She laughed and I could tell she didn’t mind. “Where are we going?”
I tapped my foot idly against the brakes. “I don’t know. Should I know?” I’d wanted to burn off my energy with another human being, but now that she was here, there was still energy buzzing through in small shock waves, filling me up with the need for topsy-turvy anarchy but with nowhere to find it. “That’s why I called you.”
She hummed what sounded like classical music under her breath. “There’s an old grain mill out there.” She pointed past the gas station toward a field and the border of the forest known as the Hollows out back. “Not far. A few of the theater kids smoke out there sometimes. They invited me twice.” I could tell by her tone that invitations for Lena were a rare occasion. “Cops never come that way.” She tapped the six-pack.
The fact that she knew cops never came that way instilled in me a sliver of trust. “All right,” I said, not much caring where we went as long as it was somewhere. “Lead the way then.”
I felt jittery and a little silly as I followed Lena out of the car. Another girl who seemed equally at home in the dead hours of the night and the wee hours of the morning. We crossed behind the gas station into the field where the grass was unmowed and we had to high-step through it while the blades tickled our kneecaps.
The artificial glow cast by the gas station awning and the traffic lights faded until the only light we had to see by was the silver moon. We crossed through a thin layer of trees before I noticed the clearing.
The mill was a rectangular building with rows of windows that had long since lost their glass and now hovered like gaping eye sockets within the concrete’s peeling red paint. Above us, a sign on stilts attached to the building’s roof read, Golden Heart Flour. I couldn’t guess how long since the mill had been open. Ten years? Twenty?
“It’s a little … creepy, I guess, at this time of night.” Lena’s voice was a soft whisper in the night.
“Not if you don’t have anything to be afraid of,” I said, and pushed open the door. With a creak it opened up into a murky cavern.
The soles of our shoes scraped through sawdust. Lena pointed her cell phone screen outward and we stared up into a maze of wood beams overhead.
I ran my hand over a giant cogged wheel, then took a seat at the bottom of a metal staircase that spiraled up into levels unseen.
Lena giggled nervously. She handed me a can. The aluminum was barely colder than room temperature. “You drink beer?” she asked.
“Not really.” I cracked the tab. The sound echoed in the abandoned mill and the amber liquid fizzed into a head of foam. I slurped it off the top.
She watched me. A funny little grin tugged at her lips and it reminded me again of a cat. “But since we’re celebrating then,” she said, opening her own. “What are we celebrating anyway?” She wrapped one hand around a metal cord that hung from the ceiling with a pulley attached to the bottom of it.
I took my time answering. “Us,” I said.
She let go of the pulley cord and it swung in a lazy pendulum arc. “I didn’t know there was an us.” But there was. I’d been her, the stupid girl who went off with stupid boys because they were loud and handsome and older. The only difference was there’d been no one there to save me. “I didn’t think you’d call,” she said.
I let my head rest against the rusty railing. “Those guys were assholes.” Like that was a response.
Lines of graffiti sullied the carcasses of empty grain carts. Lena’s breathing was loud. The metal siding of the mill groaned eerily as if it were a part of the conversation. Holes in the roof let in light from the moon and stars.
Lena held her can of beer out to me. “To us,” she said, meeting my gaze and holding it.
“To us,” I repeated and we clinked cans and each took a long sip.
I noticed the three stars tattooed on her wrist. She seemed so young and insubstantial to have something as permanent as a tattoo. “Where’d you get that?” I pointed.
She turned her wrist over and looked down at the stars drawn in navy blue ink against her pale skin. “A girl I know.” She touched the tip of her finger gently to the center of each one. “So that I’ll always have three wishes. In case I ever need them,” she explained. “You know how it goes. When you wish upon a star…” Her voice took on a melody and she whistled another bar of the song.
I watched as she idly traced the outside of the ink and felt interest grip me. Maybe it was that two-thirds of my can was now empty or maybe it was that I needed to feel the rush of last night in some lasting way. Whatever it was, the yearning for something crazy found its foothold.
“I want one,” I said. “Take me.”
“To get stars?”
“No, to get a tattoo. Will this girl you know, will she give me one even though I’m too young, too?”
Lena stood up straighter. “You’re serious.” Her eyes shone.
“Deadly.” My mouth spread into a wicked smile.