The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(81)

Red lights, pink, white, spinning strange crisscrossing patterns like coded signals gone too fast to catch. The beat in the floor and the walls and in all of their bones, pulsing through them like electric current, leaping from one lifting hand to the next all along the hall, never letting up for a second, go go go.

Selena’s been dancing too long. The weaving lights are starting to look like living things, giddy and desperately lost. Selena’s going watery at the edges, starting to lose hold of the boundary line where she leaves off and other things start. Over by the punch table Chris Harper tilts back his head to drink and Selena can taste it, someone bashes into her hip and she can’t tell whether the pain belongs to her or them, Becca’s arms rise and they feel like hers. She knows to stop dancing.

‘You OK?’ Holly yells, without breaking the beat.

‘Drink,’ Selena yells back, pointing at the punch table. Holly nods and goes back to trying out some complicated hip-and-footwork. Becca is jumping up and down. Julia’s gone, sneaked out somehow; Selena can feel the gap in the room where she should be. It throws things even more off balance. She puts her feet down carefully, trying to feel them. Reminds herself: Valentine’s dance.

The punch tastes all wrong, grassy-cool long-ago summer afternoons running barefoot in and out of open doors, not right for this sweaty thumping dark tangle. Selena leans back against the wall and thinks about things with lots of weight and no give. The periodic table. Irish verb conjugations. The music has gone a notch quieter, but it’s still getting in her way. She wishes she could put her fingers in her ears for a second, but her hands don’t feel like hers and getting them to her ears seems too complicated.

‘Hi,’ someone says, next to her.

It’s Chris Harper. A while back this would have surprised Selena – Chris Harper is super-cool and she’s not; she doesn’t think she’s ever had an actual conversation with him before. But the last few months have been their own place, lush and waving with startling things Selena knows she doesn’t need to understand. At this point she expects them.

‘Hi,’ she says.

Chris says, ‘I like your dress.’

‘Thanks,’ Selena says, looking down to remind herself. The dress is confusing. She tells herself: 2013.

‘Huh?’ Chris says.

Crap. ‘Nothing.’

Chris looks at her. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks. And, like he thinks she might be dizzy, before she can move away, he puts out a hand to cup her bare arm.

Everything slams into focus, bright colours inside sharp outlines. Selena can feel her feet again, tingling fiercely like they’ve been asleep. The prickle of her zipper down her back is a tiny precise line. She’s looking straight into Chris’s eyes, hazel even in the dimness, but somehow she can see the hall as well and the lights aren’t signals or lost things, they’re lights and she never knew anything could be so red and so pink and so white. The whole room is solid, it’s vivid and humming with its own clarity. Chris – light glossing his hair, warming his red shirt, catching the small puzzled furrow in between his eyebrows – is the realest thing she’s ever seen.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Sure?’

‘Totally.’

Chris takes his hand off Selena’s arm. Instantly that clarity blinks out; the hall turns jerky and messy again. But she still feels solid and warm all over, and Chris still looks real.

He says, ‘I thought . . .’

He’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before; like some ghost of what just happened found its way into him, too. He says, ‘You looked . . .’

Selena smiles at him. She says, ‘I felt weird for a second. I’m OK now.’

‘Some girl fainted earlier, did you see? It’s boiling in here.’

‘Is that how come you’re not dancing?’

‘I was, before. I just felt like watching for a while.’ Chris takes a swallow of his punch and makes a face at the cup.

Selena doesn’t move away. The handprint on her arm is shining red-gold, floating in the dark air. She wants to keep talking to him.

‘You’re friends with her,’ Chris says. ‘Right?’

He’s pointing at Becca. Becca is dancing like an eight-year-old but the kind of eight-year-old who barely existed even back when they were eight, the kind who’s never even seen a music video: no booty-shake, no hip-wiggle, no chest-thrust, just dancing, like no one’s ever told her there’s a right way; like she’s doing it just for her own fun.

‘Yeah,’ Selena says. Seeing Becca makes her smile. Becca looks totally happy. Holly doesn’t; Marcus Wiley is dancing behind her, trying to rub up against her arse.

‘Why’s she wearing that?’

Becca is wearing jeans and a white camisole with lace at the edges, and she has her hair in a long plait. ‘She likes it,’ Selena explains. ‘She doesn’t really like dresses.’

‘What, is she a lesbian?’

Selena considers that. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says.

Marcus Wiley is still trying to rub up against Holly. Holly stops dancing, turns around, and spells something out in small words. Marcus’s mouth opens and he stands there, blinking, till Holly gives him an off-you-go finger-wave; then he half-dances off, trying to look like he just happens to be edging away, and manically checking whether anyone saw whatever just happened. Holly holds out her hands to Becca and they start spinning around. This time they both look happy. Selena almost laughs out loud.