“No, it’s okay. I guess I’m not worth the effort.”
I glance up to see another camera, under the eaves of the house. Her parents are probably still watching, enjoying the little soap opera that they set off.
“You’re worth sacrificing one stupid night for,” I say. “I’m leaving now so I can still see you later. I mean, you might not care about getting in trouble, but I care if your parents won’t let you see me.”
She opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it abruptly. For a moment she stands there, her breath heavy, her face pale with anger. Then she grabs me by the collar and pulls me down, pressing her lips to mine.
It’s rough and urgent, her tongue pushing forcefully into my mouth. I almost lose my footing but catch myself on the door frame. A part of me recoils deep inside, unnerved. She’s doing this to punish her parents; this is her flipping them off, one more time, for the cameras. The idea that they could be watching still makes my skin crawl. But something about her fierceness pulls me in, too, like it always does.
She finally pulls away. Without another word, she walks back across the patio, toward the house.
Out on the street, leaves catch in eddies of wind, skimming the roadway and then lifting off to fly away. It’s eerily quiet, and then I realize the crickets have gone silent. It’s going to rain.
I throw my skateboard down onto the pavement and kick off. It’s a relief to get away. Sasha’s engaged in a lifelong war with her mom, a former debutante from an old Dallas family, prim and tight-lipped. I don’t like feeling like I’m just a prop in the melodrama.
A sliver of lightning cuts across the clouds just overhead, and a moment later the thunder snarls. I hop up the curb and off it again. I’ll have to hurry if I want to get home before the downpour. I lean into the downward slope of the hill.
It comes out of nowhere: a flash of light, and then impact. I am flying. The wind streams around me, seeming for an impossible moment to buoy me up. It’s in that infinite moment, caught aloft, that I understand: a car. I’ve been hit by a car. The headlights surround me like a nimbus, like the light that surrounds the saints in a religious painting.
Then the second impact comes as my body hits the pavement.
The first heavy raindrops splatter around me. An icy chill unfurls through my body, spreading along my arms and legs and coiling the muscles into shivering knots. I don’t feel any pain—just the force ricocheting through my bones—but there’s something weird about how my arm is twisted. The clouds overhead swirl and glitter, pops of color exploding in their depths now. Or is that just my vision? I try to lift my head, to get a clear glimpse of my arm.
A black shape flutters into view over me, and I struggle to figure out what it is. A bat? A kite? No. An umbrella. The patter of rain on my face ceases as someone holds an umbrella over me. The someone is hard to make out; they keep splitting, dividing, merging back together, all in the strange and shimmery air. I squint up, trying to make out a face.
A cool hand rests on my cheek.
“Shhhhh.” The voice is a woman’s. A girl’s, maybe. “Don’t move.”
I stare up at her, trying to blink my head clear. The shifting world seems to be tinged with flares of sickening color now, shades of bile and blood at the corners of my vision. I hear a cell phone’s key pad and then the girl’s voice again. “I need to report an accident.”
Lightning streaks across the sky, and in its split-second illumination I see her. She’s young, a teenager. Maybe my age. Her face is thin and pale, sharp-angled. Her hair is long and dark. Then the lightning passes and all I can see is the glow of her phone against her cheek, the silhouette of the umbrella against the sky.
And then that starts to fade, too. Her voice gets farther and farther away. She’s saying something about my arm, but I can’t bring myself to worry too much about it. The sickly colors at the corners of my vision close in, throbbing for a few beats of my heart before I slide away into darkness.
TWO
Elyse
“Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone,” says Brynn Catambay, touching her cheek lightly. “And yet no farther than a wanton’s bird, that lets it hop a little from his hand like a poor prisoner in his twisted . . . twisted . . . shit.”
“Gyves,” I say, reading off the script. “Twisted gyves.”
“I don’t know why I can’t get that.” She knocks her forehead lightly with her fist. “What’s that even mean?”
“It’s like a leash,” I say. She looks at me, eyebrows raised. I shrug. “I looked it up the other day. When I was going over lines.”
“Only you would prep for an audition by doing research,” she says fondly. “Nerd.”
It’s Friday, early October, and the theater swarms with activity. Last week the drama department announced that East Multnomah High’s fall production will be Romeo and Juliet, and dozens of us have gathered for the auditions. Most of the drama club is here—Frankie Nguyen, Nessa Washington, and Laura Egan hang out in the wings, running lines, and Kendall Avery sits in the front row on one of the faded theater seats, eyes closed in meditation, which she always claims helps her “get in touch” with the character. There are people I don’t know, too. A goth girl with a septum ring sits on the edge of the stage leafing through the audition packet. And there’s a guy I recognize from the basketball team, sipping from a bottle of water and laughing in the middle of a gaggle of girls.
Brynn looks around the room and sighs. Everything she does shows just how comfortable she is with the attention of the world on her. Today she’s wearing tights printed all over with cats under a puff-sleeved dress. She looks like she’s either ready to attend a mad tea party or catch a train at Harajuku Station. If she weren’t also unbelievably pretty it wouldn’t work. Lucky for her she’s got pillowy lips and thick black waves and the innate ability to contour without the use of a mirror.
“Who are these people, anyway? They didn’t audition last year when we did Antigone or A Raisin in the Sun. Do something popular and every poser in Portland comes out of the woodwork.”
“Hey, watch it,” I joke. “I’m vying for one of those poser spots myself.”
“No way!” She frowns at me. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Elyse.”
Brynn’s always pushing me, always telling me I should go for better parts. She was the one who got me into theater in the first place, back in freshman year, back when I was so shy I couldn’t meet anyone’s eye. I don’t know how she looked at me and saw actress material, but she’s stood by that assessment ever since.
“Hey, everybody, welcome.” The room quiets down almost immediately. A young, dark-haired man has stepped out onto the stage. His face is smooth and chiseled, his frame lean. He’s wearing a button-down shirt and a pair of black-framed glasses, glinting in the spotlight.
My heart speeds up a little. I twist a lock of hair around my finger; the blond looks almost dark against my Portland-pale skin.