“But you’re not. So what’s the real reason we’re going to igNight?”
I beamed. “Does that mean you’ll go?”
He zipped his duffel and stood, looping the strap over one shoulder. He raised his eyebrows at me like he was waiting for my response.
“Okay. Don’t get mad.” He rolled his eyes, still wordless. “Luna—”
“No way.” He started out the door.
“No, listen,” I said, following him.
“No.”
He was limping a little, giving me a chance to catch up as he loped across the parking lot. “I have to—”
“It’s not happening,” he said over his shoulder.
I stopped. “I’m going with or without you. I’d rather it be with, but it’s your choice. I’m not giving up this time, Chris. As long as she’s out there, I’m not safe. Maybe you can ignore that, but I can’t.”
He stopped, a few feet ahead of me. He let his bag drop to the ground and sighed loudly. Finally, he turned. “So where does the club come in?”
“Vee told me that Shelby Gray has been hanging out at igNight a lot. She broke up with Gibson and is acting super sketchy, and if I were a betting woman, I would bet that she’s going there to meet up with a certain psychotic friend of hers. It’s worth a shot, anyway. I can’t let this go, Chris. And the old Chris would have totally gotten that.”
He seemed to think this over, his jaw working. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I get it.”
“Good. Meet me there at ten.”
15
IGNIGHT WAS PACKED. Like, wall-to-wall, elbow-to-elbow, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip packed. A DJ worked in a high booth, buzzing techno music at us so loud you could feel it vibrate through the soles of your feet. Everything was black light and neon and sleek. Leather couches in the corners, high-top tables scattered everywhere, a long bar that stretched the perimeter of the entire room, an ornate hookah placed on it every two feet or so. It was hazy and loud and hot. Condensation ran down the windows, and our shoes felt squeaky and slick against the tile. People didn’t dance so much as writhe, mixing sweat and smoke and breath.
I didn’t know how I was ever going to find Shelby in there.
I turned to look at Chris; he appeared to be even more off-kilter than I felt. I laced my fingers through his and pulled him behind me toward an empty spot at the bar, on the dark end of the room.
“This is insane,” he said, when we finally found a place. He gazed at the hookah as if it were going to bite him. I laughed.
“Relax, jeez. You have cop written all over you.”
“Because I am one. I would rather be that than—”
“What’re you having, hon?” A waitress had appeared out of nowhere, wearing a tight hot pink romper and thigh-high black hose with a pair of combat boots. Her hair was pulled back slick on one side and dangled to her chin on the other in a flat black waterfall. She handed me a card with the shisha menu printed on it.
“Oh. Uh . . .” I leaned over. I had never smoked shisha. I knew this wasn’t exactly the same as smoking cigarettes, but it was a slippery enough slope that my palms started to itch. At the same time, my senses came to attention with craving. “Double apple,” I said, choosing the first thing on the menu.
“ID?” she asked, holding her palm out, looking bored. I dug for my license and gave it to her. She scanned it, nodded, looked Chris up and down, and then moved on.
“Apple-flavored smoke? Sounds delicious,” he said, deadpan.
“You never know until you try it.” I picked up the hose and slithered it at him like a snake.
“Can we just get to what we came here for?” he asked, turning his eyes back to the room. I dropped the hose. He was determined to make this suck as much as humanly possible.
I concentrated. Words came out at me in their usual colors, which got confused among the neon and made my eyes wonky. The room felt salmon to me. Peaceful. Not at all the kind of place I would expect to find someone like Luna.
The waitress returned with tobacco, foil, and lit coals, and we watched while she expertly filled the bowl. “Fifteen dollars,” she said in a voice equally as bored as everything else she did. I paid her and she disappeared into the crowd.
I picked up the hose and held it out to Chris. “You want to go first?”
He shook his head. “No desire, actually.”
His Mr. Straightface routine was getting old. “Whatever. Up to you.” I took a pull off the hose and felt the smoke roil through me, my whole world lighting up in apple green. “You should give it a try,” I yelled over the music, holding out the hose again.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m getting enough secondhand smoke to last me a lifetime.”
That was it. I was done with this nonsense. I brought the hose to my lips, took a deep pull, then stepped in close to Chris, backing him up against the bar. I angled my leg between his and pushed in until every part of me was brushing up against every part of him. The green apple burst and stretched until it was part of a brilliant rainbow, a curtain of color between us. I snaked my hands up over his shoulders, cupped the back of his neck, and leaned in. With my mouth only centimeters from his skin, I exhaled. I could feel him relax around me, and then, with effort, straighten up again.
“You should at least try to loosen up a little,” I said. But before I could say any more, I was distracted by a familiar laugh. I whipped around and saw Shelby Gray puffing on a hookah in a barely there backless halter and painted-on jeans. She was sitting on the couch, draped over the lap of some guy I didn’t recognize. Definitely not Gibson. Guess Vee was right—they were Split City. Shelby tilted her head back and the guy nuzzled her bare shoulder.
I forgot all about the green and the rainbow and the smell of Chris’s aftershave. My heart sped up and I felt a little tingly and dizzy. Probably part adrenaline and part green apple. Well, and part Chris, if I was being really honest.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. I started to weave through the crowd. Chris was saying something to my back, but I was singularly focused on one thing and one thing only: getting to Shelby Gray. Finding out where Luna was.
To get to Shelby, though, meant I had to cross the dance floor, which was like trying to swim upstream, if upstream was filled with flailing arms and whipping hair. The DJ had just started a new song—a grinding remix of something familiar—and people were flooding the floor like crazy. I lost sight of the couch and caught myself balling up my fists at my sides, my shoulders tensing. If Luna was here, there would be no better place to shank me and take off.
The DJ yelled into the microphone about partying, and ratcheted up the volume another notch, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible. I turned to plead for help from Chris with my eyes, but I’d been cut off from him too. The crowd had closed in, and all I could see were the people surrounding me.
I didn’t like being surrounded.
I began to get disoriented as the lights went crazy, flashing and strobing and zipping colors up walls and across faces and clawing across the darkness of the ceiling like meteorites. My head began to pound from trying to keep it all straight.
Suddenly, a hand reached through the crowd and grabbed my wrist, tight. Startled, I yanked back, but I was too distracted to be strong, and I found myself being pulled through the knot of bodies. I slipped on someone’s spilled drink and almost went down, but the hand gripped tighter and I found myself being pulled back up again.
I had the thought that maybe I should scream for help. Try to get Chris’s attention. That I should fight back. But I was having too much difficulty getting my bearings. I couldn’t see through the haze and the lights and the panic. My voice felt locked inside.
Finally, I burst from the crowd, shocked to find myself spit out on the other side of the room. I could see Chris across the room. He had found a stool and was slouched on it, playing with his phone. So glad to know he had my back.