I found Gryffin and Lyla waiting on the platform. Lyla didn’t acknowledge me, but Gryffin appeared relieved. “You’re here,” he said.
I didn’t reply, just kicked at a discarded vaping capsule until the train arrived and we hopped on. Lyla stood by the door. Gryffin pointed to a pair of empty seats, and I joined him. As soon as the train rattled back into the tunnel, he turned to me.
“Who the hell is that guy?”
“None of your business.”
“No, I mean it. Who is he? Quinn, right?”
“Just shut up, okay?”
“I’m not going to shut up.” His voice rose, and an old man in a white thobe glanced at us warily. “Tell me—”
“I already told you—if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m getting off at the next stop.”
“Okay, then just tell me what you’re doing with him,” he whispered. “He looks like a thug. He is a thug. He looks like trouble, Cass.”
“He is.”
“I thought you were cleaning yourself up.”
“Because I got a haircut? Are you some kind of idiot?”
“He gave you drugs, right? What was that, heroin?”
“You really are an idiot. Heroin puts you to sleep. Do I look like I’m asleep?”
“Tell me why you’re with someone like that. You’re smart, you could have a career again. This is like a death wish, Cass.”
I said nothing. He lowered his head until it was barely an inch from mine. “Tell me.”
My attempt at silence lost out to crank-fueled logorrhea. “Because he’s the only thing I ever cared about. Because when I met him we were seventeen and I couldn’t take my fucking eyes off him and after that I couldn’t keep my camera off him. We were together for a while, then he took up with someone else, and then he got popped for breaking into a pharmacy and went to prison and I never saw him again. I thought I’d go crazy and then I did go crazy. The floor dropped out of my whole fucking life and I haven’t stopped falling since. All this time I thought he was dead and then a few months ago he gets in touch and…”
I stopped, sucking in air like I’d just been saved from drowning. “And he’s gone, he keeps leaving and every time I think it’s the last time. You think heroin is a drug?” I jabbed Gryffin with my finger and he flinched. “Quinn’s a fucking drug and if he’s dead I’m dead, too.”
Gryffin stared at me, let his breath out in a low whoosh. “But he’s not dead, Cass. And Quinn’s not a drug. He’s just a person, a screwed-up person, and you’re letting him screw you up.”
I shook my head. “He’s keeping me alive. He’s—”
I lurched to my feet and stumbled over to Lyla by the door. “Who’s Erik? Do you know? Does she know him? Tindra?”
“I lost my signal before I could check.”
Lyla stared stonily at an ad for cheap flights to Spain. I continued without pausing for breath.
“And someone killed her dog—that’s fucked up, right? Why would she agree to meet someone who’d kill her dog? I don’t get it. Is she, like, a secret Nazi? Is it even safe for you and your brother to be at this rally?”
Lyla looked at me like I was something she’d peeled from her shoe. “What, you think a colored girl shouldn’t walk into a Nazi parade?”
“I mean, yeah.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you mean.”
“Yeah, okay, I get it, I totally get it. Stupid white American. But this guy Erik, do you have any idea who he might be?”
Silence.
“Okay, but not someone good, right?” I felt my face flush, my rant morphing into amphetamine rage. “Someone bad. Fucking Nazis. Maybe that’s who killed Harold, fucking Nazis—”
“You freak, you’re so spun you can’t even see straight,” she murmured, and stepped on my foot, hard. She stared pointedly at two white couples sitting across from us, the women wearing ankle boots and puffer coats, the men in flannel shirts and barn jackets. All sported buttons that featured a red oak leaf intersected by a lightning bolt. Svarlight.
One of the women saw me looking at her. She pushed a lock of brown hair behind her ear, glanced at Lyla, then turned to whisper something to the man beside her. He said something under his breath and they both laughed. Beside me I felt Lyla stiffen. I clenched my hands into fists. Neither of us spoke again.