“Girl over there!” she yelled again. “You’re going in the wrong direction!”
I stopped when she said that. For some reason, this statement really threw me. I wasn’t going anywhere, so how could I be going in the wrong direction?
“Come here!” she called.
I obey direct orders. That’s why I cleaned up a full lunchroom table, that’s why I gave Jordan my iPod, and that’s why I crossed the street now. Because someone told me to.
The two girls were leaning against a graffitied wall. The one who had shouted was a little taller than me, heavyset, and smoking a cigarette. She wore a black-and-white polka-dot dress with a bright yellow cardigan, and she had feathers in her hair.
“Start’s in there,” she said, cocking her finger at the building behind her.
This was like I’m sending Wrappers to the Gallos all over again. Start’s in there. Why did people always have to speak in code?
“Okay,” I said.
“Have you been here before?” she asked me.
I shrugged in a way that probably meant yes, but could have meant no.
“We haven’t been here since it was over in Pawtucket,” the polka-dot-dress girl went on, gesturing west with her cigarette, even though Pawtucket was roughly nine miles north of where we stood now. Also, how could they not have been somewhere since it was somewhere else? This whole thing was very Alice in Wonderland.
“Do you want a cigarette?” she offered me.
“No, thank you,” I said, then added, “I don’t smoke.”
She nodded. “That’s good. These can kill you.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, as if to prove the point.
Her friend spoke up for the first time. She was petite and had a blond pixie haircut. She reminded me a little of a foal, all gangly legs and round eyes. She spoke with an accent that made her words just a little hard to understand as she said, “Vicks, it sounds like you were offering her a cigarette because you were trying to kill her.”
The first girl’s mouth dropped open in faux horror, her bright red lipstick forming a big O. “I was being generous.”
The friend shrugged her bony shoulders. “Well, she doesn’t know us. For all she knows, you were trying to infect her with cancer.” She adjusted her short, fringed leather jacket over her gold sequined dress.
“You’re from England?” I asked the skinny friend, dissecting her accent.
“Originally,” she said. “I grew up in Manchester.”
“Manchester!” I exclaimed.
“You’ve been there?” She sounded surprised.
“No, but I’ve always wanted to go.”
“Don’t. Manchester is a shithole,” she said decisively. “The whole town looks like this.” She swung her arm out to encompass the blank street of warehouses.
“The Smiths are from Manchester, though,” I said.
“And New Order,” she added, sounding proud. “And Oasis.”
“Okay, blah blah, we get it, all the world’s greatest bands come from your hometown,” the polka-dot-dress girl threw in. “Thanks for rubbing it in.”
“Only because it’s such a shithole,” the British girl said. “People have to create some kind of art so they have something to think about other than their shitty lives.”
“Yeah, but Glendale’s a shithole, too, and how many world-class musicians come from here?” countered her friend.
“You. For example.”
The polka-dot-dress girl snorted and stubbed out her cigarette on the wall. “Yeah, right. Come on, let’s go back in before I smoke another one and give us all cancer.”
They walked a few feet away from me, then turned around when they noticed I wasn’t with them. “Are you coming or what?” demanded the polka-dot-dress girl.
And something about feeling like I was in a dream, or a Lewis Carroll hallucination, made me feel okay about answering, “I’m coming.”
I scampered after them as they turned a corner, down a small alleyway between warehouses. I was probably about to get kidnapped. But, honestly, I would have rather been kidnapped by these girls than remained un-kidnapped among my classmates. If getting kidnapped meant a trip to Manchester, I was all for it.
“What’s your name anyway?” the bigger girl called over her shoulder.
“Elise.”
She turned around to look me up and down. “Like the Cure song?”
“Yes,” I said.
She nodded her approval. “This skinny bitch here is Pippa. I’m Vicky, short for Victoria, of course.”
“Like the Kinks song?” I blurted out. Then I blushed. That sounded dumb coming out of my mouth. I sounded overeager, juvenile. Uncool.
But she gave me a broad, beaming smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Like the Kinks song.”
At the end of the alleyway stood a large black man with a shaved head and pierced ears, guarding a closed door.
“Hi, Mel,” chirped Vicky.
“Heya, Mel,” said Pippa, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on both cheeks.
“Who’s this?” he said gruffly. He squinted down at me.
“Elise,” I said. I stuck out my hand to shake his, but he kept his firm arms crossed over his chest.
“You got ID?” he asked.
All I had was my iPod. “Not on me,” I answered. “But I promise my name is Elise.”
“She’s twenty-one today,” Vicky butted in. “Isn’t that exciting? Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Elise—”
“If this girl’s twenty-one, then so am I,” Mel said with an eye roll.
“You mean you’re not twenty-one?” Vicky feigned surprise. “I swear, Mel, you can’t be any older than that. Your skin is baby-soft.”
The corners of Mel’s mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile. “I’m old enough to be your father, Vicks.”
“No way!” Vicky said. “My dad is old. You know that magazine old people get?”
“No,” said Mel.
“Well, there’s a magazine, and my dad has been getting it since I was six years old. Plus he goes to bed every night at nine. Mel, you have never been in bed at nine.”
Mel shrugged his broad shoulders. “Age is more than just a number. It’s a lifestyle.”
“So what you’re telling me here,” Vicky said, “is that Elise really is twenty-one, even if she doesn’t have the ID to prove it.”
Mel groaned and began to reply, but Pippa stepped forward. “Come on, Mel,” she said quietly, and I couldn’t tell what it was, if it was her posture, or the expression on her face, or her voice, or the halting way she touched her tiny fingers to her hair, but I couldn’t imagine anyone in the world saying no to her. “Be a gentleman. Elise is with us.”
And Mel stepped back and opened the door for us.
As we walked past him and into the building, I marveled at this. Not at Vicky’s banter or at Pippa’s feminine wiles, but at their willingness to say, unprompted, Elise is with us.
Why are you being nice to me? I wanted to know. But I didn’t ask. If I asked that, they might realize their mistake. Instead I just lightly pressed the inside of my left wrist, like I was checking for my pulse, and I followed them inside.
4
The door opened to reveal a packed dance floor of sweaty, flailing bodies illuminated by occasional flashing lights in the otherwise dimly lit, high-ceilinged room. “Dancing in the Dark” was blasting from speakers twice my height, and most of the crowd was singing along like their lives depended on it, except for a guy who was taking photos with an expensive-looking camera, a few girls who were waiting in a bathroom line, and two guys who were hard-core making out, complete with ass-grabbing and saliva-drenched French kissing.