They stayed up all night. Blue hung out on the deck with Jill, watching her drink vodka and cranberry juice, and counted the stars.
"I'm twenty-seven, you know," Jill said finally. "Time to make something happen. I'm pretending to be his girl on TV—big deal. It's not like I'm marrying him or anything."
Blue nodded. The noise from inside had died back a bit, the spaces of quiet filled with the low thrum of the bass. It had been three months since she'd last spoken with Teena, seven months since Cass. Here, listening to Jill, being close, felt like standing in the sun on the first warm day after winter.
"It's mostly Bet that I feel bad about. I love her, she's great, but …" Jill swirled her drink. "She feels a little left out of the whole scene with the band. And she hears all that shit that Chris, the drummer, talks, and … It makes things seem different than they are. I told her I'd never sleep with Jed. It's true, I wouldn't. This thing for the TV, it's just for show. Who cares what people see on the outside, right? It doesn't matter.
"The thing is … she gave up going to Italy on an art scholarship this year to be with Jed. They made a deal they'd go together instead. They're supposed to leave in three weeks. She's got to know a chance like this is more important. It's not like Italy's going to vanish."
Blue followed Jill's gaze through the window, to where Bet sat next to Meena. Jed was talking, and as Bet watched him, something close to despair flashed across her face, to be replaced with a smile as soon as he turned toward her.
Did Jed not see the hurt, or did he not care? Had he even stopped to ask Bet how she felt about it?
Cass had done the same thing. I'm not making the same mistake Mama made. I've got talent, and I'll do whatever I need to make people see it, her note had said. Including, apparently, leaving Blue behind, giving her nothing but four phone calls to hold on to.
"Come on." Jill took Blue's hand and led her through the garden. Her boots kept her feet dry and warm as they passed through the remnants of the flower beds, but her feet ached with something akin to hunger. "You'll like this."
At the far end of the garden was what she had assumed was a shed. Up close, she realized it was much too fancy to store tools in. The front door had doves painted on it, and it opened into a room lit with the soft glow of paper lanterns. Jill made her way to the back wall, where she tugged a chain and lit a silver floor lamp. It shone on a red velvet couch with carved wooden legs. The walls and floor were dark-paneled. In one corner stood a stereo system; one whole wall was filled with shelves of old records.
"Bet's aunt used to review music. She's got a ton of great stuff, stuff I'd never heard of until we started coming here. Lie on the couch and close your eyes. I'll pick something out."
Blue sat down, unlaced her boots, and slipped them off. Exposed, her feet felt normal, same old skin and toes. She wiggled them as she lay back, hands behind her head, and closed her eyes.
A hiss filled the room, the soft sizzle of a record in the seconds before the music started. It was followed by the first few bars from a guitar she knew far too well. The fiddle trailed behind, melancholy, her mother's voice matching its mournful timbre.
This road I know far too well,
The one between your door and mine,
More holes than tar, more lost than found,
Avenue A through my private hell.
Tish's words, her mother's music. She remembered the smell of Tish now—cigarettes and leather and peppermint and whiskey. A tattoo of vines and thorns circling her wrist. Another of a blue eye at the base of her neck. Her raspy voice in response to Mama: "For fuck's sake, Clary, you gotta want more than this."
"What do you think?" Jill's long hair tickled Blue's nose as she leaned over her. She smelled sweet, like hay and fruit. "Good stuff, huh?"
Blue opened her eyes. Patterns of dark and light shimmered, the night gentle against the windows as the world started its slow shift toward morning. She took out her notebook, thought for a moment. It's my mom, she should say. She and Tish made that record, and I thought it would change everything, but it didn't. They never got their big break. Mama died, and people forgot that Dry Gully ever existed, and I forget little bits of her every day. She told me that the important part was making music, that all the songs, even the forgotten ones, swirl in the air, become part of what's to come. That musicians play in the midst of ghosts every day. I think she would have told you not to do what you're doing, because maybe you're giving away more than you know for less than you think.
She should have said it all, but maybe she was wrong, just a messed-up kid running away from home. Instead, she wrote just three words.
Yeah, good stuff.
Rosy fingertips of light stroked the sky by the time they slipped back into the house. The drummer was sprawled on the downstairs couch, a line of drool slick at the corner of his mouth, a baby's softness to his face. Beer bottles lay along the edges of the rug, clinking softly as Blue tiptoed past them. She followed Jill up to the bedrooms, Jill keeping one finger to her own lips, giggling as the floor creaked beneath their feet.
"Beauty sleep," she whispered. "Gonna be superstars, you know."
Blue caught her hand as she turned to enter her bedroom. Jill paused, and Blue hunted for her pencil. A pink flush had colored Jill's face, optimistic as the rising sun. Happy, she looked happy. Maybe everything else was a dream. Good things happened. Bands got gigs just because they played well, got contracts and became famous without losing everything. Who was she to say otherwise?
She had to try.
"What?" Jill, waiting, smiling, tired.
You sure Major Chord is worth it? Pretending to be Jed's gf? Esp w/ Bet …
Jill shook her head slightly, her long hair falling in a wave over her shoulder. "Worth it? If it gets someone to see me as lead, then pretending for a little while is totally worth it. I've just got to play along until I've found my way in. That's all. Bet'll understand."
Did you meet him? The one with the contract?
"Rathburn? For a minute. Why?"
There was no way to ask that didn't sound funny.
He smell weird to you?
Jill giggled again. "Yeah, like money, goofball." She touched the heel of her hand to Blue's forehead, pressed it there for a moment. "Good night, Blue Riley. See you in the morning, um, afternoon. Maybe we can talk about you coming with us." She closed her door behind her.
Sleep felt like another country, one that came with a lock and key and a three-headed dog as gatekeeper. Blue gave up quickly and crept back down the stairs, spacing her steps to skip the creaks. It didn't seem to matter. The drummer was just as out of it when she passed as he had been earlier.
Kitchens all sounded the same, she decided as she searched the cupboards for something to eat. The clang of a radiator heating up, the whir of the refrigerator fan, the tick of a plain white clock hanging over the sink. They didn't all smell the same, though, and behind the scent of dish soap and last night's pizza lurked something more. Something she couldn't quite label, sharp and worrying. She sniffed her way through the cupboards without locating it, then stopped and stood in the middle of the room.
The odor came in short wafts. She paced back and forth until it intensified by a wooden door. She'd assumed the door led to a closet, but when she opened it, she found a set of stairs leading down. Of course, the basement. Down the steps, cautiously. The smell was much stronger now, joined by a sporadic click and crackle.
The answer came in a spray of white-hot sparks. A girl her own age sat on an old chest freezer. In her hands she held the two ends of a frayed wire, and she swung them back and forth as if she were playing jump rope, just as casual. The wires sparked and smoked, the light falling between her knees and onto a pile of rags on the floor.
"Stop!" Blue shrieked, or tried to. Nothing came out.
"Remember the deal?" The girl held one end of the wire to her lips, sucked on it like a lollipop, her cheeks glowing red.
Blue wrote feverishly, the shaking of her hands turning her words to scrawl.
The deal?! You said—
What had she said? Three days. She couldn't stay more than three days if they knew her name, and it had been …
"Two days. Turn of the calendar, Bluebird, not twenty-four hours."
2 days? Not 3? You said I had 3 days!
The girl hopped off the freezer. She stood a few inches shorter than Blue, her silvery hair in a neat braid down her back, her tartan skirt and white shirt crisply ironed. She moved the wires to one hand, the ends completely covered by her grip. The sound of their sizzle, the smell of their heat, filled the room. The girl paid it no mind.
"I'm being nice. I'm reminding you that bad things happen if you overstay your welcome. That's all. Just a reminder. I'd hate to have you wake up at 12:01 tomorrow morning and find yourself surrounded by death. That would suck, don't you think?" She twirled the end of her braid in her free hand.
OK, I'll go. After I get my things.
Blue turned away; turned back almost immediately.
But why them? Is it just because of me?
"Why them what?" The girl watched her with expressionless eyes.
Why are you doing it? Making that deal?
Nothing. Blankness. Then a flash, like the slip of a fish underwater. "You and I've got our own thing. They've got theirs."
The girl clenched her fist tightly. It glowed red-hot for an instant. When she opened it, the wire lay there, smooth and whole. "Go on. Fly away, Bluebird. Things will be over before you know it."
She walked away, into the corner of the basement, and vanished into the brick wall, only a faint phosphorescence left behind. Blue ran back up the steps.
