“You can’t do that,” Tami says. “You can’t just make someone move like that.”
Everyone looks at her, strands of her white-blond hair sticking to her face, black mascara smudged under her eyes, as drenched with sweat as the rest of us.
First Ash, and now Vaughn. Tami is not used to things being taken from her.
“I’m not making anyone do anything,” Raine says slowly. “But you should start looking for somewhere else to get your Freedom.”
“Let’s get out of this fucking shithole,” Tami says, standing up and grabbing Ash’s arm, hard.
“Ow!” Ash says, his first word in a long time. He’s been as quiet as me. “That fucking hurt, Tami.”
“Don’t touch him like that,” Ivy says.
Tami leans forward so her face is only a couple inches from Ivy’s. “I can touch him however I want.”
Ivy is the first to look away. I don’t know what her plan is, how she expects to win this game with Tami, but so far it’s not looking too good for her. Even with all her money and fame and beauty, even with Ash’s love, Ivy is still the underdog.
Somehow we all make it back to the car without killing each other. Tami gets into the driver’s seat again. Ivy immediately opens the bottle she left in the back and we all take big gulps.
“Why’d you get so mad back there?” Ash says. “You can find somewhere else to get the pills, can’t you?”
“It’s the heat,” Tami says. “It’s getting to me. And why the hell can’t those idiot firefighters put out those fires?”
“Really?” Ivy says. “You’re going to talk shit about firefighters now?”
Ash laughs, but Tami gives him a look that shuts him up.
Tami starts driving before any of us has a chance to put on our seat belts. I am the only one who looks behind us and sees Vaughn pull up in his busted old car and get out carrying mismatched canvas bags full of groceries. He watches us as we pull away, probably wondering at the sight of this kind of car in this kind of neighborhood, and then I see his face change with the realization of who’s probably in it, and he drops the groceries and starts running, waving his arms like a madman. We turn the corner, out of sight, and I say nothing.
28
The smoke is turning a darker shade of orange. The sky is closing in. The mountains and skyscrapers and Sound are all disappearing, getting erased by the falling night.
It is amazing how much a person can drink on the way from one side of a city to another. Ash, Ivy, and I pass the bottle around while Tami drives. By the time we get to Tami’s condo, the three of us are wasted.
The night is still young. There are still so many more things that could happen.
“Why are we going here?” Ash complains. “I want to go out.”
Those are almost the exact same words Vaughn said a few weeks ago.
Has it really been just a handful of weeks since that night? Is that all the time it takes to turn a person upside down?
We ride the elevator up in a heavy, whiskey-soaked silence, and I feel the familiar feeling—or lack of feeling—of myself floating, of my feet not touching the ground, of losing my connection to gravity. I wonder what I’m even doing here. Ivy doesn’t need me. This is between her and Ash and Tami.
I will not get out of this elevator when we get to Tami’s floor. I will ride it all the way back down and be done with these people forever. I don’t love Ash. I can’t stand Tami. There is no good reason to have them in my life.
But then Ivy reaches for my hand, like she could read my mind, like she could sense a distance forming, and she squeezes, and I feel it all the way up my arm and into my heart, and Ivy pumps through my veins and fills up every space in my body, and I feel the truth in every atom of my being: We are impossible to separate, whether I like it or not.
I will stick around a little longer. In case she needs me. In case things get out of control. Nobody knows what Tami’s capable of.
“Why did we come all this way to sit inside?” Ash says as he collapses into a chair. Tami goes to the bar and I sit by Ivy on the couch.
“We have to stay inside,” Tami says. “You know that. The air is toxic.”
“But so are you,” I want to say. “So are all of you.”
“But we could be inside somewhere else,” Ash says. “Like we could go to the Science Center or something. We could go to the aquarium.”
“What are you, nine years old?” Tami laughs.
“We could at least go shopping,” he says.
“Now that’s an idea,” Ivy says.
“You’re already drunk,” Tami says. “I need to get drunk.”
“That’s a good idea too,” Ivy and Ash say in unison, and then they look at each other with a glowing surprise, and for the briefest of moments, they are inside a bubble where time stops, and we are out here, in real time, watching it.
I cannot read Tami’s face as she stares at them. She is calculating something in her mind. She is always calculating.
“What is this?” Tami says. She sucks down her drink and immediately pours another one.
This is finally happening. Saying something out loud makes it real. I feel Ivy buzzing next to me. The lights in the condo flicker. Something inside me flickers.
“What is what?” Ash says.
“This. Between you two. What is going on?” There is an air of condescension in her voice that only people like her can pull off.
“We’re drunk,” Ash says. “You need to catch up with us. Finish your drink.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
I can’t feel most of my body, cannot find where I touch the couch, but I can feel my foot in sharp focus, unconnected, disembodied, and throbbing with infection. The piece of Ivy is still in there, poisoning me from the inside.
The wound is the part of me that is dying, and it is the part of me that feels most alive.
Something is rotting, way past sweet.
“Give me one of those pills,” Ash says.
“They’re in my purse,” says Tami.
“I’ll take one too,” Ivy says.
“You owe me two hundred dollars,” Tami says.
“So sue me,” says Ivy, swallowing the pill as soon as Ash hands it to her.
I look at Ivy and her shiny things are long gone. She has lost her powers. She’s just a girl now. Someone like me. Someone breakable.