Betwixt (18 page)

Revolting.

“I was just thinking about what you said last time, about the heart and the mind. And our assignment was to use one
color, understand one color. And I had been feeling, I don’t know … alone — and I understood that for me, blue was the color
of that loneliness. Not a sad loneliness, but a loneliness that wanted company.”

Morgan couldn’t listen to any more of Ondine’s blather. The fey looks, the earnest nodding. Raphael’s devoted attention. She
knew her teacher adored her work, she didn’t need to feel jealous, but she couldn’t help it. Everything had been so awful
at home. K.A. busy 24–7 with Neve, then jetting off to soccer camp, her pathetic mother irritating her about school and college
apps and whether she had called her dad. Her “dad.” The bastard took her to Jake’s Crawfish once a month with Bree, the “athletic
dancer,” during which time he spoke entirely to the woman’s tits. They wanted to have a baby, he told Morgan in a rare moment
of looking her way.
A little sister for you, Morgue, honey!
Just what Morgue honey wanted: a slobbering brat siphoning off what little Phil Jr. claimed to be saving for her and K.A.’s
college education.
Fuck them.

But what really bugged her was that she couldn’t get Bleek’s visit to the Krak and her own odd behavior out of her mind. She
thought of the night of the party, the missing hours, creepy Tim Bleeker, and — once more — Moth. What did it matter if she
knew where some lame, Red Bull–sponsored rave was if all it did was help a saggy drug dealer find it? She’d already made up
her mind: no way she was going. The last thing she wanted to do on
the longest day of summer was spend it driving to the middle of nowhere.
Bend,
ugh. Condos and housewives in Uggs and bear shit. No, thank you.

So she had stayed up late painting, working on her college applications, getting ready for her senior APs. Work started early
at the Krak and she was exhausted. Everything was ass and Raphael’s class had been the summer’s only solace. Now Ondine was
ruining everything — again.

Morgan slipped out the open door of Raphael’s studio. Not a head turned, though the sweet pair of black Sigerson Morrisons
(two months’ tips at the Krak) she had worn to class clacked down the linoleum hall. She didn’t care. Legs were the animal
part of a woman. Hadn’t Raphael said that about Ingres’s
Odalisque
? She wore miniskirts every day after that.

But even the most scandalous hemline couldn’t do anything about the stifling air that was choking her tonight. It was damn
hot. Morgan felt another wave of nausea. She needed to get outside. She needed fresh air.

The car’s clock read 9:02
PM
. Twenty-eight minutes left for Raphael to slobber all over Ondine. Morgan felt the rush of a dry sob but swallowed it, instead
starting the used Lexus she had bought by scrimping and saving every penny of every job she’d had since her paper route at
eleven, and screeched out of the parking lot. She was too distraught to even play the radio.

The road was clear. Instinct guided her home. Streetlights,
darkened stores. She would not cry. Scratch that: She
could
not cry. What was wrong with her? All her life Morgan D’Amici had awaited her senior year. She would be class president.
She was considered the most beautiful, intelligent girl in school and yet here she was at the doorstep of the rest of her
life and all she felt was confused, and lost, and sad.

And angry. Why was she so angry?

She pulled into the long gravel driveway of the house on Steele Street. No one was home. K.A. was at Stanford; Yvonne was
at Todd’s.
And Morgan is in a trailer, where she belongs.
She turned off the ignition. The lights faded. She let herself go.

She sobbed, grasping the steering wheel with her delicate hands. She hated crying. Not so much because of the weakness, though
she resented that, too, but because nothing came out. No tears, no snot. Just cracking heaves. It wasn’t the way she used
to cry. Before the nights spent sleepwalking, she had tears. Wet, luxurious tears. Then one day they went away.

It was dark, no one could see her. She sat and shook and wailed; she didn’t know for how long. Snatches of memory flashed.
Scenes of death, of things she felt like she had seen, but how could she have? She was a nice girl. A good girl. Raphael told
them to paint what was in their hearts, but how could she? How could she paint the tableaux of destruction that sprung, unbidden,
in her mind? A wolf eating her young. Worms twisting in the earth under moonlight. The cruelty — the senseless,
feelingless cruelty of nature? How could she paint the baby bird taking flight only to drown in a puddle an inch deep under
the nest, to be gnawed on by vermin until there were only bits of feathers and bones left?

She stared into the blackness, at the even blacker forest beyond. How could she express what she knew was hidden there? How
could she paint the dark things animals do?

T
HE MORNING OF JUNE 20
, N
IX WOKE UP BEFORE DAWN.
It was Wednesday. Ondine had gotten in late from class the night before and he didn’t want to wake her. It had been a hot
night and so he’d slept downstairs on one of the couches that faced the backyard, and when the sun rose to reveal a coming
storm — a bloody smear rising into a mounting anvil of gray — he knew it was the day. Moth had told him he’d know, and he
did, though he wasn’t sure how. Something about the unusual weather. No kid who wasn’t invited was going to venture out to
a rumored party in the mountains today. Not on a Wednesday. Not with a storm coming. He took a shower, packed water and blankets
and a change of clothes, his pocketknife and a tent. He included a sleeping bag, flashlights, bug spray. Wrapping Ondine’s
leftovers in sheets of tinfoil, he felt like a husband almost. Confident, excited. Prepared for anything.

In the kitchen he washed apples and carrots and celery for snacks, running his hands under the cool water, thinking about
the events of the coming day. He let Ondine sleep. Getting her there was his job.

It wasn’t so much that he expected something in particular as he knew that whatever was at the Ring of Fire — whatever James
Motherwell was leading them to — might be able to answer questions he’d harbored about himself all his life. Nix wasn’t sure
what this meant to Ondine, but he felt a double edge of anticipation and anxiety. He’d been wandering in darkness. The loss
of his mother, a father he never knew. Visions that terrorized him. Now he sensed he was heading toward something that would
complete him — or at least chart his course toward completion.

He wasn’t surprised when Neve Clowes’s small face appeared before him, hovering above the sink. She wore a sparkling collar
around her neck and she was crying. Then Ondine. Her eyes were closed, her face blank.
Nix,
she summoned.
Nix, cover me.

He opened his eyes. He was standing at the Masons’ marble sink, an apple in his hands, the water running. The sun peeked over
the trees at the border of the backyard.

“Nix?”

He turned to find Ondine behind him. She wore jeans, a hoodie mini, and a black RVCA jacket. Her hair was tied back in her
red scarf and she wore a baseball hat. She held a backpack in her hands.

“I got a text from Moth.” She took a deep breath and stared. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

M
ORGAN AWOKE TO A MUFFLED THUMP
on the windshield. A toad had plopped there from somewhere and was now trying to get off by scrambling across the dew-slicked
glass. Each time it tried to hop it slipped.
Just my fucking luck.
Outside the sky was scarlet tinged with gray and the air seeping through a small crack in the driver’s-side window smelled
swampy and burnt. A storm was coming. She felt achy and prickly and tired. The sandals she wore for Raphael sat muddy, straps
broken, on the seat next to her. She didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that there would be sticks in her hair, that
her feet would be dirty.

She turned the ignition and watched the headlights seep into the semidarkness. How was she going to get rid of the toad? On
her fucking Lexus, which she had cleaned
by hand
just the day before? It tried to climb the windshield — when the lights came on it sensed something had changed — only to
slip again on the sweaty glass.
Stupid piece of shit. Dumb beast.
She didn’t want to touch it. She turned on her wipers, thinking maybe that would dislodge it. All it did was confuse the
thing, causing it to scramble faster. Find a stick, Morgan thought, push it off. Instead, she turned up the wipers and the
blades started to whip faster across
the glass. She wanted to punish it for being so dumb. For spreading its filthy toad-juice all over her car. It hopped for
a while, avoiding the metronome of the blade, but soon it tired. A leg caught, then tore. She flicked again. It started to
quiver. Pressed against the glass, its tiny heart pulsed.
Good.
Again, faster. It slipped under the blade. Green and brown guts trickled. Finally its flat, ugly head. Then it was dead.

She sat for a second. Couldn’t she have gotten a stick?

No. It needed to die.

She pressed the little button at the end of the wiper and a solid stream of fluid — Lexuses were good like that — skimmed
over the bloodied glass. She waited and pressed again; the wipers wooshed, and everything washed away. Only when it was quiet
did she hear the soft buzzing.

“R
IGHT
. N
O LEFT
. N
O
. T
HE TWENTY
-
MILE MARK.
Linus Road? I can’t remember what he said. Something about a campground —?”

Nix glanced over at Ondine while she stared at the map, turning it around in her hands to get her bearings. She had let him
drive, saying that she needed to be in charge of directions, though she hadn’t looked up once since Bend. They’d passed the
town twenty miles ago and Nix was looking for Paulina Road, as
Moth had promised. A few hundred yards more and there it was. He took a left. Oaks and feathery pines arced into the road,
soon giving way to craggy rocks, thin combs of trees, and crusty black soil.

“I’ve been here before,” she said, looking around. “We’re near Sisters. The mountains. I came here in elementary school once
to see what a volcano looked like. A flank was bulging or something —” She looked at Nix and they both smiled. “The area is
due for an eruption any day now. Give or take a thousand years.”

“You don’t say.” He squeezed her knee, and Ondine smiled again and looked back at the map, tracing the contours of the volcano
near the campground, its crater now filled with two perfectly round lakes.

“That must be Paulina Lake,” she said, remembering the twin sapphire lakes surrounded by black rock. “It’s beautiful there.”

The drive off the main road was longer than they expected and soon the radio was just static. Ondine checked her cell phone;
a few bars still showed. When they got to the promised parking lot, they were already twenty or so miles in. Nix turned off
the ignition and Ondine looked up from the map in her hands.

“Great!” She smiled. “We made it!”

Nix nodded. It appeared they were at the right place, though the thickening clouds behind them made him marvel again that
a party would be held on such a crappy day. The presence of a few VW buses, dusty Toyotas, SUVs, and the like — the geeky-funky-crunchy
mix of any Northwestern campground parking lot—confirmed that Moth had advised him correctly. Nothing was unusual about the
scene except that the lot wasn’t full. A few people unpacked coolers and backpacks from trunks. No one looked much over twenty-five.
Kids appeared in the lot as if they had walked down the dirt road, though Nix hadn’t noticed them on the way in.

A dark patch in the scrubby forest showed an entrance to a trail.

“I guess it’s in there.” Ondine pointed and Nix nodded again.

“Let’s go then.”

He didn’t feel much like talking. In the distance, black hills swelled and Nix smelled sulfur. A strange place for a party,
he thought again, and as if in answer, Ondine said, “There’s a state park here.” She looked up at the gloomy sky.