“Well, Ellie, as a former hide-and-seek gold medal winner…”
But before either of us has a chance to say anything else, a guy walks out of a room off the hallway, kicking plaster chunks out of the way with a pair of black boots. His wiry arms are covered in ugly bright-yellow tattoos, and his blond hair is so light you can see the pink of his scalp through it. I breathe in sharply. It’s him. He’s the guy from Attic. He is the reason I am here. He is walking toward the stairs. He’s getting away. I start chasing after him.
I hear Sean calling after me. “Ellie!” he says, “Wait!” But I don’t turn around. There’s no time. The guy from the video is walking down the stairs, being swallowed up by the crowd. I will not let him get away.
“Hey!” I call out. But the guy doesn’t hear me. He starts walking down the stairs. I reach my arm through the railing and I grab his shoulder. I can feel his bones through his shirt.
He turns toward me. The whites of his eyes are slightly yellow, and his skin is pale, blue-veined like blue cheese. He’s holding a red Solo cup in each hand.
“Yeah?” he says. There’s a crash, a pause, a cheer.
“Hi,” I say.
He walks back up the stairs and stops when our heads are exactly level. He looks at me and raises his eyebrows. “What’s up?”
“Ijustwanted to askyoua questionbecause you soldabunchof stuff toAttic today.” The words come out in a jumble. His eyebrow twitches but he doesn’t say anything. “I was just wondering if I could ask you where you got it?” A couple of people push past us to get down the stairs, a guy and a girl. “The stuff you sold I mean.” The guy whispers something and the girl grabs him by the neck and pulls his face to hers. They’re right behind us, their fingers tangled in each other’s hair, lips mashing against each other, breathing heavily. After a few seconds their lips part and they tumble down the rest of the stairs, their hands on each other’s asses.
“I do not know what you’re talking about,” Blue Cheese says finally. He shakes his head, looks over his shoulder. A girl walks by wearing nothing but bronze body paint. He stares.
“Attic?” I say. “That vintage store? You brought in a box of stuff and hung up a sign for this party.”
“Why is everyone always accusing me of stuff,” he says, and then, “You’re mistaking me for someone else, hon, sorry.” He turns and starts to walk off.
“Wait! Please!” I say, a little too loudly. “I kind of know that you did, is the thing. Sell that stuff. It’s not like a bad thing or something. My friend works at the store,” I say. “So I was just wondering if you could tell me where the stuff you brought in came from.” I can feel my face getting hot, and I know I’m starting to sound desperate. “Please?”
Blue Cheese shrugs. His shoulders are tense, he takes a quick gulp of the beer in his left hand. “I was just looking through the basement for stuff to sell, and I found a bunch of old crap. And then I saw that Crap Day sign in the window of that store and I thought, well, what do you know?” He drains the left beer and drops the cup onto the floor. He lifts his second cup to his mouth and takes a gulp. “Why, are you looking for some crap? You didn’t have to come all the way here for that, the entire world is full of it!” He lets out a phlegmy laugh, opening his mouth so wide I can see each of his tiny teeth.
“There was one specific thing you brought in, a psychology book and it had something inside of it, a little piece of cardboard that someone was using as a bookmark…”
From somewhere downstairs the music speeds up.
“And?” Blue Cheese yawns. A girl starts walking down the stairs next to him in a skintight rose-colored dress. He watches her ass.
“And there were these drawings all over it, and my sister did those drawings.”
“So?”
“Well, she’s missing,” I say. This is easily the thirtieth time I’ve told this story tonight, but it never gets any less weird to hear myself tell.
“And what does that mean?” Blue Cheese’s expression changes slightly, the way people’s expressions always do when I start to tell them. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.
“It means I don’t know where she is and my mom doesn’t know where she is.” It still feels fresh. It always does. “Two years ago my sister Nina went out and that night she was supposed to come home.” He’s looking at me like he doesn’t know if I’m lying or not. I wish so much, so much, that I was. “And she didn’t. And then she never came home after that, either.”
Blue Cheese is nodding. “Intense,” he says. His expression has changed again but I can’t understand what the new one is supposed to mean.