Jay broke into his funky ringtone dance, shoulders bouncing and hips moving from side to side. People around us stepped away, surprised, then began to laugh and cheer him on. I pressed my fingers against my lips to hide an embarrassed smile. Just as the ringtone was about to end, he gave a little bow, straightened up, and answered the call.
“’Sup?” he said. “Dude, we’re still in line; where you at?” Ah, it must have been Gregory. “Did you bring our CDs?... All right. Sweet. See you in there.”
He shoved the phone into his pocket.
I rubbed my bare arms. It had been a gorgeous spring day in Atlanta, but the air temperature dropped when the sun disappeared behind the tall buildings. We lived an hour north in the small town of Cartersville. It was strange to be in the city, especially at night. Streetlights came to life above us, and the crowd grew louder with the arrival of dusk.
“Don’t look now,” Jay leaned over to whisper, “but the dude at three o’clock is checking you out.”
I immediately looked and Jay grunted. How funny—the guy really was looking at me. Albeit with bloodshot eyes. He gave me a nod and I had to suppress a ridiculously girly giggle as I turned back around. I busied myself playing with a strand of my dirty-blond hair.
“You should talk to him,” Jay said.
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“He’s... high,” I whispered.
“You don’t know that.”
But I did. The colors of someone’s emotions blurred when their bodies were under the influence. That guy’s were fuzzy at best.
Seeing emotions as colors was an extension of my ability to sense others’ feelings, their auras. I’d had the gift since infancy. The color spectrum was complicated, as were emotions, with shades of a color meaning different things. To simplify, positive feelings were always colors, ranging from bright to pastel. Negative feelings were shades of black, with a few exceptions. Envy was green. Pride was purple. And lust was red. That was a popular one.
The colors mesmerized me, the way they shifted and changed, sometimes slow, and sometimes in rapid succession. I tried not to read people constantly or to stare; it seemed like an invasion of privacy. Nobody knew what I could do, not even Jay or my adoptive mother, Patti.
The line for the club moved slowly. I adjusted my skirt again and looked down to evaluate the decency of its length. It’s fine, Anna. At least my legs had a little muscle these days, instead of looking like a pair of toothpicks. Although I’d been pegged with nicknames like “Twiggy” and “Sticks” growing up, I didn’t obsess about my figure, or lack of one. Padded bras were a helpful invention, and I was satisfied with the two small indentations in my sides that passed for a waist. Running had become my new pastime five weeks ago, after I’d read how my body is the “temple of my soul.”
Healthy temple: check.
As we moved up a few more steps, Jay rubbed his palms together.
“You know,” he said, “I could probably get us drinks when we get inside.”
“No drinks,” I immediately answered, my heart quickening its pace.
“Fine, I know. ‘No drinks, no drugs.’ No nothin’.” He imitated me, fluttering his eyes, then nudged me with his elbow to show he was only kidding, as if he could be mean anyway. But he knew I had an abnormal aversion to substances. Even now, his comment about drugs and alcohol caused an uncomfortable, almost physical reaction within me; it felt like an urgent, greedy pushing and pulling. I took a deep breath to calm down.
We finally made our way to the front of the line, where a young bouncer snapped an underage wristband on me and gave me an appraising look, eyes scanning my waist-length hair before raising the velvet rope. I rushed under it with Jay on my heels.
“For real, Anna, don’t let me stand in the way of all these dudes tonight.” Jay laughed behind me, raising his voice as we entered the already packed room, music thumping. I knew I should have put my hair up before we came, but Jay’s sister, Jana, had insisted on my keeping it down. I pulled my hair over my shoulder and wound it into a rope with my finger, looking around at the tightly packed crowd and wincing slightly at the noise and blasts of emotion.
“They only think they like me because they don’t know me,” I said.
Jay shook his head. “I hate when you say things like that.”
“Like what? That I’m especially special?”
I was trying to make a joke, using the term us Southerners fondly called people who “weren’t right,” but anger burst gray from Jay’s chest, surprising me, then fizzled away.
“Don’t talk about yourself that way. You’re just... shy.”
I was weird and we both knew it. But I didn’t like to upset him, and it felt ridiculous having a serious conversation at the top of our lungs.
Jay pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen as it vibrated in his hand. He grinned and handed it to me. Patti.
“Hello?” I stuck a finger in my other ear so I could hear.
“I’m just checking to see if you made it safely, honey. Wow, it’s really loud there!”