Unmistakable (9 page)

Izzy is a miracle worker—there’s no trace of the punk rock Elvira hideousness that the mirror showed me earlier. She’s managed to coax my fake inky waves into a mass of curls, adding just enough makeup so that my too-pale skin looks luminous rather than sickly. Best of all, there’s no trace of black goopy mascara from beneath the mask, just the shock of green eyes that I’ve hidden behind my glasses for more than three years now.

“Iz...”

“You look stunning, darling. Like a flapper-era Scarlett O’Hara.”

I throw my arms around her before glancing back at the girl in the mirror, this third version of myself. She’s still a stranger—fierce, elegant, and infinitely more composed than I feel. A stranger that I just might be able to live with.

“Thanks, Iz.”

“Thanks for letting me. It’s been a long time coming.”

“You’re right. It has.”

I straighten my shoulders and give her a mischievous look.

“Let’s do this thing.”

She slings her arm through mine and grabs her purse from the table. “What happens at Phillips...”

“Stays at Phillips.”

W
hen we get to the club, there’s already a line of impeccably dressed hopefuls wrapped around the block. My confidence level falls below zero. Izzy gives the queue a quick once-over, shakes her head in disdain, and pulls me behind her to the main door, where three burly men stand guard.

“You have to get to the back of the line,” a girl calls out.

“Come on, Iz,” I say, tugging on her hand. “We’re going to make all of these people angry.”

She matches the girl’s sneer with one of her own. “Screw them. We’re getting into this party if it kills me. And I don’t do lines.”

While she sweet-talks one of the bouncers, I choose to hang on the fringes of the crowd, feeling hopelessly awkward and even a little bit underdressed. We’ll never make it in.

And...I never should have doubted Iz. A minute after she cozies up to the front of the line, she crooks a finger at me, the bouncer raises his eyebrows, and, as if by magic, the velvet rope falls open. Iz beams and throws her arms around the burly man.

“Get your ass over here, Stella!” she yells.

“Great costume,” the bouncer says, eyeing me appreciatively. “You girls have fun now.”

“See,” Izzy says triumphantly. “That was easy, wasn’t it?”

I look back at the disgruntled crowd. “I don’t think we managed to win many admirers.”

“Just the one admirer who matters.” She winks at the bouncer, whose nametag reads Jerome. “Screw them. We just made a thousand bucks. Each.”

“That’s all well and fine, but I’m using you as a human shield when we get jumped trying to get ourselves out of here. Also, I really do not want to know what you promised Jerome.”

Her smirk is joyous. “I might have said that you would go on a date with him.”

“Iz, that’s it. I am going to...”

The threat dies in my throat as a man in a tuxedo hands us each a glass of champagne. The entrance into the club is a narrow pathway, and light emanates from dozens and maybe hundreds of candles, which are haphazardly placed in tiny nooks in the wall. It’s a seemingly endless walk before we reach the cavernous interior and Izzy chatters away about our victory, but I’m too transfixed by the beauty of the space to do anything but stare.

An enormous crystal chandelier dangles in the center of the dance floor, which is surrounded by cozy-looking booths filled with beautiful people. I recognize one of the Housewives, a well-known rapper whose only hit consisted of exactly three lines—“Get down. Uh. Get down and let me see you move your ass,” and a couple of insanely handsome black men in crisp white suits, who I think are models. Or moguls. Or something.

Even the dancers grinding to the steady pulse of a hip-hop beat look like professionals. I would normally take a few minutes to gawk some more, but the gleam in Iz’s eye informs me that she has a different plan.

“Let’s dance!” She drops her empty champagne glass unceremoniously on one of the nearby tables. This is going to require a lot of liquid courage. I lift my still-full glass, tilt my head back, and let the bubbles coat my throat before following suit.

“I need another drink if you’re going to get me out on that dance floor,” I yell, my voice barely audible over the music.

“You’re speaking my language now, mi querida amiga,” she says, already making a beeline for the bar.

As she drapes herself over the mahogany ledge, a very pretty boy, also dressed in a tuxedo, rushes over.

“Pick your poison, ladies,” he drawls, giving Iz a languorous look before leaning in to shout-whisper into her ear, “May I suggest tequila?”

Izzy is mock-outraged and loving every bit of him. “Tequila is for novices. Or people who have a death wish. We need vodka. Lots of vodka.”

“Whiskey for me,” I correct.

“Your wishes are my command. One vodka and one whiskey,” he says, whipping the cocktail shaker above his head with a magnificent, but unnecessary, flourish. In a matter of seconds, he produces a faintly pink-colored concoction and my whiskey.

I start to hand over some cash, but he pushes my hand away.

“These two are compliments of that gentleman standing right over there.”

I ask him to thank our benefactor, but Izzy, nonplussed, cuts me off.

“Thank you,” Iz says, clinking her shot glass against mine. “And thank you,” she mouths, in the direction of a stunningly handsome man with gleaming ebony skin.

“Cheers, Stella dear. To your dresses and my imagination.”

“To the boys of Sigma Alpha eating our shit,” I add. We down the shots and slam them back onto the bar.

My stomach is warm and my head is starting to fuzz over. It’s almost enough to make me forget about my day. About Luke. Almost.

“All right. Dancing,” Izzy announces, grabbing my arm.

I groan, but I don’t put up much of a fight. As we make our way to the gleaming wooden floor, the purchaser of our shots intercepts us with an easy smile.

“Hello, ladies. Having a nice time?”

“I don’t know yet.” Izzy touches his arm flirtatiously and swivels to give me an appraising look. “Are we having a good time, Stella?”

There’s no use in contradicting her. Her glee is infectious, and besides that, there will be no bikini car washes in my future, a fact for which I am profoundly grateful. “I think we just might be having a good time. Thank you for the drinks.”

He brushes off my gratitude with a casual sweep of his arm. “First time here?” he asks in a low, intimate tone.

“It is. But I don’t think it will be the last,” Izzy replies, lowering her eyelashes.

“I certainly hope not.” He chuckles. “Would either of you care to dance?”

“I think we might be able to arrange something. If the circumstances are right,” she says.

“Then we dance,” he says, offering one arm to Izzy and the other to me. “I’m Darius.”

“Izzy. And this is Stella.”

I take his proffered arm, albeit reluctantly. It usually takes about three drinks before I decide to humiliate myself on the dance floor, but a half-glass of champagne and a shot of whiskey will just have to do this time.

The beat is thumping, loud, and decidedly not in line with the Bootlegger theme. I use a couple of my patented moves—mostly swaying and occasionally dipping my body to the ground. I’m not exactly Paula Abdul (in her pre-Idol, dance queen phase), but no one seems to notice—the drinks are flowing too freely and the music is too loud, and Izzy and her phenomenal dancing skills more than make up for my deficiencies. Darius’s eyeballs threaten to pop right out of his head.

By the third song, my earlier words are no longer a lie—I think I just might be having a good time.

“All right, y’all! Ready for a change of pace?” the DJ howls. He samples a few tracks, mostly jazz and swing, which are promptly met by a chorus of boos. He’s undeterred. “Y’all are just gonna make do with the greatest artist of all time.”

I’m expecting Biggie or 2Pac, but instead, the faint strums of Billie Holiday begin to stream from the speakers. I have to stifle a smile—if we’re really going for a 20s theme here, it’s about thirty years too soon. However, “You Go to My Head” has always been my favorite Billie song, and my toes are already starting to tap out a slow, devastating rhythm. Evidently, I do want to dance.

“Stella, I’m going to drop my purse off and grab a drink. Darius, dance with her,” Izzy says, with an impish glance in my direction.

Darius extends a hand and whispers, “No naughty tricks. Just dancing. I promise.”

Oh, what the hell. My tentative smile is all the agreement he needs. He pulls my body close to his, and as we begin to sway back and forth, I’m hit with my most powerful memory, number one on the top ten list. It’s the breathless kind of recollection, the perfect kind, the one that exists not in the past and not in the present but somewhere in between.

Luke and I are swaying under the flowers as the light of the day begins to fade beneath the horizon. The summer heat begins to dissipate with that light, and the earth is soft and wet beneath our feet. He twirls me unexpectedly, my stomach drops, and I am utterly, hopelessly, lost.

It sounds romantic, but isn’t really: Jack is barking out commands from the treehouse in his best imitation of my mother’s voice. My toes are black and blue. Luke’s developing a serious bruise on his arm from all the times I’ve squeezed it too tightly. I’m at least a head and a half shorter than him, which causes major problems when we get to the dips.

I’m seven. He’s ten. Romantic or not, it’s the greatest moment of my life.

It was the summer that Luke’s mother decided to get remarried (again), and Luke was collateral damage. Amelia had visions of a big band wedding, and she bribed her only son into performing for the hordes of F-list celebrities by promising him a PlayStation. After a long series of negotiations, Luke agreed to learn how to dance. With a partner. As Jack’s little sister and the only girl that they knew who didn’t have cooties, I hit the jackpot by default.

The chance to be indispensable to a much-beloved older brother and to crack the brotherhood that he and Luke had created, was only a part of it. Naturally, both of them still saw me as a total nuisance, but for the first time ever, I was necessary. In the most glorious three weeks of my short life, dancing with Luke made up the bulk of my days. For however long Luke could stand it, Jack would scream and holler and we would dance and dance and dance until we had gotten all of the steps exactly right.

His mother called off the wedding at the last minute when she learned that the groom-to-be had recently lost a good portion of his stock holdings in a bad investment deal. No one was surprised, but Luke still got his video games and I got the kind of everlasting memories that all preteen girls dream about.

I clung to those memories through the awkward middle school and early high school years, all the way until I got some fairly spectacular breasts (if I do say so myself) and became the mean girl queen of Amity High.

I must still remember some of the basic steps, because Darius gives me an appreciative glance as he places his hand on the small of my back.

“Ready?” he asks.

“For what?”

I let out a little whoop of joy as he bends me so far backwards that my hair grazes the ground.

“That,” Darius says gallantly.

“That’s right, Stella!” Izzy calls out, obviously delighted.

Enchanted by the music and the memory, I forget that sarcasm is my main mode of human communication and that I have deliberately cultivated a reputation as a bone-crushing femme bot who doubles as an Elvira look-alike. I feel silly and pretty and completely frivolous. As I give Izzy a little bow, I can almost pretend that today never happened and that the past three years were nothing more than a nightmarish interlude.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

Almost, but not quite. I take five seconds to put the universe back into place, and when I do, I find Darius smiling down at me, completely oblivious to my struggle for control. I force a plastic smile onto my face.

“Another?” he asks. A new track, another jazz number owning a familiar beat, makes my feet itch for more. I’m about to say yes when I notice that his eyes are lingering on a beautiful blond next to us.

I nod my head towards her. With a wicked grin, he draws me close and whispers into my ear, “Play along, won’t you, doll?”

He taps the blond on the shoulder and when she spins around, I’m struck with an instant, and vehement, sense of dislike. She’s composed and elegant, despite the oppressive heat of the dance floor and the jostling elbows of people trying to make it to the center of the crowd. Every inch of her, from the intricately curled, bottle-blond hair to the sky-high, sequined heels, is annoyingly perfect.

“I must be in heaven, because they don’t make them like you on Earth,” Darius says, holding out his hand to her with an enormous grin. I nearly bust out laughing, but I manage to hold it together when he jabs my side. “May I have this dance?”

She turns to the man standing beside her. “Hold my bag,” she orders, extending a tiny, sequined purse.

The imperious tone of her voice rubs me the wrong way. Everything about her rubs me the wrong way. I’m so busy shooting jealous daggers that I fail to look at her companion.

“No.”

The ferocity of that one simple word, and the knowledge that the person who said it is no more than three feet away from me, steals the last of my breath.

Of course he’s here. It’s all one big cosmic joke—even if I don’t find it very funny. Encased in the crush of the dance floor, I have no choice but to look directly at him. With agonizing slowness, I raise my gaze and find that his electric blue eyes are immutably fixed on mine. He doesn’t blink, or look away, or even glance in the blond’s direction. I’m held captive, just like I was in the hallway and that night on the patio and a thousand other times that he’s silenced me with the sheer power of his gaze.

The blond lets out an angry puff of air and makes an undignified noise, but Darius eventually manages to sweep her away to the dance floor, leaving Luke and me to fend for ourselves.