by Mia Garcia
For a moment I think I know him. His smile, his eyes, something feels familiar, but I would remember if we had met.
He’s singing something, but I can’t hear the words. His gaze is locked on mine and that’s all there is.
Oh yeah, I would remember that smile.
Look away, Jules! Look away!
But I can’t. I’m stuck in the tractor beam of his eyes and lips. I’ve never wanted to touch a guy’s lips as much as I do now. I turn, expecting to find his gorgeous bohemian girlfriend right behind me and instead see my eighty-year-old savior dancing up a storm. Maybe he is smiling at her? Because who wouldn’t? She’s fantastic! I turn back and . . . he’s definitely looking at me. “Fairy girl!”
Annnnnnd he is calling me over.
Crap.
“Fairy girl!” he shouts again, this time motioning me over with his banjo—did I forget to mention the banjo? He has a banjo. And lean, long fingers that strum said banjo like no banjo has ever been strummed before. “Fairy girl!”
He could mean anyone really. Half the people here have wings.
“Red-winged fairy girl, I see you!”
Maybe not.
I move closer, weaving through people, careful not to snag my wings on the way. “Hello,” I say once I’m close enough to hear him without having to shout.
Hello?
Why didn’t I say “Hi”? Don’t look so eager, Jules.
“Hello back.” He smiles and continues to play, accompanying the band. “I like your wings!”
“Thanks. I made them myself, like, an hour ago. I like your hat.”
“Thank you. Took me days.”
We smile at each other like idiots. Or at least I do. Yeah, probably just me on the idiot front.
When he turns away, I look him up and down, taking in his hands as they strum along, his chest (he has a few buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, so sue me—I ogled him), a thin gold band around his left wrist, blue-tipped hair and handmade hat with the ears. A grin spreads across my face. “‘What fools these mortals be,’” I say again, and he looks back to me, beaming.
“You’re Bottom, right? From A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
He bows and brays like a donkey.
I take in the rest of his band, dressed in a similar style, when it hits me. “You’re the Midsummer Boys!”
“That we are. You a fan?”
“I—uh.”
Crap, say yes!
He laughs. “No worries. No one really knows us; I’m just messing with you.”
“I love the name though.”
“Nice, isn’t it? Just thought of it today! Last week we were No Return Policy.” He shrugs. “I like the Midsummer Boys better though, don’t you?”
I nod.
“Let’s do ‘I am that merry wanderer of the night,’” he says to the guys behind him, and the boys start the tune. He turns back to me. “Will’s got a way with words, don’t you think, Sunshine?”
With a wink he dives into the song, joining a buzok (I kid you not, I’ve never even heard one being played live; it looks like someone whittled down the top half of a guitar’s body and left the bottom as is), a fiddle, and an accordion. I am entranced by his fingers and try to look away, but only find my way back to his smile. He knows this I think because he can’t stop grinning. My cheeks flush, and I decide to give in to the music and try my hardest to forget about the Electric Blue Boy who knows the effect he has on women. I only catch a few of the lyrics that say “a night to wake, a night to live,” and I gather these words to me and take them with me through the night.
The band finishes “The Merry Wanderer” and picks up another—the crowd cheering as they do. It’s Mid-Summer, and no one likes a lull. Shaking my hips from side to side, I find the rhythm of one song after another. Electric Blue Boy follows me with his eyes, and that’s all I need to join in on the fun.
I shimmy over to the nearest café and borrow a pair of spoons, slapping them together across my thigh to try them out. They make a nice, crisp sound that rings clear even through the pulse of the French Quarter. I have no idea who this new Julie is, but she feels fantastic and I let her take over. Electric Blue watches me, eyebrows arched up in surprise.
“You going to join us, Sunshine?”
I strike the spoons against my thigh. “Keep up if you can!”
I have no idea what I’m doing, but I don’t care. I probably sound terrible but somehow it all works out. Our arms rub against each other, I feel a lightness I’m not expecting, and I hope it happens again as the crowds press us nearer and nearer. He leads the way down the street, pushing his shoulder against mine, and we walk that way for a song or two. Or three? I feel . . . I don’t know what I feel, it’s different and new and I can’t describe it, and as I look up into the sky, I catch a glimpse of the quarter moon, peeking out from behind the clouds, pushing away the pitiful sun, ready to take over.
“Come on, Sunshine,” he says over his shoulder.
The accordion player is leading a line of revelers out of our secluded little corner and back into the mass. I follow. The wind follows, moving my wings back and forth—I’m flying. Street after street I play my little spoons until my arms hurt.
Eventually we stop and the crowds clap as the Midsummer Boys take a bow and the crowds rejoin the living, pulsing mass that is the Mid-Summer mayhem.
My phone buzzes, a quick look tells me it’s Tavis: Where are you? I drop the spoons, quickly lost in a sea of legs. There are twenty messages on my phone from Tavis. How did I not notice this? They’re all variations of the same question: Where are you? We’re worried about you. Everyone is out looking for you. I scan the crowd, hiding my growing panic, but don’t see him.
You’re just being paranoid, Jules. No way he can find you here.
“Take a bow, Sunshine.” Electric Blue Boy looks back, reaching for me.
We lace hands; the strength in his grip feels comforting, reassuring, and surprisingly intimate. Does anyone else notice how my gaze drifts down to our hands entwined? Do they share the flush across my skin? We bow to what’s left of the crowd.
“It’s over?” I manage, gripping the phone tighter. It’s still buzzing, pulling me away from Electric Blue’s touch, and his steady pulse that seems to sync with mine.
“This is just the pre-party. Parade starts at eight—still a couple of hours to kill before then, plus gotta scope out a place to take it all in.” He takes his hat off to slide the banjo across his back before replacing it with a flourish. “You?”
I ignore the buzzing and focus on his eyes, shoving the phone back in my pocket.
Before I can answer, his three bandmates huddle around us. “Sunshine, these are the boys: Domínguez on the accordion, Taj on the buzok, and Danny on the fiddle. Otherwise known as my backup.”
I nod, ready to wave and disappear into the crowd. I’ve never been good with group conversations, feeling most comfortable hanging out in a corner with my closest friends, Kara or Em. Suddenly, Danny, who is tall and stocky with a tailored vest and hat, pushes Electric Blue to the side and shakes my hand. “Pleasure.”
Each of the boys follows suit, and before I know it I feel at ease.
“So you got someplace to be, Sunshine?” Electric Blue asks me.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, I pull it out halfway. Crap. Another message from Tavis, then my parents, Em—who called her?—and a couple from Adam. Shit.
When I look up the boys are all waiting for me.
What’s it going to be, Julie? You’ve come this far.
I scroll through the messages one last time, then I shut the phone off and shove it deep into my bag.
“Not really.”
Electric Blue smiles, and I think maybe I should call him Sunshine. He bows and asks for my hand, which I give. He loops it around his arm and says, “Well, you do now.”
What’s in a Name?
IT IS CROWDED AS HELL ON OAK STREET AS I NAVIGATE THE throngs, gripping Electric Blue’s hand. I sh
ould probably feel self-conscious about holding hands with a boy I just met, but the alternative would be getting lost in the sea of nymphs and jesters and the vibration of the city, a beat that practically lifts me off my feet. Plus his hand feels welcome in mine, and I hope he never lets go.
He smiles back at me as we find a semi-quiet corner where we can finally rest. We lean against the wall of the building and survey the mass of dancers before us, trying not to look at each other too much.
He smells a bit like vanilla mixed with sweat, and how did the word “delicious” just pop into my mind?
I pray he thinks the now-permanent flush across my cheeks is due to the heat and not our proximity to each other.
“You okay?” He leans into me, and I feel his breath on my cheek.
“Yeah.” I rub my forearms. “Just a bit overwhelmed.”
About this, about life, about everything. I just ran away from volunteer work to basically frolic with a bunch of strangers. Who am I anymore?
“Sunshine?” He draws me back from my panic. “Your first Mardi Gras?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“Yeah, but I was trying to be nice.” Then there’s that smile again. “I’d tell you that you get used to it, but that’d be a lie. There’s no getting used to Mardi Gras, you just embrace it, you know? Let it take over—then it’s smooth sailing.”
I try to push away my thoughts of home and Adam and focus on Electric Blue Boy, “How do you let it take over?”
“You know . . . you just feel.” He spreads his arms out wide as if that explains everything.
I laugh. “Right. Feel it.”
The sun peeks out before the sky dulls again; a cloud rolls through, bringing with it another quick and delicious breeze. Soon twilight will set in, making every bit of glitter and sequins reflect brighter, like fireflies in the night. Not even the threat of storm clouds will dull them. The air has cooled down and though the music is just as loud as before, there is a calmness to it that settles in with the dimming of the sun.
“All right, all right. I’m not explaining it well enough, but it’s hard to. It’s like . . . you know when people tell you ‘describe yourself in three words’ or ‘how would other people describe you’ and shit?” His gestures are all over the place as he talks. “It’s like that. You can’t encompass a person in three words. And New Orleans—she’s alive, she’s a person. Hard to settle on how to describe her, but once you’re in it, once you’re here, you get it.”
He waits for me to answer, but I’m adrift in his words, how true they feel, and his brown eyes, with flecks of gold that play off his dark skin and the kinetic lights of the carnival. His smile reaches all the way to his eyes, and they crinkle at the sides; I watch the carnival pass behind me, reflected in his irises.
Suddenly he hops off the wall. “Drink?”
“Um, yes, please.”
But truthfully, no, I’d rather go back to listening to him speak about New Orleans or music or anything. Really, anything.
“I’ll be right back; don’t run away, okay? You looked like you might bolt when I started talking about Orleans being a person.”
Nope, just staring into your gorgeous eyes and probably looking like a dolt. “I won’t, I promise.”
“Cool.” He slips into the nearest bar, and I almost shout after him that I am sixteen and probably shouldn’t be drinking anything alcoholic, but he’s gone before I can and part of me kinda hopes he does bring back a beer or a drink drink.
I think of Adam and the swigs of Dad’s whiskey and how it made him loose. How it sometimes made the shadows that followed him disappear and sometimes made them bold like the midday sun.
“You okay there, girl?” Taj settles up next to me, occupying Electric Blue’s space. I realize that I know all his friend’s names but not his. “You looked lost in thought there for a second, and not a very good one.”
I nod. “Yeah, more like complicated and hard to get into.”
Taj lays his buzok against his feet and holds his hands up with a smile.
Taj is the shortest of the guys, but there’s something about him that tells me he’s the life of the party. “Say no more, I won’t pry.”
Danny bounds over to my other side, but Domínguez seems preoccupied with a particularly flirty fairy. “I’m already soaked in sweat”—Danny points to his shirt, patches of moisture visible below his armpits—“and it ain’t even eight yet.”
“I told you to bring yourself a backup,” Taj replies.
I’m still in a bit of a daze from Electric Blue’s comment earlier. “Are you sure that wasn’t the official parade?”
Danny shakes his head. “Nah, pre-party. People are going to get their dance on until it starts around eight. Unless the sky starts falling by then.”
“You mean the rain? Will they cancel if it starts raining?”
Taj shakes his head, a laugh tumbling out. “Then they’ll start at eight fifteen!”
“But for real, Taj, you think that storm’s going to hit us?” Danny tips his hat to a couple of girls as they walk by; they smile but keep on walking.
Taj looks up at the sky, and my gaze follows. The sky is darkening a hair’s breadth at a time, but the moon is already out despite the daylight. Off in the distance there are long stretches of dark clouds ready to roll in; above us a few pitiful gray puffs threaten the evening.
“Nah, my dad says it’s turning away from us and will probably die off before it gets any closer.”
“Plenty close,” Danny says. “From what I hear we going to feel it later in the night or early morning.”
“You think people would be out here partying it up if there was a tropical storm just round the corner?”
“Hell yeah!” Danny laughs, and soon Taj is laughing as well. The wind joins in, tussling my hair.
“Wait, I thought it was just, like, rain. There’s a tropical storm coming?” I interject, realizing I probably should’ve paid more attention to Tavis after all. But I’ve found it hard to think of anything outside my own drama for several weeks now.
Taj nods. “That’s what one weatherman said, but everyone here knows tropical storms and hurricanes don’t show up during Mid-Summer. It would be mad rude if it crashed.”
“Mad rude?” Danny cackles.
“Mad rude,” Taj continues, “and no storm wants to be mad rude, my friend.”
Danny nods and picks up his fiddle, playing a lazy tune as he watches the revelers go by. Soon Taj joins him. “Waste of a carnival if it did. Damn waste.”
“You’re kidding, right? People wouldn’t just—”
“Keep going?” Danny nods. “Of course they would. Nothing ruins a parade, even if we have to swim home.”
As if on cue the pitiful gray cloud settles above us, releasing a cooling mist on the party below. We are the only ones who give it any mind.
Taj does a quick doggy paddle in the air. “I can’t swim, man.”
“I will carry you on my back.” Danny turns, patting his back. “Let’s go.”
Taj bends his knees and takes a running leap, only to stop right before actually landing on Danny. Danny shakes his head in disappointment. I hold back a laugh, unsure if this show is for me or just a part of who they are.
“How long have you known each other?” I ask, trying to fill the lull in conversation. The mist feels amazing, each drop cooling me down.
“All our lives; grew up together. Domínguez, your boy, and I have known each other since grade school,” Danny says. “Taj’s family moved here like, what?”
“Two years ago,” Taj finishes, “but it feels like I was born here, you know?”
I nod even though I have no idea what he means. I’ve lived in my tiny little town all my life and have no idea how it would feel to live anywhere else and call it home. Not that my town feels like much of a home now.
“It’s N’awlins, man,” Danny continues. “She gets into your bones and you swear you were born here.”
Soon Dom
ínguez strolls right up, the accordion making the most ridiculous sounds because he’s forgotten to lock it.
“I’m heading out,” he says.
“Heading out where?” Taj asks.
“I’ve met the love of my life”—he gestures back to the fairy—“and I’m not spending another second with you pendejos.” He looks at me. “No offense. I’m talking about them.”
“None taken.”
Domínguez is tall and muscular, unlike his friends who are of the reed-like variety. I would’ve never pegged him as someone who played the accordion at all, maybe football or something but not the accordion.
“Man, you just met the girl.”
“Exactly, and I want to get to know her before we never see each other again. You know how Mardi Gras is.”
Taj and Danny nod.
“Uh, what do you mean that’s how Mardi Gras is?” I ask.
“It’s like, something about Mardi Gras. You can be whoever you want to be and it’s cool.”
“Like,” Danny elucidates, voice carrying over the rhythm of the day, “if you got a weird glass eye, it don’t matter, on Mardi Gras you got twenty/twenty vision. If you broke—”
“You’re still broke on Mardi Gras!” Taj laughs and punches Danny on the shoulder.
“True, but you don’t feel it as much because the city is wide open for you.”
Domínguez finishes, “For one night anything is possible. Tonight, Tinker Bell and I can be whoever we want to be; tomorrow, I might never see her again if she doesn’t want to.”
“That’s kinda sad.”
“Maybe. Sometimes you need one night to run away from shit, you know?”
“Yeah.” I smile at Domínguez, because there it is, the answer I needed.
Weird how two semi-complete strangers can totally validate your actions.
As the mist travels on to bless the rest of the parade, Domínguez nods good-bye and runs to his Tinker Bell, looping his arm around her waist, the accordion making another set of ridiculous sounds. They look happy as they disappear into the crowd.
