A Song to Take the World Apart (31 page)

The drive to Jackson's happens in complete and total silence.

Lorelei feels so shitty about the situation that she turns to her dad as soon as they're alone and says, “Just so you know, he was stoned. That's all.”

Her dad blinks at her.

“I'm not stoned,” she says.

“Okay,” he says. “Well. Good.”

He puts the car in gear and turns them toward home. “I'm not worried about him,” he says. “Or Chris.” It's strange to hear her dad say his name. “I'm worried about you.”

“Why? I'm the one who screwed up.”

“I know I haven't been around much since Oma died. Or before that, even.”

Lorelei nods cautiously.

“I wish I hadn't let myself disappear on you like that.”

Lorelei wants to say:
That has nothing to do with what happened.
Having a different kind of dad wouldn't have saved her from herself.

“It's just that you should know: if you ever want to talk about anything, I'm here for you. I don't know what you know about…what happened. But your mother and I, we went through—”

Lorelei cuts him off. “I don't want to talk about it, actually,” she tells him. “But thanks for the offer, I guess.”

At home, Lorelei tries to tally up what she broke and what she's fixed. Chris is fine, but they're over forever, this time, and there's nothing she can do about it. Jackson is fine, but he's probably never going near Nik again.

She owes Nik the truth of what she did to him.

She owes her mother and her father something much, much bigger.

Because if she can undo the effects of her song, it means her mother probably could too. She could let Henry go. Lorelei could give them what they need to dismantle her family for good.

She's just not ready to do it, yet, is all.

After dinner there's more homework. There's always more homework. Lorelei wants to text Zoe a question about the math, but they haven't spoken since the party, and after their non-encounter at school she's pretty sure there's no pretending it didn't happen and just moving on. There's a very real possibility that Carina told Zoe about seeing Lorelei at the bar, and their conversation after.

There's also a possibility that Zoe is too freaked out to want to be friends anymore. Lorelei can't even let herself consider that one, although she wouldn't blame Zoe for bailing.

She emails one of the other girls in her class the question instead.

Of all of them, this is the smallest and stupidest betrayal. It stings her like a pinprick, sharp and insistent. The smallness somehow doesn't make it hurt any less.

L
ORELEI EATS LUNCH ALONE
on Wednesday, sitting in the bleachers like every high school movie cliché. It's lonely, but it's also quiet. She thinks she could learn to appreciate the austerity of her days without Chris, or the band, or her friends. At least everything gets done.

Carina texts her,
are you not speaking to Zoe or something?
Lorelei is tempted not to respond. It's none of Carina's business. It's probably unfixable, anyway. But then there's the little part of her that knows she's being self-indulgent. She owes Zoe a last explanation and apology, at least.

Kind of?
she sends back.
Not sure she wants to talk to me.

Don't be dumb,
Carina says.
I thought we talked about this.

Are you sure?
Lorelei wishes she could take it back the minute she sends it. It's too vulnerable. Carina knows how much she loves Zoe, but it feels like rolling over and exposing the thinnest skin, the softest part of her belly. What if Zoe sees it, and knows?

Lorelei. Seriously. Talk to her.

Mrs. Soroush comes to the door. “Hey, Lorelei,” she says. “It's been a while.”

Lorelei is surprised that she hasn't heard, somehow. She half expected that they wouldn't even let her in.

“Yeah,” Lorelei says. “I've been, you know. Busy.”

“Is Zoe expecting you? She didn't say…”

“She isn't. I'm, um, I'm surprising her. You know. Since it's been a while.”

“Aren't you sweet! Zoe's just in the den.” Mrs. Soroush stands back to let Lorelei pass. “I hope you two are planning on getting some work done,” she calls down the hallway after her.

Lorelei pauses at the mouth of the den. The sliding door has been pushed most of the way open, and the TV is on with the sound off, which means Zoe's halfway between pretending to get work done and buckling down to actually do it. Right now she's gotten as far as opening a book she doesn't seem to be reading. When she sees Lorelei, she sits up too straight. “Hey,” she says. “Uh.”

Lorelei stands in front of her, feeling like she's going to faint. Her hands are empty and heavy at her sides.

“I—” Lorelei starts at the same time Zoe says, “I really—” and they both laugh a little, but it doesn't break the tension.

“You first,” Lorelei says. At least she'll know what she's getting herself into.

“Sorry about being weird at Daniel's party,” Zoe says.

“You weren't that weird.” Lorelei's reply is automatic. It takes her another few seconds to register that it wasn't anything—that Zoe doesn't seem mad at her. At all. Somehow.

“Yeah, I was.” Zoe closes the book without bothering to mark her page and scrubs a hand through her long hair. “God, I woke up in the morning and I was just like—what was that, you know? I never drink like that. Or I haven't, before. And then we were all being weird. No wonder you wanted to leave.”

“Yeah. I mean, no. I get it! You were excited.”

“I just did not want that night to end,” Zoe says. “But then it did, and it was like—I don't know, it was weird. Like the world snapped back into focus or something. In the morning. I still wanted you to sing again, but it wasn't, like, urgent? Anyway, I'm sorry.”

“Me too.” Lorelei carefully sits down on the couch. “And I'm sorry about the last few days. I just needed to figure some stuff out. You know?”

“Yeah,” Zoe says. “Of course.”

She looks down at her hands. There's a vulnerability in the movement that makes Lorelei just a little bit brave.

“I missed you,” she says.

Zoe says, “Me too.”

Then, finally, it feels normal in the room. It's like the air Lorelei sucked out by coming in rushes back, and they can both breathe.

Zoe remembers something with a start. “Oh shit,” she says. “Come upstairs. I have a secret to tell you.”

In Zoe's room they take their usual spots on the bed. Lorelei has her head on the pillows, and Zoe props herself up against the footboard, so they can face each other. Their feet meet in the middle.

“So we went back to the party after we dropped you off,” Zoe starts.

“Oh. Good.” Lorelei doesn't really want to hear about what the party became in her wake. “Was it fun?”

“Yeah. Because. I, um. I totally did it with him. With Daniel. That night.”

“Holy shit.” Lorelei sits straight up, all of her misery knocked right out of her head. “Whoa, Zoe, that's, like,
huge.
”

“I know!” Zoe wails. She hides her face in the covers. “I had thought about it before, and we'd kind of talked about it, and I just felt like, I don't know, there he was, there the house was. Why not, you know?”

An awful thought occurs to Lorelei. “Did you decide after you dropped me off?” she asks carefully. “Did you— Did it have anything to do with my singing?”

“No,” Zoe says. She laughs. “Don't get me wrong, L, you were good, and we were excited, but, uh, not that kind of excited.”

“Okay. Yeah. That probably sounds crazy. I'm about to sound crazy. I have to tell you something,” Lorelei says. She's lost Chris, and if she's going to lose Zoe—better to get it over with. In a second more she'll lose her nerve. “I sort of accidentally influenced you. And everyone there.”

Zoe gives her the look everybody gives her at first: like she's crazy.

Lorelei tells it as quickly as she can: Oma's rule against singing, and her mother's idea that it was a curse, and Hannah's email, which gave it a name. She tells Zoe about her single-minded desire to win Chris back, even if it was risky to try. And about Chris showing up at the house, and singing to him on Sunday. She leaves out the parts with Carina and Jackson.

When she's done, Zoe says, “That's really a lot. Are you— You said your mother believes all of this too? And Nik and Chris?”

“They know it.”

“You understand why I'm having trouble swallowing it, though, right?”

Lorelei doesn't know what to say. She doesn't
want
Zoe to believe her. She doesn't want it to be true. But offering proof means singing, and she's done with doing that, now that there's no more to undo.

“I know you were good,” Zoe says again. “But. Lorelei. Magic? Sirens?”

“Why would I make this up?”

“I don't know!” Zoe throws her hands in the air. “Are you— Could it be a sad-about-Chris thing? Are you mad at me for losing my virginity first? I just don't—”

“It's not about anyone else. It's about me,” Lorelei says.

Zoe relents. “Okay. Sorry.”

They fall into silence, and even though they're in Zoe's familiar bed in her warm house, it's uncomfortable between them all over again.

“Can you sing to me?” Zoe asks. “If you can influence people with your voice—I don't know, if you could just show me.”

“It's unpredictable,” Lorelei says. “I'm not really sure I have enough of a handle on it.”

“You did it with Chris, though, and it kind of worked. Right? You cured him, or whatever.”

“I think so. But I had to. Leaving him that way was worse. If you're okay, I just—I don't want to. Don't ask me to.”

“It seems like it matters,” Zoe says curiously after a while. “Who you sing to. What you want. What you're thinking about.”

“Yeah,” Lorelei says. “Exactly. The letter said never to sing to anyone I needed anything from.”

“Do you need anything from me?” Zoe asks.

“I don't want to lose you.”

“Oh, Lorelei.” Zoe crawls over so they're facing the same direction, and butts herself up against Lorelei's side like a cat. “I don't want to lose you, either.”

“Some things we just can't share, though. You and Daniel. Me and this.”

“I trust you,” Zoe says. “I do.”

“I don't trust me.”

Lorelei decides to change the subject.

“Did you know?” she asks. “That you were ready?”

Zoe laughs. “I thought so, I guess,” she says. “Enough so that I did it, anyway.”

“Have you changed your mind since you did?”

“I just didn't know what it was,” Zoe says. “I thought I did, and so I thought I was ready, and it wasn't— I wasn't wrong, exactly. It's just different. I couldn't have known until I did it. What it would be like. I'm not sure there is such a thing as ready, when it's that big. When it's a before-and-after question. When you can't know what you're trying to be ready for until you've already done it.” She rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. “It's funny. I think I was more scared after, actually.”

The last light of day is coming in through the windows, heavy all around them, making the room glow gold. Days of rain have cleared the air so that it's desert-bright, fine and clean. The sunset will be neon clouds and a pastel sky. In the morning Lorelei will be able to see the mountains again.

“I didn't know what I was doing,” Lorelei says. “I'm not sure I ever will.”

“Who does?” Zoe says. “I mean, seriously, I don't. Carina sure as shit doesn't.”

“That's awful.”

“Yeah.” Zoe sits up so that the sunlight silhouettes her, black against the gold.

Lorelei closes her eyes and opens them again. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“Sure.”

Lorelei waits for a melody to come to her. It arrives from somewhere deep in the back of her brain, something she thinks she might remember from a long time ago. She hums it until the words come to join in. They aren't English. They're sounds she must have picked up in childhood, her mother or grandmother bending over her crib to whisper her a song. She tries to remember which it was, but their faces blend together and it's impossible to know what she actually remembers and what she's just inventing.