Diana’s lips curl into a sneer. “Yer such a priss, Holly. Such a good li’l Catholic girl.”
“I am not.” Holly can’t stop smiling. It’s like she’s stuck.
“Such a Goody Two-shoes. Bet yer mom would never leave such a good, good girl.”
“My mom hates me. I’m just free babysitting,” Holly says. She laughs, but her eyes are watery.
Justine rustles in her purse for tissues, which she gives to Diana, who wipes and pulls up her wet undies.
“I can’ wear these,” she says, and throws them to the ground. “Happy birthday, perverts.”
The single bulb over the Sunrise’s back door bleeds out, casting yellow light over their tired faces. Justine’s mascara has left black rings under her eyes like a raccoon.
“How are we gonna get home?” she asks.
“Fucky-sucky,” Diana giggles. “Fucky-sucky, fucky-sucky.”
“Shhh, don’t,” Holly says, and suddenly she’s crying, and Maggie thinks of the dime in her inner jeans pocket.
The Sunrise has a pay phone up near the front counter with its cash register, toothpick dispenser, and bowl full of creamy mints. Maggie slides inside the narrow phone booth and closes the door. Scribbles in different pen colors, different scripts, litter the wall:
For a good time, call Jenny.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
“It’s okay to look outside
The day it will abide
And watch the sunrise.”
–Big Star
If you’re here, where am I?
If you’re not here, where are you?
She dials his number. It rings once, twice, four times. On the fifth ring, a man’s voice answers with a sleepy “Hullo?” She twists the cord around her index finger till the tip turns a fat purple.
“Who is this?” the man asks, more demanding this time.
“Is my dad there?” Maggie answers.
“Oh,” the man says. And then again, “Oh. Hold on.”
The phone is fumbled; static fills her ears. She hears muffled voices and then her dad is on the line.
“Maggie? Baby? What’s wrong?”
“Sorry, Daddy. Did I wake you up?”
“No, it’s…okay.” Her dad’s voice is deep and raw with sleep. “Is something wrong? Is your mom okay?”
“No. I mean, yeah, she’s fine. I’m in Dallas. I went to a concert.” Everything she says sounds like a question. She takes a deep breath. “I’m in Oak Lawn.”
“You’re here?”
“Yeah. We’re at a diner. The Sunrise.”
She hears her dad say to Bill, “They’re at the Sunrise. I know, I know,” and then he’s back on the line. “The Sunrise, huh? Charming establishment. Kind of like a bad prison movie. Is Olivia de Havilland there?”
“She’s serving eggs and screaming about Joan Fontaine being a bitch.”
“Ah.” Her dad chuckles.
Maggie wraps her finger completely in its phone-cord cocoon. “Um, Diana’s too drunk to take the wheel, and nobody else can drive stick.”
“Do you need me to come get you?”
“No, that’s okay,” she says, a reflex. She stares at a spot on the wall where someone has scrawled a response to an earlier question in red ink:
You are here. We all are. We just can’t see it.
The words squiggle and blur, and she blinks hard against the tears that show up uninvited. The whole cruddy night implodes inside her chest, bringing her defenses down on themselves in a whoosh of choking dust. She is all that is left standing, a small piece of rubble that has escaped the blast. “I was just wondering…maybe it would be better if we could crash at your apartment?”
It’s quiet for a second or two, long enough for Maggie to want to take it back.
“Hold on.” Her dad puts the phone to his chest. She can hear it sliding against his pajama top, making a crackling sound. She wants him to say, yes, yes, of course you can come, you don’t even have to ask. But it isn’t like that anymore. It isn’t even her dad’s place. None of them really have a place. They’re tethered by this impossible silence, interrupted only by static and jokes and muffled talk, held motionless by the things that can’t be said to one another.
Outside, the sky’s pinkening. A newspaper truck idles in front of the Sunrise. A guy shoves a neatly folded stack of morning papers into the glass-front case beside the door and drives away. She hears her dad’s voice again. “Give us fifteen minutes.”
The drive to Bill’s condo is only a mile. Maggie takes the wheel, and Holly works the stick. When the engine starts to sound like it’s gargling nails, Maggie shouts, “Shift!” and Holly works the gearshift into second or third and back down again at traffic lights, which are on some insane timer that they cannot seem to beat. In the backseat, Diana yells, “Shift! Shift!” over and over again, laughing maniacally.
“Stop it, Diana,” Holly says. “You’re confusing me!”
But Diana only says it more.
Maggie’s nerves are shot. She wants the night to be over. She wants Diana to be quiet so she can drive. She wants her dad.
“Diana,” Maggie snaps, “we’re going to strip all the gears if you don’t shut up.”
Diana’s head lolls against the backseat. Her lips tremble. “Please don’t fuck up my car. It never did anything to you,” she says, and bursts into tears.
After two wrong turns, Maggie finally finds her dad’s street. It’s a long one flanked mostly by apartment buildings with names like The Windsor and Royal Court. Her dad lives in a coral stucco complex called The Chapparel. Maggie parks out front, and she and Holly prop Diana onto their shoulders and half drag her through an interior courtyard with a rock garden and some kind of exotic cactus. Justine trails behind, carrying their purses.
“I’m gonna puke,” Diana moans.
“Not yet you’re not,” Maggie warns.
“Oh god, oh god,” Diana’s eyes flutter.
“Not yet,” Maggie says. “Almost there.”
Maggie finds the door, number 7B, and knocks softly. The door opens.
“Hi, Daddy,” Maggie says.
“Oh god,” Diana says, and vomits all over the carpet.
A half hour later Diana is passed out on the bathroom floor, her arm wrapped around the toilet base like a cherished friend. Justine and Holly have been put into the second bedroom under blankets Maggie recognizes, blankets that used to be in their linen closet at home. It’s just Maggie and her dad and Bill on the long camel-back sofa across from a wall of mirrors. She sees them reflected there like those speak-no-evil monkeys on a cigarette break. Bill has thrown on a terry-cloth robe that’s gone flat with washing. Her dad is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. His auburn hair sticks up in stiff tufts that might look rocker cool except that it’s her dad and so it doesn’t. His eyes are the same heavy-lidded blue as hers but older, like a time-lapse photography exhibit of her next twenty-five years.
Bill isn’t what she expected. He’s solidly built, like he could have played football when he was younger but now he’s got a little bit of a belly on him. His face is soft and shadowy with stubble. He wears cheap brown plastic glasses. Put a white button-down on him and he’d look like any bean counter in an accounting firm.
“The place is nice,” Maggie says, eyeing the dinette set in the corner, the arched chrome lamp, the china cabinet housing shiny white plates and bottles of wine, all of it Bill’s, all of it foreign.
“Would you like a soda or some tea?” Bill asks. “I’ve got some oolong.”
Maggie doesn’t know what oolong is, but she wants to be agreeable so she says yes. She follows her dad and his lover into the bright white kitchen. Bill hands the kettle to her dad, who fills it under the faucet while Bill reaches into a cabinet for a box of tea bags. They move around each other in easy harmony, and the one time they screw up—Bill opens the fridge, and her dad nearly bumps into the open door—they grin as if it’s some private joke they
share. Maggie has seen her dad happy and sad, pissed off and preoccupied, but she’s never seen him this way. She does not yet know this dad, the one moving so easily around his kitchen, handing his lover eggs to crack in a bowl, taking a milk carton from his hand and placing it back in the fridge. He has unpacked someone new here, and she will have to learn the way of him.
Her dad licks a dollop of sour cream from his fingers, and Bill automatically extends a dish towel.
Maggie clears her throat. “Um, I thought I’d go see the pool.”
“Swim hours aren’t until eight,” her dad explains.
“I was just gonna stick my feet in. If that’s okay.”
Her dad looks to Bill, who shrugs.
“As long as you’re quiet, nobody really cares,” Bill says.
The pool is only a few feet from her dad’s condo. It’s a long, chemically blue rectangle surrounded by a white metal fence and lots of lounge chairs. Maggie sits at the edge of the deep end and tests it with her toes. It’s still holding some of yesterday’s heat, warm as a bath. It would be a good place to spend a summer afternoon, maybe as good as the Holiday Inn.
A flight attendant emerges from one of the second-floor apartments. She stands on the balcony in her crisp navy uniform and matching pumps, a rolling weekender bag at her feet. She smiles at a businessman four doors down stepping out with his briefcase, a newspaper under his arm. They do not call each other by name but wave and smile and say good morning before heading in different directions, to different commutes. One by one, people come out of their dark, mysterious caves, blinking against the new light—a runner off for his morning jog, a scruffy guy in his boxers scratching his belly, a woman in sensible work shoes, two kids in tow. They go and come back and go again. No one stays for long.
Her dad has come out. He sits next to her, a glass of orange juice in his hand, and places the steaming tea mug beside her.
“Nice pool,” Maggie says. “Very Sunset Boulevard.”
Her dad does an exaggerated Gloria Swanson face, all curled lips and big, crazy eyes. “It’s the pictures that got small!”
“Anybody up yet?” Maggie asks.
“Sleeping. In another few hours they’ll be praying for death.”
Maggie imagines her friends waking up in a few hours, looking around at the condo, putting it all together. They’ll know, and maybe Maggie should care about that, but she doesn’t.
“I guess I should call Mom,” she says.
Her dad sips his juice. “Already done. I let her know you were here.”
In her mind, Maggie can see her mother sitting alone at the kitchen table in her pale-green nylon robe, her paper spread out, a cup of Sanka sitting beside her in a mug decorated with Christmas cats, the words SANTA CLAWS LIVES HERE emblazoned around the rim, the numbing hum of the central air providing a soundtrack. If Maggie were home, she’d be slurping her Cheerios while her mom chattered nervously about things that didn’t matter. Her mother doesn’t trust silence. Maggie wonders if her mother is talking even now though no one is there to hear it, if she’s still afraid of what could settle around her in that empty space if she doesn’t keep filling it. It’s a terrible responsibility, trying to keep them all safe from the unsaid, and Maggie feels bad about it. She should talk more, take some of the burden away. She vows to be nicer to her mom when she gets home, and even as she makes the promise to herself, she knows she will break it.
Maggie cups her eyes with her hands to block the morning sun. “Is she pissed?”
Her father shrugs, sips his coffee. “Surprised. Glad you’re okay.”
Surprised. Disappointed. Concerned.
“Did you tell her everything?”
He nods solemnly. “Yes, and she’s going to take your left ear, which she’ll keep in a jar by her bed. Let that be a lesson to you.”
Maggie winces. “Did you really tell her?”
Her dad shakes his head. “I told her you were too tired to drive back so you came here instead. The truth, the partial truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Thanks,” Maggie says.
“De nada.”
Across the pool, Bill stands at the condo’s kitchen window rinsing glasses, watching them. She’s made a hell of a first impression.
Maggie holds the mug in her hands. It’s hot against her palms, but she likes it. “I thought maybe I could spend some weekends once school’s out. You could tell people I’m a Bolivian circus contortionist you won in a poker game with missionaries.”
“Those missionaries. They can’t hold their liquor, and they always lose at cards.”
“Ain’t it the truth,” Maggie says, but she’s starting to tear up. She takes a steadying breath and asks again. “Would it be okay?”
Upstairs, the mother is back without her kids. Looking frazzled and annoyed, she rushes into her apartment and comes out seconds later holding a tattered rabbit by the ear. Maggie listens to the woman’s heels click down the stairs and away while she waits for her dad to answer for real. The waiting is hard, and she has to bite her lip to keep from making a joke or talking about old movies, anything to break the silence.
“I think we could arrange it,” he says at last.
She sips the oolong. It has a taste like grass, sharp and clean. It’s not bad, just different. She thinks she could get used to it.
Her dad rises, stretches his arms against the hazy light of morning. “You coming in?”
Maggie shakes her head. “Not yet. It’s nice out here.”
“Okay. Bill’s making waffles. They should be ready in about five minutes.”
“Five-minute waffles…” Maggie starts to make a commercial, but nothing clever comes, and so she says what she feels. “Waffles sound good.”
Her dad goes inside, and Maggie stays behind, sipping her tea, getting accustomed to it. The early-morning pink haze has given way to a blue growing steadily sharper. It’s going to be hot. Maggie doesn’t know what time it is—probably not near eight yet, though—but the pool is a happy blue, and Maggie can’t wait. She slips into the warm water, letting her body adjust by degrees. She swims the sidestroke from one end to the other and back again, enjoying her easy buoyancy, the way the water moves against her cupped hands. When she stops for breath, her skin itches with chlorine, so she folds her arms and drops to the bottom like a stone. She hugs her knees to her chest and watches the air bubbles squeak out of her tightly closed lips. They float up toward the distorted world above. Maggie sits for as long as she can, feeling her lungs tighten, until she can’t sit a moment longer. With one strong push, she arcs up, legs pumping, arms reaching out, grabbing hard for the surface.
She breaks through with an audible gasp, drawing as much air into her lungs as she can, inhaling more deeply than she can ever remember. It’s like she’s breathing all the way up from her toes, like every cell in her body is waking up and demanding air, and she can’t do it here in the deep end with so much pressing against her. She needs to get out, anyway. The waffles should be ready.
Maggie swims toward the ladder. The sun’s gaining strength; she can feel its coiled heat on her back. The day will be clear and hot. A good pool day. Maybe her friends will want to stay for a swim. They could lie on towels listening to the radio and drive home in the afternoon, when the traffic’s not so bad and it’s easier to talk.
A guy in shorts and a T-shirt lets himself in through the gate. He’s carrying a pool sweeper in one hand. In the other is a caddy filled with bottles, chemicals to make the water sparkle like a desert hope.
“Sorry, miss, but I’ve got to clean it now,” he says, smiling in apology.
Maggie smiles back. “That’s okay. I was just going in.”
She grabs hold of the metal rungs with sure hands and pulls herself up out of the warm, wavy blue, and the water falls off her like a million shards of glass.
About Libba Bray
Libba Bray is the New York Times bestselling author of A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Swe
et Far Thing. Her books were named ALA Best Books for Young Adults in 2005 and 2006. Before writing novels, Libba worked as a waitress, nanny, burrito roller, publishing plebe, and advertising copywriter, which may or may not explain her characters’ love of television commercials. Libba was born in Alabama, grew up in Texas, and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their son. You can visit her online at www.libbabray.com.
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THE VULNERABLE HOURS
David Levithan
Later, there would be people who would try to explain it away. There was something in the light, they’d say. The sky was a color that nobody had ever seen before, a rose-tinted darkness that made the air seem more tender to breathe. Other people would swear that the tincture in the air wasn’t light or color but scent, an uncertain distillation of the things you were afraid to admit you desired. The temperature could not be blamed, because it was so mild that nobody felt it. Not a single person in the city shivered the entire night, nor did anyone feel overburdened by heat. Minds wandered to other things.
Sarah Wilkins may have been the first to feel it. She was in her room, alone, getting ready to go out. She could hear her mother yelling at her sister in the kitchen—something about a lack of respect, probably stemming from the fact that Sarah’s sister had taken to leaving without saying good-bye. Sarah drowned out the fight and focused on her face in the mirror. She tried not to feel sad about the acne on her forehead or the fact that her bangs were too long. I just have to try to make it better, she said to herself. And then she surprised herself by adding, Why? She put on her cover-up, her blush, her lipstick. She teased and gelled and pulled her bangs into shape. It’s a party, she told herself. But the why still lingered.
Amanda called to say she and Ashley were two minutes away. Sarah was only going to the party because Amanda and Ashley wanted to. The guy who was throwing it was a complete jerk, and the guy Amanda wanted to see there wasn’t much better. Sarah never told her this, because what was the use? When had a friend’s opinion ever undone a crush?
Up All Night Page 6
