Loud Awake and Lost, page 7
“What?”
“Pizza, with everyone on it.”
“Ugh.” But I could feel myself smiling. “Are all your jokes from the How to Be an Annoying Fourth Grader’s operating manual?”
“Hey, I got a smile out of you. I’d way rather see you be exasperated than sad. And listen—you’ve got your whole life to be a French chef. Truth is, the average high school class runs on Pop-Tarts, Corn Pops, and Red Bull. So how about you just sit back and enjoy something that crunches while we talk Halloween.” With one long arm, Rachel easily plucked two bowls from the top shelf and then shook the box of cereal on the counter.
“Yes, Halloween. No, Corn Pops.”
“Cereal snob.” Rachel replaced one bowl with a sigh, then dumped her own bowl straight to the rim. “So here’s our dilemma, as I see it. Are we going to Lucia’s Halloween party? Even though it’s in Tribeca and we have no idea if superrich Italian beauty queens know how to throw a party?”
“I think so,” I answered. “If we don’t drop by, Claude will feel snubbed. And then we’ll never hear the end of it.”
Rachel made a face. “Annoying but true. Agreed.”
“So, wedding zombies,” I said. “Are we definitely decided on that?”
“Yes, but not gross-out. Fashionable zombies, all dressed up. With the blood daubed on like perfume. A couple of tasteful splotches at the neck and wrists.”
“Mmm. Let me write this down.” I found a notebook by the phone and wrote, blood—perfume. “What about shoes?”
“Dunno, but it sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? Where do zombies buy their shoes?”
“A bad joke. A Rachel Smart joke.” I wrote, shoes? Then I stared at the paper. The words blood perfume shoes seemed to blur and break apart into fragments before my eyes. It was as if a winter wind had slivered through the room. Shivering, I looked down. I saw my bare feet and I saw black biker boots with thick silver metal grommets at the ankle. I saw a kitchen floor and I also saw a concrete pavement. Wet leaves blown by the chill of a first freeze. I could hear a rhythmic thud of footfalls. I was on a bridge, a gray chop of water stretched all around me, and I was singing, from faraway I could hear an echo of my own voice, the tune was Weregirl, I was singing with someone, and now he stopped and I could feel his mouth on my neck, nipping it, his lips soft and cool against me, but somebody was watching, somebody I disliked, my body tensed, I turned my head—
“Ember!” Rachel had zoomed in close, flapping a hand in front of my face. I jumped. “Dishrag girl! Where’d you go?”
“What?” I blinked.
“You just completely freaked me out! Talk about zombies! You weren’t here!”
My heart was pounding. On the notebook, I’d doodled that funny-looking A, that same character that I’d written on my hand my first day home. I stared at it hard, as if it were capable of giving me more. Was the A for Anthony?
“Smarty,” I whispered. “I think I went back.”
“Back where?”
“To January. In the memory pocket. In my head.”
“Aaaand?” Rachel raised a stagy eyebrow. “Whatever did you see there, time traveler?”
She was joking, but I was right. I’d been back. I closed my eyes to find it again. Pressed the heels of my hands into the hollows of my eye sockets. “Nothing really. It was winter, and I was walking, singing. I was with someone.” I didn’t mention my neck, his mouth. “It was ice-cold, but the images were etched so clear. Like a dream.”
When I glanced at Rachel, she had her arms crossed. Skeptical.
“Sorry.” I flushed. “Forget it. I’m back! Zombie costumes. Shoes—to be decided.” I picked up the pen and scribbled loop-de-loops through the mark. “Let’s see if we can find hospital gauze instead of toilet paper. I bet that the gauze will be more durable. Especially if it’s raining on Halloween, our costumes will dissolve.”
“Ember.”
I looked up. “What?”
“Are you okay to be a zombie?”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“Maybe you’d rather be something less morbid. Maybe zombies are putting you in the wrong head space.”
“God, Smarty. I’m not that sensitive, am I?”
Rachel began popping her knuckles, from thumb to pinkie. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell what you want, minute by minute.”
“The bandages will hide my scars.” I touched my forehead. “Unless…I went as the lead singer of Weregirl. Now that’s an easy costume—ripped tights and an army jacket and patrol boots.”
“And then you can enjoy all the blank stares since nobody knows that band.”
“Smarty, when did I start liking Weregirl? I listen to them all the time now.”
“Ugh, Ember. I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping babysitting tabs on you after you deep-sixed Holden,” said Rachel—her voice had gone flat in that way I’d come to recognize when she spoke about last year. “You turned distant. Holden was in a terrible place, and I had cousin custody of him. Plus you didn’t want me.” Then it was as if she were making a conscious effort to lighten up, as she stuck out her tongue, then dug back into her Pops. “So bottom line, poor me.”
“I don’t remember Holden being in bad shape.”
“Well, he’s proud, you know. Not pitiful.”
“The breakup was hard on us both.”
“Hard on us all. You checked out, Emb. Even when I tried to find a way back to being friends.”
“Right. I know.”
“Hey, I think I want to be the groom zombie,” she said. “I’m taller with no boobs. You wear—used to wear—dresses all the time. You should be the one to go bridal.”
Used to. I used to wear dresses all the time. But I don’t anymore. Ever. I fobbed off the suggestion with a shrug. “Except it’s the one night I can put on Dad’s eighties tux jacket. So how about let’s be two groom zombies?”
“Oh, you’re so difficult sometimes.” But then Rachel begrudged a smile. “Okay, fine.” And then, as if daring herself, she wolfed down the rest of the pizza slice. “Not bad, actually.”
“Liar.” I smiled. She was trying, I knew. Trying to understand this girl I’d become, after the breakup, the accident, the year away from her. She wanted to preserve and maybe even reinvent our friendship, to be here for me—whatever parts of me she could find. And I knew I wanted her back, too. It wasn’t her fault I was partly hidden from her. In many ways, I was hidden from everyone. Myself included.
11
Get Sweaty, Look Sexy, Dance Freaky
“Eeeeee!” Perrin squeaked and hopped for warmth, battling the sudden temperature drop and sounding a lot like the mouse she’d dressed up as tonight. “Let us in already!”
I pressed my finger three seconds longer on the bell of Lucia’s chrome-and-glass Tribeca apartment. It was rude, but we were freezing.
“Fancy-schmance building,” murmured Sadie, huddling deeper inside her fake-fur cat coat. “Doesn’t Robert De Niro live here?”
“People think De Niro lives in every single building in Tribeca,” said Tom.
Sadie giggled. “Maybe he does.”
“Well, I don’t see him up there.” Rachel had stepped back to squint up in the window. “But I am seeing a vast parent conspiracy. Yeesh. What if it’s that kind of party?”
“Then we all drop the cyanide tablets together,” murmured Keiji-the-Hulk. “After we eat, of course. I bet there’s good ’derves.”
“Parents?” Sadie pursed her lips side to side to make her wire whiskers twitch. “What is she thinking?”
“Who knows? Of all the guys at Lafayette, Lucia picked Claude,” reminded Rachel. “So who knows what further secret insanity she’s capable of?”
Perrin had started a round of jumping jacks. “It’s the freezingest night of the year tonight. Why’d I only wear a hoodie?”
I’d underdressed, too, in a bubble-gum-pink overcoat that I couldn’t believe I’d ever picked out for myself, let alone wanted to wear in public—but it beat the electric-pink ski jacket that I’d left hanging in my closet. Except the ski jacket would have been warmer, and the left pocket in my overcoat had torn so that its bottom hem was weighted with at least a pound of loose change. My cold fingers dug for a handful of coins stuck in the hem, but then I couldn’t manage to pull everything back up through the lining.
At Addington, there was always a nurse or a therapist with a blanket or a warming pad, making sure I was retaining my body heat. Tonight was the first time in months that I was in genuine discomfort—and there was nobody looking to rescue me from it. Which was kind of awful and wonderful at the same time.
“JAY-sus.” Tom grimaced, flashing his Day-Glo vampire fangs. “Answer the door already, Lucia. I can practically taste my mug of cider.”
I’ve been here before. The thought knocked the air from my lungs just as the door swung open to reveal Claude in a gold silk shirt and black pants paired with a velvet blazer that gave off a hint of vintage porn star.
“Claude! Is that a costume—or are you merely acknowledging that you’re the creepiest person we know?” Perrin made a face as we all stumbled like a flock of badly herded sheep into the warmth of the foyer. I laughed along with the others, but my thoughts raced in a private blizzard.
Yes, I’d been inside this apartment! I’d been here to see something—what?
Claude gave Perrin the finger. He was overly excited and way too full of himself as he led us through the sumptuous foyer. “Let that dude take your coats. He’s their butler, a pretty cool guy,” Claude explained as a uniformed man began to whisk away our coats and stack them under his arm.
“There’s a lot of beautiful art here,” I said to Rachel as it struck me. A painting. Yes. That’s why I’d been here. To look at a painting.
“Yeah?” Rachel gave me a look. “How do you know? Did Lucia tell you that?”
“Um, I think so.” I’d been here, but not with Rachel. But it was familiar enough that I could have predicted the art deco furniture, the black-lacquered wood polish and gilded mirrors. Blood rushed to my head as I stepped in deeper.
Where was the painting? Someone had told me things about it, whispered them in my ear, when I’d seen it hanging here for the very first time.
We were all following Claude, who was still insisting on playing host. “It’s a duplex with the roof deck. It belongs to Lucia’s uncle,” he explained, “and he’s a big-deal art collector. They’re in a house swap. Right now he’s living in Bologna with his family, and that’s why Lucia’s family’s here.”
“Was Lucia’s family depressed to find out you came with the place, Claude? Kind of like their own pet weasel?” Perrin teased. She and Claude had dated briefly freshman year, and they had a way of dealing with each other that was rude and yet affectionate—the secret language of exes.
“Yeah, yeah, keep on me, Perrin. Like you wouldn’t do the exact same thing. Best views in the city. Check out the gold-leaf detail in the doorway. Eighteen-karat.”
I didn’t care about gold leaf. Which was the room that held the painting? This party was strange, too crowded and too formal, too many blank faces staring me down into social quicksand. But when I closed my eyes, I could feel myself back here, only in a less-stressed zone, wandering again through these vast, extravagant rooms as if lost in a lovely dream. With him—I’d been with him. The boy who kissed me on the bridge was the same one who’d whispered in my ear.
“We’re screwed.” Now it was Rachel whispering in my ear. “This scene is totally old people. Worse than church. Not how I saw my Halloween.”
“Give it a few more minutes.” I spied Lucia’s kid sister—she couldn’t have been more than eight—handling a tray like she was running the party. Cute, but obnoxious. It was definitely that kind of party. But I wanted to explore. The living room was enormous and yet secretive, with long, dark corridors and closed doors in all directions.
The painting wasn’t down those halls. It was in a darker room…the dining room. Yes, that felt right.
“Hey, where’s the dining room, Claude?”
“I’ll show you. By the way, Lucia’s parents are totally prego about drinking. Italians aren’t hung up on stupid legality,” said Claude over his shoulder as we followed him to the far end of the living room, then through an open archway and into the velvet cocoon of the dining room—yes, this was it—where the table was a king’s feast of runny cheeses, glowing pink sushi, and oysters on their iced, tiered platters. “Try the oysters; they’re like fifty bucks a pound. You have to use those tiny forks.”
Right over there.
Goose bumps sprouted over my arms.
Near the corner. You’d miss it unless you were looking for it. The tucked-away, wood-framed square was overshadowed by a pair of old-fashioned portraits hanging above the sideboard. I sidled closer, leaving Rachel to maneuver a cup of punch from the crystal bowl, while Tom clattered up his plate with oysters and Claude bragged about the caviar like he’d harvested it himself.
I moved to the painting as if pulled in by a magnet.
It was a portrait in oil and gouache—okay, and how’d I know this word gouache anyway, but I did, both spelling and pronunciation (gwash)—of a young woman. Her fingers were splayed over her face, her skin was dappled in light, her eyes were outlined with feathery, exaggerated lashes. She was lush and unreal, but not artificial. She was like a dream girl, possibly hallucinatory.
But it was the signature that really startled me. The insecty lettering on the bottom right: A. Travolo.
No. Impossible. But yes, he’d painted this. I yearned to reach out my finger and touch the surface. To trace the shape of the mark. Had it been Anthony’s whisper in my ear, then? Had it been his kiss on the bridge? Was it at his invitation that I’d been at this apartment before?
Of course it was. We’d known each other, somehow. But I was too nervous, too uncollected in my head to point out the signature to Rachel. Not that she was particularly preoccupied with my mental state.
“No DJ, no music,” she murmured. “This is worse than my cousin Marva’s wedding reception in Palm Springs. What are we gonna do next?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t take my eyes off Anthony’s signature. I wished I could be here alone to stare at this painting in silence. But that wouldn’t work tonight. Rachel’s disappointment was making her clingy.
“And it looks like we lost Sadie and Perrin to a couple of weird Euro-yuppies.” Rachel frowned out into the living room, where I saw that Perrin and Sadie were drinking champagne and madly flirting with two past-college-age guys. “It’ll be hard to motivate them. Meantime, Tom’s going to eat oysters till he pukes if we don’t spring him. Don’t you think we should take off?”
“Um…” I did want to go, but I was reluctant to leave the memory. My mind reached back into this new, glowing warmth. The secret brush of an arm against mine. The hush of that whisper in my ear again. Had it been Anthony, or someone else?
“I could call some people,” Rachel continued. “Would it be too awkward to call Holden?” She was fiddling with her phone, dying to use it.
That luminous bath of light and color. Who was that girl in the painting? I had to look away and I couldn’t.
“Okay, fine, Holden’s a bad idea,” she answered into my silence. “But look over there. I bet Keiji won’t leave, either. Check him out, mingling, being charming. Traitor. What is wrong with us that we didn’t make a Halloween plan B?” Rachel was staring at her phone as if hoping it would beam her a new plan. She glanced up. “And why do you keep looking at that picture?”
“Don’t know.” I stepped away, physically removing myself from it. Suddenly the banquet table made me realize how hungry I was. “I think I need to eat.”
“Go nuts; you’re in the right place. But what I need is a bathroom. Don’t you dare sneak off anywhere. Be right back.” As Rachel slipped away, I reached for a bread wheel and spooned up some tapas. Tahini, black olive, plum tomato—was that fennel? There was a time when I could reel off every ingredient on a first taste. I’d been a champ at that. Had I lost it? Didn’t seem so. I could even taste pink peppercorn. I smiled quietly to myself. Cool.
Then I stole another look at the painting, scouring it for answers. It wasn’t unfamiliar. What else did I know about it? About Anthony?
“Ember!”
I turned. The girl was boyishly elfin, with pale, silky hair slip-tucked behind her ears. She was staring at me from the way other side of the room, wearing a latex yellow superhero mask that hid half her face. Her eyes were big as drain stoppers beneath it. Immediately I knew that like this apartment, she was someone from the then. The blackout pocket. I’d known her once, absolutely. Even if I didn’t quite exactly know her now.
“Hey!” I gave a weak wave as I swallowed my last bite of bread. Could she see through my smile, my cheerful “recognition”? Not a single name buzzed my brain.
The girl stared at me another second and then decided to approach, sidestepping bodies down the length of the table to come around and meet me.
“Did you know me?” The way she asked it assumed that I did. “With the costume, I mean?”
“I mean, I’m like ninety percent…” My laugh was an apology, that she wouldn’t take it too personally.
“Oh. It’s me. Maisie.” Her eyes drank me in. “Wow. I heard you were home. I guess I heard right. You don’t look—you don’t look as bad as how I’d heard.”
“You might not have said that six months ago.” My mind was flying through the mental filing cabinets. Who was she?
Luckily, Maisie didn’t appear to sense my confusion. “The whole thing. Oh my God, Ember. So horrible. And then to think how long you’ve been away. I’m just so sorry. I can’t really.” She paused. “But, just to say, you look great. From what I can tell. Under the zombie-costume situation.”
How do I know you? I couldn’t make myself ask her a single question. I just couldn’t. It shamed me. I didn’t want to admit that the accident had stolen every memory of the elf girl, too, when it had already taken so much.
