A Song to Take the World Apart (29 page)

Which means it's time for her to go. Lorelei stands up and tugs at the hem of her sweatshirt. It's Zoe's, and a little bit baggy on her, but she's glad she wore it. The pool of fabric around her makes Zoe feel present, somehow. It reminds her that there are other people left in the world. She doesn't let herself remember that she hasn't heard from Zoe since the party.

Chris walks her to the front door. He doesn't move to hug her goodbye.

“I'm sorry,” Lorelei says again, like it matters.

“Me too,” Chris says.

He closes the door carefully. Lorelei listens to the lock clicking into place. There are other people in the world, of course, and there are people who love her, but staring at the blank wood and listening to the silence behind it, she finds it's hard to make herself care.

O
N
M
ONDAY
L
ORELEI SKIPS SCHOOL.
She rides with Jens and Nik, but the minute they get onto campus she starts to feel sick to her stomach. She loses herself in the crowd of students when they near the buildings, and slips back toward the parking lot as soon as she can. She steps off campus, and disappears.

At first she just walks around and watches cars on the street and all the other people who are also wandering around. What is it, exactly, that everyone else does all day?

She distracts herself with the usual things: catching up on homework, pretending to go shopping, thumbing through Facebook on her phone. She visits a coffee shop, and then a juice shop, and then the library. The world is the same as it's always been: boring, and too busy for her. By four p.m. she's unbearably lonely.

Happy hour is just getting started when she ducks into a restaurant filled with drunks saying good morning to each other at the bar. Lorelei takes a little two-seater along the wall and orders a sandwich. She pulls her English book out to read while she eats.

As she's finishing up, one of the men at the bar makes his way over. He's not stumbling, not yet, but his big hand grips a double shot of whiskey so cheap Lorelei can smell the fumes from across the table. He's well-kept but his eyes are bloodshot and there's a soft tremble to him, an unsteadiness that lives under his skin.

He says, “You look like you could use company.”

“Not really.” Lorelei doesn't have to fake indifference. She just doesn't care anymore. Let him try to talk to her.

“Shouldn't you be in school?”

“If I should, shouldn't you be leaving me alone?” Lorelei is proud of herself for channeling Zoe so effectively. She looks pointedly at the glass in his hand.

“There are a lot of creeps in this place. I should know. I spend a lot of time here.”

“I'm sure.”

He leans across the table. “You're a very pretty girl,” he says. “You should be careful.”

Something ugly rushes up in Lorelei. She is a pretty girl, with a pretty voice, and she's never allowed to use it again. She's going to have to put away the most beautiful and unusual part of herself because she doesn't know how to wield it, because she let it get the best of her. And no one will ever know it. No one will ever know
her.

No one should want to.

“Maybe you should be careful,” Lorelei says. She smiles. There's a song playing at midvolume through the bar's speakers. Deliberately, she starts to hum along. She weaves the melody through with the thinnest strand of compulsion, pulling him to her and braiding him up. His eyes get glassier and his pupils swell. “Don't you think?”

“Very pretty,” he repeats. Lorelei doesn't even know what she's doing with him, only that she's doing it, siphoning off the dark feelings inside her because they're too much to contain anymore.

“I'm ugly,” Lorelei says. “I'm horrible.”

“Okay.” He puts the glass down on the table, finally. Her pull is stronger than its thrall. Lorelei's fingers twitch toward it but she doesn't pick it up. She doesn't need it now.

“Tell me how awful I am,” she says.

“You're awful,” he says. “Like that?” When he says it, she can hear the nastiness in her tune reflected back at her, cruel and delicious. “Like that?” he asks, again. Lorelei hums a little more.

“Awful,” he repeats. “No one's ever going to love you, you know. No one could ever love a girl like you. What are you?” He leans forward across the table. “Do you even know?”

A server catches sight of what's going on: the pretty little girl and the big drunk man. He hurries over to stop it. “Everything all right here?” he asks. His eyes dart frantically between Lorelei and the man, and Lorelei and the glass of whiskey on the table. “Can I get you guys anything else?”

Lorelei hums and hums, until his jaw slackens too. “I'm leaving now,” she says. “You'll cover my meal, right?” They both nod dumbly. “And forget me,” she says. “Like I was never even here.” She sings along to the words of the song as she leaves, and watches in the long mirror at the bar as every head turns to follow her out.

It's a little weird, singing her way into places, but it works. There's a row of open-air bars along the beach that Lorelei can slip into from the sidewalk, and if anyone notices her, she has ways of dealing with that.

She's as young and vulnerable as she's ever been, but now she's untouchable too, surrounded by an invisible column of song. The freedom and power lick up her spine. The feeling is intoxicating.

Lorelei embraces the corrosiveness inside herself, and for the first time she understands all the bone-thin girls at school with sallow skin and peeling cuticles, the ones with long sleeves pulled down to hide their wrists and arms. Those girls looked their own darkness in the face and then descended into it. They ate themselves up instead of letting the world do it for them.

Lorelei wants to go on and on, through the night and across the city, into her own black depths.

“Lorelei,” someone says. She has to look at Carina for a minute before her brain puts a name to the face.

“Leave me alone.” She's too surprised to say it convincingly.

“You shouldn't be here,” Carina says. “What are you doing here?”

Lorelei should just sing her into submission and keep going, but Carina looks too much like Zoe, and Lorelei's not quite that ruthless. “I'm serious,” she says instead. “I'm fine, okay. Just let me go.”

“Where are you going?”

The lie doesn't come quickly enough. Carina reaches down and clamps her hand onto Lorelei's arm. “I know trouble when I see it,” she says. “C'mon, sweetheart. I'm getting you the hell out of here.”

Carina drives her home in silence, and parks a block away so she can crack the window and smoke a clove. She doesn't ask about the party, which is a relief. If Carina has recovered, she might not be the only one.

She does have some questions, though. “All right,” she starts. “I'm gonna need at least a partial explanation for what you were doing in a bar at five-thirty on a weekday.”

“What about you?” Lorelei asks.

“I'm in college.” Carina waves her hand dismissively. “Different story. Out with it. Is this about that asshole, still?”

“Yeah.”

“Breakups suck,” Carina says.

Lorelei cracks a smile. “That's what Nik said,” she agrees. “That's what everyone says.”

“So what makes you think this one is special?” Carina asks. “Why is he worth…There's a lot of trouble you can find if you go looking, Lorelei.”

“I guess you know from experience.”

Carina refuses to take the bait. “That doesn't give you a license to make my mistakes.”

“I wasn't in any trouble.”

Carina raises a skeptical eyebrow and smokes in silence. Lorelei doesn't know what to say, so she doesn't say anything. The inside of her head is too loud. She misses how quiet it got when she was singing.

“Anyway, he's the asshole,” Carina says. She grinds her cigarette butt into the grimy mug jammed into one of the car's cupholders. “I know he's cute and he's older, but if he broke your heart, he's the asshole.”

Lorelei shakes her head grimly. She does know this answer. “No,” she says. “It was my fault.”

“Did he ask you to—”

“No,” Lorelei says. “No. Nothing like that.” Chris never asked her for anything. That was part of the problem.

“How could it possibly be your fault?”

“I tricked him,” Lorelei says. “It's hard to explain, okay, but I did.”

Carina laughs. “Oh, honey,” she says. “It always feels like that.”

“It's not the—”

“Sure, yeah, okay.” Carina lights another clove and settles herself into her seat again. “I know you think you've reinvented heartbreak, but trust me, it's always— You have this thing, and it's so beautiful and great and fun. And then it's over, and you've never had anything end like this before, right?”