If You Find Me(55)

“If it isn’t Pixie Macleod and Fiddle Girl,” she purrs.

Pixie gives a little hop in place and Marie smiles.

“Oh hell, if you’re that excited, come on in.”

“Thanks,” Pixie gushes, pulling me in behind her.

The noise is like an assault—the house vibrating with laughter and music and chatter. My heart thumps sideways, out of rhythm with the driving beat.

“Look!”

Pixie drags me into a room off the hall. There’s actually a whole separate room for coats.

“Feel that in your chest? Isn’t it cool? It’s dance music, like at the clubs.”

I keep my coat on. I’m wishing I had my violin case, just to have something to hold on to. Even worse, I’m wondering if there’s a way to get a spare case and take the handle off. I could hold it in my pocket, where no one could see.

Pixie tugs my sleeve.

“Aren’t you going to hang up your coat?”

[page]“I think I’ll keep it on.”

What if someone swiped it? It’s the nicest coat I’ve ever owned. When I wear it, I feel like civilized Carey. Carey with a hope.

“Suit yourself. If you get too hot, you can always hang it up later.”

Back in the great room (Pixie knows these things), the noise squashes me like a bug against the wall.

“You’re the literal definition of a wallflower, you know that, Blackburn? Don’t you want to dance?”

I shake my head no, my smile glued in place. I can’t breathe. Can’t think.

“You, um, go ahead. I’ll—I’ll be fine.”

Pixie sashays off across the polished marble, the room’s furniture huddled against the back and side walls to make way for dancers. She stops at the glass fireplace in the center, rubbing her hands together. She smiles and waves at a group of girls from English lit, who wave her over. They dance together in a circle, laughing and shouting over the din.

She makes it look so easy. I feel a twinge, watching her. Jealous. Jealous of Pixie.

I imagine dancing, something I’ve never done in my life, and Delaney and her ladies-in-waiting laughing and pointing.

I jump when a skinny guy leans in toward me, his head wagging to the beat.

“Want some?”

He holds out what looks like a homemade cigarette, the smoke sweet, like when Ness and me threw moss into the campfire.

“What is it?”

“Fun.”

I stare at him blankly.

“You’re joking, right? You really don’t know what this is?”

I shake my head no, and he laughs like a hyena, so loud that the group next to us turns to stare. He leans in toward me, and I recoil at his breath. Like Mama on the moonshine. I inch away.

“Stuck-up bitch. All girls like you are stuck-up bitches.”

I think of my shotgun. Just the sight of it, steadily pointed, could set the knees of grown men quaking.

Pixie catches my eye and gives two dancing thumbs-up. I smile a shaky smile. I can do this. I inch along the wall. I have no idea where I’m going. I’m a scientist in the wild, I tell myself, observing the social behavior of caribou. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a part of me keens to be a caribou, too.

“Sorry,” I mumble as I bump into a couple. I catch my foot on a root, only here, it’s someone else’s foot. My arms flail.

He catches me, his body shielding me from the gyrating crowd, and I hang in his arms. It’s as if I’m one of Nessa’s Disney princesses; we’ve been dancing, and he dipped me.

“You,” he says.

But Lancelot mused a little space;

He said, “She has a lovely face;

God in his mercy lend her grace,

The Lady of Shalott“



I fall into those eyes that feel like swinging real high with your head thrown back.

“Lucky I was here to catch you. You could’ve been trampled.”

By caribou. Just the thought alone hurts.

I think of the way it felt, screaming at him in the woods. My face screwed up. The words ugly. I’d come undone. I’d never come undone before.

“Ryan,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. I search his face, but it’s like the open book has closed.

He sets me back on my feet.

I stand next to him, our arms touching, watching the crowd. I want to say something, anything, but the words won’t come. He leans in toward me and forces a smile, a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I haven’t seen you around all week.” His breath is minty fresh, like Delaney’s Tic Tacs. “I’d say you’ve been avoiding me. Have you been avoiding me?”

I look away, my chest expanding with that all-too-familiar ache that seems to await me around every corner.

“No. I don’t know.”

“Well, is it yes, or no?”

“It’s just . . . I just—”

“Just what? I no longer deserve any common courtesy? People make one mistake with you and they’re out in the cold?”

“No! I didn’t think you’d want to see me. I thought—I mean, I thought that—”

He turns my face to his, but unlike Mama’s, his grip is phoebe-belly soft.

“I thought we were friends,” he says.