Betwixt (17 page)

She sat up and pushed K.A. away.

“Jesus Christ, boys. I’ve got one daddy. I don’t need two more, okay? Jacob is up in my shit enough. He got to have his fun
and now he wants his daughter to be the good girl? Yeah, well
fuck
him.”

Silence swelled after her outburst.

Finally K.A. spoke: “Neve?”

A panicked look came over her face, as if she were as surprised by her words — by their vehemence — as everyone else was.

“Oh, don’t pay attention to me. It’s just that Dad’s been riding my ass ever since the party. I mean, you have a little too
much to drink
one time
and suddenly it’s homeland security. I mean, I caught him checking my odometer. My
odometer.
When I called him on it, he said he wanted to know if I was doing more driving than I should.” She snickered. “I told him
Bleek has his own car; I didn’t need to drive mine if I wanted to sneak around.”

“Neve,” K.A. began. “You’re not …” His voice indicated he didn’t know which was worse: the idea of Neve fooling around with
Bleek, or the idea of her doing dust.

“Oh, relax,” Neve scoffed. “It’s just a little taste to mellow me out.” She looked at Nix but spoke to K.A. “What, your best
bud can do it but it’s too good for your girlfriend?”

Nix tried to piece through what he was hearing. He knew when he saw Neve at the party with Bleek that things were bad, but
not so bad she would flaunt it in K.A.’s face.

“I’m off it, Neve.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “Yeah, right, Mr. I-Wore-Sunglasses-to-Wash-Dishes-for-a-Year. Tim told me all about
your
intake,
man. I don’t see you going cold turkey.”

Ondine smiled at everyone and no one. “Is it true, Nix?”

Something seemed to have come unstuck in Neve. In a wild voice she let fly, “Man, don’t try to put this all on me, Miss Goody
Two-shoes. You were the one who threw a party attended by not one but two of Portland’s biggest dust dealers. If you serve
it up, don’t be surprised if your guests
partake.
”

K.A. was looking at his girlfriend as though she’d zipped off her skin.

“You — you know about Moth?” Ondine asked, her arched brows high.

“Yes, I ‘know about Moth,’” Neve mimicked. “And don’t tell me you don’t.” She stared at her three friends. “Tim told me about
him. Figures he knows about the party, wanted to see if I could get it out of him.”

“Who in the hell is Moth?” K.A. said.

“‘The Ring of Fire,’” Neve scoffed, ignoring his question. “Somebody needs to hire a new ad agency. And the
Flame
? What is this, last year? Everybody knows the Flame sucks now.”

Ondine stood up. “I’m getting some water. Does anyone want anything? A beer? Some dust? Maybe a couple shots of heroin?” She
walked out of the room.

Her departure seemed to silence Neve, who sat picking at a loose thread on her perfectly tattered jeans.

K.A. got up, looking at his girlfriend. “We’d better get going. The bus leaves at seven tomorrow. You ready?”

Neve stood up, half sullen, half coy. She took his hand in a mock-flirtatious way. “Don’t be mad at me,” she said in a baby
voice. “I’m a good girl, really I am. I’m just playing is all.”

K.A.’s mouth opened and then closed. He turned to Nix.

“So you’ll talk to Jacob?”

Nix scanned the room for Ondine, who stood in the kitchen doorway with a worried frown on her face. Then he looked at Neve.
He didn’t want to talk to Jacob, didn’t want to see the light again, but he knew now that Neve was in serious trouble, and
that Jacob was her only hope. He wished it was something K.A. could take care of the way he took care of everything, but even
if K.A. weren’t going away to soccer camp, Nix knew that Jacob would never believe these things from K.A.’s mouth. Nix was
the transient, the slacker, the “user.” He would take the blame and might have to leave Portland, but at least Jacob could
get his daughter away from Bleek. Moth, of course, was another question.

“Yeah, man. I’ll talk to him.”

When K.A. walked to the door with Neve in tow, it was hard to tell if he was holding her hand, or if she just wouldn’t let
go.

N
IX DIDN
’
T TALK TO
J
ACOB.
When he went into the restaurant the next day, Leon — Portland’s self-proclaimed best pie maker — told him that the Cloweses
had taken off that morning to the coast for a vacation. Leon was an ageless waxy-haired hippie who had known Jacob “since
Altamont, man,” and Jacob had confided to him that the main purpose of the “vacation” was to get Neve as far away from Tim
Bleeker as possible, especially with “the square” out of town for a week. Nix assumed Leon meant K.A.

“Hey man, mellow out. Why do you need to see him so bad, anyway? You knock up the pepperoni princess or something?”

If Nix ever had doubts about when to quit dust, one look at Leon reminded him. The man coughed, passed a burning joint to
him, raising his eyebrows. Nix waved it off, shaking his head.

“Suit yourself, man.” Leon let a stream of smoke trickle from his dry lips. “But it’s better than that shit you do.”

Later that day, Ondine got a surreptitious phone call from Neve. She almost hadn’t answered because she didn’t recognize the
number on caller ID. “I’m on a fucking
pay
phone,” Neve said, half pissed, half amused. “We’re at some gas station halfway
between hillbilly central and B&B hell — ugh. I
hate
bed and breakfasts. All that fucking
lace.
And my loser dad confiscated my cell. He said we need some ‘family bonding’ time, but I know it’s just cuz he doesn’t want
me calling Bleek.”

Ondine exhaled. “Nix said he heard the cops are on Bleek’s trail.”

“Yeah,” Neve cooed. Ondine didn’t like her tone. It was almost wistful.

“Neve,” she ordered in her sternest seventeen-year-old voice. “Tim Bleeker is pathetic. Must to avoid, girl.
Must. To. Avoid.
”

Neve laughed, a breezy tinkle. “Aw, he’s like a lost puppy, moping around the Krak asking anyone he sees where the Ring of
Fire is gonna be. He just needs someone to take him out to play.”

“What he wants is to sell dust to a thousand blissed-out Flame fans.”

There was silence on the line, and then Neve whispered something.

“What’d you say?”

“And me,” Neve repeated softly. “He wants me.” Then, annoyed — and louder: “Jesus, Dad, back off! It’s just Ondine!
Ondine.
Gotta run, baby,” Neve said into the phone. “Love ya!”

With Neve and K.A. gone, and Morgan in avoidance, Nix and Ondine were on their own. Phil D’Amici had gotten Nix a job at the
Burnside D’Amici store, working in the stockroom, so
he spent his days leading up to the solstice there, coming home late, when Ondine was already in bed. Nix had always been
a loner, but Ondine wondered what had happened to the girl who just a few weeks ago had to turn her phone off, it rang so
often. She had always been the popular girl, the one who walked into a roomful of strangers and walked out with a new posse
of friends. Now when the phone rang — if it did at all — she answered it only if it was Ralph or Trish, and the idea of calling
someone to grab a cup of coffee or go shopping or catch a movie didn’t even occur to her. The girl who did those kinds of
things was someone else named Ondine, not her. This Ondine stayed close to home, cleaning, cooking — though she had never
made anything more complicated than ramen noodles before — spending long hours maintaining Trish’s flower beds. Gardening
was Trish’s passion, but not something Ondine had ever shown any real interest in. There were magazines and manuals everywhere,
but she ignored them, just as she eschewed tools. She wandered into the garden and sank to her knees and worked the earth
with her fingers, pinching off a leaf here, a twig there; she whispered to a cupped leaf, “Grow.” Under Ondine’s watch the
Masons’ yard exploded. It was almost eerie how every plant seemed to bloom at the same time. How the flowers didn’t fade,
or rust, or even close when the sun went down. Ondine knew, because she had looked. She had gone to the window late one night
when Nix still wasn’t back from the store, and seen an army of roses and
peonies and irises all staring up at her window. When a breeze stirred them, it was as if they were bowing. Ondine felt like
Evita of the flora. She would have laughed, if she hadn’t been so creeped out.

She thought about telling Nix, but didn’t. At least not out loud. What could she and Nix say to each other that they hadn’t
already said in their dreams?

Ondine didn’t know what to do with all the fractured thoughts, the hints of imaginings, the subtle intuition, and the plain
anxiety she felt alone that last week, so besides gardening and cooking, she painted. She finished her first piece for Raphael
Inman’s class; her crit would be on June 19. She hung her canvas in her bedroom against the sliding doors of her closet, covering
the oak floors with D’Amici paper bags to catch the paint. She worked from sense — from feeling — wasn’t that what Raphael
had told them that first day? His hazel eyes had burned under a frizz of gray hair.
Find out what is in your heart first. Then shape it with what is in here.
He had touched a finger to his chest.
The head only knows what the heart feels.

Ondine had looked at Morgan. She missed her friend, yet didn’t know how to ask what had happened at the party to drive a rift
between them. She watched Morgan’s eyes narrow when Raphael said those last words. Had he noticed, too? Morgan was by far
Raphael Inman’s best pupil. A genius, almost, in her rendering. Ondine envied her talent — her lines, her gesture
sketches that seemed to walk off the page. Though Raphael had been speaking to Morgan then, he had also been speaking to Ondine.
What had he been saying to her?

Alone in her room, she painted. This painting was blue. All the blues she understood. The blue of sadness. The split blue
of the sky meeting the sea. Her mother’s favorite blouse. The blue of emptiness. The Virgin’s dress she had seen in a Giotto
painting. The blue of the ocean of Alaska, of Nix’s home. A blue waiting to be filled.

Something emerged. The painting was still wet when Ondine pulled it off the wall and headed to Raphael’s class.

B
ITCH.

Staring past the heads of her classmates at Ondine’s impossibly beautiful painting on the opposite wall, Morgan couldn’t stop
the word from springing into her head, straight from the pit of her stomach.
Bitch bitch bitch.
She looked at Ondine’s painting, watched Ondine nodding at Raphael, Raphael beaming — beaming! — back at Ondine. A proud
smile that usually only Morgan received during one of Raphael’s harsh crits.

Stop, she told herself.
Stop it.
She couldn’t.

He hadn’t even spoken. When Ondine tacked up her painting, still wet, Raphael Inman was so moved he couldn’t speak.
He had cupped his hand to his mouth as if his guts were caught there, and he hadn’t even spoken. The whole class just stood
there, following Raphael’s lead like a bunch of stupid cows while Ondine stared at her shoes.

And blushed. The bitch blushed.

Morgan herself would never have shown something so messy, so unfinished, so raw.

With a trembling hand, she tucked her hair behind her ear and wiped away the veil of sweat that had gathered at her temples.
It was hot in the room, odd since it was almost nine at night. She was about to throw up. At least she had been late and couldn’t
assume her normal seat at the front of the classroom. At least there was that. But it wasn’t fair. Morgan wanted Raphael Inman
to favor her. Not the skinny bitch at the front of the class. Spoiled brat. Was there anything Ondine
didn’t
get?

“Well, Ondine.” At last Raphael spoke. “Would you like to tell us about this?” Morgan swallowed hard to quell the sick bulge
in her stomach, noting Raphael’s barely concealed smile, his proud-father look. That look should have been hers. That smile
should have been hers.

Ondine looked at her feet, then at the painting. “I —” She faltered, uncomfortable with the attention.