Текст книги "Cam Girl"
Автор книги: Leah Raeder
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Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
Advance Praise for
CAM GIRL
“Raeder’s best book yet. It has the grit, language, and heat you’d expect, but there’s more. Raeder has clearly dug down and bled and studied the mirror to reveal the ugliest and most beautiful parts of herself, and human nature. Cam Girl is a rich and unflinching narrative.”
–Emery Lord, author of Open Road Summer
“Cam Girl is a beautiful exploration of gender and sexuality that begs readers to question how well we know those closest to us, including ourselves. Raeder’s trademark sensual lyricism is in full effect here, but it’s the fraught yet tender relationship between Vada and Ellis that will have you glued to the pages until the oh-so-perfect ending.”
–Dahlia Adler, author of Under the Lights
Praise for
BLACK IRIS
“Intense and visceral, Black Iris is as sharp as a knife and beats with a heart that is double-edged and dangerous.”
–Lauren Blakely, New York Times bestselling author
“Provocative, seductive, and skillfully written, Black Iris stands out from the crowd.”
–K.A. Tucker, USA Today bestselling author
“Like an afternoon special on bullying gone impossibly dark, Raeder’s dizzyingly intense, drug-addicted queer teenage revenge fantasy takes its reader on a sexy, bloody journey of pure emotion that’s by turns expressed, denied, and turned back in on itself . . . A twisting timeline dancing over a year’s events makes every moment seem both immediate and angrily steeped in memory. Major themes include depression, mania, and the ways that the use and abuse of drugs affect access to the reality of self and the world’s essential nature; but the soul-searching always comes in the context of action, everyone around hit by the shrapnel of exploding feelings. This is an exhilarating ride for our inner underdog, craving a taste of what it would feel like to just get back at everyone if we were reckless enough not to care about the consequences.”
–Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Risky, brave, bold. A suspenseful powerhouse of a novel and one of the best books I’ve read this year.”
–Karina Halle, New York Times bestselling author
“Fearless, inspiring, and a story that does more than just keep you enthralled. It holds you by the damn throat.”
–Penelope Douglas, New York Times bestselling author
“Erotic, poetic, heartbreaking, captivating, and full of mind-blowing twists and turns.”
–Mia Asher, author of Easy Virtue
Praise for
UNTEACHABLE
“With an electrifying fusion of forbidden love and vivid writing, the characters glow in Technicolor. Brace yourselves to be catapulted to dizzying levels with evocative language, panty-blazing sex scenes, and emotions so intense they will linger long after the last page steals your heart.”
–Pam Godwin, New York Times bestselling author
“Unteachable is a lyrical masterpiece with a vivid story line that grabbed me from the very first page. The flawless writing and raw characters are pure perfection.”
–Brooke Cumberland, USA Today bestselling author
“Raeder’s writing is skillful and stunning. One of the most beautifully powerful stories of forbidden love that I have ever read.”
–Mia Sheridan, New York Times bestselling author
“Edgy and passionate, Unteachable shimmers with raw desire. Raeder is a captivating new voice.”
–Melody Grace, New York Times bestselling author
“A simply stunning portrayal of lies, courage, and unrequited love. Raeder has a gift for taking taboo subjects and seducing us with them in the rawest, most beautiful way.”
–S.L. Jennings, New York Times bestselling author
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For all the girls I’ve lost
—WINTER—
—1—
A car crash is a work of art.
At first it’s Cubism: the hood folding, doors crumpling, windshield splitting into a mosaic of shattered light, the whole world breaking into shards of color and noise and tumbling around you like a kaleidoscope. Screeching tires and cold air and gasoline and your own scream are all just bits of debris flying around, gorgeous chaos. When the tires stop spinning and the engines die, you’re left sitting in a smashed puzzle of metal and glass, trying to figure out which way the pieces go now, why some are stuck together and won’t come apart. Why there is an eye next to a foot, steel where there should be skin.
I listened to a soft dripping and the sigh of steam. By then it had become Surrealism. My hands were puppet hands, one arm bent at a bizarre angle. A deflated airbag lay in my lap like a bloody surgery sheet. The seat belt (I buckled up, I didn’t really want to die) was some kind of medieval bondage device and I clawed at it senselessly before clicking the release button. Then I saw her.
Ellis slumped in her seat, limp against the seat belt. Red-gold hair hung in her eyes. She was utterly still.
I kicked my door open. Staggered through the electric prongs of the headlights to her side of the car. My right arm was heavy, pulling toward the ground, so I used the left to haul her out. Impressionism now: the dashboard glow dappling her pale skin cyan, black ice reflecting swirls of white starlight. My breath spiraling wildly into the sky. I cried her name as I pulled her onto the road, her legs dragging.
“Wake up, Elle. Please, please, wake up.”
You idiot, I thought. You know CPR.
I brushed her hair off her forehead¸ leaned close. No warmth on my ear. My right arm had begun to tingle and buzz and it was going to make this difficult. I took a deep breath, but before my mouth met hers she coughed and her eyelids fluttered open. Details became acutely clear, almost Pointillist: stars glittering in her eyes, ruby droplets freckling her skin. I touched her face, smearing the blood.
“Vada?” she said weakly.
“Can you move?” I couldn’t take my hand off her cheek. “Move your arms. Ellis, move your arms. Okay. Now your legs.”
She obeyed.
I grabbed her in an awkward one-armed hug but hugging wasn’t enough so I kissed her cheek, her mouth, cupped her face and stared down into it. “Are you okay? There’s so much blood.” I wiped her face again but it only got worse. “Where’s it coming from? Are you hurt?”
We both noticed my right arm at the same time. The sleeve of my hoodie ripped to tatters. The sliver of white showing through red near the elbow.
“Oh my god,” Elle whispered, her breath musky and sweet. Tequila.
I let go of her.
The other car.
His headlights made an X through ours, a crucifix of light across the blank black night. We were on a highway bridge between nowhere and eternity, the ocean glinting beyond the treetops. The other driver lay sprawled facedown on the ground. My eyes traced the path he’d taken through his windshield, the bloody stripe running over the hood of his Jeep.
“Vada,” Ellis said.
I dropped to my knees at the man’s side, feeling for breath, pulse. My right arm was completely numb now. When I lifted his head, a warm red gush flooded my palm.
“Call 911.” My voice was calm.
Elle fumbled in her coat pocket and then at the screen and almost dropped her phone. As I watched I thought, She’s drunk. God, she is so drunk.
I took her phone and painted by numbers with the stranger’s blood.
“I need an ambulance.” I described the river nearby, the bridge.
Elle sank to the ground beside me, those lucid green eyes locked on the body. Her glasses were gone. She couldn’t see how bad it really was.
On the asphalt, pieces of skull lay scattered like pottery fragments.
Can you tell me what happened?
“Car accident. This guy wasn’t wearing a seat belt and he’s . . . on the road.”
How many people are hurt?
“Three. We’re okay but this guy is—we need an ambulance.”
It’s on the way, miss. Is the man breathing?
“I don’t think it really matters anymore because I can see his brain.”
My voice remained calm but Ellis clapped a hand over her mouth.
The dispatcher asked another question. Elle stared at me, horrified, over splayed fingers.
In a few hours, she wouldn’t remember any of this. The concussion and the alcohol would blot it out.
But not me. I’d never forget.
“Vada,” I said. “My name is Vada. I’m the driver.”
—2—
Dots. Pretty dots of color, chrome blue and oxide red, strewn with firefly blurs of peach and gold, all smudging together. I stared at them for a while before my vision focused like a camera lens, the circles shrinking, becoming shapes. Room with white walls. Plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up. Black-rimmed glasses. A face I knew better than any other, her mouth moving slowly.
“Vada? Can you hear me?”
I opened mine to respond, then immediately closed it. My right shoulder twinged. I tried to cover my mouth to hold in the vomit, but my arm was stuck at my side, weirdly wooden. I looked at her helplessly.
Ellis hit the call button for the nurse.
A man came in and added something to my IV. Elle stood beside the bed, smoothing my hair back from my forehead. I closed my eyes and made sure only breath left my mouth.
Last night was fuzzy and soft, silvery, a half-erased sketch. But as the drugs kicked in it came back in sharp dark strokes. An oxygen mask over my face, cutting off my questions with frozen air. Losing track of Elle in the other ambulance. Hospital lights streaking overhead like glowing road stripes. A doctor explaining to me, in my shock-addled daze, that they had to operate and I had two choices: save the arm, or—
My eyes shot open. I clawed at the sheet with my left hand.
Ellis laid hers over mine. “Don’t touch.”
“Did they take it? Oh my fucking god, did they take my—”
“No.” She squeezed. “Look at me, Vada. You’re okay. It’s still there.”
I breathed hard, staring at the sheet wild-eyed. Still wanted to rip it back to confirm visually that I was whole, that they hadn’t amputated. How would I know? I couldn’t feel a thing. I remembered a desperate incantation as the anesthetic washed over me in a black wave: Please don’t take it. Dear God, please.
Elle touched my face and turned it up toward her.
“Baby,” she said in that lilting voice, “I promise, you’re okay.”
My claw grip transferred to her hand, twisting it in mine. She winced but didn’t let go.
I glanced around the room. Pale sun poured through a window, kindling the few spots of color: lilies spilling from a vase in a froth of pink starbursts, cards arrayed on the sill—Dalí and Kahlo prints from my classmates. My gaze refocused on Ellis. Her face was drawn, eyes dashed with violet shadow.
“Were you hurt?” I said.
“Mild concussion.”
“Anything else?”
“No.” She smiled briefly, faltered. “They said you pulled me from the wreckage like some superhero. You were bleeding so badly.”
My mind skittered over fragmented images. Her closed eyelids, spattered with freckles and blood. A screaming wildness rising in me as I thought, for an awful moment, She’s gone.
“ ‘They said’? You mean you don’t remember?”
Elle shook her head, the movement slight.
“Do you remember anything?”
“They said not to focus too hard. Concentration is bad for a concussion. No books, games, or memories.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She stroked my hand. “Just wanted you to see a friendly face when you woke up.”
“There’s nobody I’d rather see.”
I meant it with my whole heart. Ellis lowered her eyes, a lock of ginger hair sweeping over them.
We both looked at my arm beneath the sheet.
“What did they do to me?”
“They saved it.”
“But I can’t feel—” I made a fist around Elle’s hand and she bared her teeth, but I couldn’t release. I had to hold on to something. “Elle, I can’t move my arm.” I pulled at my right shoulder with every surrounding muscle. It wasn’t heaviness. It was . . . nothing. There was nothing there. Shreds of pain, fraying off into oblivion. “I can’t move my arm.”
Carefully, she extricated her hand. “That’s normal. It’ll take a while for the nerves to heal.”
“Am I paralyzed?”
No answer.
“Ellis, am I fucking paralyzed?”
Her eyes filled up, sea green shivering with sun. She brushed my face with her fingertips. “They don’t know yet.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
They don’t know.
I slammed the emergency call button over and over till the nurse reappeared.
“I don’t want to be conscious right now,” I said.
“Are you in pain?”
Was he for real? I couldn’t move my drawing hand. My everything hand.
“Eleven out of ten.”
He slid a needle into the bag and the colors blurred again, dissolving into darkness. The last thing I saw was Elle’s face, two glass threads running down it.
The car hit the river in a burst of black petals, water flowering all around us in inky dark bouquets. Cold jets shot through the crumpled door and webbed windows and I yelped when they touched my skin, and realized I was still conscious. I turned with horror.
Ellis hung from her seat belt, unmoving.
Automatically I clicked my belt button. At least I thought I did. But my hips were stuck and when I looked down, my hand was all red, the fingers splayed at strange angles, as if gripping mush. In my mind I sensed myself moving that hand to the button and clicking again, but my eyes showed only a mangled ball of meat stubbing itself dumbly on the buckle, failing.
I’d done this. This was my fault.
Water rose over my ankles.
“Ellis,” I said.
Not a sound. Not even breath.
We sank slowly at first, then faster as the river surged into the car. I twisted and fumbled. Couldn’t get free.
Water at my calves.
“Ellis.”
Something sharp. I needed something sharp. I tried to reach the glove box but the seat belt cut into my chest, made it hard to breathe.
“Elle, wake up. Please.”
Water at our waists.
A ghastly chill climbed my legs, crept up my bones, deadening me with cold. In one last muster of strength I mashed my belt buckle and miraculously, it released.
My whole lower body was numb. Deadweight.
The waterline reached my breasts. An infinite heaviness pushed the air out of me.
Ellis sat motionless as we sank.
I love you, I didn’t say. Instead I took a deep, deep breath, struggling to hold it as the chill tried to spook it free. When we went under, I’d give it to her. A last kiss of life.
Uncontrollable shivering. No feeling in my fingers or toes. I closed my eyes, reopened them underwater. Elle’s hair floated around her face in lurid red ribbons, like skeins of blood.
At least we stayed together.
Till the very end.
I sat bolt upright. Hospital bed. Something trilled frantically, a machine about to explode—the heart monitor, matching my pulse.
Ellis lurched from a nearby chair. “It’s okay,” she said, rushing to my side. “It’s okay. Don’t scream.”
Was I screaming?
“We were in the river.” I grasped her forearm. “The car was sinking. I couldn’t wake you up. I never meant to hurt you, I just—”
Didn’t want to lose you.
My mouth fell as I heard the words in my head.
“Vada?”
I settled back into the bed. “Nightmare. I was having a nightmare.”
We were never in the river.
Just a dream.
Oddly, I could still feel imaginary frostbite searing through my arms. Wait. One arm. The immobilized one.
I wrenched Elle’s wrist, and her face scrunched up.
“I can feel it,” I said through gritted teeth. “It hurts. Like a motherfucker. But I feel it.”
“I feel it, too.”
I looked at my hand on her, and let go. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled. “Pain is good, Vada. It means the nerves are working.”
“They’re really, really working.”
Her smile turned tremulous, that watery quality it took on just before she cried. She so rarely did. And only in front of me. I could never watch without joining her.
“Don’t cry, you big nerd,” I said gently.
“You either, dork.”
My right arm was on fire and it felt fucking glorious. I could feel.
Elle leaned in and half hugged me, resting her forehead against mine. Her tears and touch made me drop the tough-girl act. Pain flared through me, striped every nerve from fingertips to brain stem with living fire. My arm sizzled like a sparkler firework but it wasn’t dead, it was bright and sweet with agony, and I began to laugh in delirious relief.
“Are you okay?” Ellis said.
“You’re here.” I brushed her cheek with my knuckles. A tear laced between them. “And I’m whole. Yeah, I’m okay.”
She cupped my chin in her hands, let a thumb stray over my bottom lip, then the top one, as if to ensure I was real. My heart played a skittery staccato on the monitor. Elle’s breath smelled like mint grown in shade, a forest coolness—the scent of her vaping liquid. Her face was so close. Freckles dusted her cheeks like cinnamon, sandy against milk-white skin. I skimmed a finger over them.
“Excuse me,” a voice said from the door.
We jerked apart.
New nurse, female. She bustled in and checked my IV and vitals. Ellis skulked near the window, looking silly, a redheaded scarecrow, too tall to be inconspicuous.
“How do you feel?” the nurse said.
“Terrible.” I beamed. “It’s fucking amazing. I can actually feel stuff.”
Her eyebrow twitched. I caught the slip of a smile. Then she said, “Only immediate family is permitted after visiting hours.”
Ellis and I blinked at each other. What an absurd thing to say. No one in my life was more immediate family than her.
“She’s my best friend,” I said. “She’s—”
The nurse—Halsey, according to her ID—interrupted. “I’m sorry. Legal family only. Is she your partner?”
Strange that such an innocuous word could freeze me up so fast.
Partner.
Your best friend is your partner, right? The person you’ve lived with going on five years. Shared your life with. Shared everything with. Matching tattoos, an encyclopedia full of inside jokes, a scrapbook stuffed with memories. The person whose heart you know better than your own. Because you’ve listened to it so many nights, that small, fierce tapping against your ear, your jaw. A little bird hurling itself at the bars of its cage.
Elle stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“No,” I said.
Her mouth fell.
I wanted to disappear.
“Miss,” Halsey began, and Ellis said, in a raw voice, “It’s fine, I’m leaving,” and something rose up in my chest like a tidal wave.
“Don’t go,” I called as she reached the door. “Elle, please don’t go.”
She turned back partway, wearing that wounded expression that wrecked me every time, and words formed in my throat—Fine, she’s my partner, whatever you want to call it, just let her stay—and then heel clicks sounded from the hall, and a voice that filled me with warmth and dread.
“Here you are.”
My mother stepped into the room, flawless, as if she’d walked straight off a photo shoot and not half a day sitting in coach on some shoestring airline. Camila Pérez Bergen: nearly six feet tall, skin the tone of aged brass, bone structure that could facet diamonds. Her withering eyes sized us up in one sweep. She kissed Ellis’s cheek and hauled her by the elbow back to my bedside. I got two kisses and a series of tsks and a sigh.
“Let me see,” she said perfunctorily, plucking at the sheet.
“Mamá,” Elle said—my mother called Ellis her third daughter—“careful. She’s healing.”
“Explain this to me, chiquita. Apparently I’m the only one in this fucking hospital who speaks English. Can she work? Do art?”
My mom spoke rapid, flawless English with a Puerto Rican accent, dipping deep into vowels, rolling and hissing consonants agilely, musically. Her voice always reminded me of a song picked up in the middle, her words one long lyric.
“She has nerve damage,” Elle said, eyeing me askance. “Think of a puppet. You know how the strings move the arms? Hers were cut. Not all the way through, but bad enough.”
“Is she in pain?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m right here. You could just ask me.”
Neither looked my way.
“Yes,” Ellis said. “A lot of pain. But that’s sort of good. It means the nerves work. The doctors sewed them back together, but that’s only a partial fix. Her body has to heal them fully.”
“Gracias a Dios. I thought she was paralyzed. I was sobbing on the plane. People thought I was going to a funeral.” Yet her makeup was immaculate now, of course. Mamá rubbed Elle’s shoulders. “You should be a doctor. So much smarter than the ones here.”
Ellis blushed furiously. The nurse cleared her throat.
“Ma’am, are you the patient’s mother?”
My mother narrowed her eyes, not dignifying that with a response.
“I’m sorry, I need anyone who’s not immediate family to leave the—”
“We are all immediate family. Thank you.” Mamá gestured to the door.
Despite myself, I caught Elle’s eye and traded a small smile with her.
No one got between my mom and her family. Ever.
But the smile faded swiftly. They hadn’t told me I had nerve damage. What the extent was. The prognosis. My right arm was crawling with fire ants, but I didn’t want more painkillers. I wanted to know, for sure, that I was still whole. More specifically, to what degree.
When the door clicked shut my mother rounded on us. “What have you told the police?”
Elle blinked, owlish. I shifted in the bed.
“Did they question you?” Mamá pressed.
“Yeah. That night.” I scratched crosses into the sheet with a nail. “I told them what happened. I was driving, it was icy on the bridge. The other guy hit us.”
My eyes flicked to Ellis. She swallowed.
“And you, chiquita?”
“They didn’t question me yet. Because of my head injury.” Elle spun a lock of hair around one finger. “I’m supposed to give a statement later this week, but . . . I still don’t remember anything.”
“Do you remember getting in the car?” I said. “In the passenger’s seat?”
She squinted at me.
“I buckled you in. You drank too much and felt sick. I made sure your seat belt was secure. You were on your phone right before he hit us. Remember?”
Remember how you were breaking my heart?
Elle’s breath quickened. Very softly, she said, “Are you coaching me?”
I didn’t answer.
My mother frowned, then clapped her hands, startling us both.
“Enough for now. We can revisit it later.” Her gaze settled on me, dark and weighted with expectation. “Why don’t you tell me how you’ve been, since you don’t answer my calls anymore, mija?”
“I’m really tired.”
“Always tired, tired. Too tired to talk to your mother.”
“Too tired to hear how disappointed you are,” I snapped.
Mamá’s eyes flashed.
“Come, flaca.” She put an arm around Ellis. “I’m starving and you’re too skinny. Let’s find something to eat.”
At the door Elle glanced back at me, a specter of hurt in her face. I turned toward the window and watched dusk fall in shades of blood and old bruises. When I was alone I recited the story to myself, the car crash story, until the details were sharp and straight in my mind, honed to a razor’s edge.
My mother stayed for two days. We’d had enough of each other after two hours.
Every time doctors came by she acted like I was a baby, not twenty-two. She made them tell her everything, then had Ellis re-explain in layman’s terms while I sat there mentally headdesking.
Compound fracture of the radial head. (Broken elbow.)
Distal radius fracture. (Broken wrist.)
Multiple phalangeal fractures. (Broken fingers.)
Soft tissue injury. (Bruises on the inside.)
Injury to radial, ulnar, and carpal nerves. (Puppet strings cut.)
The doctor said, “It appears you braced against the steering column at the time of impact.” (Elle said, “Imagine trying to stop a truck with your palm.”)
The insurance investigator said, “There were two impacts. The other car rear-ended you, then you hit the bridge rail.” (Elle looked away, her eyes shadowed.)
The cop said, “We will not be pursuing criminal charges, Ms. Bergen. We wish you a speedy recovery.” (Elle was not in the room.)
When they finally let me out of bed—my arm strapped tight to my chest, throbbing through the meds—I snuck into a supply room, stole a white coat, and put it on Ellis. We made rounds and talked to the other patients. She loved this kind of stuff. Her and her big soft heart. She’d listen to any sob story, no matter how obviously fake or drug-induced. It was better than her staring at me with that hangdog expression, her eyes glimmering with questions.
We’d both taken a Breathalyzer that first night. Standard procedure for any serious crash. I was stone-cold sober. Elle’s BAC was 0.11.
I tried not to think about white shards on black asphalt.
“He can barely see,” I said, pulling Ellis away from an old man who mistook her for his son. “He thinks you’re a boy.”
She shrugged.
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Why would it?”
“Because you’re not his son?”
“He’s alone, Vada. If it makes him happy, it doesn’t hurt to let him believe that.”
“Don’t lead people on. It’s cruel.”
She recoiled as if I’d hit her.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “My arm hurts. It’s making me bitchy.”
It was making me more than bitchy.
THINGS I COULD NO LONGER DO WITH A FUCKED-UP ARM:
1. Shower alone.
2. Dress myself.
3. Handle my fucking period.
Mamá was right to baby me, because never in my life had I felt more powerless than when I went to piss and saw blood on the paper. It hit me then, harder than anything else had: this was my life now. I couldn’t wash my own hair. I couldn’t put a bra on. I couldn’t put the fucking menstrual cup in.
Once upon a time I had a bit of a Cinderella complex. I resented the mundane chores that consume your life when you’re poor: hauling clothes to a coin laundry, lugging groceries home on city buses. I wished for freedom, fantasized about a life where my days weren’t measured in cups of rice, where I didn’t have to decide between eating protein that week or having a beer to unwind after working a double shift and studying my ass off for finals. Well, I got what I wished for. Just like in fairy tales, the wish wasn’t worth the price.
Please, I prayed. Take it back. Let me scrub my clothes in the tub again. Let me work. Let me suffer and ache.
This isn’t freedom. This is the cage. I was so wrong.
Elle knocked at the door and I wiped my tears away. “Yeah?”
She passed me my phone. On it, a text from her:
Write down anything you need. I’ll go get it. She won’t know.
I texted back, my savior.
While Ellis was gone, all Mamá talked about was my younger sister, Ariana. Ari was dating some hotshot lawyer, Ari was in love, Ari was getting engaged. My twenty-year-old sister had already been engaged twice. Instead of going to college, she majored in heartbreak.
“You could have been married by now,” my mother said, sighing. “Living in a nice house, with a baby to keep you busy. Then this never would have happened.”
Just like you, I thought. “That’s not why this happened.”
“Then why?”
Subject change. “You seriously think I’m old enough to have kids?”
“Seventeen was old enough for me.”
“I haven’t even finished college.”
“You already have a degree. Why do you need another?”
“Because I—” I cut off. Still no good answer beyond because I want it. But when I thought hard, sometimes the answer was Because I’m stalling. Because I’m not ready to be an adult yet. “I don’t know.”
“What do you know? Besides that my life isn’t good enough for you.”
“Stop projecting. No one’s judging you, Mamá.”
“Every choice you’ve made is a judgment on me.” She picked at her nails. “Ari wants children.”
“Good for her. I’m not my sister.”
“Yes. That is clear.”
Then she started talking about wedding dresses.
When Elle returned, I whispered, “Please get me out of here before I hurt myself and others.”
The doctors insisted I use a wheelchair. Ellis pushed me down eerily quiet halls in the dead of night, the harsh light tinting our faces ashen, ghoulish. When we passed the nurses she pushed me fast, sprinting down the corridors as I shrieked in surprise and glee. She grinned down at me, that rake of red hair all mussed, cheeks pink. So pretty.
“Speed demon,” she said.
I smiled, but part of me was in the car, watching the odometer tick up. Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.
“Demon,” I agreed. “El diablo.”
The cafeteria was deserted this late, so Elle bought me gummy worms out of a vending machine. Gummy anything: my go-to comfort food.
“Do you know what tonight is?” she said.
I bit a worm and stretched it transparent. “Nope.”
“New Year’s Eve.”
The worm snapped against my teeth. I’d lost all track of time. Some friends from school were throwing a big New Year’s bash, and I’d planned to take Ellis. I’d planned to show her the latest painting I was working on. I’d planned so many things.
My mother loved to say, If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
A sinking feeling opened up in my chest, widening, plunging, and heavy things inside me slid toward that precipice.
“What are you thinking?” Ellis said.
“How much I can lose in one fucking night.”
She touched my shoulder, lightly. “I’m still here. You haven’t lost me.”
It didn’t mean much. Not when she couldn’t remember the crash. If she did, she’d take that promise back.
“What do you want to do tonight?” she said.
“Wallow.”
“Aside from that.”
“Maybe some navel-gazing. An hour or two of angst.”
“Vada.”
I sulked at the cafeteria counter. A display of kid’s meal toys caught my eye: lacy tiaras, magic wands. I pictured Ariana in a Disney princess dress.
When we were little, Mamá was our queen, looking like a million bucks in Gucci heels while scrubbing grilled cheese off the floor. Never mind that the Gucci was thrift store and the grilled cheese bought with food stamps. She wanted a do-over. Wanted us to marry rich and rewrite her life story. I was more interested in watercolor paints than wedding gowns. By the time we were teens, Mamá had shifted her hopes to Ari.
Ellis followed my gaze.
Suddenly I knew what would cheer me up.
I didn’t even have to tell her. I just smiled.
Elle was comically bad at stealing. First she looked straight up at the security cameras. Then she positioned the wheelchair to block the view, and kept repositioning to get it perfect. Then she knocked the toy display off the counter, which made all her prep pointless.
“If I go to jail for stealing a tiara,” she said, “I will never forgive you.”
“But you’ll be a legend. The prince who stole a crown for the exiled princess.”
This pleased her. She set the tiara on my head, blushing.
“We need something for you,” I said.
“No. No way am I wearing—”
I jumped up and dashed around the counter before she could stop me. I was light-headed, dizzy from poor circulation, but I grabbed a plastic apron from a bin and tossed it to Elle with a flourish.
