Ever since I was little, as soon as it’d get warm in the spring, I’d start walking everywhere barefoot outside, even on the gravel of the driveway. I took special pride in how the bottoms of my feet would harden so much that by the end of the summer, I’d have a layer of thick leather skin impermeable to sharp rocks and even the barnacles of the beach. It’s the only way I have ever been tough.
I walk down the road barefoot now, the only pair of low heels I own sticking out of my purse. Each step makes me cringe. My feet aren’t nearly as tough as they used to be.
I’m wearing a vintage dress Daddy found at a thrift store and altered to fit me perfectly. It’s been hanging in my closet for months because I’ve never had any occasion to wear it. Papa’s supposed to be the fashion designer in the family, but I don’t think he’s touched a sewing machine in years. “Doesn’t it show a little too much leg?” he quietly complained when I modeled it for them tonight, along with the makeup that I had to watch online videos to learn how to put on.
“You look beautiful,” Daddy said, and kissed me on the cheek. Papa gave me a way-too-long hug. Gotami meowed.
I could hear Lily’s voice in my head: “You look like a girl who is overcompensating for a lack of confidence in her intelligence.”
I say, “Shut up, Lily.”
I think I may actually look like someone who belongs at a party at Ivy Avila’s house. Lily may not think that’s anything to be proud of, but maybe I’m done caring what Lily thinks.
I can hear the music before I even get to the road. When I reach the pavement of Olympic Road at the bottom of the hill, the horizontal beams of the setting sun blind me, and I pull my sunglasses out of my purse. I dust off my feet and stuff them in my shoes, pausing for a moment to look out at the water. It is calm and the sky glows with bright golden light. In a rare moment of stillness, there are no boats on the water, neither yachts and speedboats nor floating shacks. A convertible full of beautiful strangers drives by slowly, squinting their eyes to see if I’m someone worth noticing, but I am invisible in my sunglasses, and they park way down the road at the end of an already long line of cars.
The gate to Ivy’s waterfront property is open, with a stern-looking man in a suit standing next to it. I say, “Hello,” and he nods without looking at me.
As I walk up the short, flower-lined driveway, the sound of the party gets louder, and I feel something pulling at me, and I am simultaneously chasing it, some indescribable thing I want, and I get the feeling that I am crossing over into a new reality, a new world, one that will change me forever. Even though I’ve never been here before, it feels somehow familiar. Like I was meant to be a part of it.
It’s just a party, I tell myself. I’ve been to plenty of parties before. But then the house opens up before me, a huge glass structure, full of people and light and music and flowers, everything inside illuminated, everything alive and burning with an intensity I have never felt in my safe, wholesome life.
Everything feels special.
Tami called me special.
I want to be special.
I could watch the whole thing from out here if I wanted to. That would be the safe thing to do.
Or I could walk forward. I could take one step after another down the path that leads around the side of the house to the huge outdoor space, more like a resort than an actual home, with various levels of patios and decks and covered seating areas, a pool and a hot tub, two full bars with bartenders, tables with hors d’oeuvres, people dressed in black walking around with trays of drinks and food. A private dock has a few speedboats tied up to it, and a group is currently stepping off a water taxi, with another boat idling nearby, waiting for its turn.
It is still early, but the place is already packed with young, beautiful people, many of whom I recognize as varying levels of famous, and the others are people who look like they should be famous; all mixed in with a few boarding school kids and locals from the island, some of whom are huddled in the corner by a fountain, looking terrified and young and terribly out of place.
Most of the people here are much older than me. Much older than Ivy. They do not belong on this island. But this place, this property, has somehow turned itself into something with its own rules, its own agenda.
I don’t see Ivy anywhere.
Maybe I stay on the edges, hiding behind my sunglasses, watching. Maybe I make myself invisible, become a voyeur, and live through everyone else.
Or maybe Tami finds me. She grabs my arm a little too hard. She says, “There you are,” claiming me. She says, “Where have you been hiding?” I’m the one who told her about the party. I wanted to show her I’m friends with Ivy Avila and she’s not.
I told her because I wanted her to bring Ash. But he’s not here. Again. I’m starting to think he’s avoiding me.
If Ash were here, he’d be holding court with Tami on some centrally located couch where everyone would be sure to see them. Everyone is dressed in their socialite best, but he’d be in some obscure band T-shirt and jeans, just to show how good he looks without even trying. He’d be leaning back in that entitled, cocky way boys do, legs spread because they never question how much space they have a right to take up. But there’s almost an elegance when Ash does it, like a lion or tiger or some other purring beast, beautiful, on the verge of dangerous.
His eyes crinkle in a private smile only I can see, like this is all a joke and we’re the only two people in on it, and the lights flicker, and the room darkens, and there are spotlights on just the two of us. With this smirk, he has invited me to an elite, secret club, and we are its only two members. We will sit on a cloud somewhere together, watching everyone below us, and we will know exactly what’s going on, and we will be the only people who do.
“So Jordan, huh?” Tami says, breaking my trance. “How was it? Are you going to see him again?”
“No,” I say, and I’m surprised by the disgust in my voice.
“You surprise me, girl. There may be some life left in you yet. Let’s get a drink.”
“What happened with Vaughn?” I say. “Is he okay?”
Tami laughs. “Oh, Vaughn is fine. Just a little lovers’ quarrel. We kissed and made up.”
Did she tell him she was sorry? Has Tami Butler ever told anyone she’s sorry?
I imagine Ash holding the thin straw from his drink between his teeth, biting down, his white teeth gleaming. His tongue is hiding somewhere behind that smile, and I feel the teasing pressure of his teeth like a phantom stalking down deep into my body, the promise of his tongue warm and soft.
And then Ash would turn his attention back to the group huddled around him, back to telling some story about that band he hung out with backstage in Vegas, about some epic five-day party he went to in Rio, about his adventures with shamans in Peru. I’d be released, and he’d go back into disguise, and so would I, leaving a little piece of me with him.
I wonder what Vaughn and Raine are doing now. I try to imagine them at this party, but I can’t.
Maybe I sneak away when Tami’s not looking. Maybe I hide behind my sunglasses and eavesdrop on a pack of Seattle socialites sitting with their feet in the pool, as they talk about Ivy’s previous party, dropping names of the people they saw there. I half listen as I look around the crowd for Ivy. The only person I recognize in the vicinity is the girl who came in second on the last season of that singing competition show.
“Have you seen Ivy?” someone says.
“No,” another one says. “Didn’t see her at the last one either.”
“Someone said she has cameras installed all over the place,” says another. “And she just sits in her room watching everyone. She’s crazy, you know? That’s why she was in rehab. She went crazy on set and tried to kill a boom operator.”
“No,” says the other one. “She just tried to kill herself.”
“All I know is she tried to kill someone.”
“Who cares? Where’d that cocktail waitress go?”
“I did see her mom lurking around, though,” says a young man. “She looked hungry. She’s on the prowl.” The girls laugh.
“You’re technically legal.”
“Gross,” he says. “But I’m sure she could snag an island boy easy.”
It goes on like that for a long time. Everyone at the party is having different versions of the same conversation.
It wouldn’t matter if I stayed outside, looking in. If I perched somewhere in the corner and eavesdropped on other people’s lives. It would not be much different than if I followed Tami around the party as the night gets darker, nursing my soda while everyone gets drunker.
Another young celebrity arrives and everyone pretends to not be impressed. One of the island’s local drug dealers is propped up in a throne-type chair with a line of people waiting for their turn to conduct business. The reality show runner-up plays piano and sings, but no one is listening. I can feel the party collectively getting drunker. The heat rises. Articles of clothing are strewn about the house.
A woman who is older than all of us stands at the top of the grand staircase looking down with a drink in her hand, hair extensions piled on her head and cleavage piled on her chest, surveying the party with a hungry, prideful look in her eyes. Something seizes inside me as I see this vision of Ivy in thirty years. Something like fear. Something like disgust.
The music has gotten louder. People yell to be heard, but they say nothing. A girl falls down the stairs and no one comes to help her up. Someone runs by, fast, nearly ramming into me. Someone else lunges forward and I have to jump out of their way. Arms grab a boy and pull him into a shadowed corner. The lights seem to flicker and spin and I wonder if my drink has been spiked.
The magic has shifted. What felt so special at first has tipped over into some other realm. A frenetic energy has inserted itself into the party, like the stakes have suddenly been raised, like everything has become more desperate. And I just watch from wherever I am, either by Tami’s side or alone, in shadows, hiding behind sunglasses, the light shining through me, the night turning more surreal even though I think I am completely sober.
It does not matter if I found Tami or if I watched from the shadows. She would not notice when I got up to leave. No one would see me walk down the hall. They’re all looking for someone else.
I find a drunk girl slouched in the bathroom who doesn’t know where she is. “I was in a boat,” she says. “I think. Now I’m in here. But the floor’s still moving like a boat. Is this a houseboat? Are we on Lake Union again?”
I just stare at her, wondering what I should do, when I feel the presence of someone new behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My skin feels warmed. Without looking, I know it is Ivy.
“Do you know her?” Ivy’s voice asks. I can feel her breath on my bare shoulders.
“No,” I say, turning around. “Do you?”
“I don’t know any of these people.” Her face is calm, friendly. “We can put her in one of the bedrooms. She’ll be safe there until she sobers up.”
What if I’m the only one who’s seen Ivy all night? The whole world thinks they know her, but here, in this bathroom, I am the only one.
“I know you,” the drunk girl says, and I can’t tell if she’s talking to Ivy or me.
Ivy texts something into her phone and almost immediately two large men arrive. “Take her to the south bedroom,” she says. “And someone check on her regularly to make sure she’s okay. Don’t let any assholes into her room. Got it? If anyone hurts her, you’re both dead.” The men nod and carry the girl away.
“You sound like a feminist mafia boss,” I say.
She smiles. I have pleased her.
“I’m not in the mood for a party, are you?” she says, then takes my hand. “Let’s go upstairs.” And I don’t even think. I would follow her anywhere.
Nearly the whole bottom floor is made of glass and steel beams, almost completely open except for a couple of bathrooms, while the second floor is more private, with actual walls. No one seems to notice us as Ivy leads me upstairs to a secluded bay window with a built-in bench, like a reproduction of a quaint little reading nook in an older, traditional-style home. We sit there together in silence for a while, the windows open so we can hear and see the madness below and the stars shining above.
“Do you want to know a secret?” Ivy says.
“What?”
“I wasn’t even at the party last weekend. My own party. I had nothing to do with it. It was all my mom.”
“What’d you do instead?” I say.
“We should hang out soon,” Ivy says, looking out the window like she’s looking for something, or someone, specific. I wonder if she knows how mysterious she’s being, if she’s like this on purpose.
“We’re hanging out now.”
“I mean go fishing or something.”
“Fishing?”
“I’m kidding,” she says, turning to look at me. “But let’s go for that walk we were talking about. Or a hike. I’ll even go in the forest. I don’t know. Something nice. Something not this.”
Nice. I am her source of something “nice.”
“You’re not drunk, are you?” she says.
“Not at all.”
“It’s refreshing, right? Being sober? Seeing clearly?” She raises her glass, and I have a feeling she’s trying to convince herself more than me. “Club soda and lime. Doctor’s orders. I think we’re the only sober people here. By a long shot.”
“I feel like I’m on an alien planet,” I say.
“I feel that way all the time.”
“I wish I could put on some kind of disguise and go through the world being the opposite of me.”
“Me too.”
“But that only works in the movies.”
She looks at me and just like that there is no party, there are no people, there are just the two of us suspended here in space, molecules and atoms connected by molecules and atoms, and I forget time, I forget history, I am only what her eyes make me, I am only the sound exhaled through her mouth, perfectly articulated.
And suddenly the party is transformed again. This is a new kind of magic. This is the other world I was meant to enter when I walked down the driveway, as I stood in the shadows in my sunglasses, watching, waiting for entry. I am on a side with Ivy that no one else is on.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Ivy says. “Like a favor.” She seems for a moment unsure, almost nervous, just as I am fortified with a sudden, shocking confidence.
“Okay.”
She will make me useful. I feel myself leaning in, ready to catch her need.
But then the electricity of the moment is stolen as her mother arrives, a little wobbly on her feet, with a drink in her hand, the low cut of her tight dress showing bronzed skin pulled over very fake breasts. “Honey, darling,” she says. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“I’m busy, Mom,” Ivy says, her face clouding over. I feel my own heart pulled toward her, like it wants to piece together all the parts of her that are breaking.
“What are you doing up here? The party’s downstairs. Nobody important is upstairs.”
I look at Ivy and she’s looking out the window again. She hasn’t yet found whatever, or whoever, she’s looking for.
“Is he here?” her mom says.
“I don’t think so,” says Ivy, hardened.
“Who?” I want to say. I feel something twist inside me. Is that jealousy?
“Come on,” her mom says. “Talk to me. It’ll be just a minute.”
“Fine.”
So I drift away. Just like that, I am erased. Ivy has been claimed by her mother and it’s nearing midnight.
The light of the party has dimmed. Everything is darker, more shadowed. People are closer to the ground, huddled, almost horizontal.
A couple is fighting.
Two boys are kissing while their girlfriends egg them on.
A girl is puking in the bushes.
Lights turn on in rooms upstairs, then dim back down.
The corners are full of people who couldn’t make it to chairs.
I remember what Daddy said: “Nothing good happens after midnight.”
Spilled drinks everywhere.
Broken glasses and dishes.
A chair, half charred by some mysterious, now extinguished fire.
No one is having fun anymore, but no one is leaving. Maybe they think they’ll camp out here, wake up in the morning, and start it all over again. They’ll keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping they’ll get lucky and something will change.
The reality show star is crying, alone. People back away slowly, like they don’t want to catch what she has.
A sound of raised voices, a fight brewing, a glass breaking.
Limbs grasping in the shadows.
Boats rocking on the dock.
Small, consistent, forever waves, lapping against the rocky shore, the clicks and rolls of the rocks as they collide, a tiny fraction of the time it will take for them to break each other down into fragments, into sand.
As I walk away from the house, I turn one last time and see, through the glass, Ivy standing at the top of the grand staircase, with the lurching and comatose debauchery winding down around her, a transparent home full of so many strangers.
How can she live in this house made of glass? What is the architecture that keeps it standing?
Her face displays a private softness, an opening, but no one is looking, no one but me. But then it’s like she remembers she is not alone, not safe, and in a split second she transforms, conjures a second self and dons her like a shroud. She is once again the star everyone wants, an actress, someone who is always someone else.
I walk away, through the graveyard of stranded cars on Olympic Road. I stand in the middle of the road and look up into the clear sky, searching for the moon, but it is not there.
A raccoon runs across the street. Daddy would say that means something. He’d look it up: the spiritual significance of a raccoon on a new moon.
He will be sleeping on the couch when I get home, will startle awake at the sound of the door and say something like “I must have dozed off while reading.” He will hug me and try to hide the fact that he is sniffing my breath for alcohol. I will find comfort in this as I pretend to be annoyed.
I start my climb away from the shore. Old pine and fir trees creak as I pass, despite the lack of breeze. They send messages below the surface, over mycelium highways, alerting the trees farther up of my approach. There is the sense that everything freezes right before I get there, like I keep walking in on a secret party I am not invited to and no one wants me to know is happening.
The forest crowds around me as I make the ascent up the hill, returning, changed.
Bare feet hardened by gravel, shoes in my hands.
Maybe I am made of forest.
Maybe I want to be wild.
Me, alone, all the way home.