It took Hyde what felt like a minute to respond.
“So…to make up with your sister, who you’ve been ignoring for unknown reasons, you want me to send the stretch limo meant for you to her instead so that it can take her to some sort of hoedown in New Jersey?”
A pause. “A trendy hoedown?”
Hyde couldn’t stop laughing.
“I mean it! Hyde, I know it sounds stupid, but I really, really–”
“What’s the address she’s staying at?”
Oh, come on now. “Just like that?”
“To be honest, I’m pretty embarrassed myself. And yet: what’s the address?”
So it really was possible to melt and be guilt-ridden at the same time. “Um…” I gave him both addresses: the one in Soho, as well as the one I’d written down yesterday when looking up Jersey clubs online. I’d picked the club where that one reality TV star got drunk and punched out the camera man before trying to make out with him on the floor. If Anton were planning on getting there just before midnight…
“Could you pick them up at eleven? And um, I don’t know where they’ll end up after said hoedown, but could you maybe have your driver drop them off at a hotel down there when they’re done? I mean I don’t want them to get picked up by anyone else.” I shuddered at the thought. I didn’t want them hurt, after all, just out of the way. Not that I assumed that they were completely incapable of taking care of themselves, but still, I had to cover all my bases.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Thanks, Hyde.” With a sigh, I added, “I’m really, really sorry about this.” I was. All this manipulation to prove that Anton couldn’t manipulate me. The greater good, Deanna.
“It’s all right. And since I know you’re definitely not planning on biking over the bridge in a couture dress, what time can I pick you up?”
“Uh…” I fidgeted. “It’s OK. You don’t need to come all the way here. I’ll take a taxi.”
“A taxi? Why?”
Because I’m tired of taking advantage of you. “Because there’s something I need to do at home first, so I won’t get there until much later,” I said instead. “Really, it’s OK. Don’t worry about me.”
“How can I not?”
Stop that, I demanded, not knowing whether it was him or me I was begging. Squashing the butterflies in my chest, I smiled. “Really, don’t worry. So… I guess I’ll see you at the party. I’ll be the one in black ruffles.”
“Try and find me.”
Hyde hung up.
A deep, calming breath wasn’t quite enough to help me ignore the awkward-making tingling feeling rushing down my stomach. Still, I called Shannon anyway. “OK, confirmed. I’m bringing the package.”
“Nice. Hey, see how fun this is?”
I rolled my eyes. She reminded me way too much of Ade.
A short trip later and I was knocking at her apartment. All the money I’d been spending on transportation the last couple of weeks was drying out my wallet. I made a mental note to sign up for extra hours of canned-food hell at the grocery store once this whole fiasco was over.
Shannon had her hair dyed a light pale blonde. She had two friends with her. They waved at me, their makeup half-done. Tall, skinny and blonde. All they’d need is the right dress and a lack of shame to fool Anton.
“This is the right shade, right?” Shannon ruffled her hair.
“Yeah, I think so. Anyway, I doubted Anton would notice or care. They’re in here.” I shoved the bag into her hands. “Remember, Anton’s limo is probably going to be at the models’ apartment a little before midnight, so you guys should get there by maybe half-past eleven.”
“We know, we know.”
“And whatever you do, don’t say a word until you’re at the party. And don’t take off your masks… whatever you do has to be with the masks on. If they come off, Anton might wonder why you’re wearing the same one he bought for his models.”
“Well, obviously,” said one friend, putting on some lipstick.
“I don’t know what he’ll do to me if he finds out I helped you get them.” Another lie. I knew perfectly well what he’d do. “He can be really… vicious.”
Shannon ran a brush through her hair. “We won’t sell you out, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You remember what Anton looks like, right?”
Shannon laughed. “Yes, I still have the pictures I found online. It’s all good, Deanna, damn.”
“She’s so thorough,” said the girl in the bathroom. She winked. I couldn’t tell if they were making fun of me.
“OK, OK,” I said. “Just make sure–”
“Yes, don’t worry. We know what the plan is,” Shannon said, rummaging through the backpack and pulling out a mask. She strapped the golden-laced mask over her face. “You’ve done more than enough. We’ve got this. You just worry about your end.”
She was right. All the pieces were in place. The only thing left was to get dressed and call a taxi. With a shaky hand on my forehead, I exhaled and nodded.
“Right. See you there.”
There was not enough makeup in the world to hide the lines under my eyes. I looked exhausted. And scared. It meshed with the eye shadow.
Through the mirror, I stared at the black couture dress clinging to my body. I counted each of the ruffles flowing down my legs in tumbles of fabric, ruffles that for one moment reminded me of rotted feathers. I imagined my own feathers, black and rotted beneath my skin, and shook my head.
The last eggshell-white Moretta box lay open on my desk. Inside was a black-rimmed half-mask, decorated with silver macramé and studded with crystals. It was the single most beautiful thing I’d ever owned: the military badge of a society girl with few cares and endless time. I put it on, tying the ribbons at the back, pinning my black curls down. Then, once again, I peered into the mirror.
An imposter. I saw the lies fastened to my face and shuddered, truly, from the core.
Quietly, I slipped the mask off and rummaged through my drawer. Found it. It didn’t have its own case, but there was no way I’d ever lose it. Mom’s bracelet. A simple bronze chain. Ever since I’d first felt the brush of feathers against my back, I’d been trying to hold on to the girl I used to be. I clasped it around my wrist. It didn’t help.
Just this one night, I told myself as I walked out of my room. Survive this one night and then you can think of a way to survive the rest. Then you’ll be you again. Free.
“Wow, you look great, honey,” Dad said from the couch, a beer in his hand.
“Yeah, you look great, Dee,” repeated Ade from the couch, a soda in her hand. Both her voice and eyes had dulled at the sight of me. She set the soda can down, pushing it towards Dad with a finger and stood up.
“You think?” I asked as I watched her walk to the kitchen and open the fridge. I was pushing her. I knew I shouldn’t. Maybe I just wanted to hear a bit of sincerity in her voice – or anything, really, without that frigid sting.
She glanced at me. “Yeah. Pretty as hell,” she said, then took out her half-eaten slice of pie from yesterday night and set it on the table.
She wasn’t looking at me. Asking why would embarrass us both. My shoulders sagged anyway, weighted by unsaid words. I repeated the mantra I’d been clinging to like a religion ever since I stumbled out of Stylo’s metal cage – and maybe before:
I can’t tell her what’s really going on. Even if I did, she wouldn’t be able to help, anyway. It’s too risky. It’d only make things worse.
But even if she didn’t know, I thought at the very least she’d be able to look past the couture and actually see just how thoroughly it was suffocating me.
“I kind of don’t want to go,” was the closest I could get to the truth.
“Then you could have said no,” Ade answered flatly.
“Come on, Adrianna, don’t be jealous,” said Dad from the couch.
Ade nearly dropped her fork and whipped her head around to meet the back of his with a
silent glare. The room shook with the intensity of it.
Jealous. But she was the sister who didn’t give a shit. She was the one who’d charmed her way into Anton Rey’s party. Except we both knew Anton was a fluke. Ade had the skill to make boys, rich and poor, horny enough to fool around with her. But thus far she hadn’t yet managed to make any of them care. I had always figured she didn’t care either.
She was quick to recover, though. Instead of yelling, she poured herself a glass of milk. “Dad, you took care of the electricity bill, didn’t you?”
An odd question. “What?” Dad frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Ade knew as well I did. He was stalling – stalling because with all the insanity life had been hurling at me nonstop for the past few weeks, I hadn’t been able to remind him, like I’d been doing for years. And if I didn’t remind him, no one reminded him. And if no one reminded him, the bills usually didn’t get paid. And yet there was Ade, looking at Dad with a cold rigidity that reminded me of someone else entirely – of the girl I couldn’t find in the mirror. The old me.
That girl had never been entirely free either.
A knock on the door. I opened it to find a guy in a suit and a funny hat lowering his white-gloved hands while an exquisitely sleek black car revved behind him… the same one that had taken us over the bridge to Hedley’s funeral. “I’m here to pick you up, miss. Your sister sent me.”
“Ericka did?”
“Oh yeah.” Dad set his beer can down and peeked over from the couch. “Ericka called a little while ago while you were in the bathroom. Said Hyde told her you’d need a ride to the party. Apparently she and Charles are already there.”
An odd gesture, but then Ericka did do stuff like that once in a blue moon – when her husband let her. It was Charles who controlled the money flow, after all, Charles who sanctioned every expense. And even when it came to his in-laws, Charles wasn’t exactly a giver.
“It’s a nice thing they did,” Dad continued. “You make sure you thank them once you get there. Hyde too.”
“Look at that, little sister,” said Ade with a defeated smile. “You’ve got a carriage and everything.” She poked at the crust.
I’d have preferred the subway.
“Ade, you want to hang out tomorrow?” I blurted out suddenly. Ade looked just as shocked as I expected she would. “I mean we haven’t really in a while.” I hated the way Ade couldn’t look at me for more than a few seconds.
She shrugged. “I can’t. I’m… busy.”
“Really?”
“I’m working,” she said quietly. “I signed up for extra hours. You’re not the only–” She stopped.
“Oh…”
“Well, I mean I might as well, right? Since…” Though she trailed off again, it was a statement she didn’t need to answer for me to understand the meaning behind it. She looked at me in my couture dress. She looked at Ericka’s driver, in the doorway. Then she looked at Dad, and the unpaid bills that would have to be peeled off the cheese-stained kitchen table.
“Miss,” prodded the driver.
Ade grinned. “Have fun.”
I nodded lifelessly. The door shut behind me with a heavy click more devastating than the whine of metal bars, or the desperate chirping of the bird trapped inside.
Twelve-feet-tall brass doors opened into a dimly lit oval ballroom underneath a high gilded ceiling. The masks freaked me out more than anything. Regardless of how exquisite the ball gowns were, or extravagant, or excessive, the masks added a grotesque quality that sent a shudder through me – half-masks and full-masks, masks of pure lace, masks of netting, masks that fanned out in all directions, masks that climbed up the wearer’s forehead like black vines and stretched to the sky. Ears and beaks. Half-covered grins and beady seductive glances. They seemed to meld with the flesh, becoming part of it. The plastic faces of the wealthy elite.
I wrapped my arms around my chest, shivering partly because I’d left my cardigan in Ericka’s car, but mostly because I knew I was trapped. From the stained-glass skylight to the marble floor to the Corinthian columns lining the walls. From one cage into another.
Where should I go first? Anton would text me where to meet him at midnight. He probably anticipated not being able to find me. I was masked after all. So was Hyde. Knowing that Anton couldn’t have me watched or followed helped me breathe easier.
I checked my cell phone. Just about half an hour to midnight. That meant Anton, Shannon and her friends wouldn’t get here for a while. What the hell was I supposed to do until then?
Try and find me.
Hyde. A wave of warmth passed through my chest, down my stomach. I squeezed my eyes shut to get rid of the lightheadedness. Perhaps I could find him. It wouldn’t hurt. There was no point in me standing around on my own staring slack-jawed for two hours. Plus, I’d need to be around him when Shannon did come. I was fairly confident the plan had nothing to do with the flutter in my chest.
I pushed through the crowd, keeping my arms wrapped closely around me so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself by–
“Excuse me!” Red wine splashed onto a finely tailored suit. Damn, I was so close.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
The tall man glared at me with sunken blue eyes. He might have been more intimidating if he hadn’t been so scrawny and frail.
“Relax, honey, she clearly didn’t mean it,” said the beautiful woman next to him, her solid black macramé mask matching her strapless sequined gown perfectly. If only she hadn’t sounded so emotionally exhausted and lifeless, I might have counted her among the few bright spots I could find among this socialite circus of haute couture.
“Am I supposed to care? This is a thousand-dollar suit. If I’d known there’d be little girls stumbling around I’d have stayed in the office.”
Wait. That voice.
The woman flipped back her long black hair, clearly straightened, and folded her arms in an “I’m painfully annoyed and I’m not even going to try to hide it” kind of way. Very familiar. “You’d have stayed in your cave anyway if I hadn’t dragged you kicking and screaming into the outside world.”
He smirked. “Yeah. Thanks for that.”
“Ericka?”
The woman steeled herself, as if her closely guarded secret had been shouted from the heavens. She looked at once embarrassed and panicked, and yet still kept her head raised and her grin spread widely enough to perhaps convince me that I hadn’t just glimpsed the broken marriage of a husband and wife who clearly could not stand each other. It was Ericka. The mixture of pride and shame was more solid a proof than her voice.
“It’s me, Deanna,” I added helpfully.
She deflated almost immediately, all the airs she would have put on dissipating before she had a chance. “Deanna, is it that really you?”
“Yes, Ericka.” I laughed. “Or have you already forgotten the sound of my voice?” I slipped up my mask quickly so she could see my whole face.
“Oh.” She tried a smile, but it only dissolved into more shame. Still, since she was pretending I hadn’t seen it, I pretended not to notice. “Charles, it’s my sister.”
“Yes, I know who it is.” He rolled his eyes and threw in a particularly half-assed, “Hello, Deanna.”
Pfft. Beanpole. “Sorry about the suit.”
He straightened his back. “It was very expensive.”
“You’re not going to cry, are you?”
“Deanna!” Ericka grabbed my wrist, playing the indignant wife quite well, even though she couldn’t stop her lips from twitching upward. “She’s sorry, Charles. Deanna, why don’t you come with me? I’d love to talk for a bit.”
It was the honesty of her grin that sold it.
“Deanna,” she said, once we’d found a place near one of the columns. “Are you doing OK? Adrianna told me you were having some problems at home.”
I scanned the crowd. One woman in golden chiffon teased a man’s lips with a strawberry
as flesh red as his horned mask. “She may have exaggerated. Thanks for sending a car, by the way. The seats were really cushy.”
“She said you’d been keeping to yourself, locked in your room.”
“I go out with Hyde sometimes.”
At the sound of his name, Ericka rubbed her forearm with a sigh, the wineglass in her other hand wobbling a little. “OK, but other than that you’re content with shunning every other aspect of life?” She shook her head. “That’s not you at all.”
I peered up at her, incredulous. “Not me? Who am I, Ericka?”
She blinked, startled into silence before she managed to find her voice again. “What?”
“Keeping to myself isn’t me.” I adjusted my mask over my eyes. “How would you know?”
“I didn’t mean… Look, can you blame me for being worried? I don’t care what you think of me, but I’m still your sister, Deanna. I care about what happens to you. I… want to know what’s going on in your life.”
For the first time in over a decade. If only she’d cared back when my only problems were giant-sized pimples and missing Mom.
“Nothing’s going on.” I turned back to the crowd. “Nothing really…”
My breath hitched. Somewhere amidst the dancing masses stood a young man in a black waistcoat. Dark hair grazed the top of his forehead, which was half-covered by a metal mask that left the right side of his face exposed. But even if his entire face had been hidden, I’d still know who it was. The way he watched me with a gentle kind of intensity that made me both nervous and excited – that was the biggest hint.
“Deanna?” Ericka held on to my gloved hand with hers. “Where are you going?”
I had to keep an eye on Hyde. I had to be around so I could make sure Shannon followed through with the plan. That was why I was floating to him. It wasn’t because of that sly grin.
“Sorry, I have to go.”
“Wait.” Ericka squeezed my hand harder. “Come on, we just found each other – why not stick around and chat? I know I haven’t been around a lot, but that’s why I want us to spend some time together.”
Feather Bound Page 14
