UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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My hoop skirt keeps trying to escape from under the dashboard and smother me. Between the dress’s boned corset and my seatbelt, I can barely breathe.
This is what I get for not planning a costume. At the last minute, Mom called my older cousin Jess who used to be a Southern Belle docent on a historical plantation tour. I said no to the hat and parasol and added a shawl to protect my arms and shoulders. I’m hoping my makeup and hair steer it away from Scarlett O’Hara and toward my goal: Dead Prom Queen.
“Your first academy party,” Mom squeals as we near Mandy’s drive. “How exciting!”
So exciting, my hands won’t stop shaking. My heart wants to make a career change and work for a hummingbird.
“I told your father that going to this school would change the direction of your whole life.”
“The direction of my life” hinges on such tiny, fragile moments: What if Mom had said no when I asked to audition for the academy? What if she’d told Dad instead of keeping it secret? What if I bombed the audition? What if I never, at the age of six, saw my first play? Things can change in an instant—might be changing right now—and I won’t even notice until later when I look back and say, “That night. That’s the night when things changed.”
“I’m proud of you, Caddie,” Mom says. “I’m proud of you for asking yourself what you want in life and going after it. That’s something I’m still learning how to do.” I can hardly look her in the eyes. If she knew how lame I’m being, how close I am to losing everything . . .
She says, “I admire you, sweetie,” and her eyes are wet at the corners, and I have to look away.
Lit up from below, Mandy’s house looks like an unstormable castle, a real Elsinore. I expected a lot of people, but not this many—cars are stacked all the way up the drive and line the street for a block or more in both directions. I make Mom drop me at the street and I trudge up the drive, careful not to let my skirt drag.
My people should be here, people I know.
As soon as I go around back to the pool, there’s a high-pitched scream from Hank and Livia and a guttural, “Ha-ha!” from Oscar. An eerie glow from the aqua-gold pool lamps catches the undersides of their faces. Splashes of light and shadow shift so my friends seem insubstantial, half-there. But they rush at me, proving themselves real. Oscar bounds to me in two steps, and Livia hauls Hank after her by the arm.
Livia and Hank both wear togas, hers green, his gray. Livia’s clearly Medusa with plastic snakes woven into her braids, and Hank’s “stone.” Hank planned ahead for the cold with a gray fur cloak, but Livia wears her green peacoat over her toga, which kind of undermines the scary.
Oscar . . . well, true to his word, he came as a vampire, but I guess he really wanted a thrall. There’s a blowup doll hugging his neck.
“Ew,” I say.
“Girls dig vampires,” he says. Oscar reaches for me, ready to pull me in for a hug. My hoop skirt and his doll form a buffer between us, but I still have to sidestep him.
“I’d hate to make your girlfriend jealous,” I say.
“Oh, Bethany? It’s cool. I think she’s bi.”
He makes the doll reach toward me, but she comes undone and he’s suddenly like a kid with a broken toy, begging Hank to fix it.
Livia reaches for one of my gloved hands. “Did you plan your costume around these?” she asks.
“Not exactly.”
“I bet you’d wear them in the water if it were warm enough for swimming.”
She’s smiling, but I don’t like the questioning tilt of her head.
“Um, hang on. I should say hi to Mandy.”
She’s on the far side of the pool, a classic witch with some serious cleavage. I squeeze between the pool chairs and the kids who’ve drunk themselves warm enough to stick their feet in the water. Mandy steps away from a group of seniors to greet me. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”
“Sorry. I had to take care of some stuff for Mom first.”
“Well, you’re here now. Dead prom queen?”
I nod. Apparently the tiara and dripping blood did their work.
“Drunk driving accident?” she asks.
“I was thinking more serial killer on a rampage?”
“Sure.”
She leads me to a table stocked with hard alcohol and some mixers. A pony keg and a Styrofoam crate full of wine coolers sit underneath. “What do you want?”
“A little bit of everything?”
She laughs, but cutting the anxiety seems like a not-so-bad idea.
“Caddie, living dangerously.” She pours some ice and what looks like a lot of lime vodka into a red plastic cup, followed by Sprite. “What do you think?”
It’s tangy and acidic, but on top of all that it’s . . . “Sweet. Really sweet.”
She watches me gulp and says, “Make sure you drink a glass of water before you have another one, okay?”
I nod. It’s awkward between us, but I’m grateful to her for at least trying to make me feel welcome. We wander up a brick walk to the flat expanse of grass between the pool and the ridge. The old trampoline still sits there.
“Remember this guy?” Mandy scoots onto it, sloshing her drink as she bounces. “Oops.”
“Yes, I remember this guy. This guy broke my wrist.”
“Right! I had almost forgotten that. Remember that time when we moved it close to the edge of the wall so we could bounce off it into the pool?”
“It’s a miracle we didn’t die.”
As I push up onto the trampoline, my lowest hoop flips vertical, flashing anybody who might be looking. I squeal, and backpedal to the center of the net, trying not to spill my drink in the process. Mandy’s laughing at me, but she helps me wrangle the skirt, and we sit cross-legged facing each other.
“I’m glad you came tonight, Caddie,” Mandy says. “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you came too. I mean, I’m glad I came.”
Down by the pool, Livia and Hank are doing a bastardized swing dance. He throws her away from his body and yanks her back so her Medusa snakes whip around. Then he lifts her and swings her so close to the edge of the pool that she shrieks and starts kicking her feet.
I want to shake Hank and Livia so the feelings between them come out more even.
“Why does he flirt with her like that?” I ask.
“She loves it.”
“But it can’t ever become anything.”
Mandy sighs. “Maybe that’s why she likes it.”
I hadn’t thought about them like that before.
“Maybe some kind of closeness is better than none,” Mandy says, “if you’re afraid of the real thing? Or if the real thing starts making you crazy.”
“Where’s Drew?”
“Drew. Is. Sulking,” she says, and nods toward the ridge. “Peter’s up there with him, I think.”
Mandy must be able to hear my heart beat in my chest, feel the trampoline pulse, but if she notices, she’s too polite to say anything.
“Why the sulking?”
“We had another fight. I started it this time,” she says guiltily. “I wasn’t the kindest version of myself. But he pushes my buttons. We ought to break up.”
She says it so matter-of-factly.
“I thought you were terrified of losing him.”
She twists so she can look me in the eye. “So what?”
“What do you mean, so what?”
“So what if I’m afraid?”
She holds my eyes for longer than is comfortable and I fall back on the trampoline, watch the dark branches frame stars then swish to the side in a sudden breeze.
“Caddie, there are worse things than feeling afraid.” She lies down beside me, close enough that the wire brim of her witch hat brushes my temple, but I stay still.
“I don’t know if I think there are—worse things.”
“I’m going to stay in a bad relationship because I’m afraid of being alone?”
I laugh at myself. “Maybe?”
“It’s like with your parents—”
“I don’t want to talk about them.”
“Why?” Mandy asks, propping herself up on one elbow and making her voice goofy, a kid at a campfire. “Are you afraid?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Scaredy-cat.”
I put on a goofy voice too. “Am not!”
“Are so!”
She leaves her drink resting on the net and pokes my arm, too close to the edge of my shawl. I jerk, and the trampoline bobbles beneath us. Mandy raises her drink to save it from spilling, but that makes her slide closer to me. The elbow that had been propping her up slips and touches my skin.
“Ow!” I’m up and scrambling to the edge of the trampoline’s net before I can remind myself to play it cool.
“What?”
“I feel like . . . I think I pinched my leg in the spring.”
“Yeah?” She sits up and eyes me over the rim of her drink. “I touched you.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“I touched your arm, and you didn’t like it.”
“Mandy . . .” There’s no end to that sentence except to say please don’t make me talk about it. I scoot toward the edge of the trampoline. “I’m going to get another drink.”
“Wait. Caddie, please, let’s talk. I started feeling bad that I gave you a hard time. I realized you might have a good reason for not wanting to talk, like an awful reason, but you can tell me, no matter what it is. You should talk to someone.” She’s gone super serious, so concerned. “Did something happen, Caddie? You know, did somebody do something to you? Take advantage of you?”
“God, no!”
The idea makes me ill. Mandy’s decided I’m some kind of victim. It would be easier to understand, more sympathetic, than the reality. I feel almost guilty that I don’t have a story like that to tell. The only person hurting me is myself.
“You can talk to me about it,” Mandy says, “even if it’s something awful.”
“There’s nothing like that,” I say as I scramble down to solid ground.
“Okay, then what? Caddie, I’m supposed to be your friend. I don’t know why you won’t talk to me.”
“Look, I have to run inside for a second, and then I’m getting a drink, and then I’ll come back and we can talk more, okay?”
“What are you going inside for?” Her voice gets louder as I reach the brick stairs. “You’re going to wash it off, aren’t you?”
“Hush, please,” I say and hurry around the pool. People turn their heads to see who’s fighting with the hostess.
“Caddie!” she says, loud enough for everyone around the pool to hear. “Caddie, I’m trying to be a good friend.”
“Stop trying,” I say. It comes out before I can censor myself. “Just drop it!”
Everybody’s watching. I weave my way through our poolside audience and inside.
I take as long as I can washing my arm, as much to avoid Mandy as to scrub the nagging, anxious feeling from my skin.
When I head back outside, Mandy’s at the center of a tight circle saying something funny enough to have the whole group doubled over and cackling. She catches my eye, midsentence, and there’s the tiniest hitch as she dismisses me and smiles at her audience.
I walk to the edge of the pool and hold my arms out, let the aqua-gold lights dance in patterns on me, one set of colors for my skin, another for the lavender gloves, like with one of Mom’s filters. I could take the gloves off, glide my hands through the water, let it tunnel and fold through my fingers.
The feeling of falling—that rush that comes from standing at the edge of something—makes me step back. I’m too full of potential energy. The impulse is there to dive in, to be reckless and giddy, but it’s cold and I’m wearing heavy clothes. I’ve been drinking and you should never, ever swim after drinking.
I give myself a task to steady myself—get some water—and float over to the drinks table. Everything’s a bit off, like my motor skills are on holiday. I take an ice cube from the bucket and suck on it.
“There’s a scoop for the ice. You don’t have to use your hands,” Peter says, startling me. He puts a big scoop of ice in his cup and rattles it around.
He’s all in black with a half-mask under his glasses, a headscarf—and black gloves.
“The Dread Pirate Roberts?” I guess.
“Pity, now I’ll have to kill you.”
“Already dead.” I point to the blood at my temple.
“Oh, right, my bad.”
Why did Peter have to be a pirate? I used to have the biggest crush on that character from The Princess Bride. I crack down on the ice in my mouth and give my best all-things-are-good grin.
“Chewing ice? They say people do it when they’re sexually frustrated, like it helps with that or something.”
I spit the ice into my hand. “It helps with babies teething, too.” If promised a room full of rubies for coming up with something more inane to say, I couldn’t do it.
Peter pauses, stuck on whether I’m joking or not. I wasn’t, but he decides I was, and laughs like I’m a comic genius. “Hey, baby, you want some . . . ice?” he asks with a fake leer, and my laugh comes out high-pitched and bouncing.
Peter steps closer. “How are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m okay. Still working on my character journal.”
“Right now?”
“No, not right now. Right now, I’m chewing ice to get over my sexual frustration.”
Ack!
Witty?
Yes . . . Peter is laughing.
Suggestive?
Extra yes . . . Peter is coming closer.
I walk toward the brick steps that lead up to the yard.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Elsewhere. I feel like stepping away from the pool, is that allowed?”
He tilts his head like he’s considering. “By the power vested in me as your castmate, I decree that ye may step away from the pool.”
“You are such a dork.”
“Shh,” he says, ducking like he’s looking for spies. “They’ll hear you. I try to keep the dorkiness under wraps. Otherwise, it tends to overwhelm people with its awesome power.”
“The awesome power of dorkiness?”
He shrugs. “It’s some pretty big dorkiness.”
“Let’s hope no one alerts the authorities.”
“Right? They’d rush over to neutralize me for sure.”
“I feel safer just having you here.”
He bends his head toward me. Oh, no. I spin, face away toward the ridge and say the first thing that comes to mind. “I want to go see the bats.”
They swoop and dive up there, fleeting shadows against the orange-purple sky. There’s something otherworldly about how they skim through the dark.
“Bats,” Peter says, shaking the ice in his cup. “Bats are exciting. I can’t compete with bats.”
I turn back to him. “No, it’s not . . . You’re not competing with bats. You can look at bats too. I just—I haven’t been up to the ridge since I got back to being friends with Mandy.”
“Well, let’s go.”
I invited him to the ridge. I didn’t mean to do that. I wanted to do it, but it’s not a good thing to have done. I trudge up the hill with Peter at my side, trying to hide how the heels and alcohol make me wobble.
“You were up here with Drew,” I say. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. They fight every now and again. That’s how relationships go, you know?”
I don’t know. I know that my parents fought every now and again, and I know how that went.
When I stumble, Peter reaches out a hand and I take it. Now that he’s gloved, too, it’s doubly safe. His grip is firm and warm, and he’s just enough taller than me that I feel like he’s lifting me slightly as we walk to the top of the world.
The top of our little-city world, but still, it is beauty.
Bats tilt overhead like they’re as tipsy as me, drop down and swoop back to daredevil heights, a show of bravado for Peter and me.
Below us, way down in the valley, gold- and pink-tinged lights make our tiny downtown kingdom shine. A dance of red and green lights streams through the city’s veins.
“It’s like Christmas,” I say, “all the lights.”
“I don’t know about that,” Peter says. “It reminds me of one of those sci-fi space shows with a city floating in the darkness—all stars and vacuum except for this one flat, robotic chip. Maybe it’s robots down there.”
“Maybe the robots took over,” I say, “while we’ve been at this party. Maybe we’re the only people left free and alive.” I kneel at the edge of the world, and the hoop skirt collapses around me.
“There are worse places to be,” Peter says, “if the world had to end.” He sits down beside me and grins. “Worse people to be with.”
Peter lifts his mask out from under his glasses, which causes his headscarf to slip, freeing a few messy tufts of hair.
I would like to touch that hair.
“Thanks,” I say. “Thanks, I’m sorry I’m . . .”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I’m so weird.”
I don’t want to see the echo of that in his face, the “yes, you are weird,” so I stretch out on my belly and prop myself up on my elbows facing the city. My shawl shifts in the process, giving the damp grass an opening to tickle my skin.
“You’re not weird,” Peter says, stretching out and leaning on one side to face me. “Or maybe you are, but not in a bad way. You’re great.”
“Thanks.” My voice comes out in a whisper. But everything else is amplified—the prickle of grass, Peter’s breath sighing across a charged space to touch me.
“I like you, Caddie,” Peter says, low.
“I like you, too.”
It’s not acting. It’s un-actable, the truth of those words.
“Sometimes, I think . . . you’re afraid of me,” he says.
I twist to my side, facing him, and I nod. “I think so.”
“You don’t need to be,” he says. “I don’t want you to be anymore.”
Space shudders between us, full of potential—begging us to close this distance, to move.
“I don’t want to be afraid,” I whisper.
But fear’s rising, a wave.
Peter touches me. Touches my face. And the ridge starts to crumble, ready to drop me and him off the edge of the world.
“Peter . . .”
He touches my lips with his lips.
And I scream.