And I hold out my hand because she shouldn’t be here. She’s so much cleaner than this place. “You could come with me.”
She looks up at me like she might be considering it, eyes fixed on my face. Then she reaches out and carefully takes my hand.
“I can’t,” she says. Her touch is light and warm and she digs her fingers into my palm. “It doesn’t work like that.”
I understand what she means. I might be a long way from Pandemonium, but home is still with me, a pair of eyes that follows along, measuring my progress, waiting to see if I’ll fail. I nod and let Alexa go, even though it feels like the wrong thing to do.
I turn back in the direction of the train, studying the address on the map, but as I start to walk away, she catches me by the sleeve. “Hey, if you see Tru, tell him—just tell him to be careful.”
“I will,” I say.
I’m almost across the street when she calls after me again.
“Hey,” she yells, standing forlornly on the front steps of the Avalon Apartments. “Hey, I hope you find your brother.”
I raise a hand to show I’ve heard and that I thank her for her concern.
That I hope I find him too.
MARCH 7
3 DAYS 7 HOURS 53 MINUTES
Dio’s kitchen was small but bright, with green formica countertops and brand new linoleum. It was refreshingly far from Cicero and the Avalon apartment complex.
Truman was at the table. He was drinking Dio’s bad, cheap bourbon, and had been for awhile. His head felt numb and heavy. Most of the party was out in the living room.
Across from him, Johnny Atwell sang along with the stereo, drumming his hands on the tabletop. “On course to get wrecked, or what?”
Truman nodded, but he was thinking of the voice from the closet, thinking that he’d settle for feeling like he wasn’t losing his mind. Somewhere behind him, a girl was laughing, a high, taut sound. It made his skin hurt.
Johnny poured him another shot and Truman drank it, closing his eyes as the familiar heat bloomed in his throat. Everything seemed to be rushing toward him, the whole world converging on the point where he sat, leaning his elbows on Dio’s table. He blinked slowly and stopped holding his breath.
The shot was just starting to kick in when Dio burst into the kitchen, small and kinetic. He banged Johnny hard between his shoulder blades, smiling a little too widely. “Hey, it’s big John! What’s happening, my man?”
To Truman, he said in a savage whisper, “Dude, I thought I asked you to stop bringing your friends around.”
He meant Johnny, of course, but also Claire Weaver, who was Truman’s sometimes-girlfriend. Or maybe Victor Macklin, although Victor was scary-unpredictable and had recently promised to kick Truman’s ass over a misunderstanding involving a bottle of shoplifted vodka and twenty-five dollars. Dio meant all of them, any of the tragic losers who drank with Truman or skipped class with him or scored him alcohol.
And Truman got that—he did. He could see his life as Dio saw it, watch the train wreck from the outside. He knew what itit looked like, but Dio was wrong about Claire and Johnny. They weren’t his friends. They were just messed up enough to hang out with him, and Dio was the only real friend he’d ever had.
The two of them looked at each other, not speaking. Dio’s hair was long, past his shoulders, and his eyes were the narrow almond shape of a stone god’s in a history book. His expression was angry and helpless.
Truman missed him suddenly, even though they were in the same room. Loud, fast-moving Dio, two floors down. They’d spent years, maybe their entire lives, smoking on the sidewalk and now Dio was gone. Going somewhere. Everything was wrong. He felt his jaw tighten and made himself stop clenching his teeth.
“Forget it,” Dio said, shaking his head and reaching for Truman’s shoulder. “Just go easy, okay? Don’t do that thing.”
Truman pushed Dio’s hand away and stood up, fighting a surge of anger, and under that, shame. “Don’t do what thing?”
“That thing where you drink like a madman, then pass out. Not tonight, okay?”
Intellectually, Truman knew that Dio was only talking to him this way because he was worried. But something about Dio’s concern just made him feel worse.
Even in a house packed with college kids and alcohol and noise, he was completely alone. There was no place in Dio’s world for anyone from the old neighborhood. Especially not a kid who was still in high school and who was never going to aspire to anything as ambitious as college, let alone pre-law.
At the table, Johnny was offering him another shot. Truman didn’t really want it, but he reached for it anyway.
He smiled, holding Dio’s gaze. “Hey, don’t get worked up. I’m fine.” He felt the familiar mixture of loneliness and overwhelming relief as Dio’s face relaxed. “I’ll be fine.”
His own voice sounded warm and easy, and that made everything worse. Fine was the biggest lie of all.
He turned away from Dio, then froze, before letting his breath out in a strangled sigh. “Shit.”
Claire had come into the kitchen and was standing against the counter, wearing a bright pink shirt. Her fingers were laced together in a way that made it look like she was about to start begging.
He watched her from across the kitchen and she stared back. He knew that she expected him to kiss her, but his head was spinning now and the times they’d had together had not been good. Suddenly, Truman wanted to tell her he was sorry, but it wouldn’t make a difference. It was the one thing that she would never believe.
She moved away from the counter and started toward him, her footsteps sharp on the linoleum. In his altered vision, she moved like stop-motion, flashing closer. Then she was right in front of him, her hands plucking at his sweater, slipping under. When her fingers skittered over his stomach, he flinched.
It was painful, being so close to someone. He could see her too clearly, eyes caked with makeup, lips slightly parted. She was thin and hungry-looking, with Clorox-colored hair and too much perfume. She pushed herself up on tiptoe, and her kiss tasted sugary and like wax. When he pulled away, she didn’t hold on.
Dio was watching from the doorway. He wore a tense, pitying expression that Truman couldn’t stand. It was a look that said, Truman Flynn, you are so fucking tragic.
Truman grabbed the bottle and slopped liquor into his glass. Everything had stopped moving except him. Claire still stood exactly where he’d left her, arms at her sides. Her mouth was working and he hoped she wasn’t going to cry. He could picture it already, smeared eye makeup and snot and pitiful hitching sobs. But she didn’t cry. She just looked at him, her lower lip glossy and trembling. He drank off the shot and poured another.
“Tru,” Dio said in a low, anxious voice, “Go easy. You’re crazy, man.”
And Truman laughed because it was the truth and because Dio had said it out loud. For a second, it made him feel lonely, and then he pounded the shot and didn’t feel anything at all. The refrigerator kicked on, humming to the ebb and flow of his pulse.
The night was long, stretching out, washing over Truman like dirty water. He smoked one cigarette after another and the filter in his mouth kept his teeth from grinding.
When Johnny slid him another shot, he tipped it back, coughed, but couldn’t actually feel the drink in his throat. Johnny was laughing, muttering something out of the corner of his mouth. Then he leaned forward expectantly. Truman couldn’t decipher the question, so he shrugged. He realized his hands were shaking and dropped his cigarette into the bottom of his shot glass.
Johnny studied him, leaning closer. “Hey Tru, you look like you’re about to puke.”
Truman took a deep breath and tried to answer, to say he’d be all right, but his voice got caught in his throat. He closed his mouth.
“Christ,” said Johnny, shaking his head. “Go in the fucking bathroom.”
And that sounded fine, that sounded good. He couldn’t stop shaking.
Then Claire was right
next to him, tugging at his elbow. “Tru,” she said. “Tru, are you okay? You want me to come with you?” Her voice was too shrill to be kind and she was plucking at his sleeve in a frantic, needy way. It revolted him.
He pushed himself away from the counter, out of Claire’s grasp. Away from the kitchen, the linoleum, the bright light.
He made it through one doorway and then another. In the living room, the music was a jarring mess of bass and screaming. Bodies thumped, jostling each other, knocking into him. He had to shove his way through, but no one seemed to care. He stumbled into the back hall and pressed his face against the wall, breathing hard. Johnny was right. The bathroom. He felt sick now and too hot. Under his sweater, his T-shirt was sticking to his back.
The hallway was dark and full of doors. He covered his face with one hand and tried to think. He was dizzy and the stereo was much too loud. The carpet was soaked with beer.
There in the hall, standing across from him, was a chubby girl with butterscotch hair and a bored expression. She was leaning against the wall by the bathroom door, which was closed.
“Are you waiting?” he asked thickly, trying to keep the words from running together. He reached for the wall and fell against it harder than he’d meant to.
The girl looked up at him. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, are you all right?”
He shook his head and rubbed one hand clumsily over his eyes.
“Look, do you want to go in front?”
He nodded and tried to thank her. He could feel himself choking and covered his mouth.
When the door swung open, he didn’t wait, but slipped quickly past the girl coming out. Fumbling behind him for the knob, he locked the door and leaned against it. He was sweating through his shirt, hot and shivering.
In the yellow light he could see his reflection above the sink, gauntly shocked. A used-up-looking boy with a shining face and desperate, starry eyes. In the mirror, he didn’t look like himself anymore. He didn’t look like anyone. The fluorescent tube in the ceiling dimmed. He felt his head hit the floor, but it didn’t hurt at all.
THE PARTY
CHAPTER NINE
The address Alexa has given me is on a street to the far, far north and it takes me a while to decipher the timetable for the train. I have to take the Blue Line and then switch to the Red Line, which travels along a high track overlooking all of Chicago. Out the window, the city looms like five or ten Pandemoniums, but without the glossy splendor of home. Everything is caked in grime.
My stop is in a clean, quiet neighborhood with trees, much nicer than Truman’s. The air coming off the lake is murky and cold. It smells like minerals.
On the front steps of Dio Wan’s house, I pause and touch my mouth, testing the shape of my smile. It feels wrong under my fingers—too wide, too hard. Clearly, I’ll need more practice.
The house itself is narrow, with a short flight of concrete steps leading up to the door. No one answers when I knock. Inside, voices rise and overlap and when I knock again and no one comes, I turn the knob and let myself in.
The entryway is full of smoke and people. To get through the crowd, I have to touch them. I can’t help it. Their shoulders and chests and backs press against me, but no one pulls away when I get close. No one seems remotely disturbed by my presence. They could knock me down and still barely notice I’m here.
“Hey,” yells a girl over the steady thrumming of the music. She is wearing outrageously green pants and a wide plastic headband. “Hey, I like your boots! Are those vintage? Those are vintage, right? Where’d you get them?”
“Altamont,” I say, trying to keep things simple.
A girl with a pink blouse and plastic fingernails pushes through the crowd and shoulders her way in next to us. “Morgan,” she yells. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Her hair looks white in the light shining from the end of the hall.
“Hello,” I say, turning to face her. “Do you know a boy named Truman Flynn?”
She just looks at me without saying anything. Her eyes are pale and frosty.
“What?” shouts the girl with the plastic headband.
I ask again, yelling the question this time, and it feels strange to be so loud.
She cups her hand to her mouth, leaning to my ear. “You mean Tru? He’s kind of tall?”
“Yes, I think so. Do you know him?”
“Everyone knows Tru,” the girl with the white hair says in a tight, cold voice.
“Do you know where I could find him then?” I try my smile, but it feels wrong and it must look wrong because now they both pull back like they want to flatten against the wall.
“Oh wow,” says the white-haired girl. “Where’d you get your teeth capped? Those must have been really expensive.”
I look back at her, trying to decipher the question. “What does capped mean?”
“Ew, are you telling me they’re permanent? I’m sorry, but that’s completely disgusting.” She doesn’t sound sorry though. She sounds scandalized and a little bit pleased. She sounds satisfied. “And what do you even want Truman for, anyway? I mean, maybe no one told you, but you’re not really his type.”
I put my hand to my mouth to make sure my teeth aren’t showing. “Why? Type of what?”
She twitches her shoulders, looking past me. “He’s just not into the whole Goth scene.”
“Visigoths?”
“How are you so weird?”
The girl with the headband steps between us. “Claire, just quit, okay?” Then she turns and addresses me in a tone that suggests she’s taking pity on me. “Hey, I saw him like twenty minutes ago, but he was looking pretty rough. Not good, you know.”
I want to tell her that his appearance might not be worth remarking on. That he didn’t look good the last time I saw him either. “Please, I need to talk to him.”
“Good luck. I’d check the bathroom. He’s really drunk.”
I nod and make my way farther into the crowd. When I glance back at the white-haired girl, she smiles tightly. Her smile doesn’t look any more real than mine. I wonder if she has to practice too.
Truman Flynn is a piece of paper in my coat pocket. He is a memory of water and of loss, his hand sliding free from mine, no way to hold on.
It’s strange to be in the house with him now. To know that he’s here, somewhere in this sprawl of dark rooms and noise. I wish he were a star. Then he might shine through the spaces in the walls, gleaming between boards and under doors. If he were a star, I could follow the light. But there’s nothing. Time, which did not exist before, is rushing past me like a long gust of wind. And Obie is somewhere in the world. Missing.
The house seems to go on forever. Over in one corner of a large, noisy room, a boy with a shaved head and buckles all over his jacket is pressing the dark shape of a girl against the wall, running his mouth all over her throat.
“Excuse me.” I tap him on the shoulder. “Hello, I was wondering if you could help me.”
He turns and there is a moment—I see it clearly—when annoyance turns to simple confusion.
“Can you tell me where the bathroom is?”
He jerks his head toward a doorway on the far side of the room, but says nothing. Then he turns away from me and fills his mouth full of the girl.
This is the world, I tell myself as he begins to feel her breast right there by the television table. This is the real world.
I step into a dim hallway. There are beer cans on the floor, scattered across the carpet, and a closed door and standing beside it, a girl. She looks pleasant and solid, like a nice toy. Her hair is braided into two short plaits, bright yellow, and she’s standing with her arms folded, almost expectant.
I point to the closed door. “Is this the bathroom?”
When she nods, I pound on the wood with the flat of my hand, but there’s no answer. “Do you know who’s in there?”
The girl shakes her head and shrugs. “Some guy. I was waiting, but he looked kind of sick, so I let him go ahead
. He’s been in there awhile, five-ten minutes maybe.”
I want to ask why it doesn’t bother her that no one answers. Her mouth is wide and honest. Maybe this isn’t the kind of thing that worries people.
I knock again, harder. “Do you think he’s all right?”
“He’s fine. Just sick, is all. I’m about ready to go down the street to the Marathon if he doesn’t come out, though.”
“Marathon?” I think of Greeks, barefoot or in leather sandals, racing away along an arid coast, a blue sea glittering in the distance.
As though she can see into my dream, the girl smiles. “You know, the Marathon. The gas station. You wanna come with?”
“Thank you, but I’ll wait.”
She shrugs, and I watch her step through the doorway into the living room, disappearing into the crowd.
As soon as she’s gone I try the door, only to find that it’s locked. The knob moves loosely for a second, then stops and won’t go farther.
I examine it, but find no real keyhole, only a small round opening. In the movies, hairpins open doors when you don’t have a key, so I rummage in my bag for a pin. I stick it into the doorknob and turn it back and forth, but nothing happens and I don’t quite know how to proceed.
The knob is metal, though. Metal can melt, and this afternoon, I burned a man standing under a bridge simply because it was what my hands knew how to do.
I close my eyes until everything gets red—red as the light that shimmers and drips above the Pit. There’s sound in my head like the roar of the furnace, air rasping in and out. There is a pin in my hand. Anything can get very hot. A thin coil of smoke rises out of the knob as the tumblers begin to soften. When I turn the handle again, the door swings open slowly.
THE BOY IN THE BATHROOM
CHAPTER TEN
He’s thinner than I remember, shoulder blades showing through his worn-out sweater like wings. He’s lying sideways on the bathroom floor.