The Last Song (5 page)

Ronnie didn’t want to go there. Not after what happened to Kayla last winter. Someone—Kayla never knew who—slipped some GHB
into her drink, and though she had only a vague recollection of what happened next, she was pretty sure she remembered being
in a room with three guys she’d met for the first time that night. When she woke the following morning, her clothes were strewn
around the room. Kayla never said anything more—she preferred to pretend it had never happened at all and regretted having
told Ronnie even that much—but it wasn’t hard to connect the dots.

When she reached the pier, Ronnie set down her half-empty drink cup and dabbed furiously at her shirt with her wet napkin.
It seemed to be working, but the napkin was disintegrating into tiny white flakes that resembled dandruff.

Great.

She wished the guy had rammed into someone else. She was only there for what, ten minutes? What were the odds that she’d turn
away at the same instant the ball came flying her way? And that she’d be holding a soda in a crowd at a volleyball game she
didn’t even want to watch, in a place she didn’t want to be? In a million years, the same thing could probably never happen
again. With odds like that, she should have bought a lottery ticket.

And then there was the guy who did it. Brown-haired, brown-eyed cute guy. Up close, she realized he was way better looking
than
cute,
especially when he got that expression of… concern. He might have been part of the popular crowd, but in the nanosecond their
eyes had met, she’d had the strangest sense that he was as real as they came.

Ronnie shook her head to clear her mind of such crazy thoughts. Clearly the sun was affecting her brain. Satisfied that she’d
done the best she could with the napkin, she picked up the cup of soda. She planned to throw the rest away, but as she spun
around, she felt the cup get jammed between her and someone else. This time, nothing happened in slow motion; the soda instantly
covered the front of her shirt.

She froze, staring down at her shirt in disbelief.
You’ve got to be kidding.

Standing before her was a girl her age holding a Slurpee, seemingly as surprised as she was. She was dressed in black, and
her stringy dark hair hung in unruly curls framing her face. Like Kayla, she had at least half a dozen piercings in each ear,
highlighted with a couple of miniature skulls that dangled from her earlobes, and her dark eye shadow and eyeliner gave her
an almost feral appearance. As the remains of her soda soaked through Ronnie’s shirt, Goth-looking chick motioned with her
Slurpee toward the spreading stain.

“Sucks being you,” she said.

“Ya think?”

“At least the other side matches now.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re trying to be funny.”

“‘Witty’ is more like it.”

“Then you might have said something like ‘Maybe you should stick with sippy-cups.’”

Goth-chick laughed, a surprisingly girlish sound. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, I’m from New York. I’m here visiting my dad.”

“For the weekend?”

“No. For the summer.”

“It does suck being you.”

This time, it was Ronnie’s turn to laugh. “I’m Ronnie. It’s short for Veronica.”

“Call me Blaze.”

“Blaze?”

“My real name’s Galadriel. It’s from
Lord of the Rings
. My mom’s weird like that.”

“At least she didn’t name you Gollum.”

“Or Ronnie.” With a tilt of her head, she motioned over her shoulder. “If you want something dry, there are some Nemo shirts
in the booth over there.”

“Nemo?”

“Yeah, Nemo. From the movie? Orange-and-white fish, gimpy flipper? Gets stuck in a fish tank and his dad goes to find him?”

“I don’t want a Nemo shirt, okay?”

“Nemo’s cool.”

“Maybe if you’re six,” Ronnie retorted.

“Suit yourself.”

Before Ronnie could respond, she spied three guys pushing their way through a parting mob. They stood out from the beach crowd
with their torn shorts and tattoos, bare chests showing beneath heavy leather jackets. One had a pierced eyebrow and was carrying
an old-fashioned boom box; another had a bleached Mohawk and arms completely covered with tattoos. The third, like Blaze,
had long black hair offset by milky white skin. Ronnie turned instinctively to Blaze, only to realize that Blaze was gone.
In her place stood Jonah.

“What did you spill on your shirt?” he asked. “You’re all wet and sticky.”

Ronnie searched for Blaze, wondering where she’d gone. And why. “Just go away, okay?”

“I can’t. Dad’s looking for you. I think he wants you to come home.”

“Where is he?”

“He stopped to go to the bathroom, but he should be here any minute.”

“Tell him you didn’t see me.”

Jonah thought about it. “Five bucks.”

“What?”

“Gimme five bucks and I’ll forget you were here.”

“Are you serious?”

“You don’t have much time,” he said. “Now it’s ten bucks.”

Over Jonah’s head, she spotted her dad searching the crowd around him. Instinctively she ducked, knowing there was no way
she could sneak past him. She glared at her brother, the blackmailer, who’d obviously realized it as well. He was cute and
she loved him and she respected his blackmailing abilities, but still, he was her little brother. In a perfect world, he would
be on her side. But was he? Of course not.

“I hate you, you know,” she said.

“Yeah, I hate you, too. But it’s still gonna cost you ten bucks.”

“How about five?”

“You missed your chance. But your secret will be safe with me.”

Her dad still hadn’t seen them, but he was getting closer.

“Fine,” she hissed, digging through her pockets. She passed over a crumpled bill and Jonah pocketed the money. Glancing over
her shoulder, she saw her father moving in her direction, his head still going from side to side, and she ducked around the
booth. Surprising her, Blaze was leaning against the side of the booth, smoking a cigarette.

She smirked. “Problems with your dad?”

“How do I get out of here?”

“That’s up to you.” Blaze shrugged. “But he knows what shirt you’re wearing.”

An hour later, Ronnie was sitting beside Blaze on one of the benches near the end of the pier, still bored, but not quite
as bored as she’d been before. Blaze turned out to be a good listener, with a quirky sense of humor—and best of all, she seemed
to love New York as much as Ronnie did, even though she’d never been there. She asked questions about the basics: Times Square
and the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty—tourist traps that Ronnie tried to avoid at all costs. But Ronnie
humored her before describing the real New York: the clubs in Chelsea, the music scene in Brooklyn, and the street vendors
in Chinatown, where it was possible to buy bootlegged recordings or fake Prada purses or pretty much anything else for pennies
on the dollar.

Talking about those places made her absolutely
long
to be back home instead of here. Anywhere but here.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to come here either,” Blaze agreed. “Trust me. It’s boring.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Just my whole life. But at least I’m dressed okay.”

Ronnie had bought the stupid Nemo shirt, knowing she looked ridiculous. The only size the booth had in stock was an extralarge,
and the thing practically reached her knees. Its only redeeming feature was that once she donned it, she’d been able to slip
unseen past her father. Blaze had been right about that.

“Someone told me Nemo was cool.”

“She was lying.”

“What are we still doing out here? My dad’s probably gone by now.”

Blaze turned. “Why? Do you want to go back to the carnival? Maybe go to the haunted house?”

“No. But there’s got to be something else going on.”

“Not yet. Later there will be. But for now, let’s just wait.”

“For what?”

Blaze didn’t answer. Instead, she stood and turned around, facing the blackened water. Her hair moved in the breeze, and she
seemed to stare at the moon. “I saw you earlier, you know.”

“When?”

“When you were at the volleyball game.” She motioned down the pier. “I was standing over there.”

“And?”

“You seemed out of place.”

“So do you.”

“Which is why I was standing on the pier.” She hopped up onto the railing and took a seat, facing Ronnie. “I know you don’t
want to be here, but what did your dad do to make you so mad?”

Ronnie wiped her palms on her pants. “It’s a long story.”

“Does he live with his girlfriend?”

“I don’t think he has a girlfriend. Why?”

“Consider yourself lucky.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My dad lives with his girlfriend. This is his third one since the divorce, by the way, and she’s the worst by far. She’s
only a few years older than I am and she dresses like a stripper. For all I know, she was a stripper. It makes me sick every
time I have to go there. It’s like she doesn’t know how to act around me. One minute she tries to give me advice like she’s
my mom, and the next minute she’s trying to be my best friend. I hate her.”

“And you live with your mom?”

“Yeah. But now she has a boyfriend, and he’s at the house all the time. And he’s a loser, too. He wears this ridiculous toupee
because he went bald when he was like twenty or something, and he’s always telling me that I want to think about giving college
a try. Like I care what he thinks. It’s just all screwed up, you know?”

Before Ronnie could answer, Blaze jumped back down. “C’mon. I think they’re getting ready to start. You’ve got to see this.”

Ronnie followed Blaze back up the pier, toward a crowd surrounding what seemed to be a street show. Startled, she realized
that the performers were the three thuggish guys she’d spotted earlier. Two of them were break-dancing to music blaring from
the boom box, while the one with long black hair stood in the center juggling what seemed to be flaming golf balls. Every
now and then he would stop juggling and simply hold the ball, rotating it between his fingers or rolling it across the back
of his hand or up one arm and down the other. Twice, he closed his fist over the fireball, nearly extinguishing it, only to
move his hand, allowing the flames to escape out the tiny opening near his thumb.

“Do you know him?” Ronnie said.

Blaze nodded. “That’s Marcus.”

“Is he wearing some sort of protective coating on his hands?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Not if you hold the fireball right. It’s awesome, though, isn’t it?”

Ronnie had to agree. Marcus extinguished two of the balls and then relit them again by touching them to the third. On the
ground lay an upturned magician’s hat, and Ronnie watched as people began tossing money into it.

“Where does he get the fireballs?”

“He makes them. I can show you how. It’s not hard. All you need is a cotton T-shirt, needle and thread, and some lighter fluid.”

As the music continued to blare, Marcus tossed the three fireballs to the guy with the Mohawk and lit two more. They juggled
them back and forth between each other like circus clowns using bowling pins, faster and faster, until one throw went awry.

Except that it didn’t. The guy with the pierced eyebrow caught it soccer-ball style and began bouncing it from foot to foot
as though it were nothing more than a Hacky Sack. After extinguishing three of the fireballs, the other two followed suit,
the entire troupe kicking the two fireballs back and forth between them. The crowd started to clap, and money rained into
the hat as the music built to a crescendo. Then all at once, the remaining fireballs were caught and extinguished simultaneously
as the song thundered to a close.

Ronnie had to admit she’d never seen anything like it. Marcus walked over to Blaze and folded her into a long, lingering kiss
that seemed wildly inappropriate in public. He opened his eyes slowly, staring right at Ronnie before he pushed Blaze away.

“Who’s that?” he asked, motioning in Ronnie’s direction.

“That’s Ronnie,” Blaze said. “She’s from New York. I just met her.”

Mohawk and Pierced Eyebrow joined Marcus and Blaze in their scrutiny, making Ronnie feel distinctly uncomfortable.

“New York, huh?” Marcus asked, pulling a lighter from his pocket and igniting one of the fireballs. He held the flaming orb
motionless between his thumb and forefinger, making Ronnie wonder again how he could do that without getting burned.

“Do you like fire?” he called out.

Without waiting for an answer, he threw the fireball in her direction. Ronnie jumped out of the way, too startled to respond.
The ball landed behind her just as a police officer rushed forward, stamping out the flame.

“You three,” he called out, pointing. “Out. Now. I’ve told you before that you can’t do your little show on the pier, and
next time, I swear I’m gonna bring you in.”

Marcus held up his hands and took a step backward. “We were just leaving.”

The boys grabbed their coats and began moving up the pier, toward the carnival rides. Blaze followed, leaving Ronnie alone.
Ronnie felt the officer’s gaze on her, but she ignored him. Instead, she hesitated only briefly before going after them.