All Our Pretty Songs (14 page)

Maia’s eyes have a feverish gleam, but for once I’m sure she’s sober. The lecture is jarring, and I don’t like where this conversation is going. Given what’s been happening in my life lately, I’m none too thrilled to hear Maia citing the devil as an everyday source of other people’s artistic inspiration. “I never knew you played,” I say, changing the subject. “You’re really good.”

Her face goes blank. All the life seems to run out of her as I watch. I don’t know what I’ve said wrong. “I used to be,” she says. “Jack and Aurora are upstairs.” I take the hint and leave her staring at the piano.

Jack and Aurora are in Aurora’s bed watching
Aliens
. They aren’t touching, I notice, and then hate myself for noticing. Hicks is showing Ripley how to use the grenade launcher. This scene never fails to send Aurora and me into a frenzy of lust. “Is it normal, do you think,” I say, squeezing between them, “to experience actual feelings of loss and anguish over the fact that Hicks is not a real person?” Jack nods solemnly, puts his hand at the small of my back. “I didn’t know Maia played the piano,” I add.

“She’s weird about it,” Aurora says, gnawing on a piece of beef jerky. “She won’t do it if she knows I’m in the house. Oh my god,
look
at him. Go, Ripley, go.”

“Does she play a lot?”

“She was going to be a concert pianist or something.”

“She’s incredible.”

Aurora shrugs. “Fat lot of good it does her. Shut up, this is the good part.”

“It’s all the good part.”

“Shut
up.
”

“How are you feeling?” Jack asks me.

“Not my best. How are
you
feeling? That was some show.”

“Shhhh,” Aurora says, riveted to the screen.

“Aurora, we have both seen this movie at least forty times.”

“I’m a little tired,” Jack says.

“Did you see anything—” I pause, not even sure of what I’m asking. “Weird? Did you see anything weird?”

“What do you mean, weird?”

“
Shhhhhhhh
.” Aurora smacks me. “For fucking
real.
”

I roll my eyes, lower my voice. “Like, you know, weird.”

“I don’t notice much when I play.”

“You were really drunk,” Aurora says to me, not looking away from the screen.

“Not that drunk. Who was that guy you introduced me to?”

“You should ask Jack who that guy was.”

I look at Jack. He turns his face away. “What,” I say.

“Come outside with me,” he says. We leave Aurora, rapt in her bed, and I follow him downstairs and into the jungle of her garden. He finds a less-tangled patch in the shaggy lawn, sheltered from the house by a thicket of blackberries. He lies down in the grass. I stretch out next to him and put my head on his chest.

“You’re going to tell me something shitty,” I say into his shirt.

“I’m not going to be around for much longer,” he says. “They want me to go to Los Angeles. Cut a record. Minos has a club there. I can headline some shows. It’s a big deal.”

“That’s what you were auditioning for.”

“More or less.”

“What do you mean, more or less? Who was that guy? Minos’s boss?”

He puts his arms around me and doesn’t answer.

“You saw what I saw,” I say.

“I told you, I don’t notice much when I play.”

“When do you leave?”

“I don’t know. Soon. It’s not up to me.”

“Will you come back?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can I come?”

“Oh, you.” I wait for him to say something else.
Of course you can come with me. I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without you
.

“What did you promise them?”

His arms tighten around me. “Nothing I’m not willing to give.” His voice is steady. The ordinary sun beams overhead in an ordinary sky. Birds chirp, butterflies flutter. I will not fucking cry. If it kills me, I will not cry.

“Does Aurora know?”

“She knows.”

“And now I pretend like everything is okay until you leave?”

“You don’t have to pretend anything. But I’d like to enjoy the time I have left with you.”

“So I pretend.” I sit up, furious. “To make it easier for everyone. Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Jack.”

He reaches for my hand but I pull it away. “You knew what I was when you met me,” he says.

“Is this about Aurora?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Now he’s angry, too. “No, this is not about Aurora.”

“Why was it ever me, and not her,” I say. He sits up, puts his hands on my knees. This time I don’t back away. He looks at me until I have to meet his eyes.

“You’re so strong,” he says. “The first time I saw you, in that garden, you seemed so sure of yourself. You have this relentlessness, this fury. You say what you think. You’re not afraid of anything. You’re not like anyone else I know. Do you want me to keep going?”

“Nobody loves the girl who is strong. They love the girl who is beautiful.”

“I love you,” he says. So low I almost miss it. I will not cry in front of him. I will not. I will not. I will not.

“Not enough.” My voice does not waver.

“What if you had to choose? Between art and me? What if you had to go someplace I couldn’t follow?”

“I would choose you. I would stay here.”

“No,” he says gently. “You wouldn’t. You’re seventeen. Your entire life is in front of you. You’re good. But more than that, you’re stubborn. You don’t take anything for granted. You’re so young, and already you understand what it’s like to work. You’ll love other people. But you would never be able to survive letting go of your art. I can’t, either.”

“I’m sure Aurora understands.” My voice is low and mean and I hate myself even as the words leave my mouth.

“I can tell you the same thing over and over. But it won’t do any good if you don’t listen to me.”

“You want what happened to Aurora’s dad? Is that what you fucking want? You want to be so famous it kills you?”

“I’m a lot stronger than Aurora’s dad.”

“You never knew Aurora’s dad.”

“I don’t have to know Aurora’s dad to know I have something he didn’t. I’m not going to make the same stupid mistakes he made.”

“You’re an
asshole,
” I snap, balling my hands into fists. I could hit him now without thinking twice. But he doesn’t take his hands from my knees, doesn’t back down.

“Always ready for a fight,” he says, touching my cheek. I flinch and he takes his hand away. “What if someone offered you a trade? Everything you’ve ever wanted. The whole world. For it to be easy for the first time in your life. No more sleeping on the street. No more playing shitty clubs for six people who are so drunk they have no idea how good you are. No more getting followed home at three in the morning from your shit job washing dishes, getting your ass kicked by bored white boys who don’t have the balls to fight you alone. Just music. Just you and the thing you need the most, the only thing that matters.”

“Trade for what.”
The only thing that matters.
The only thing that matters isn’t me. “A trade for
what
.”

He shakes his head. “Let me go. Please. Spend the next few days with me, and then let me go.”

I try to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I can’t.”

“You have to.” There is nothing I can say to that, so I don’t say anything at all. He kisses my throat, behind my ear, the curve of my shoulder. Skims his palms up the line of my back, fingertips ticking off each vertebra. I let him take off my shirt, unzip my jeans, make a nest of our clothes in the long grass and bring me to him. The air is heavy with the scent of roses, the warm honeyed buzz of a bee. His hands on my skin are cool, his mouth hot. I can hear the earth thrumming beneath us like a pulse.

“I’ll take you home,” he says later, lazily flicking away an ant making its way up my wrist. Sweat’s cooled on my skin. I smell like him. If we don’t put our clothes back on, if we lie here in the grass forever, if I don’t think about anything, I can make this moment last for the rest of time. But he’s already sitting up and buttoning his shirt, his back turned to me. Now that we’re not touching he’s worse than a stranger. How can someone be so close to you and then so far away in the span of a single movement? Is this a thing that makes sense when you turn into an adult?

“I’ll go say goodbye to Aurora.” We never did decorate. I go back into the house, still barefoot. Aurora is fast asleep in her bed, clutching the bag of beef jerky. On the screen, Ripley’s tucking Newt into her pod. Aliens defeated and everyone safely on their way home through the vastness of space. I turn off the television. Aurora murmurs in her sleep. I stand watching her for a while. All around me the enormous house is still. Everything is on its way toward an end I can’t see. Aurora’s white hair spills around her, moving with the rise and fall of her breath like a living thing. One strap of her tank top has slipped off her shoulder. “I love you,” I say into the silent room. “But I wish you would tell me what the hell is going on.” She does not stir.

In the driveway, Jack’s straddled his motorcycle. He gives me his helmet and I put it on. I wrap my arms around his waist, remembering the first time we went to the beach together, the first time I touched him, the first time he kissed me. I wonder if he’s remembering it, too, or if he’s already thinking about what happens next. The part that I’m not invited to. The sun’s setting, the sky gone glorious. Let’s go for a drive. Let’s keep going, out of the city, out west until we run out of land. Let’s swim naked in the ocean, phosphorescence streaking behind us like comets’ tails, let’s shuck oysters on the beach and eat them raw next to a bonfire. Let’s build a shack in the woods when winter comes, weather out the long rains with a pile of blankets and Jack’s guitar. Let’s make a world of our own so strong that no other worlds can intrude on it, no skeleton men, no ambition, no horizon, no fear. No mermaids singing us down to a world we can’t survive. I don’t say any of it. When Jack stops in front of my house I tug the helmet off, hand it back to him. “You can come in.”

“I need to practice.” He’s looking at the helmet as if it might tell him something important.

“I’ll see you later?”

“Later,” he agrees, and puts on the helmet without so much as a kiss. Well then. I watch him drive away into the lowering night, knowing that’s as close as we’ll come to goodbye.

Aurora’s birthday is the same night as the full moon. She offers to pick me up, but I bike to her house that afternoon instead, tucking her banner into my backpack after I’ve rolled it up carefully in butcher paper. I love the long ride to Aurora’s, the miles dropping away, the feel of my muscles bunching and releasing on the inclines, the freedom of the downhills. I feel strong and careless and invincible. My shirt is soaked through by the time I reach the elaborate gate that marks Aurora’s driveway. This late in the summer, the blackberry vines are weighted with fruit. I hop off my bike and help myself to a handful, wheeling the bike with my other hand as I lap berries out of my palm.

She comes running out to greet me, white hair flying. “You’re all sweaty,” she says, flinging herself into my arms, wrapping her bare legs around my waist. I laugh and hoist her up, stagger with her across the lawn. “You look terrible.” She kisses me. “You’re not wearing that to my party, are you?”

“You’re in your underwear,” I point out.

“I am not in my underwear. I’m wearing a shirt over my underwear.” She untangles herself from me.

“Were you going to put clothes on?”

“Oh, eventually. Come help me finish decorating.”

Maia’s nowhere to be seen. I help Aurora string up paper lanterns in the garden. The caterers show up shortly after I do, shouting orders at each other and carrying folding tables across the lawn. Aurora and I drink gin and tonics on her back porch, watching them mow a swath the size of a dance floor into the tangle of lawn and garland the vine-shrouded portico with lights. “Come on,” she says. “We have to get ready.”

We fill her enormous bathtub with hot water and lavender-scented oil. I drop my clothes on the marble floor and sink to my ears in steamy, sweet-smelling water. Aurora undresses with her back to me and slinks into the bath, but not before I see the bruises spanning her ribcage. She sees me looking and ducks her head under the water before I can open my mouth.

“Jack’s leaving,” I say instead when she comes back up.

“I know.”

“You knew for how long?”

“Don’t be mad at me. It wasn’t my story to tell.”

“I don’t know who you are anymore,” I say, helpless. And then I do cry, hot wracking sobs that come from somewhere deep in my gut, and she sloshes forward and puts her arms around me. I cry into her shoulder until we are both a mess of my snot and tears, and she strokes my back and whispers meaningless things in my ear until I calm down and cling to her, hiccupping.

“You know who I am,” she says. “I’m the same person.”

“You’re not the same person.” I knot a lock of her hair around my finger. “You knew he was leaving and you didn’t tell me. You have all these secrets now. You’re sprung on a total monster and I hate him and I hate everyone at that stupid party and I hate—”

She puts her hand over my mouth, gentle, and I take a shuddering breath through her fingers.

“There are things that don’t change,” she says. “The thing that will never change is how much I love you. Do you know that?”

I shake my head. Yes. No. Yes.

“Don’t break my heart,” she says. “You know that. Tell me you know that. I will love you until the moon falls out of the sky and we are old women in sensible shoes and our main joy in life is spying on our underage neighbor as he mows the lawn with his shirt off.”

I can’t help it. I start to laugh. “I can never stay mad at you.”

“Because you have nothing to be mad about and because you love me, too. Can you be happy, for me, tonight? For my party? For Jack? Can we wait until tomorrow to be sad?”

That is the story of you, Aurora: You are always waiting until tomorrow to be sad. You’re a fairy princess beaming at me, remaking the world in your image. Wiping away everything that hurts. But someday everything that hurts will come back and kill you. Your face, your wide dark eyes, your white hair, the skin I know as well as I know my own. “Okay,” I say. “For you, tonight, I will be happy.”