the lights were off.”
Robin licked his lips. He thought about the card—thought about how he’d felt after his own turned, how scared he’d been, how alone. He thought about Vicky’s fierce control in the hotel bar, about the thin line of her lips when Jan said ghosts did not exist. He thought about how scared you could be of yourself, especially at fifteen. “Jan, I…” Jan turned on him, glaring. “I think we should let the ghost go.”
“Are you nuts? After how much trouble it was to catch the thing? I want to show Vicky she doesn’t have anything to be afraid of.”
“Jan,” he said. “Look at her mouth.”
Vicky’s lips twitched, and the ghost yowled.
And the one happened at the same time as the other.
“Jerry Jeff,” Robin said, “let her go.”
Jerry Jeff looked from him, to her, to her. He released the rope.
The ghost vanished.
Vicky’s eyes fluttered open. “Aunt Jan? What happened? What are you doing here?”
She looked afraid. Desperate to hide her secret.
She must have turned young, and woken from her illness full of power she did not understand. Power that scared her, that she loved, that she could not let herself love. Power she made into a demon.
He watched Jan’s face. Jan, who’d turned as an adult. Jan, who worked so fiercely to expose truth, however weird that truth might be; Jan, who chased down ghosts and rooted out falsehood and had so little belief in comforting lies that she made up horrifying lies in their place.
Jan, who turned back to her niece, and said, “We found the ghost, Vick.” The girl went still. “But she got away from us. And…” She searched herself a long time to find the next words. “I think she’s not that bad a ghost after all. She’s powerful. Mischievous. But not bad.”
Vicky’s mouth twisted. Her body wrung, and she curled the comforter about herself. She sat up, and brought her knees to her chest, and stared into the covers between her bare feet. “What if she hurts someone?”
“I’ll be around,” Jan said. “And I’ll help.”
Jan slipped Robin the second half of the money before he left: a handshake with rumpled bills inside, to solemnize a conspiracy. He paid Jerry Jeff the fifty he’d been loaned at dinner, and walked him to his car.
The night lay heavy on the San Antonio parking lot pavement, and Jerry Jeff’s boot heels clicked. Robin made no sound. Jerry Jeff hooked his thumbs through his belt, and looked back and up at the moon. “Boy, though, did you even see that? Just like old times, weren’t it? You with the arms and me with the rope, and that friend of yours ain’t half bad herself, could have used her on the set back in the old days I tell you what.” He whistled through his teeth. “That’s some proper hero-ing we did there.”
Robin looked skyward for advice, but the moon had none to offer. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess. I’m glad Jan handled it well. And the kid seemed to understand.”
Jerry Jeff’s eyes flicked sideways toward Robin, beneath the brim of his hat. They walked in silence past rows of cars. “You’re good at this,” Jerry Jeff said. “This is a good life for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve always wanted to take care of people. I’m glad to see you doing it.”
He stopped in front of a cherry-red pickup truck.
“Welp,” Jerry Jeff said, “this is me.”
A blanket covered the pickup’s bench seat, and a pillow scrunched against one wall. Tufts of rumpled clothes sprouted from a backpack on the floor. A fly buzzed around a pile of takeout containers in the passenger seat.
Robin turned. Jerry Jeff looked down at the embellished tips of his boots.
“Jerry Jeff, are you sleeping in your car?”
“Aw,” Jerry Jeff said. “Yes.”
Robin set his hand on Jerry Jeff’s shoulder. He didn’t think he could say anything to help, so he said nothing at all.
“There’s trouble at home,” Jerry Jeff said. “All my fault, of course. I done wrong, Robin. In the music, in the lights, in the teevee, somewhere along the line, I just done wrong. I couldn’t stay anymore, I couldn’t hurt her like that. So I packed the car, and took the royalty check that showed up that afternoon, and I left. Didn’t know where I was going. I drove north and then I drove south again. I ran through the money. I drove east, and I read your name in a paper in a diner, and I thought, shit, if anyone knows what to do, it’s old Rubberband.” His eyes glittered. “Happiest days of my life were on that dumb show. And here I seen you happy, with your kids and your life. You made something real. I just tried to be a shadow of a cowpoke.”
Robin closed his mouth, and pulled Jerry Jeff into an embrace. Jerry Jeff breathed slow; his mustaches rubbed Robin’s cheek. He felt light as dried wood.
Robin said, “I’m happy. And I’m broke, and I’m single, and I’m miserable, and I miss it all, too. I have debts and I’m failing my students one damn day at a time. I’m doing the right thing and I’m doing the wrong thing. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.”
Jerry Jeff’s laugh was big and wet. “You’re sure as hell doing something, though.”
“Yeah,” Robin said, “and when you showed up, I thought, there’s my buddy Jerry Jeff, who had everything figured out way back when, who has this whole career set out for him, while I can’t win for losing.”
Jerry Jeff held the hug longer, and Robin let him. When he broke, Robin said, “I’ll be here all week, if the competition goes well. But—come visit me in New York. You can stay until everything gets sorted out. Here.” He slid the spare key off his key ring, and scribbled his address on the back of a receipt. “Go to my place. If the neighbors hassle you, tell them I said you could stay. The walrus next door comes on strong, but he’s a nice guy when you get to know him. And…” He took Jan’s money from his other pocket.
“Shit, Robin, I can’t—”
“You can. It’s a gift. You’ll figure this thing out, whatever it is. It might
take time. But, hey. Wrecks like us have to take care of each other.”
Jerry Jeff looked from the money, to Robin. He took the bills. “A loan.”
“A gift,” Robin said.
“I’ll be waiting for you in New York. I can get a job, I don’t want to wear out your welcome.”
“You’re a guest,” he said. “Stay as long as you need.”
Jerry Jeff hugged him again. “Thanks, pardner.”
“You can sleep in my room here, if you like. Rustbelt’s already got the other bed, but we can split.”
“Nah. Bessie’s comfier than she looks. But don’t you worry. I’ll be around.”
Robin walked back to the hotel, hands in pockets, eyes on the stars (which still existed, somewhere, behind the choking clouds and light pollution). He tried not to think of Jerry Jeff; he couldn’t help thinking of him.
As he reached the end of the lane of cars, he glimpsed a flash of color out of the corner of his eye. He knew better than to turn toward whoever was stalking him. One of the protesters, maybe, seeing a lone target? No sense waiting until it was too late, for him or for Jerry Jeff. Robin knelt, coiled his legs, and sprang.
The world inverted. He arced twenty feet up and back down again, and landed in a puddle behind the cars. His skin sorted itself out, and he resumed something like human form, hands up, filling his arms and shoulders, bulking like a cobra about to strike. He looked, for a second, like a hero.
Antonia Abruzzi stared up at him with wide dark eyes. Tracks of tears ran down her cheeks.
He deflated, and said, “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Mind if I sit?”
She shook her head.
He sank to the asphalt beside her, and watched their reflection in the Ford fender opposite. “You heard?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. For all of us. That’s not an excuse, though. I’m just … I’m sorry. That’s all.”
Antonia inhaled, exhaled.
Robin waited.
“I’m not a joker,” she said.
Robin waited more.
“The other kids. Stupid Peter. They’re all about being jokers. That chant, in the lobby. Like they can take what those—assholes—” She glanced at him, but he didn’t react. “Like they can take what those assholes outside call us, and throw it back. And maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do. Maybe I should be that strong. But I’m not.”
Fingertip by fingertip, she removed her gloves.
The tentacles began at her wrists, and with the gloves gone she had to shake them out from the fingerlike shapes into which they’d curled. They were thin and long, covered in shimmering scales the same gold brown as Antonia’s arms. She raised them in the night. Streetlamps struck rainbows from their surface. She fanned them, braided them, unwound them again. They were beautiful.
“I don’t like the name joker. People use it to mean broken. I’m not. We’re not. Not Ms. Oberhoffer. Not Sean or Asti or Adesina, not even stupid Peter.”
“No,” Robin said. “You’re not.”
For a long while, in the parking lot, they did not speak, and other phantoms, unspeaking, clustered nearer. Robin watched the ghosts. “We all tell stories about ourselves, that say we’ve got everything figured out. We don’t. But we’re not broken, and no one can break us if we don’t let them.”
“And we won’t let them.”
He nodded.
In the end, she said, “I’m ready to go inside.”
He stood, and stretched out his hand to her. She wound her scales around him, and he pulled her up.
Beats, Bugs, and Boys
Part 4
IT TOOK LORIANNE OVER an hour to shower and do her hair, but for once she was pleased with the end result. Whether it was the San Antonio water or the fistfuls of product she’d used, her curls had gone from insane to luxurious. She preened in front of the mirror for a couple of minutes then saw the 7:58 on the clock and raced to get dressed.
Luckily, clothing was easy—jeans, a T-shirt with skull-faced butterflies, and a light jacket since the hotel air-conditioning worked really well. Phone and keycard in the front pocket, drumsticks in her back pocket, and then she was off.
As she exited the elevator on the ground floor, she spied the back of a familiar peach-fizzy head. “Asti!”
He turned, a half-eaten ice-cream cone in his hand. “LoriAnne! I see you successfully dried your hair.”
“Go me!” she said with a light laugh that she hoped didn’t sound too dorky. “And you’re melting.” She waggled her fingers at the ice cream.
“Oops. Thanks.” He hurried to lick the escaping trickle. “After hearing Basilio talk about ice cream, I had to go get some for myself.” He lifted the mangled remains of the cone. “I’d offer you some, but, well…”
“That’s all right,” she said, though the idea of sharing ice cream with Asti was more than a little tempting. Down, girl! “Are you heading to the dinner?”
“Sure am. Right this way.” He offered her his arm, which she took with delight. “Allons-y!”
“Allons-y,” she echoed as she matched his long strides. Probably the only time her high school French would ever prove useful.
As they neared the ballroom, two boys and two girls stepped out, laughing and jostling one another. LoriAnne recognized them from the pool and started to give a smile of greeting, but to her shock, when they caught sight of Asti, their laughter shifted to sneers and whispers. To add to the insult, they made a point of edging close to the wall as they passed, then sniggered as they walked off.
Throat tight, LoriAnne glanced over at Asti. She fully expected to see outrage, but instead, he merely looked resigned—which was way worse. “You’re used to that sort of thing, aren’t you.”
Asti popped the rest of the cone into his mouth and crunched it down before speaking. “Yeah.” He twitched his shoulders in a shrug. “That was mild.”
“I’m so sorry.” To her horror, tears stung her eyes.
His fizz perked up. “Thanks, LoriAnne. You’re really sweet. I’m glad you accidentally tried to drown me.”
That made her laugh, which took care of the verge-of-tears thing. Probably his intention.
Within the ballroom, a buffet table ran along one wall, and tables and chairs filled the rest of the space.
“LoriAnne!” Greg waved at her from several tables away. With him was the rest of her group, including Mr. Sloane. Crap. Late again.
She gave Asti a wince of apology. “I’d better go join my band. Will you be around for a while?”
“Should be,” he said, scanning the gathering.
“Sweet. See you soon!”
He gave her a distracted smile before making his way across the room. LoriAnne filled a plate at the buffet then wound her way over to the Funkalicious Four table.
“How was the pool?” Greg asked after she sat. “I didn’t know you were going.”
“Pretty nice. I didn’t stay very long.” She stuffed a forkful of enchilada into her mouth to avoid further questioning, then took a moment to enjoy the flavor. It was amazing—better than any Tex-Mex she’d ever had before. Of course, that was a low bar considering what she was used to in the boonies of Louisiana. She tucked into her dinner and let the conversation flow around her, pleased to feel quite a few of her skeeter friends in the room.
“Isn’t that the Plano Originals?” Greg asked around a mini-taco.
LoriAnne followed his gaze several tables over to where half a dozen teens sat—including the ones who’d acted like jerks outside the ballroom.
“Yes, that’s Plano,” Cassie said.
“What are they doing?” Greg wondered aloud as two of them bumped chests then staggered around, laughing. “And why do they keep looking over at us?”
They were miming falling into a pool, LoriAnne realized. A flush crept up her cheeks. “’Cause they’re jerks,” she said with a savage stab of her fork into a tamale. No way was she going to tell
her bandmates about her “big splash.” Instead she informed every skeeter within a thousand yards exactly where to get themselves a nice juicy meal. “When I was walking with one of the Jokertown Mob players earlier, a bunch of them acted like they didn’t want to get near him and made nasty faces like he smelled.” She took a bite then realized everyone was looking at her. Cassie was outright staring.
“You were hanging out with a joker?” Greg breathed at the same time Cassie said, “Which one?”
LoriAnne put her fork down, relieved to see that Mr. Sloane, at least, was smiling. “The guitarist. Asti. I met him down at the pool. We talked and, well, he’s really nice. I ran into him again when I got off the elevator.”
Greg muttered something LoriAnne couldn’t catch, but he looked more envious than upset. Howard wiped his mouth with a napkin. “That’s the guy with the peach-fuzz skin, right, LoriAnne?”
“Yeah. And his head fizzes.” Then she smiled. “Plus, he smells ah-maze-ing.”
“He can really shred a guitar,” Howard said. “He was killing it before the smoke bomb went off.”
“The Plano shitbrains are still looking at us,” Greg said with a scowl. “And now they’re doing that stupid laughing-behind-their-hands thing.”
“Ignore them,” Mr. Sloane said. “If you rise to the bait, you lower yourself to their level.”
Greg’s forehead puckered. “If you rise up then lower down, don’t you end up in the same place?” He ducked as Cassie, Howard, and LoriAnne flung tortilla chips at him.
Mr. Sloane laughed under his breath and placed his napkin on the table. “On that philosophical note, I believe it’s time for me to retire. Enjoy your evening, don’t forget the curfew, and be sure to get plenty of sleep tonight. We get to do it all again tomorrow, but even better.”
He left to a chorus of “Good night!”
“I’m going to head upstairs, too,” Cassie said, then added to LoriAnne, “I might be asleep by the time you come in, so please be quiet.”
“Gee, no impromptu drum solo?”
Cassie laughed and pointed to the sticks beside LoriAnne’s plate. “Never know with you.”
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