Lost Girls(46)

This was where I belonged. In a land where music and dance merged and became one.

I wasn’t a geek here, I wasn’t that student who got all Bs and Cs or the ballet-wannabe who watched everyone else get all the starring roles. Here, I was somebody. I could feel it.

I never wanted to stop dancing, never wanted to leave, but Lauren took my hand and pulled me away from the crowds.

“Look!” she said.

A black strobe light flashed where we now stood, changing her lipstick white and her eye shadow silver. She stretched her right arm out in front of me, an arm that had been completely normal before.

Now her arm was covered, from wrist to shoulder, with an elaborate, gorgeous tattoo. I gasped, enchanted, holding her wrist still so I could examine it.

“Oh. My. Wow,” I exclaimed.

Glowing white scrollwork turned into feathers, which then turned into swans with curving necks. It was more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen. It was a black-light tattoo, invisible until exposed to the right spectrum of light.

“You like?” she asked, her grin widening.

I nodded.

Stephanie lifted her right arm, revealing an identical tattoo. Zoe did the same. They grinned at me, their teeth glowing.

“Now. For the grand finale,” Lauren said. “Take off your jacket.”

My eyes widened. “No way. You’re shitting me.”

“Off, off, off!” all three girls chanted until several boys stopped to see what I was going to take off.

I slipped off my jean jacket, both nervous and excited. My tattoo appeared in reverse, from shoulder to wrist. First, a delicate swan head appeared, resting on my right shoulder as if she had been waiting for me to see her, as if she’d been watching over me all this time. Her head curved gently to one side, her long neck twining with that of another swan and another, their wings spread wide across my biceps, each feather perfect, drawn with glowing white light, as if this lamentation of swans was immortal.

It was Odette and the other girls from Swan Lake, young girls who had been enchanted by a sorcerer, turned into swans and condemned to swim forever on a lake made from the tears of their parents.

Tears formed in the corners of my eyes.

“We’re sisters,” Lauren said, taking my hand, our glowing tattoos forming an arch that bridged us together. “Always and forever.”

“Always and forever,” Stephanie and Zoe repeated with one voice.

I nodded. I wasn’t sure why or when we had made this commitment to one another, but it felt right. Just as right as that black box had felt wrong.

“Always and forever,” I said.

At that moment, I could feel the new me pushing her way to the surface, starting to reveal herself, just like that black-light tattoo. Dangerous, seductive, beautiful.

I couldn’t ignore her anymore.

She was me.

...

We were moving away from the central dance floor, although I didn’t want to leave. I kept dancing as I walked, twirling and spinning, inhaling the perfume of a thousand sweaty dancers, my attention wandering from one visual experience to the next. Girls waved their arms as they rode atop their boyfriends’ shoulders and faces blurred beneath the colored lights, while a huge screen displayed an ever-changing psychedelic light show. I knew there were other things going on below the surface here, dark and dangerous things. Kids were taking drugs and some of them would possibly overdose, girls might go home with boys who had bad intentions, people were selling drugs that weren’t what they were supposed to be, and guys would get robbed on the way back to their cars.

It was horrible and wonderful, evil and perfection combined.

But the dancing and the music were heavenly.

The girls and I walked down a long hallway, past the bathrooms, the music sounding muffled now. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, wishing I had a bottle of water. Stephanie had one arm draped over Lauren’s shoulder and they were whispering.

“Where are we going? We’re not leaving already, are we?” I asked.

Zoe giggled and gave me a hug. “The party’s only getting started.”

Lauren continued to lead the way, looking different tonight, her hair pinned and braided, the set of her shoulders even more confident than usual. Something was coming. Something I needed to be ready for. A heightened awareness kicked in, stirred by a sixth sense I’d forgotten I had.

“Do you trust me, Rach?” she asked, spinning around to face me, stopping all four of us.

“Of course,” I answered, although my pulse quickened in the hollow of my throat.

“Good. ’Cause we’re just about to enter Phase Two.” She held up four tickets that looked almost exactly like the stubs I found in my closet. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about this the other day at school, but you were the one who brought me here and you made me promise to never tell. None of us can tell, can we?”

For the first time tonight, Zoe and Stephanie looked at me with serious expressions. Zoe drew an X over her heart and shook her head.

“We’ll never tell,” they both vowed.

“Okay,” I said, starting to feel a bit spooked. “You’ll never tell what?”

“What happens on the other side of those doors.” Lauren pointed toward a pair of steel doors at the far end of the hallway. We were about twenty feet away. We still had time to turn around.