So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) (19 page)

She screeched and gave Chase a shove, but he
didn’t budge. “You fucking bastard!” she screamed, before stumbling
off to the back of the bar with her friend.

“That was mean,” I chided him as we walked
back to the table.

“She’ll get over it. Besides, I was just
kidding.”

As we walked back to the table, I noticed
various pairs of eyes—mostly girls’—on us. I tried to ignore them,
but as everyone at the table went back and forth from the bar with
beverages in red plastic cups, I noticed it was getting more and
more crowded. The majority of people seemed to be shooting hostile
glimpses in our general direction.

“What’s with the evil eye?” I said to Rowena
at some point.

“It’s all directed at Chase,” she responded.
“Girls he’s hooked up with, and their boyfriends, who still hold
grudges against him for offending their oh-so-fragile manhood. It’s
mainly empty mad-dogging, though. Chase is pretty respected around
here.”

I was tempted to ask Rowena more about
Chase’s tawdry reputation but decided to refrain. After all, I was
here for one reason and one reason only: to get further insight
into Chase’s creative process and let him know I was a trustworthy
ally.

I could hear Chase speaking animatedly to his
friends, so I turned to them.

Entropy was saying, “Tunnels are so heavily
guarded that hitting ’em up is just fucking stupid. I mean, it’s a
felony these days. And people think you’re a terrorist if they see
you: Suspicious men with backpacks spotted entering the tunnels.
Call the bomb squad!”

Chase was grinning deviously. “That never
stopped us before.” He glanced over at me. “Besides, I promised
Annie a good time. So we’re gonna show her how it’s done, South
Bronx–style!”

I was dumbfounded. “We’re . . . hanging out
in a subway tunnel? I don’t get it.”

Nobody really stopped to explain. They all
just stooped to gather their stuff, as the music had become so loud
that it was hard to hear anyone over the hubbub. Chase grabbed my
hand and pulled me out of the bar, sidestepping hulking guys and
jilted-looking girls. I was glad to get out of there, and the cold
night air was a welcome sensation.

“Where are we going, Chase?” I asked, as the
six of us made our way briskly down the dark street.

“We’re heading to the Harlem tunnel,” he
said, not looking at me as he took a drag off his cigarette.

“Wait . . . we’re heading back to
Manhattan?”

He smiled. “Nope. I didn’t say we were
catching the train.”

I could feel myself wilt. So this was the
secret mission Chase had in mind? An excursion to one of the local
subway tunnels? “No way,” I said firmly. “I’ve heard that’s really
dangerous.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s the quarter
moon. I’m obligated. Besides, there’s a bunch of cops out on the
streets tonight because of some gang activity up by Mott Haven.
There’s six of us, and we’ll be way less conspicuous in the
tunnels.”

“Someone said it was a felony!” I
protested.

He flicked the remnants of his cigarette.
“So? Haven’t been caught yet. Besides, you need to see this stuff.
It’s an underground labyrinth, and it’s got some of the best
writing in the city.”

“It’s like the fucking Egyptian pyramids!”
Reynaldo said excitedly. “But our hieroglyphics are better.”

I had a bad feeling about the whole thing,
but I had to admit there was a part of me that was intrigued by it
as well. I’d met a few people who’d done some urban spelunking down
city storm drains, and while it definitely didn’t sound like my cup
of tea, the idea of going down into the underworld was kind of
cool, at least from an archaeological perspective.

This is research, Annie, that’s all
, I
told myself. And if the police did in fact catch us, maybe the fact
that I was a pretty, innocent-looking NYU student would make it all
go over fairly well.

I took a deep breath and girded my loins as
we walked down to the station. It was already well after midnight,
and there were no attendants on hand. Everyone jumped the
turnstiles, even Rowena, but I swiped my MetroCard before stepping
through.

As we made our way to the subway, I couldn’t
hear anything except the distant sound of wind swirling through the
tunnels. My heart began to pound uncontrollably as I looked down
into the bowels of the train tracks. I had no idea how we were
going to traverse them.

“I have flashlights.” Rowena grinned at me
and pointed at her backpack. “And water. I grew up in Compton,
California, so I’m all about safety—whether that means preparing an
earthquake kit or making sure you don’t get carjacked.”

I smiled, not sure if she was joking or
earnest. I was a bit embarrassed that my anxiety was written so
plainly across my face, but there it was. “Thanks,” I said
gratefully. “I’ve never done this before,” I explained.

“No shit? I would’ve thought you were a
seasoned bomber,” she quipped, smiling. “It isn’t that bad,” she
continued. “Besides, at this station, there’s one train that comes
on the hour, and it just came through, so we have plenty of time to
get in and out. There’s a lot of little detours and abandoned
stations up in here, so it’s kind of like exploring a hidden
civilization. You’ll feel like Indiana Jones.”

I laughed. “Hopefully without the spiky walls
or rats.”

“Well, it
is
New York, so there’ll be
rats.”

I shivered at her words. Chase came up to me
and put his arm around me. His breath in my hair was warm, sweet,
and somewhat minty. “I’m glad you decided to come, Goldilocks,” he
whispered in my ear, “’cause you’re really in for a treat. We’re
risking ourselves here, legally and artistically. There’s no better
rush I can think of.”

I could feel my cheeks get pinker and my
palms get sweatier, but I pretended to act cool. “We’ll see about
that, Chase Adams,” I said, meeting his gaze.

Reynaldo looked at us and made a gagging
sound. “Civilians only slow us down, yo,” he whined. “Just ’cause
she’s a hot blonde and all doesn’t mean she gets to come with
us.”

“Annie goes wherever we go,” Chase said
frostily, which shut his friend up. He grabbed my hand. “It’s not
hard. Just a little jump down, and we’re on the track.” He pointed
off into the darkness. “About thirty feet in is the path to the
abandoned station we’re hitting up. From there, it’s only about a
ten-minute trek.”

“Trek? Should I have brought different
shoes?” I asked, only half kidding.

My stomach was in knots as each of them, one
by one, dropped down into the subway and loped off into the
distance. Chase was last, and he looked up at me expectantly. “You
coming?”

I nodded and grabbed his hand, which he was
holding out to me.

As we made our way into the tunnel, I
shivered and rubbed my arms. It was cold and damp, and only a few
flickering ENTER and EXIT lights were around for illumination. I
was afraid I would lose my bearings and fall, but Chase was right
next to me.

“What if someone sees us?” I whispered.

“You don’t have to whisper. You saw for
yourself. There’s nobody around.”

“But what if a train comes by?”

“We already checked the schedule. We’re
running a pretty tight ship here, me and my crew, so don’t even
worry about it.” I couldn’t tell if Chase was annoyed by my
vigilance or not, so I fell into silence as we walked in single
file along the narrow walkway next to the tracks. I could see
Rowena’s flashlight swinging back and forth like a miner’s head
lantern. And that’s exactly how I felt—a miner venturing into
places where normal people wouldn’t dare tread. I was a little
claustrophobic, and the tightening walls and musty smell conjured
unpleasant visions of rubble avalanches.

Chase spoke, and his voice echoed a little.
“Some of these lost stops can actually be seen when you’re on a
train,” he said. “You can barely make out the graffiti as you’re
hurtling by, but if you look closely, you can see the markers of a
fearless bomber. All you need to know is where you are, and you’ll
find them.”

Entropy, who was ahead of me, concurred. “The
most fascinating aspect of New York City is its underground places.
Think about it. We have the oldest subway system in the world, so
there’s a shitload of weird stuff down here. Abandoned stations,
platforms, different levels. Some people think crime bosses dumped
bodies here.”

“I prefer to think we’re gonna run into
buried treasure, not skeletons,” Z said.

“What’s the matter? Chickenshit?” Reynaldo
jeered.

Chase and his friends started to rag on each
other, and their voices bounced off the mottled brick walls, but I
was almost enjoying myself. It was weird to think we were taking an
underground tour that was right in the vicinity of stations and
platforms that thousands of people traveled by on any given day.
But how many could say they’d been down
here
?

As we made our way along the tracks and onto
a narrow ledge below a wall of crumbling brick, I could hear rats
skittering alongside me. Reflexively, I grabbed Chase’s arm.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“It’s okay, Goldilocks. You’re doing fine,”
he offered. “We just need to crawl through this space, but we’ll be
there in no time.”

Crawl? I groaned. Just what I needed: a crawl
space full of rats.

I stooped down so I was on my belly and made
my way through the narrow archway, right behind Rowena. I groaned
again as I thought about what my dress would look like by the end
of this subterranean adventure—I doubted a trip to the dry cleaner
would be enough to restore it to its previous glory. I could see an
incandescent light a few feet off in the distance, thank goodness.
I edged along the cold and slightly slimy concrete, trying to keep
my eyes trained on the blue light ahead of me. As I made my way off
my knees, I could feel Chase’s body slightly behind and his hand
posed almost protectively on the small of my back, which made me
feel steady and confident, even as I also felt an intense bolt of
electricity coursing through my body at his touch.

“We’re here!” Rowena announced ahead of
me.

I turned my attention from Chase and looked
around, floored by what I saw. The area was open and airy. I could
tell it had been a station once upon a time, as we stood on a
platform of near-pristine marble. Although there were small piles
of trash in random areas of the platform, the ceilings were arched
and tiled with colorful mosaics. It almost felt like we were in a
cathedral, but instead of stained-glass renditions of the Madonna
and Child, there were splashes of graffiti on the walls.

“It’s fucking awesome,” Rowena said. “It’s
like a hidden art show, but you can’t buy the art ’cause it’s not
available for public consumption.”

As I squinted and looked across the way, I
could see several other platforms, lined with Grecian columns and
separated by recessed track beds. “It’s weirdly beautiful here,” I
breathed. “Why don’t the other stations look like this?”

“This one’s old. Still, it’s pretty punk
rock, huh?” Chase said.

The others looked around the dank and
cavernous space, as if we were in a place of worship. I could see
plenty of slogans that looked like they’d curled out of the
spray-paint canisters of angry anarchists, but there were also a
slew of beautiful yet incomplete murals, many of which looked
vaguely apocalyptic in the blue light.

“It’s like a ghost town. I can actually
imagine there were people standing right where I’m standing and
that they were here not too long ago,” I said. “I kind of expected
it to be a little more gone to seed down here.”

“The consistent temperatures down here keep
it pretty well preserved,” Chase explained, removing some of his
spray-paint cans from his backpack. As if on cue, Rowena, Entropy,
Z, and Reynaldo all took out their supplies, too, and found a piece
of wall to call their own. I watched intently as their visions
emerged from their heads and onto the crumbling canvas of the
moldering tiles. I grabbed Rowena’s flashlight so I could take a
closer look. I gazed at each of their pieces—from Chase’s grand and
ominous swirls of shadow and light to Rowena’s playful renditions
of life-size sewer rats to the chaotic, geometric scratchings of
the other three, who occasionally stopped to argue about who was
copying whom.

At one point, Chase moved away from his piece
and came over to stand next to me. “What do you think?” he
whispered, surveying the space. The warmth of his body next to mine
made me stop shivering for a moment. I looked up at him, and the
blue light pouring out of some unseen vestibule shrouded him with
an eerie pale halo, giving him the appearance of a dark angel.
“It’s like being in another world, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “There . . . there are no
words.”

He looked down at me. “Some people look for
the infinite but are satisfied with the finite. We’re not those
people, Goldilocks.”

I closed my eyes, enjoying the strangely
reverent moment. I could have stood there for hours with Chase. So
I was almost disappointed when he said, “Come on.” He returned to
the others, and I followed as they began to put away their
supplies.

“Are you ever going to come back here again?”
I asked Rowena. “I mean, to finish what you started?”

She shrugged. “We don’t usually hit up the
same places.” She looked over at Chase. “The LunaBomber forbids
it,” she said wryly.

“If you wanna get busted by the po-po, be my
guest,” Chase said, as he zipped up his backpack. “Besides, there
are dozens of platforms just like this one. No fun playing
favorites.”

As we headed back to where we’d come from, my
head was pounding and my entire body was buzzing. Chase was right.
The night had been thrilling, almost magically so. As I trudged
along with the rest of them, careful to avoid gaping holes in the
platform (courtesy of Rowena’s flashlight), I was almost sorry I
hadn’t taken out my camera to snap a few pictures. I was sure Chase
would have told me it was forbidden, but all the same, I longed for
a testament of that night’s odyssey, something that would endure
long past this moment.