“That’s tragic,” Ash laughs, sucking on the joint.
“It is!” Ivy says, pulling the joint out of his fingers.
“Stop, you’re going to get it wet,” he says, half-playful, half-irritated.
“I don’t care,” she says, trying to inhale, but the whole thing is drenched. The ember has gone out.
I smell something too sweet, almost rotting. It must be those drinks Ivy keeps making. The sugar and alcohol are seeping out of her skin.
* * *
• • •
I think about Vaughn. I think about Raine. What are they doing now, as we laze around a waterfront pool getting drunk in the middle of the day?
* * *
• • •
Ivy is sparkling, as usual. Small, shiny objects stick to her skin. They jingle as she stands, like tiny bells. She doesn’t even seem to notice. Neither does Ash. He is solid, impermeable, all tendon and bone and muscles that always seem flexed.
The problem is we are too sober. It is too bright out. I can see it in Ash’s face; he can’t quite relax. Does Ivy see it? Is she just pretending everything’s okay? Does she think if she acts hard enough, we’ll believe her?
“Have another drink, Ash,” she says.
“I’m tired. Let’s go inside. It’s nap weather.” And then his smile is something different than his usual smirk. Then there is the briefest of openings, and Ivy takes it, and they are gone, and I am left floating in the pool, on the verge of sunburn.
Maybe I stay here. Or maybe I turn into a ghost and go inside to watch them, unseen. Either way, it is not my body being touched.
* * *
• • •
Days and nights pass. There are times when even Ash must go home. He must tend to Tami. He must not be too conspicuous. But Tami has her business too. Her secret lets him have his.
There are times when I must go home. Must turn back into my fathers’ daughter.
The news says something about the gray whales that keep washing up on the beaches. The whole Pacific coast smells like rotting flesh.
The white supremacist separatists in Alabama have expanded their territory to five counties. Several towns are now under their rule.
More protests about A-Corp private prison labor. Another chemical spill in the Midwest. Another oil spill in the Arctic Circle. Another shootout between militias in Montana.
More refugees piling against our border walls even though they know no one’s going to let them in.
The protests in Seattle are getting more violent.
Papa and Daddy watch me while I eat. They look at each other and say things with their eyes.
I don’t tell them where I’ve been spending my days. I don’t tell them I quit my job.
I sit in my tree and wait for my turn to come again.
* * *
• • •
It is getting harder to stay in my body. I feel more comfortable without skin, floating, watching from above. I have to make the conscious decision to return to the ground, and sometimes I don’t want to; sometimes I wonder if I could just stay here forever, without form, just observing, not participating. I think I go whole hours without speaking. Just listening. Just watching. IvyandAsh. AshandIvy.
* * *
• • •
Lily leaves me voice messages. “I’m worried about you, Fern. I’m afraid something bad’s going to happen.”
I don’t care what Lily thinks anymore.
* * *
• • •
“See,” Ash says. “I brought it, just like you wanted.” Ivy has been nagging him to bring his guitar, said she wanted to hear his new songs, said she wanted to sing them.
Did she not notice the way he kept avoiding the issue, kept weaseling out of it, changing the subject, kissing her to shut her up?
It is not just alcohol and weed tonight. More magic needed to be conjured.
Ivy’s knee is bouncing and Ash is even harder than usual. He is leather drawn tight and she is a top, spinning.
He plays. His dark hair hides his eyes as he bends over the guitar, as his fingers pick the strings in impossibly beautiful arrangements. He lays his notebooks of lyrics out like flower petals. These are not the songs of the gangly thirteen-year-old boy I used to know. The lyrics are poetry, dark, full of metaphors I don’t quite catch but am certain mean something important. His voice is gravel and Ivy’s is moss. Gritty and soft. Made of the earth.
Ivy is radiant. I have listened to her album a million times, but she never sounded like this, not like someone with weight, with gravity. She has only ever been a puppet.
But is this any different? She is still twisting herself into someone else’s melodies, someone else’s words. She is still the shape of the script she’s been given. The only difference now is that she’s been given a better script.
“It’s beautiful,” I say when they take a break, but she and Ash only smile at each other.
I want to believe that this is some kind of intimacy, that I have witnessed some great reveal, but I feel further from them than ever.
Maybe this is the curse of all artists. Maybe they all desperately want to be understood, but they only know how to communicate in riddles.
Or maybe they can only ever understand each other.
A sweet smell fills the air, like something overripe, on the verge of turning.
* * *
• • •
We have two weeks while Ivy’s mom is gone. We are somewhere near the middle now, but I’m not sure where.
Daddy says he’s starting to worry I’m staying out too late. Have I been eating? Have I been taking my supplements? Have I been drinking enough water?
I have no idea what day it is, what time. My phone ran out of battery days ago and I haven’t bothered to plug it in.
* * *
• • •
Ivy is always talking, eating, drinking, smoking, laughing. I watch her lips, the things that go in and the things that come out. There is a science to her mouth.
She won’t stop talking about Ash’s music. She won’t stop talking, period. This new drug has sped everything up.
“It’s only real if it punctures your heart,” she says. “That’s how you know you’re alive.” She’s hunched over a mirror. She goes tap tap tap tap, organizing the white powder into tidy rows.
Daddy would remind us we’re not our thoughts and feelings. There is no permanent self when our perceptions are constantly changing. There is no isolated self when we are connected to everything.