Kiss Kill Vanish (29 page)

I have to make it stop. In the dark, I fumble for the remote on the bedside table. It's not there. More giggling. Anger burns away my grogginess, and I'm instantly alert, twisting the knob on the bedside lamp and tossing the extra pillows around until I find the remote wedged between the headboard and the mattress. More giggling. I press power, flip to VH1, and plant my thumb on the volume button until it's blaring loudly enough to cover everything else I don't want to hear.

I don't fall back asleep.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

M
arcel knocks at exactly five to seven.

“What?” I call through the door without opening it.

“Are you ready to go?”

I am, but I definitely didn't think he would be. I peer through the peephole. He looks showered, dressed, refreshed. Disgusting.

I open the door a crack without removing the chain.

“Did you just wake up?” he asks, ignoring the chain and my glare.

“No.”

“So let's go.”

“Give me a sec.”

I close the door, pick up my bag and mandolin, and give myself a glance in the mirror. I look haggard and cranky, like I've spent half the night being screamed at by music videos. One more day.

The lobby smells like burned waffle and boiled eggs. Marcel checks out, while I scan the continental breakfast offerings. The muffins look okay, if oddly shiny, so I put one in my bag along with a banana and a carton of chocolate milk.

“Grab me something, will you?” Marcel calls from the front desk. “I'm going to go get the car.”

I turn back to the breakfast spread, stewing over the fact that whatever anger he had for me last night is gone, and that all this food looks like it's been waxed and polished. Based on the way he stomped out of my room before he went swimming, I was sure there would be chilliness this morning, but the rest of his night seems to have erased all the earlier unpleasantness with me.

I take a fork, stab a doughnut—the half-mangled one with the least frosting—and scrape it onto a paper plate. I add two sulfur-reeking eggs, which immediately roll around picking up doughnut crumbs and frosting, and a box of grapefruit juice for him to wash it down with. I hope the combination makes him puke.

I wait outside, his plate in one hand, my things in the other. The air is crisp, but the cold doesn't pour into my lungs and burn like I've grown used to it doing. By tonight, I'll be walking around with bare legs, no goose bumps.

Marcel pulls up. I get in the back and hand his plate over the seat to him. “I'm going back to sleep.”

“Um, okay.”

I don't give him the satisfaction of hearing me acknowledge that I spent the second half of the night wide awake. He has to have heard the TV blaring from my room. He has to know why. Instead, I curl up with the blanket and let the hum and sway of the car lull me to sleep.

We do drive-through for lunch. Taco Bell. His choice, which is my own fault for refusing to offer my opinion when asked. It reeks up the car, but it's better than sitting across from each other and staring into our steaming burritos in silence. I eat in the backseat, not even caring that I have no excuse for still being back here, and he eats without once glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

“Do you need me to drive?” I ask after a particularly disgusting Texaco bathroom in Valdosta, Georgia. It's midafternoon. He has to be tired.

Marcel twists the gas cap on and starts toward the Texaco store. “Nah. You want a magazine or anything? A snack?”

I shrug. He's not mad at me—he's made that more than clear. He just doesn't care about the fact that I'm mad at him, and maybe I shouldn't even be mad at him. He is what he is. It's not his fault I got confused and thought he was any different. “A magazine.”

“Which one?”

“I don't care.”

I get in the backseat, change my mind, and climb up into the front seat, change it again and am in the process of climbing over into the back again when Marcel returns with
InStyle
and
People
.

“Thanks,” I mumble, sliding back down beside him. Whatever.

I read both from cover to cover. It's something to do—read words, turn pages—but none of it means anything anymore. Beauty, fame, fortune, scandal. It seems funny that these worlds used to be interesting, that I would lie on the beach with my sisters, scouring glossy page after glossy page because this season's eye shadow trends mattered and celebrity cellulite battles were entertaining. And now it's nothing. It's sand. Stand up, brush it off. Or wait for it to be rendered pointless by the heaviness of real life, a single wave.

I put the magazines down.

Outside, everything is changing again. Yesterday was nothing but winter under a bruised sky, snow-cloaked farms melting into gray. I'd started to feel like we'd never escape the dying grass and naked trees again, but today the hills have been slowly lightening. It started while I slept this morning, the sun seeping into individual blades of grass one at a time, and now I see green. Actual green. Leaves, grass, trees, bushes.

Marcel leans forward and turns on the radio. The static is so loud after so many hours of silence that I jump. He rotates through the stations, never staying on one for longer than five seconds. It's incredibly unsatisfying, only listening to bits of songs, but he doesn't seem bothered.

“Are you going to pick something?” I ask.

“Maybe.”

He cycles through the dial several more times, and out of nowhere, I wonder what he said to the blonde to make her laugh. What was he whispering in her ear when I saw them in the hot tub? And in his room? He turns off the radio, runs his hand through his hair, and yawns.

“Tired?” I ask.

“A little.”

“You want me to drive?”

“I'm okay.”

I reach around to the cooler, pull out another energy drink, and hand it to him.

“Thanks,” he says. “Hopefully you can't overdose on these things.”

Overdose. Overdose. Overdose.
At least this time he was the one who stumbled into it.

He snorts, finally hearing what he said, then adds in a voice that barely even sounds like him, “I still can't believe it, you know? It's such a . . .”

A shock. A waste. A tragedy. All of them, really, but I don't know which one Marcel will pick.

“It's such a joke. A stupid way to kill yourself. It doesn't even work half the time.”

“Oh.”

“The Lucien I knew would've put a gun in his mouth. Less pain, more drama. Then again, the Lucien I knew loved himself way too much to commit suicide.”

I know he's right. I've always known it. “Maybe he didn't.” I close my eyes, wishing the words could be sucked back in.

“It wasn't an accident. There's only one reason you take dozens of sleeping pills and painkillers and antidepressants, and it's not to get high. Still. I'd never in a million years have thought a fight with my dad, or a stupid art show, or a fight with me . . .”

His voice breaks, but he doesn't cry. I don't look at him. To our right, the sun is just about to touch the earth. The whole sky glows with all that orange energy, and I wish I could stare into it without hurting my eyes. I feel dangerous, like doing something dangerous, or saying something dangerous. “It wasn't you.”

“I don't want a pep talk.”

I owe him the truth. I owe it to Lucien too, but when I open my mouth the words aren't there, and I realize it's not simply what he deserves and what I owe. I can't do it. “It was me.”

“What are you talking about?”

I'm blushing already, embarrassed by the lies I'm about to tell. “He kissed me. He told me he loved me, and I was so—” I stop and shake my head weakly. Maybe I can't tell him the truth, but I won't leave him thinking it was his fault for the rest of his life. “I was so mad and tired and drunk, and I said . . . I said the cruelest things. I felt trapped and used, which isn't an excuse, but I didn't mean for . . . I didn't know. I'm sorry.” That choking, thickening-throat feeling surprises me, and the first tear slips out before I even realize it's there. It's strangely satisfying to be crying; it's the truth beneath my lies, because if Emilio killed Lucien, I am sorry. I'm so, so sorry. The guilt squeezing my heart is so tight, I feel like it might stop beating.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Marcel asks slowly, cautiously. I can't tell how angry he is. Not yet.

“I was afraid you'd blame me, but I don't care anymore, because you should blame me. It had nothing to do with you. You know that—you two argued all the time. He was upset because I broke his heart and told him he was a fake and a creep and I insulted his art. . . .”

I don't want to go on. That should be enough. I shouldn't have to dig up all the names I ever wanted to call Lucien. I wipe my cheeks with my palms.

When I finally get the courage to look at Marcel, his face is ice. He hates me. It's for the wrong reason, but it's a relief.

“I'm sorry,” I say one last time, but I don't want him to forgive me. It's best if he hates me forever.

“I don't want to take you to him,” Marcel says softly.

“What?”

“I can't take you to Emilio.”

“So what, you're going to just dump me on the side of the road? I didn't know Lucien would—”

“I don't want to talk about Lucien anymore.”

I pause, confused. “But you won't help me get to Emilio because I made Lucien kill himself.”

“Nobody made Lucien do anything,” he interrupts. “And I'm not a priest. I don't need your confession, especially a fake one you're only giving so I won't feel responsible.”

I wipe my cheeks again, but the tears are already gone. My cheeks are hot.

“I don't want to take you to Emilio,” he says again, this time more forcefully. He's angry, but not in the way he should be. “He's not someone you should be with.”

“Don't,” I say, finally understanding. “Not again. You don't know the real Emilio, and I'm tired of hearing what you think you know about him.”

“I'm worried about you. You're being naive and stupid, and you don't know what you're doing.”

“You don't get to worry about me!” I yell. “Worry about yourself. Worry about diseases you picked up from the skank in your room last night! Worry about your crazy parents and getting your screwed-up life back together, but don't worry about me!”

The sun is gone. It happened so fast, I missed both the moment it kissed the earth and the moment it slipped under.

Marcel doesn't speak again. We spend our last hour together in perfect silence, as the shimmer drains from the sky. The gold becomes purple, the purple becomes black, and the stars should be shining, but the lights of the cities—West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and finally Miami—steal the glory. Their glitter is all electric. I recognize the rainbow of neon lights on downtown's towers, gaudy and gorgeous and fake. Home. It's a hollow sort of relief.

I shouldn't have said it. I shouldn't have said any of it, but it's too late now, no time to repent or forgive. What's a little more guilt for me to live with in the long run?

I direct Marcel to the ritzy blocks of Brickell, nestled between downtown and the causeway to Key Biscayne. I didn't need to worry about finding Emilio's in the dark. It's all familiar, every corner and turn easily found in my memory.

“Here,” I say, pointing to a cream building on our right. It isn't one of the tallest or newest, but it's one of the prettiest, with its rippled Spanish roof and curled iron railings edging the balconies and the walkways. Swollen hibiscus bushes with bloodred blooms line the courtyard.

Marcel turns into the parking lot, and an unforeseen panic slams into me. We're here. I'm not ready. I spent twenty-seven hours in the car anticipating this moment, but then Marcel distracted me and now I don't know what I'm doing.

Should I call Emilio and tell him I'm in the parking lot? Or should I just walk up to his door? I don't know why I'm nervous. It's Emilio.

Marcel puts the car in park. If he asks me if I want him to wait while I call Emilio, I'll say yes. Or if he asks me if I want him to wait while I go see if Emilio's home, I'll say yes to that too.

He doesn't ask either of those things, though. He doesn't say anything.

I reach behind the seat and find my bag and the mandolin. For the first time it seems wrong that this is all I have. There's nothing else in the world that's really mine, and the mandolin isn't really mine.

I open my door and the moist, floral air hits my nose. I'd forgotten the heaviness of night flowers. I can't smell them without thinking of Emilio, and suddenly the anxiety is gone. Childish. “Thank you,” I say.

Marcel nods and stares out at the tangled vines, letting his gaze crawl up the building with them.

“No, really,” I try again. “Thank you. And I'm sorry.”

“Me too.”

I'm not really sure which of his sins he's apologizing for, and he doesn't know half of what I'm sorry about, but the exchange is genuine. And as far as endings go, we could certainly do worse.

I slide out of the car and slam the door before he can ruin it by saying anything else. My legs feel thick and slow after so many hours of sitting, and I wobble a little as I enter the lamp-lit courtyard. I look up. Second floor, south corner. His light is on. Every part of me wants to run to the vine-wrapped spiral staircase, but Marcel is watching, so I walk. At least I think he's watching, but when I turn to give him a wave good-bye from the base of the staircase, he's already gone.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE