What Happens Now

by Jennifer Castle

  It was only when RedSmoke announced Temporal Anomaly as the first prize group cosplay winners that I dared to glance at Eliza again.

  “Wow,” I said to Max as we let Eliza lead the way to the stage to retrieve our trophy. “Is that what she looks like when she’s truly happy?”

  “I wouldn’t know for sure,” he said. “Take a picture before it goes away.”

  Camden reached out for my hand and I took it, but I let it go as soon as we were on our way to our seats.

  19

  I’ll admit this: when we walked into the Tri-State SuperCon Dinner and Dance with our trophy, it felt like the whole party was for us. It was almost a wedding reception receiving line, the gauntlet of people we had to move through. There were claps and cheers and unexpected, slightly creepy pats on the back. I smiled and said Hey, thanks all the way down.

  At some point, Camden took my hand again, but I didn’t notice right away. It felt like part of our costumes now, that we had to be connected. We were no longer us but rather, the Azor and Satina who’d finally hooked up and defied every rule of the Silver Arrow universe.

  I couldn’t wait to get out of my Satina costume. The fabric on my skin felt heavy and old; the weight of the wig pulled me unnaturally to one side.

  What had changed? Maybe there was a border between doing the cosplay for myself and doing it for someone else. Or in this case, a lot of someone elses. I’d crossed it.

  Once we got through the cluster of people at the entrance to the party, I took a deep breath and let go of Camden’s hand. He took a step away from me, as if he’d been wanting the break, too, and in seconds he was gone from sight.

  And it was okay.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Kendall, her eyes red, eyelashes crooked with dried tears.

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  “I bought a book,” she said, holding up a tattered paperback. “I found a table in some unused conference room and sat there and read.”

  “God, Kendall. You win for having the crappiest time here,” I said.

  “It was peaceful, actually. And I overheard some fascinating conversations through the doorway.”

  My best friend. She was an expert at making awful situations into something not-so-awful. I guess she had no choice.

  Eliza appeared and pushed plastic cups into our hands. “Someone bought us a bottle of sparkling cider!” she exclaimed, then started to pour from a bottle. We let her, nobody speaking a word, and then she moved away.

  I stared at the popping bubbles in my cup, the mist of fizz they created, until Kendall knocked her cup against mine.

  “To surviving the Tri-State SuperCon,” she said.

  “In more ways than one,” I said, and we both drank.

  “I’m starving,” she said. “Should we go find the hors d’oeuvres?”

  “You lead, I’ll follow,” I said. We started to make our way through the crowd, which had gotten denser and louder.

  “Satina Galt!” said a guy stepping in front of me. His T-shirt said GOT GEEK? “It makes me so happy to see young people who know the Original Silver Arrow.”

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling yet also trying to keep a visual lock on Kendall.

  “Have to say, I got a little emotional, seeing you guys up there at the contest. That show got me through some hardcore personal shit.” His voice cracked. Maybe he’d been drinking, maybe he was just a weirdo. Either way, he was clearly sincere, and that cut through all the unease.

  “It got my mom through her depression,” I said suddenly, and realized I’d never said that out loud.

  I took a step backward and found myself against a wall. The guy smiled, bowed his head to me, then moved away. I’d lost Kendall in the crowd.

  I was sort of trapped there. Which actually felt good and safe, and made me think of Maeve Armstrong watching her own party while also being apart from it. Maybe it was okay to want all this, to love it even, but just need a break.

  “Hey,” said someone close to me, and it took me a second to realize it was Camden. He held out a soda.

  “My savior,” I said.

  The crowd pushed us, pressed Camden into my body.

  “Sorry,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

  I reached up and put my hand on his cheek. It was Camden right there, I knew that for sure. I felt balanced.

  “Woot woot!” some girl shrieked. “Satina and Azor getting busy!”

  I yanked my hand back and looked down into my drink.

  “Ignore them,” said Camden.

  “Uh, impossible,” I replied. “Besides, didn’t we ask for it?”

  “I guess we did,” he said, searching my face. “I wouldn’t ask for it back.”

  Camden touched my hair and then drew away, realizing it wasn’t really my hair.

  “I wish I could kiss you right now without it feeling . . .”

  “I know.” This party would end, and we would leave, and go back to real life, and maybe even the weirdness of this whole day would end up being a good part of the memory.

  “Should we find the others?” asked Camden.

  I nodded, then scanned the crowd and saw Max’s head towering over it. Thank God for Max’s head.

  “Come on, I see Max.” I took Camden’s hand and we pushed into the crowd. People gave us high fives and smiles and nods along the way.

  When we found Max, he was leaning against the bar, sweat dripping down his face. He looked terrible.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m just . . . really, really hot. This jumpsuit material does not breathe.”

  “Take off your wig for a few minutes, that’ll help,” I suggested.

  He pulled off the wig and grabbed a cocktail napkin, wiped his drenched hair with it.

  “That’s pretty gross,” said Camden.

  “I don’t care. It feels amazing. How are you guys holding up? It’s like you’re the prom couple.”

  Camden just made a face, which made Max and me laugh.

  Eliza appeared. I wasn’t even sure where she’d come from or how she’d broken into our little triangle.

  “Where’s your wig?” she asked Max. Not asked, really. Yipped, like a terrier. She had a neon orange frozen drink in her hand.

  “It’s right here,” he replied, indicating the wig, which looked like an alien pet, sitting by itself on the bar.

  “Put it back on,” she said, and took a sip of her drink.

  “I’m dying of heat. I’ll put it back on when I’ve cooled down.”

  “It’s embarrassing if you’re not wearing it,” said Eliza, glancing around. “Everyone’s hot, but nobody else is stripping off their costumes. It looks lame.”

  “Why the fuck should I care how it looks?” said Max with a frown. I’d never heard him swear before. He was always so good-natured. If Eliza was the terrier, Max was the golden retriever. But now he was baring his fangs.

  “Because I care,” said Eliza slowly. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Eliza picked up the wig and tried to put it back on Max, but she couldn’t reach. Max snatched it out of her hand.

  “Back off, Eliza,” he said.

  Camden and I exchanged an awkward glance.

  “Please, please, please,” she said in a tone that totally did not match the word please. “Don’t do this to me. Keep it on so everyone can see it.”

  Max stared at her. “I am so sick of everything being about you. It was funny for a while, this vision you had. But now it’s irritating as hell and actually, kind of sad. I’m sorry all the attention is on Ari and Camden. That was your idea, remember?”

  Eliza was silent for a moment, then calmly took another sip of her drink. “I thought it was our vision. We did this together.”

  “I’m tired of being bossed around. The same way Camden got tired of it.”

  Eliza looked at Camden with utter surprise. Camden drew in a quick breath as if he was going to say something in protest, but then froze.

  Eliz
a narrowed her eyes, then turned back to Max.

  “I wouldn’t boss you around so much if you didn’t enjoy it so much.”

  Max stared at her, his eyes scanning her face for something. I wondered what it was.

  “Fuck this,” he said. He tossed the wig into the crowd. Someone must have caught it because we heard an oooooooh.

  Then Max pushed his way past us. The crowd opened to let him in, then closed around him, and after a few seconds I couldn’t even see his head.

  Eliza sighed and slammed her drink onto the bar. “Drama queen,” she said with a laugh. Camden and I did not laugh. “Oh, come on,” she added. “Don’t you think that was over the top?”

  I thought of everything I’d seen of them since we’d all met. How I knew next to nothing about relationships, but I did know, with every fiber of my being, that theirs was not healthy.

  Someone came up to Eliza and asked her to dance, and after a quick glance at us, she nodded yes. We watched her move off toward the dance floor.

  “Do you want to?” asked Camden.

  I shook my head. “I don’t really want to be on display anymore.”

  So we did the next logical thing. We found the food table and stuffed our faces.

  A little while later, James appeared. “There you guys are.”

  “Have you seen Kendall?” I asked, then wished I hadn’t.

  He looked pained. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry about what happened. She was pretty upset, wasn’t she?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I figured it was better not to lead her on. I wasn’t sure she liked me until today.”

  I paused, looked hard at him. “I have a tough time believing that.”

  He glanced away and squeezed his cup until it dented. “I didn’t want to deal with it until I had to. It was like, I knew what I had to do, but couldn’t do it.”

  I thought of Lukas’s face, asking me what was wrong. Asking me to tell him the truth. Do you want to be with me or not, Ari? How it was so much easier to keep saying one thing but then doing another.

  “The timing could have been better,” said Camden.

  “I know,” said James, wincing. “It’s not like I planned that. We were on our way to get the food and she kept looking at me like she expected something and I just—”

  “She’ll be fine,” I said, cutting him off. He seemed relieved. “Thank you for being honest.”

  “There’s more to it than what I told her,” he said.

  “I don’t need to know that.” I scanned the room again. “Right now I only need to know where she is.”

  “Maybe she texted you.”

  Maybe. Probably. Which meant I needed to turn on my phone.

  I took it out, ran my finger over the dark screen. Admired the beautiful blankness of it.

  Camden put his hand on my shoulder.

  A deep breath, then I was pressing down on the power button. As the phone woke up, it vibrated and dinged and danced. I unfocused my eyes and let the text messages come as a series of blurs. The screen was full of them, but I only looked at the ones from Kendall.

  I couldn’t take it in there anymore, sorry. Jamie left the van unlocked so I’m hanging out here.

  It was from a half hour ago.

  “She’s outside in the van,” I said. “I’m going to go see if she’s okay.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, I’m good.” The thought of a few minutes alone seemed suddenly marvelous.

  I wound my way out of the crowd and into the hallway, then the hotel lobby. I pulled my wig off as the lobby doors slid open, and even the humid night air felt fresh against my skin and head.

  “Wait up!” someone yelled from behind me. It was Eliza again. She ran to me, stopped, saw my wiglessness and shook her head. “Et tu, Brute?”

  “I’ll put it back,” I said, then felt mad at myself.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m checking on Kendall.”

  “Have you seen Max? I don’t think he came back to the party.”

  I shook my head and kept walking into the parking lot toward the van. Eliza kept pace beside me.

  “That was great, don’t you think?” she said in a cheerful, un-Eliza tone. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you how fantastic you did at the contest. And all day, really.”

  I was about to say thanks when we reached the van and Eliza stopped abruptly. She stared into the front window.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  I moved closer to see what she was looking at.

  Which was Kendall and Max in the front seat. Kissing.

  All was quiet for a moment. Not just Eliza. The whole world, it seemed, was frozen on the edge of something. Then Eliza exploded.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” she yelled, then started banging on the windshield.

  Max and Kendall broke apart, startled. Their oh-my-God expressions identical.

  “Get out of the van!” shouted Eliza.

  Max shook his head. And who could blame him, really?

  “Goddammit,” said Eliza, and threw herself at the driver’s side door, flinging it open.

  Kendall scrambled out the other side of the car. I scrambled to meet her.

  “Kendall,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her hand still gripping the car door. “I was here and Max showed up and we started talking, and I started crying, and then . . .”

  But Eliza was walking toward us now. I turned and tried to stand as strong as I could next to my friend.

  Quickly, so quickly nobody really had any time to react or guess what was about to happen, Eliza stepped up close to Kendall. Her arm went out and for a flicker of a moment, I thought she was going to slap Kendall. Or worse.

  Her hand reached for the collar of Kendall’s X-Men T-shirt. And she pulled. Hard. Harder than I thought someone as small as Eliza could.

  The collar started to rip before Kendall smacked Eliza’s hand away. It made a loud thwack, comics-style, as their skin made contact.

  “Stop!” yelled Max, crawling out of the van now.

  “You,” said Eliza, holding out one finger and jabbing the air with it. “You do not get to do this. Not to me. Not with my boyfriend.”

  Kendall whimpered, clutching the collar of her shirt. Eliza put her hands on her hips in a gesture of victory.

  Because girls like Eliza always won. They always owned and they always received. They never expected anything less.

  A second later, I was shoving Eliza up against the side of the van.

  “You do not get to treat people like that!” I yelled. “You can’t bark orders and try to control everything!”

  Eliza’s face. Not angry, but shocked. Her eyes and mouth all perfect O’s.

  “Ari!” someone shouted from somewhere, but I didn’t turn to look.

  My hands gripped her shoulders and held her there, and I was surprised how easy it was. She wasn’t even fighting back.

  “Ari, stop!” someone shouted again.

  “You also do not get to steal things from people and expect them to let you!” I hissed. “You do not get to take advantage of people who thought you were their friend!”

  I let Eliza go for a fraction of an instant, then pushed her again. The tinny noise of her body against the metal of the car. It was suddenly the best noise ever. Who was doing this? Ari wouldn’t do this. Satina? Maybe.

  Or maybe Ari was always doing this, somewhere deep down. Not to Eliza, but to everyone and everything I wanted to push back against.

  I wasn’t thinking about that. I was only thinking about the satisfying sensation of Eliza’s body on the other side of my hands. How the way she was looking at me made me feel so present.

  Then, tears pooled in her eyes and she started to sob.

  Arms wrapped around me, pulling me back. Max grabbed Eliza and walked her down the aisle of cars until they were a good distance away from us.

  I turned to s
ee that it was Camden who’d yanked me away. He kept his arms tight around me and I could feel his breath panting against my ear. I realized I was panting, too.

  Kendall opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The three of us stood in suspended animation.

  “Hey,” said James, ambling across the parking lot toward the van. I could tell he hadn’t seen or heard a thing. “Is it time to go?”

  Stating the obvious: the drive home sucked.

  Eliza sat up front with James, while Kendall and I were in the middle. Camden sat with Max in the way back.

  I would never have believed that six people could be that silent for that long.

  To pass the time and to avoid looking at Camden behind me, I read my new Silver Arrow book. When I felt carsick and could read no longer, I spread my hands in front of me, examining my palms whenever something outside would flicker light into the interior of the van. I moved my fingers, twirled my wrists. Were these really my hands that had pushed and held Eliza against the side of a car? And my brain had told them to do that?

  It didn’t make sense. One of the things I knew for sure about myself was this: when I got angry, it stayed indoors. I never let it out to roam and roar and scratch. It hid in a corner or burrowed inside a couch, easy to ignore. A thousand silent times, I’d raged against my mother or Dani or the thought of my father. But it had screeched out now, and who knew what the consequences would be.

  Somehow the hour passed and we were back in town.

  James dropped Eliza off first, of course. No discussion necessary. I’d never seen Eliza’s house and she never talked about it—she never talked about her family at all—so I wasn’t sure what I expected. Certainly not a McMansion in a subdivision called Morningside Meadows. She climbed out of the van and didn’t look at any of us. James followed, walking her past a Mercedes parked in the driveway and around to the back of the house. He returned a minute later.

  “Dude,” said James to Max when he slid behind the wheel again. “Why was it me who just did that?”

  Max gave him a dirty look and pulled out his earphones. “Can we get everyone else home now, please?” He leaned his forehead against the window. Kendall stared straight ahead.

  When we pulled into Kendall’s driveway, she gave an unashamed sigh of relief. I found myself hopping out of the van with her.