Anything but Ordinary(60)

Bryce couldn’t help but laugh as they headed toward the door. “So you’ve been twenty-one for three years now?”

Sydney laughed with Bryce, putting her arm around her waist. “Eternal youth, sis. Eternal youth.”

The door opened and they were lost in sound pumping from endless speakers, sound she couldn’t help comparing to a thousand cicada melodies, amplified, buzzing, dipping in and out and dripping down like drops of drum rain. She could actually see the tones around her, floating in the air and humming around her, looking like the translucent, shimmering bubbles she used to blow as a little girl.

A tall, skinny, tattooed guy bobbed over a laptop, brushing his hand on a turntable in a jerky rhythm. The dance floor was full of everyone from Vanderbilt sorority girls in peachy dresses to guys in Atlanta Hawks jerseys with cornrows.

Bryce slipped onto a bar stool near where Sydney was clocking in and took the frosty martini glass she slid toward her.

“Lemon drop,” she said as she loaded a tray with drinks.

It was exactly that, in liquid form. Sweet, tart, bouncing on Bryce’s tongue. She nodded her head to the beat and realized in the last half hour, she hadn’t thought once about empty drawers.

An hour later, after her third lemon drop, Bryce was on the dance floor, smashing against sweaty bodies. She was gasping for breath, but so was everyone else. The beats had sped up, still steady, still rolling and swooping like a roller coaster. Everyone jumped with them. The lights flashed so fast it was as if Bryce were dancing slow.

Sydney appeared, the bright strobe catching her in choppy poses as she approached. The beat got faster. Bryce bobbed and weaved with the best of them.

“Bryce!” Sydney yelled.

“Syd!” Bryce yelled back. “I’m having so much fun!” Her lungs seized up, squeezing, so she stopped jumping. It was nothing worse than a 100-meter freestyle, she told herself.

“Awesome!” Syd replied. “Hey, so, I’m starving and I have a quick break. We’re going to get something to eat. You wanna come?”

“No, thanks!” Bryce yelled. “I think I’m gonna have another drink!”

“Okay.” Syd squeezed Bryce’s arm. “Take it easy, okay? I’ll be back in five.”

She disappeared in the bumping bodies.

Bryce looked for the direction of the bar, finally spotting it. She took a step. The floor tilted. “Uh-oh,” she muttered.

That old, familiar feverish feeling crept up her body, and she couldn’t tell the difference between the strobe light and the flickering of her eyesight. Each beam burst with pain like needles in her eyes. The lights wouldn’t stop. They were cutting red in her eyes. She tried to signal the person next to her, but she couldn’t quite find her arms in the numbing heat that was spreading from her spine.

Bryce tried to take another step, but she was no longer in Lounge 2.

A loud car, the engine thundering.

It was the same car they were in tonight, and they were speeding along the streets of Nashville. The bass was bumping. The wheels swerved between the yellow lines, barely screeching to a stop at a red light. The driver, one of the tattooed James Deans, turned to the passengers, asking for directions to McDonald’s. He tripped over his words, giggling, and the whole car stank of a bottle of vodka spilled on the floor of the backseat.

The laughing faces looked familiar. Bryce drew in breath in horror; she had seen this vision before. The dark-haired person next to her—

Sydney.

Sydney laughed at her friend driving, telling him to watch the road. At least that was what Bryce thought she was saying. Every second, the bass rattled her chest, and there were no other sounds. Sydney was laughing. The laughter like broken glass. Glass, shattering. And there, just as it had come to her in the CAT scan, was a sharp, sinking feeling that everything here was wrong.

Sydney had to get out of the car. She had to.

Bryce tried to pull her away, to open the door, to yell, but she was only half there. Another nauseous wave and Bryce pounded on the invisible barrier between Sydney and herself.

“Get out! Stop the car!” Bryce screamed.

But she didn’t hear her. No one did.

The car lurched into motion and the vision snapped away. Bryce was lying on the sticky floor of Lounge 2, a circle of figures bent over her, shaking her shoulders, calling things she couldn’t make out.

“I’m all right,” she said. “I’m all right.”

She stood up, and the crowd of people dispersed, dissolving into the music. Her head felt heavy with heat and pain, and the sight of the swerving car came to her in a flash of hot pain. Was it real? How much time had passed? Was it already happening?

Where was her sister?

“Do you know Sydney?” Bryce turned to the first person near her, a short girl with bleached-blond hair.

“No, honey, but are you okay? Your nose is bleedin’.…”

Bryce put her tongue up to lick away the blood. It tasted like sticky, salty metal. She wiped the rest away. There was a lot of it.

“Where’s my sister?” Bryce yelled over the girl, turning to anyone else who would listen. “Does anyone know if Sydney left?”

Bryce pushed through the bodies to the door, her feet returning in pinpricks of feeling. The bearded, large bouncer sat on a stool, counting money. “Did you see if Sydney left?”