“Eh, I might have forgotten to mention it.”
My mom coughed out a laugh, and I looked down at the ground. Maybe Becky and I should have rehearsed this majorly sucking performance.
Becky lifted her hands. “Look, I know Maddie’s cooped up here. I thought she might be interested in going. That’s all. You can call my mom if you want.”
“It’s not like I’m going to run away,” I said, and waved my wrist.
“But your father—” my mom started, and then she cut herself off because she could see how badly I wanted this. “You girls go ahead. Have fun,” she said, and stepped back from the door.
I realized I had been holding my breath and inhaled a deep lungful of air. Becky’s eyes had such a wide look of surprise, I grabbed her hand and yanked her out the door before she could say another stupid thing.
We practically skipped to the sidewalk, and my eyes embraced the dark gray sky and my skin embraced the breezy, humid air. Even the plastic trees were a relief from the screens that had become my life.
“Do you think she bought it?” Becky asked.
“My mom has a functioning brain, so probably not,” I said with a smile. “I think she just likes the idea that she’s not the only mother with a rebellious daughter.” At this point I didn’t care if my mom never let me out of the house again. I was free tonight.
We hopped onto the empty train when it hissed to a stop, then scanned our fingers and sank into the first row of seats. An advertisement immediately popped up on the screens and caught our attention before we could talk.
Ladies, how would you like a pedicure or manicure delivered right to your front door! Our NailNow equipment can sense nail follicles down to the cuticle. Just turn on the machine, place your fingers or toes on the nail deck, and the brush sensor will do the rest. Dip your hands into the cuticle-cutter cream, and your cuticles will naturally dissolve! No spilling, no hassle. No appointments and no waiting! Let luxury come to you.
I silenced the screen when another advertisement started running.
“Sorry I was so nervous,” Becky said.
“I wouldn’t pursue an acting career,” I told her. “But thanks.”
She beamed. “Anytime. This is an honor. You’re famous, did you know that?”
I looked out the window at the empty streets and nodded. “It’s hard to keep all my fans away,” I said. I looked back at her and smiled. “You never answered my question at the benefit. How long have you been hanging out with the DS Dropouts?”
A worry line creased her forehead. She reminded me of how I used to feel when I first started doubting DS, like something was wrong with me, like one day I would wake up and snap out of my animosity. I spent most of my life walking on my tiptoes and trying not to leave an impression, but that was the worst part because that’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to leave a mark, to prove to myself I was living in the first place. But it’s lonely to strike out on your own path. Not much foot traffic.
“I joined them a year ago,” she said. “After the benefit dinner. The night you pointed out Justin Solvi and his friends.”
“You remember Justin?” I asked.
“I remember his hotness.”
I smiled at this. “What inspired you to contact them?”
“You did. I heard you and your mom talking last year, and I was interested. So I looked into it. I wanted to meet guys as hot as Justin. That was reason enough for me,” she said. “I watched you leave with him and his friends. You know how bad I wanted to follow you that night? I knew right then, whatever you were doing wrong, it felt right to me.”
“I’m impressed you’re getting away with it. Your dad’s almost as controlling as mine.”
Becky smirked. “My dad thinks I’m perfect. It’s easy for people to think something’s wrong with somebody else’s kids and then they’re clueless about what goes on in their own homes. It’s like proximity makes people blind. I’m also a little more subtle than you,” she added. “I’m not trying to overthrow a system, I just hang out with these guys one night a week because I like flirting.”
“I can respect that,” I said. “I take it there’s no romance marathon playing tonight?” I asked. She flashed a smile at me.
“There is, but where we’re going is so much better,” she said.
It was raining when we jumped down from the train, an angry rain that gnawed against our jackets like teeth. The weather had been unseasonably rainy since I’d been home. The Willamette River, which cut through the center of Corvallis and flowed downstream all the way to Washington, was the highest it had been in years, already flooding in parts of the state.
We jogged two blocks, dodging puddles on the sidewalk, until we found the theater. A vertical neon sign clung to the brick façade of the building, lighting up the word Cinema. I stopped and stood under a black awning and looked at movie posters advertising the old classics. I ran my fingers over the glass display window. All the stars had died, but the stories lived on. Maybe old things could be recycled. They could rebound and come back to us.
We walked inside the lobby and brushed off our raincoats and stomped our feet on the bristled carpeting. There was a bored-looking attendant standing behind a glass display of candy and popcorn. We nodded to him, and I was about to approach him until Becky grabbed my arm and led me toward an exit sign down the hall. We passed the restrooms and came to a door where warped, stenciled white lettering barely made out the letters Staff Only. The door opened into a stairwell. I hesitated outside the door. The metal steps, the thin white railing, and the musty smell of paint took me back to the LADC. For a moment doubt overshadowed trust and I wondered whose side Becky was on.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Come on, it’s right upstairs,” she assured me. I followed her up two flights, and when she pushed open a heavy metal door, we were greeted with people screaming.
My pulse started to race and my arms tensed at my sides until I realized people were screaming at wall screens, set to soccer games.
“This is the cinema I was talking about,” she said. “It’s mostly a hangout for dropouts. That’s why they don’t advertise it.” The sports bar had wall screens covering the entire area from floor to ceiling, and every screen had a soccer game on. The soccer players loomed taller than me, as if I were out on the field with them.
Two pool tables lined the far end of the room, and an oak-wood bar stood in the center. Hanging tumblers and glasses above the bar reflected the yellow overhead lights. There were a handful of groups inside, gathered around tables, watching the games and eating baskets of food and drinking out of old Mason jars.
I pulled out my ponytail and my pink hair fell around my shoulders. “Why does this have to be a secret?” I asked Becky as we walked to the other end of the bar. “Can’t you just tell your parents you like watching soccer?”
She laughed. “My mom doesn’t have a problem with me going to a movie with a couple of girls. But soccer games, bars, and men? That she would definitely have a problem with.” We walked past a table of four young guys, and they all turned to check us out.
“I’m not allowed to date anyone face-to-face until I’m done with college,” Becky added. “My dad claims I won’t know anything until then.”
“Maddie!” a familiar voice screamed, and before I could turn, Clare’s arms were around me, pinning me in place. Clare was famous for her sneak hug attacks. She grabbed a chunk of my hair in her hands and stared at it like she was holding gold.
“I love it!”
“Really?” I said, and wove my fingers through it.
“Very badass. I’m sure your dad is thrilled,” she added.
I watched Riley saunter up to Becky and slide his arm around her waist. Her dad would kill her. I looked over Clare’s shoulder to see Gabe, Molly, and Scott sitting at a round table. It was such a relief to be around people again, even Scott’s smug expression didn’t bother me.
Clare pulled me over to the group, and I slid in
to a chair next to her. They all smiled and said hi, except for Scott, who still apparently held a grudge. Becky and Riley joined us, scooting their chairs close together.
I told them to catch me up. “Where are you all living now?” I asked. Clare started to explain that she was back in town, staying with a friend, but Scott interrupted her.
“I think you’re the one who should be catching us up,” he said, and the entire table became quiet. Eyes turned in one direction until I could feel an energy of stares.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
He held up his hands. “What have you found out? Has your dad said anything about the detention centers? What about the national vote on digital school? Will he tell you when they’ve settled on a date?”
I could feel Scott’s hostile energy from across the table, like a wave of heat, but friends are the last people who should intimidate you. I couldn’t tell what annoyed me more, his frenetic bombardment of questions or the fact that I didn’t have any answers.
“They have to announce when a vote’s happening,” I told him. “That’s public information.”
Scott took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Legally not until seventy-two hours before the vote,” he corrected me. “Which would give us zero time to set up a protest.”
This news distracted me from my irritation with Scott. “Can they get away with that?” I asked.
Riley nodded. “The commission’s board has been meeting, but they haven’t announced a date. They don’t want to give us time to form a protest.”
“They’re postponing the announcement as long as possible so we can’t wage war,” Scott said.
Molly nodded. “It would take us a day just to contact everyone, and another day to travel and set up. By the time we round people up, the vote will be over. No media, no protest—it’s almost a waste of time to organize.”
I studied the brass tabletop, pink in the dim bar light. There were dots of water stains all over it. “Why don’t you just go up there now?” I asked. “Set up camp, build a tent city, and get ready?”
Scott shook his head. “They’ll just postpone it longer, a year if they want to. All we can do is listen and be ready to move. Or have somebody give us inside information.”
I nodded at his hint. “I’m working on it.”
“Is your dad starting to talk?” Scott asked.
“No,” I said. Scott slumped back in his chair. He looked exhausted. I knew he was in charge of organizing the protest.
“Look, I have a plan,” I told him. “That’s why I’m home. First I need to recruit some people.”
“Under your dad’s roof?”
“They show up in the most unexpected places,” I said. I thought about telling Scott I was tracking my dad. But something made me hesitate. Probably his aggressive attitude.
Riley tapped my arm. “Justin’s here,” he said, and pointed to a message on his phone.
I spun around in my seat and looked at the door.
“He’s downstairs,” Riley said, then pushed his chair back and stood up.
“At the movie theater?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“There’s a club in the basement,” Clare said. “It’s no Club Nino,” she warned me.
“Promise?” I asked, remembering the virtual club went to together in L.A.
“It’s a little more . . . hands-on,” she told me. I followed her, Riley, Becky, and Gabe, but Scott and Molly hung back.
“You guys aren’t coming?” I asked them.
Molly scrunched her nose. “I’m not in the mood to be groped. It’s a den of hormones down there.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Gabe asked.
“Everyone’s all sweaty,” Molly said. “It’s gross.”
“It’s dancing,” Clare said, but Molly pulled her turtleneck closer to her chin and waved us off.
We walked down three flights of stairs, and I could hear techno music seeping through the door and feel the bass shaking our feet.
“It’s not for everybody,” Clare warned me. “It’s been around for years. It’s one of the only places people can go in this town. To—”
“Feel each other up,” Riley finished for her.
“To be human,” Clare said.
When we walked inside, my eyes had to adjust to the darkness. The room was lit by black lights, casting a neon-yellow reflection off ceiling tiles and glistening skin. The entire room was a dance floor, except for a narrow bar along the wall, set up between old-fashioned box speakers. It looked more like a garage tool shelf stocked with glass bottles and silver coolers. Overstuffed leather couches stretched out along the wall, but hardly anyone was sitting.
There were only about twenty people inside, but they packed the small space. The air was humid and thick and smelled like salt and skin, with a strange current of adrenaline mixed in. The basement room seemed to serve one purpose, and that was to dance. The techno music blared and crashed around us, so loud I could feel it shaking my rib cage and pulsing in my jaw. It was too loud to talk, but I realized you weren’t supposed to talk in here. You weren’t supposed to think. Just feel. You need to drop some of your senses in order to heighten others.
Girls wore miniskirts and skimpy tank tops, some of them balled up to show off their stomachs. A few of the guys had their shirts off, and sweat glistened on their arms and necks. People blinked in and out as a strobe light flashed from a corner of the ceiling.
I scanned the room for Justin, and Clare nudged my arm and pointed past the crowd to the couches in the back. It was still so dark inside, I had to strain my eyes to see.
“Justin!” Clare shouted.
I nodded and squeezed by her. I scooted around couples and tried not to stare at people making out all around me. I was surprised I wasn’t more uncomfortable. This felt more natural and human than the last week of my life had.
When I got closer to the couches, I could see Justin. He wore a red T-shirt, frayed around the sleeves. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up through his fingers. He had a drink in one hand and was leaning over, shouting something to the guy sitting next to him on the couch. He was looking around the room with these intense eyes, like he could see things the rest of us couldn’t see. I missed that kind of awareness. It’s like he saw colors outside of the spectrum, or infrared rays of heat, or radars of jet streams, things that most people were blind to, or didn’t take the time to notice. He made the room more exciting, more vibrant, just by the way he noticed it. It made me love being here, in it.
The guy yelled something back into Justin’s ear, and then Justin’s eyes snapped to me like he could sense my presence.
My stomach jumped and kicked and rolled. He didn’t smile at me. He didn’t acknowledge me with a wave. He just watched me. There was an open spot next to him on the couch, and he moved his glass into his other hand so he could lift his other arm and rest it on top of the couch back.
I made my way over to him and sat down, sagging into the couch so that our shoulders touched. In that dark, warm space, people started to disappear. All I saw was a warm body and soft lips, and all I felt were warm fingers gliding over my neck and massaging my shoulder.
I leaned closer to him. “We need to talk,” I shouted over the music.
He watched my lips move and smiled. He leaned toward my lips like he was going to kiss me, but he pressed his mouth against my ear instead. “You don’t want to warm up before we do the heavy lifting?” he asked. “We don’t want to pull something.”
He leaned back and I stared at the cool smirk on his face. I looked at his T-shirt, bunched at his shoulder, and reached over and slipped my fingers inside the fabric and pulled it down. My fingertips grazed his arm. I noticed his chest rise. In a way it felt like we were talking. It was our way of saying things were fine, we were fine.
The guy sitting next to Justin yelled something, and Justin looked away. He lifted his hand off my shoulder, and his fingers found my hand,
lingering next to his leg. He was talking to the guy next to him, but I couldn’t make out words. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes and let myself feel. Justin’s fingers enveloped my hand, and it was such a small gesture, such a common touch, but it felt like my entire body was being shocked. All I could concentrate on was that touch. His fingers played around mine, tapping and then squeezing and then brushing and then squeezing again. There was an entire conversation going on with those movements. His hand was trying to tell me something. It made me smile. It made me crazy.
We kept having our own private conversation. I squeezed his hand back to tell him I was happy to see him. I pressed my fingertips against his, to tell him I missed him. He rubbed his thumb slowly over each of my knuckles to tell me how much he loved every piece of me. I squeezed his hand again to tell him I wished we were alone, and he agreed with his own squeeze.
I’m glad we’re still okay, we both seemed to be saying. It was one of the best conversations I had ever had.
I looked around and saw Riley and Becky on the dance floor, glued to each other. I raised my eyebrows to see Clare and Gabe making out in the middle of the floor, but I wasn’t surprised.
The couch cushions shifted and the guy sitting next to Justin stood up, and before I could blink, Justin pulled me up off the couch. The floor vibrated under my feet, rattling my arms and legs until it loosened every tense joint. I became water, fluid and bendable. I became myself. Justin led me to the dance floor, and I tried not to stare as couples straddled each other, their hands and mouths and tongues roaming each other’s skin. In my T-shirt and jeans, I was extremely overdressed. Justin leaned into me and pulled his arms around my waist.
“I thought dancing wasn’t your thing,” I yelled. His eyes were intense, and instead of answering me he leaned his head into me and rested his lips against my ear. That was all I needed. I lifted my head up until his lips were on mine. His hands trailed below my waist, and we started another conversation that was really hard to have in public.
But I didn’t care.
I pulled at his hair and he pulled my T-shirt sleeves over my shoulders. I was half touching, half clawing his skin.
Still Point Page 7
