I realise that my lighter is missing while I’m sitting with Thom and Rick Markov and all of Markov’s many girlfriends. I play with the lighter a lot. It’s a comfort thing, the way other people bite their nails or crack their knuckles. Sometimes I flick the top open and closed; other times I let it sit in my palm, anchoring me.
I pat the pockets of my jeans one more time. Empty, except for my wallet and keys. My shirt pocket houses my phone, nothing else. Thom drones on beside me, talking about our (his) influences and our non-existent musical philosophy. Rick Markov appears to be barely awake, let alone listening. The whole time Thom talks, Markov thirteen strokes the leg of the woman next to him.
I can’t sit here anymore. I stand up, avoiding Thom’s eyes, and shuffle out of the booth. Someone slaps me on the arse as I go and a woman cackles.
I had the lighter when I was at the black market. After I used it I put it back in my pocket, as usual. And then we met the Kidds. It’s not difficult to work out what happened. It was probably the boy and girl who were behind me. They could have been playing stoned so that we didn’t take them seriously. It’s been done before. You should never let the Kidds out of your sight while they’re rolling. I was too busy worrying about Wildgirl’s safety to remember the basic rules.
I seek out the darkest part of the room, close to where the wire fence stops people falling into the disused subway tunnel. I slip around the corner and through a gap where the fence doesn’t quite meet the wall. A shadowy couple are all over each other at the end of the narrow platform. I ignore them and sit on a concrete block overlooking the abyss.
Ortolan gave the lighter to Gram on his eighteenth birthday and it has their initials engraved on the base in tiny letters that no one ever notices. That lighter is the only piece of Gram I have left. Soon after he died Mum cleared all of his stuff out of the garage. She donated some to charity and threw the rest out. I suppose she also went over to Gram’s flat and did the same thing. She kept just a handful of photos, and the lighter, which she gave to me when my dad wasn’t around. It was a strange thing for her to do because she’s so anti-smoking.
There isn’t a single light in the tunnel. Occasionally a gust of cold air passes through. I’m pretty sure the couple has started removing bits of clothing but I can’t find it in me to be embarrassed. I should be burning mad, I should be doing something, swearing revenge or murder on the Kidds who stole my lighter, but I’m dead inside. I feel so heavy it wouldn’t surprise me if I never moved from this place, if I turned into concrete myself.
I don’t know how long I’m sitting there before I wonder if Wildgirl is all right on her own. I force myself to stand up and go back into the main room. Wildgirl isn’t near the entrance where I last saw her with Paul. I walk around the edges of the club, a sour taste in my mouth. I shouldn’t have let Thom drag me away. She’s probably furious.
I finally spot her on the dancefloor, in the centre of the sunken pit of bodies. She dances with every part of herself, her eyes closed, her hair leaping as she twists and jumps and spins. She leaves everyone else in the shade.
Paul jumps next to her in his usual twitchy way, occasionally bashing out a bit of air drum, his hair plastered across his face. They’re both grinning and windmilling their arms. It looks like I shouldn’t have worried.
I hang back and watch, hidden in a forest of people. You can tell Wildgirl isn’t dancing for the people around her. The music moves through her body like electricity. My sickness eases a bit as I watch her. She’s one good thing in my night.
After a minute I slide up behind her, putting my face close to her warm neck. She smells of vanilla and beer. For a second I think I’m going to lick her, from the curve of her neck up to her ear.
‘Sorry,’ I say in her ear instead. Sorry for letting Thom drag me away, and yes, sorry for thinking about licking her face.
Wildgirl whirls around, but she doesn’t stop dancing and she doesn’t back away. Instead she holds my shoulders and shakes it in front of me. She looks happy to see me.
‘You gotta stop apologising!’ she yells. Her forehead is damp with sweat.
I’m not much for dancing, at least not until I’ve had a drink or ten. But thinking about dancing is better than thinking about the lighter. I move closer to Wildgirl, trying to match my movement to hers, trying to feel the beat, praying my feet will somehow do the right thing. Sometimes when I’m playing guitar everything falls away and I play without thinking about what my fingers are doing. I know that’s the trick to dancing as well, but I can’t ever get to that place.
Paul notes me on the dancefloor with surprise and then turns his back on us, always the tactful one.
‘I’m sorry I left you alone.’
‘No problem. Paul is cool. We had a nice chat.’
That’s the first time I’ve heard the words ‘Paul’ and ‘cool’ used in the same sentence.
‘What did you two talk about?’
‘Oh, nothing much. He was just carrying on about how The Long Blinks are the best band ever and how you’re going to take over the world.’
Taking over the world sounds more like Thom’s spin, but it’s true that Paul and Thom both see more of a future in the band than I do. If I had to choose which of my friends to leave Wildgirl alone with then Paul’s the obvious choice. Thom can be a nightmare, the way he has to impress everyone who crosses his path. He gets worse the more he’s had to drink. There’s no doubt he was trying to look down Wildgirl’s top earlier.
‘You wanna know the truth?’ I put my hand on the back of her neck, resting my fingers against the bumps of her spine. ‘We suck. I can’t sing in tune, Paul can’t keep time, and Thom can barely play three notes. We’re not taking over anything. It’s something we do to make time pass.’
‘You’re smiling about it, though.’ Wildgirl looks at me from under her snake-green lids. You’d think that confessing how hopeless I am to the girl I’m desperate to impress would make me want to go home and bang my head against the wall, but instead I feel relief. A hot-and-cold rush goes through me.
I howl.
I howl at the roof like a hotted-up bomb doing donuts, full of screeches. I howl like an air-raid siren, my arms stretched out wide. Howls are like songs. They can’t be summoned; they just happen. They come from a place that I barely understand. And then something else climbs to the surface, something black and jagged, something from the deep. Imagine all your worst feelings surfacing. Imagine coughing up razor blades. Imagine not being able to stop the pain from coming out, and not knowing when it’s going to end.
Wildgirl laughs and whoops at the ceiling. She doesn’t hear the razor blades. All around us people are laughing and clapping and punching the air. My throat burns. It always feels like this: pain and relief at the same time.
I pull Wildgirl into me to cover the shakiness I suddenly feel, and the fact that I might cry.
‘This is why you don’t leave, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘This! Little Death, the people here, it’s cool. I can see why you don’t leave Shyness, go and live somewhere else.’
‘I crossed into Panwood during the day last summer.’ I don’t want her to look at me so I keep my mouth by her ear. ‘And I thought I was going to melt, the light was so bright.’
The real reasons why I don’t leave Shyness, why I’m stuck here, why I can’t leave, are so many I wouldn’t know where to start. Do I even know myself? I rest my cheek against Wildgirl’s hair, and then, over her shoulder, I see something that makes me bite down so hard I taste blood on my lip.
The Elf stands on the other side of the dancefloor, his eyes cutting a direct path through the crowd. I stare back for several seconds before I accept that he’s really here. What more does he want from me? I look up at the ceiling and down by our feet. Someone once told me that Little Death has an electric roof to stop the tarsier from coming down here, but it doesn’t hurt to check. There aren’t any other Kidds on the dancefloor, but I pull Wild-girl away regardless. Every instinct tells me to put some space between the Elf and me. Don’t think. Just move.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Kidds,’ I tell her. Her eyebrows shoot up. She tries to see over the crowd.
‘Where? Are they the same ones?’
I keep her moving. ‘It’s the Elf.’
‘How did he get in here? Isn’t he too young?’
‘There’s probably a back way. Come on, let’s go.’
Thom is talking to a girl on the fringe of the pit but I drop my head and keep moving. Rick Markov is still sitting at the booth, surrounded by his posse and a table full of empties. On this side of the room there’s a short tunnel with rooms leading off both sides. I glance back to see if the Elf is following, but his blond hair is still visible on the dancefloor. Has he been tailing us all this time, or did someone tip him off?
We turn left at the end of the tunnel. At the next door I brush aside the curtain to let Wildgirl through. A wisp of smoke escapes.
‘Welcome to Dreamland. No one will bother us here.’ The smoke machine is turned on high and lasers swoop through the mist. Even with my enhanced eyesight it’s hard to see straight. A place of illusions, just the way Dreamers like it, and a good place to hide. There’s a band in here somewhere, playing low, tripped-out jams with swirling guitar. Dreamer-rock isn’t loud enough or angry enough for me, but I don’t mind listening to it sometimes. I lead Wildgirl across the room.
There’s a free couch in the mist, tucked next to a pillar. We sit and Wildgirl watches everyone with an entranced look on her face. I’ve noticed she has this ability to soak up everything around her like nothing else exists.
A guy sitting on the floor near us can’t stop his chin sinking to his chest, and his girlfriend has already gone foetal next to him. Beyond them, a group dance, straight-armed and straight-legged, like a film being played at the wrong speed. Behind the dancers there’s the silver glint of a drum kit, and a bar in the far corner. The barman leans against the wall, arms crossed, bored out of his brain. Dreamers don’t drink much.
‘Land of Nod,’ Wildgirl whispers.
‘Little Death is different. You get everyone here— dreamers, ghostniks, necroheads—everyone. It’s not segregated like other places.’
Wildgirl relaxes into the couch. I slump as well, looking back at her. I force my fists to unclench. Our faces are only centimetres apart. Everything stops around us, and it’s us two, alone in the room, cocooned by the smoke.
‘Even your sort?’
My sort.
‘Not really. I’ve seen a few people in Shyness who look like me, but they’re all less…changed than I am.’
Wildgirl traps my hand between hers. She pushes her fingers through the thick hair on the back of my hand.
‘When I first saw you,’ she says, ‘I knew you wouldn’t be like anyone I’ve ever met.’
‘I didn’t choose this. Not like the Dreamers. They’ve chosen who they are.’
And they could return to who they used to be if they wanted to. I don’t think there’s any way I can go back from here.
‘I look the way I do. And I act differently, without knowing why. I howl and my senses are sharper than ever. I’m never cold and I can open beer bottles with my teeth.’ That last one really impresses Thom. He often wheels me out at parties to show people.
‘When did it happen?’
‘Slowly. Like the Darkness.’
I don’t feel different on the inside. Or if I do it’s hard to tell—everything is so complicated around here that I have no idea who I would be in a normal place with normal people.
‘You haven’t told me everything yet. Not nearly.’
Wildgirl looks amazing in this light, bronzed and otherworldly.
‘It would take all night,’ I say.
‘We have all night.’
I can’t argue with that. For some reason I find it easier to talk to Wildgirl than other people. I look down at our hands. I’m finally getting the idea that she’s interested in me more than Shyness. She’s more than I deserve.
‘You do look different. You are different.’ Wildgirl speaks as if she’s thinking her ideas through as she’s going.
‘I think we like the attention our looks get us. But we also hate it.’
Maybe. Looking different sets me apart and that’s both good and bad. Good for getting free drinks. Bad for feeling like anyone understands what I’m going through.
‘I want people to look at me,’ she continues. ‘I mean, I dress in a way that makes them look at me, but then when they actually do, I hate them for it. Is that crazy?’
A little bit. ‘Does that mean you hate me?’
‘Huh?’
‘Because I’ve been looking at you for hours.’
She laughs then, and gives me a playful slap on the arm. The imprint of her fingers burns before fading.
‘I think it’s fine to use your looks, but you have to have other things you can rely on as well. My mum still doesn’t think anyone would be interested in her for any other reason. And—’
The irony is, I’m looking at Wildgirl and all I want to do is touch her soft cheeks and raven hair.
‘—and so that’s why I’ve decided to get my forklift licence.’
The look on my face must be priceless because Wildgirl laughs and slaps her thighs. I find myself laughing as well. I wonder if they put something in the smoke here because I’m half gone. Wildgirl taps my arm.
‘Did you tell Thom and Paul?’
‘Tell them what?’
‘That I’m joining the band with my awesome rock-ukulele licks?’
I can’t believe how funny she is. I’ve hit the jackpot here. If I was a different person, if my life was less complicated, if I had more to offer her than just sadness, if I didn’t feel so tired from the weight of the entire world pressing down on me, then this would be the moment I would try to kiss her.