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Authors: Tara Bray Smith

BOOK: Betwixt
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D
UDE
, I
HEARD IT

S OUT AT
C
ANNON
B
EACH.

No man, it’s down in the tunnels.

They’re gonna hand out dust there, dude. It’s a government thing. They want to bust all the kids.

I heard all the chicks are gonna be naked.

The one thing everyone could agree upon about the Ring of Fire was that the Flame was going to play and it was supposed to
be huge. People from all around the Northwest were supposed to be going — Washington, Vancouver, Cali, even. Yet no one seemed
to know where it was. The connected kids pretended they knew, but even they were clueless. Dealers were paying dollars for
any solid information but the leads all turned out to be wrong. It was anyone’s guess where the Ring of Fire might be.

Anyone but Morgan. She didn’t need to guess. What she did need to do was remember.

Just like on the PSATs: A perfect score the first time. Then in ninth, she “forgot” — consciously, unconsciously, she wasn’t
sure. Just a few questions, a hypotenuse here, a fill-in there, but enough to keep her from getting tagged by Penwick or any
of the other geekeries she had no interest in attending. She wasn’t up for any special schools stinking of nerd B.O. and the
drool of overinvolved parents. No, McKinley was fine. Morgan liked being a big fish in a big pond. Any other role would have
bored her, and the slower pace at Portland’s biggest high school left her time for her job as assistant manager at Krakatoa,
which she pretended was a drag, but wasn’t. Morgan liked any position where she got to tell people what to do. She was good
at it, and the owners trusted her to run shifts after school, adding a few mornings during summer break.

Though the seventeen-year-old was still too young to serve the wine and beer the Krak proffered along with the best macchiato
in Portland, the place attracted a crowd Li’l Paul, her boss, liked to attribute to his “chill vibe,” but Morgan knew was
due to her own policy of attracting — and limiting admittance to — Portland’s coolest. “Think of it as popularity by death
stare,” she once confided to K.A. “It’s ridiculously easy. You just make the weeds feel as unwelcome as possible.”

“The weeds?”

“The geeks. The losers. The people that ruin the garden.”

Morgan needed only to raise an eyebrow to silence him. Anyway, the ends justified the means, or whatever. K.A. loved the Krak,
and spent most school days hanging there when he wasn’t at practice or studying, as did any Portland kid who wasn’t stared
out of the place by the impossibly hot girl behind the counter.

Morgan was proud of the scene, and though she enforced carding, she didn’t mind if there was a little dust passed around on
weekends, just to enliven the mood. She’d even volunteered to work an after-hours thing on Saturdays, a party-before-the-party
kind of thing. The place closed at eleven, but Saturday at midnight always found the Krak full, someone DJing, Morgan keeping
one eye on the door, one eye on the bar. They’d even gotten written up in
Vice
for “best place for a sprinkling.”

The night Tim Bleeker walked in looking for information on the Ring of Fire was no different. She spotted him slinking through
the front door, turning his head both ways to scope out the room before he strode over to the bar, where Morgan was covering
for Li’l Paul, who was out for one of the smoke breaks that always took enough time to get some “business” done — there was
always a preponderance of handsome young dishwashers at the Krak.

Bleek smiled when he saw her. They’d met once before, and she knew the guy from a party he’d thrown down in Eugene. Morgan
had been fifteen and it was the first time she’d gotten trashed. She’d even tried dust, which made her sick, and she’d vowed
never to do it again. The party — and Bleek — skeeved her out.

She nodded but kept wiping the water glass she had in her hand.

“Morgan D’Amici — looking good as usual.”

Morgan said nothing and Tim Bleeker sat down at the bar.

“What can I get for you?” She wiped the countertop, where Bleek’s strawberry blond matted forearms were now resting. He had
a lot
of hair — except on his head. That and the puffiness around his eyes and gaunt look made him look old, almost rancid. And
there was something weird about his teeth.

“Doppio, babe. I know it’s late but I’ve got some parties to improve.”

She let it pass, but inwardly she shuddered.

“Skim milk.” He smiled an oily smile and patted his non-existent belly. “Weight Watchers. I think it’s really the safest of
all of them. Atkins makes your breath stink.”

“Huh,” she responded, noting Bleek’s did already. She turned to the machine behind her, tapping her feet in time with the
music that drifted in from the other room.

“So, Morgan” — fake casual — “where ya been hiding? I used to see you around all the time.”

The girl shrugged, going through the well-practiced motions
of making yet another espresso. Dump grounds, fill, tamp, lock in place, flip switch. Get little pitcher, fridge for milk

“Working a lot.”

Bleek frowned. “All work and no play —”

“Makes Morgan very happy.” She turned. “Look, Bleek, what do you want? I haven’t spoken to you since you came in here with
doped-out Evelyn Schmidt hanging off you.” She worked the pitcher up and down to foam it. In one deft movement she scooped
some of the foam off the top and into a waiting cup of espresso. She pushed it toward the boy and firmly smiled. She was a
professional, after all.

“Three bucks.”

Bleek pushed it back to her. “A sprinkle of chocolate on there, sweets. Just a
dusting,
” he said, picking the tiny spoon up and balancing it between his thumb and forefinger.

She stared. She got the reference. Morgan had bought the stuff from him that night at the party in Eugene and always sensed
that he’d use any chance he had to leak the information to her ultra-square student council faculty leader, who was always
around the Krak checking in on the McKinley kids. Morgan was going to be class president senior year and didn’t want anything
screwing her up.

“Well, I want some information … love. An address. Wondering if you’ve heard anything about a certain … gathering.”

Gathering.
What was it with the lame code words? Yet the mention of the Ring of Fire made her stomach tighten. The morning after Ondine’s
party she’d asked around at the Krak for Moth, even thought of calling Ondine or Neve to ask if they’d seen the boy, but then
decided against it. Neve she didn’t much want to talk to, and Ondine she didn’t want knowing her business. She heard Moth
had gone back to Eugene, where he was from. So she had decided to wait. He’d turn up sooner or later. Every day she tried
to remember what he’d said, but all she could come up with were a few images: confused stumblings in the dark, blue lights
flashing. Then nothing. She gave up thinking about it and let herself disappear into her work at the Krak or spent her time
daydreaming about sexy Raphael Inman. The party was ancient history, she told herself. The party? What party?

Which made her response to Bleek that much weirder. Even as the words spilled from her mouth, Morgan wondered whether she
was saying them.

“Highway ninety-seven … twenty-mile point … Little Crater. Park there.”

“I knew you’d be the right person to ask,” Bleek countered.

“Sometimes it’s not good to be too

clean,” she said, lowering her voice but unable to look into the older boy’s eyes. She watched her right hand wipe circles
on the counter in front of her. It wasn’t quite that she was in a trance, but something peculiar was happening. She hadn’t
told a single person what she had
learned from Moth about the Ring of Fire, barely remembered it, in fact, and wasn’t planning to go. The Flame?
Right.
Morgan’s favorite local band was the Berms — an experimental suburban slacker outfit from Beaverton, of all places. Raphael
Inman said he even jammed with them a few times on his electric cello.

“Fantastic.” Bleek smiled, and pushed his empty demitasse toward her. “I’m so glad I came.”

Morgan took the cup and saucer in both hands, conscious of it trembling. She turned to the sink behind her.

“See you there, darling.”

She hung her head. He might as well have had her neck in his jaws.

“Feels good to be a little dirty, doesn’t it, Morgana?” Bleek whispered. The song playing over the speakers ended. “Yeah,
it does.”

The next thing she heard was the light tinkle of the Krak’s back door ringing as he left.

I
T WAS
K.A.
WHO BROUGHT IT UP.

It was a cool night in mid-June and Ondine had invited the crew over for K.A.’s last night before a weeklong soccer camp in
California. He was leaving for Stanford in the morning. Scouts were going to be there; he could come back with the scholarship
that would determine where he’d spend the four years after high school.

They were watching movies. Neve and K.A. snuggled on the couch while Nix and Ondine lazed on the floor, picking at the last
slices of pizza from Jacob’s and sipping root beer in sympathy with K.A., who couldn’t drink before camp. Nix kept one eye
on Neve. She seemed normal, giggly, all her attention focused on K.A., but Evelyn had sworn she had seen “Clowes’s daughter”
hanging out a few times with Tim Bleeker by the river. Nix kept the knowledge to himself so far, though it worried him. Once
was a coincidence. Twice, a mistake. More than that, a habit. And Nix knew all about habits.

Morgan had been invited, of course, but she said — through K.A.; she didn’t return Ondine’s phone call — that she’d picked
up a few extra shifts and couldn’t come. Neve, guileless, or perhaps just less inhibited than everyone else, had asked if
Morgan was mad at her. She hadn’t seen or heard from her since Ondine’s. At the mention of the party everyone got quiet, until
K.A. said, “Aw, you know Morgue. She’s moody. Sometimes she just likes her downtime.”

“Dude!” he said now, stretching back onto the couch and smiling at Nix. “You have to admit, Jacob makes a mean pie.”

“Yeah,” Nix replied, uncomfortable at the mention of his old boss, but grinning anyway. Ondine winced. Two weeks together
alone on N.E. Schuyler had made Ondine feel joined with the boy, and it was almost painful to have other people around, even
ones as close as K.A. and Neve. Sensitive to her friend’s moods, she tried to change the subject.

“So, K.A., next World Cup. Think you’ve got a shot?”

K.A., unfazed, unclasped the arm he’d draped around Neve and reached down to tousle Nix’s long hair.

“He misses you, you know.”

“Who?” Nix said, though he knew who K.A. was talking about.

“Jacob, man! I was just telling Neve today how Jacob was asking after you.”

Neve nodded and trailed a long rhinestone-studded fingernail — she was doing ghettofabulous that week — around the lip of
her root beer glass.

“Yeah.” Her pierced tongue clicked. “K.A.’s been wanting you to come back, Nix.” She tickled the boy’s shoulder with a stripey-socked
foot. “He misses you.”

From the floor Ondine watched with a protective half frown. “Nix is taking it easy. It’s been a rough spring.”

“Yeah, well,” K.A. resumed, “it would help to have him around so that he could run interference for me with Tim Bleeker —”

Nix looked up at the mention of the dealer’s name.

“What?”

“Yeah, man. He’s been around almost every day since Ondine’s party, macking on Neve. And let me tell you, Jacob is
not
happy about it. He knows Bleek is bad news. But you know how Clowes is with Neve. If she wanted to walk on Mars, he’d figure
out a way to get her there. But man, Bleek is
lame.
I’m like, dude, that is my girlfriend, and that is my girlfriend’s dad, and you are a lame-ass drug dealer, and he’s all
like, it’s cool, dude, it’s cool. And he’s always asking me if I know where you are. He wants to get the four-one-one on the
rave — for some reason he’s convinced you know where it is and so he’s always bugging me. ‘Nix coming by?’ ‘Heard from Nix,
man?’ One time Jacob overheard him asking, and after he left, Jacob was like, ‘Is Nix all right? Why is he hanging out with
Tim Bleeker?’”

Throughout his speech Neve had been still, her eyes aimed at the TV, but glazed. Nix thought it was weird that K.A. would
think Bleek was hitting on Neve, and that was the end of it. Love truly did conquer all. Tim Bleeker was a drug dealer, though,
just like K.A. had said. His first priority was his next sale, and not even premium tail was enough to put that out of his
mind. When Nix caught Neve glancing his way, she fixed her eyes on the TV again.

K.A. sighed, readjusting his lid. “I have enough drama at home with Morgan and Mom fighting constantly.”

Nix looked back. “Tim Bleeker’s an asshole, Neve.”

His voice came out harsher than he’d intended, and K.A. glanced at him, then at his girlfriend.

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