Betwixt (19 page)

“What a day for a party.”

The two ducked under the low branches. A few kids were ahead of them in rain gear and hats. She hadn’t seen any cars she recognized,
but the air of the place felt familiar.

“Doesn’t seem much different from the Oregon Country freaking Fair.” Ondine scowled. “The silver statue people are going to
come out any second.”

Nix turned. “Including the rain. Hey —” He stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I just thought this would be … different.”

He thought the same thing, but his anticipation stopped him from agreeing aloud. He wondered if he’d know anyone, someone
from the squat or Jacob’s, but there weren’t enough people around, and the ones who had passed them in the parking lot kept
their heads down against the rain.

“Moth said it was today. You saw it on the text.” He squinted up into the sky and then into the trees. “Where do you want
to go?”

Ondine peered at the faces of a couple passing them on the path, but they had their hoods pulled up.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to … um … get comfortable?” She looked around at the rocky
grass. “Anyway,
this
was the party everyone was trying to find out about? Am I missing something?”

Nix shrugged. Ondine could tell he was just as confused.

“Maybe it will pick up later.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Whatever. I don’t think you could get a Phish bootleg here it’s so lame. I guess we’ll just wait till
Moth shows up.”

Another couple passed them on the dirt path, heading toward what Ondine imagined was yet another clearing like the one they
were languishing in. Farther on, a group was setting up
a blanket under a tree and unpacking a cooler, which was weird, since it had started to mist, and the clouds above them were
making low, faraway rumbles.

“What?” Nix tugged at her wrist. She waited, then turned.

“Maybe … maybe we should go. It’s going to storm.”

His eyes shifted to the clouds. Shaking his head, he picked up the cooler and rucksack he had set down. “No. We’re here. Let’s
go find ourselves a place to chill and I’ll look for Moth.”

They found a place under a spindly pine a few hundred yards down a twisting rocky path and started unpacking their stuff.
Ondine was tired. The ride had been long. Not as long as she remembered from the field trip in second grade, which she identified
now as the one time she had gotten scared and had to go back and stay in the bus with the teacher’s assistant. Despite its
beauty, she hadn’t liked the queer, lonely landscape then and she didn’t now. Still, no harm in seeing, she told herself while
Nix set up the tent, though the lack of people and the terrible weather unnerved her. What, exactly, had she expected? She
watched Nix and felt the familiar warmth and understanding, the closeness they’d shared in the last few weeks. “Relax,” she
whispered aloud. It appeared Nix was thinking the same, for as soon as the tent was up, they scrambled in. It was still morning.
Whatever was supposed to happen didn’t have to happen now, Ondine reminded herself. She burrowed into her sleeping bag. Nix,
beside
her, rolled over and did the same, mumbling, “I’ll look for Moth in a little while.”

They sank into a dreamless nap from which they awoke hungry, Ondine thankful that Nix had remembered to bring food. She despised
falafel. That is, if they could have found any at this strange failure of a party. She looked at her watch. It was past noon.
A few hours had gone by, and the area was as quiet as it had been when they got there that morning.

Ondine was starting to think it was just a crappy Rainbow Gathering fizzled when Nix looked up from his PB&J and said, “Let’s
go look for him.” She nodded, happy that he’d suggested it. They left their camp as it was, taking the rest of the gear and
heading down a path toward a deeper wood, where light strains of music floated through the increasing rain.

There
was
more activity in the forest, but it was still quiet. Small groups of people sat under tarpaulins or around modest campfires,
not paying Nix and Ondine particular attention except for the one time Ondine had looked back and seen a short and somewhat
stocky Asian girl peering after them. The girl had ducked into a tent from which Ondine thought she could hear the hum of
a tattoo needle. After that, she didn’t see the girl anymore.

For a half hour they wandered. Incense trailed out of glowing makeshift tents stippled with the shifting silhouettes of their
inhabitants, and a few tables seemed to be set up to sell something.
People crowded around, but when Ondine tried to push her way through to see what was offered, she could never get close enough.
She wanted to ask Nix to stop, but he was busy scanning the huddled groups for Moth and she felt shy to ask. A few boys passed
her, juggling Hacky Sacks or twirling Frisbees, and there was even some music from what sounded like the ubiquitous Peruvian
flute ensemble — though eerier in the darkening wood — yet most faces were averted, so she had a hard time seeing her fellow
partygoers. No one laughed, no one danced. Mostly everyone seemed to be waiting, like she and Nix were. For the Flame, she
supposed, though a concert was going to be hard in a downpour.

When they passed the same patched army tent the third time, it was clear that they were walking in a circle.

“Nix.” She stopped and tugged at her father’s Gore-Tex she had lent him. It was a gesture that made her feel young, like tripping
after Ralph in the hardware store, and that feeling, combined with the realization that they had no idea why they had come
or what they were supposed to be doing — besides not knowing a soul — made Ondine feel powerless. It wasn’t that she didn’t
want to stay. It was that whatever she’d thought she would find at the Ring of Fire — answers to questions she hadn’t yet
formulated about mirages, the party, Nix, Moth, whatever — seemed hopeless: a girl’s fantasy.

“Nix! Hold up!”

“What?” He looked irritated and barely slowed, so she had to scamper to catch up with him.

“What are we
doing
here?”

“Does it look like I know? I’m trying to find Moth. Like I’m supposed to. I don’t know any more than you. But unless you walk
a little faster or help me find him, we’re never going to know. Is that what you want, Ondine? To just
stay like this
?”

The look on her face must have exhibited a fraction of the hurt she felt, for he quieted then, though his mouth stayed gripped
and his hands remained jammed into his pockets, not looped in hers as they usually were when they stood close.

“Look. I think we just need to find Moth.”

“Okay, it’s just —”

“It’s just what?” He was a few paces from her, but his voice was more tender.

She swallowed a sigh. “It’s just … this doesn’t feel right.”

“What does? What does feel right? Or should I put it this way: have you ever ‘felt right,’ Ondine? Because I sure haven’t.”
Nix’s voice hushed. “I thought that’s what we were doing here. I thought that’s why we were trying to find Moth.”

A distant crack and, a few seconds later, faint light in the sky, and she knew they were in for a full storm.

“I mean this isn’t safe,” she said over the crunch of their feet against lava dust.

“I’m not sure it’s meant to be.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She stared at him.

“Nothing,” he mumbled, and kept walking.

Behind Nix, she checked her watch. Time had passed, and the storm that had threatened them all morning was now a reality.
Branches tossed, wind howled, thunder rumbled. Ondine was no Girl Scout, but she knew that a tent in a clearing under a tree
wasn’t the place to be during a storm. Nor was the path back to the car. They had hiked a ways into the forest already. Nix
had the tarp, the flashlight, and a blanket in the rucksack he carried.

“Let’s set something up here. You have the tarp. We can wait out the storm and see if Moth shows up.”

“We’ll have to find some twine —”

“It will be a good chance to speak to someone.”

For the first time that day she linked her hand with his, and he took it, and squeezed it, and didn’t let it go.

M
ORGAN SAW THE GIRL WITH FANGS
outside her car window — a Japanese girl with long, shiny blond dreads — as soon as she woke up. She had fallen asleep soon
after she’d arrived at the campground, late from getting lost somewhere around Bend and spending two hours retracing her route
along winding mountain roads, still icy at the edges from the late spring snows. At a truck stop she’d almost turned around,
and if it weren’t for the leering
fat-ass down the counter she might have, but a glimpse of his swollen face reminded her that she had zero to lose by going
to the mysterious party-gathering-concert-whatever-it-was, and talking to Moth. The heated words with the strange boy at Ondine’s
still puzzled her, as did the resurgence of her night walks since meeting him. It wouldn’t be so bad if the Ring of Fire were
some kind of a rich-boy, culty thing crawling with Moth’s higher-end clients. Maybe she’d meet someone from Penwick. A weirdo
who liked parting with his cash for a few spankings or whatever. Rich boys were always into freaky shit.

But this was too idiotic: A short chick with fake vampire fangs staring into her window? To sell T-shirts or bumper stickers
or bottled water or programs or fucking glow sticks? Or maybe, if it was just Morgan’s luck, to beg for cash.
Got a dollar, lady? I need to buy a hash brownie.
When had her Lexus turned into the vermin motel? And what ever happened to manners?

She rolled down the window and the girl edged back. She was pretty enough, solid and curvy, with black eyes and a ripped T-shirt
that slipped over a tanned left shoulder. Outside it was a gray, rainy afternoon, and Morgan thought she heard thunder somewhere
in the distance. She moved to open the door, but her seat belt restrained her.

The girl with the dreads smiled, not quite nicely.

“Excuse me, do I know you?” Morgan said through the crack.

The girl said nothing, but her hands fell to her sides, and Morgan noticed she had a tattoo on her wrist, a little blue X.
She felt like she’d seen something like it before, but wasn’t sure where. The girl didn’t move and kept staring. Morgan thought
she detected a high-pitched whine coming from her throat.

“What the fuck? I said,
Do I know you?
”

Great, Morgan thought. She’s rolling and wants to make friends.

Though the girl’s face didn’t look friendly. Her nostrils flared and her eyelids fluttered every time she inhaled. Was the
chick
smelling
her?

Morgan wished she didn’t feel so disoriented. She’d been up since five because of the toad incident, and though there wasn’t
anything going on in the half-empty lot, she should have checked out the scene earlier. The remnants of a slippery, bothersome
dream knocked around in her head. Something about a cave, or a tunnel. She was walking in darkness toward a dull yellow light,
but the memory of what was there kept floating away from her. She was reaching toward a wall, which gave way to an adjacent
room. Each time Morgan grasped, she fell farther into thick black nothingness. She reached once more —

She unbuckled her seat belt and glanced at her cell. Moth’s one-word text of TODAY was still there on her screen, so she deleted
it and clicked back to the clock. It was three. Whatever was supposed to be happening at the Ring of Fire had probably
already started. It irritated her that she was late. What irritated her more, though, was the freak standing outside her car.

“Go away,” Morgan said to the rain-slicked girl. “I don’t feel like company.”

She didn’t move, though her eyelids still fluttered and the weird humming heightened. Thunder clapped and a brief burst of
lightning illuminated the afternoon sky.

“What are you, a fucking
’tard?
I said
go away!
”

What was the bitch doing? That sound she was making. If she didn’t stop, Morgan was going to have to —

She opened her car door. She
tried
to be careful but it bumped the girl anyway. Not that she was sorry, though she mumbled an apology while she flipped through
her keys for the alarm. She was cut short by a sudden flurry of movement. Morgan turned and there the girl was, in front of
her, on her haunches, grabbing for her ankles like a demented dog.

“Fuck!” She moved back, trying to disengage. “You are not what I need right now, bitch!”

She wouldn’t have kicked the weirdo had the girl not held one of Morgan’s ankles in her grasp. It seemed that she was trying
to drag her toward a line of scraggly trees at the base of what looked like — was that a volcano? Where the fuck
were
they?

“Stop it!” Morgan yelled, still kicking.

She started to walk in the other direction, but the girl —
Morgan couldn’t believe her eyes, but it was happening — the girl was grabbing for her other ankle in an obvious attempt to
keep her rooted. In one swift motion Morgan grabbed a handful of dreads and pulled. Then she swiped, hard. She had never hit
another person before — well, besides K.A. and her mom — and when she felt her palm meet her opponent’s cheek, then the ragged,
serrated bump of fingernails, her own, scraping into flesh, she was surprised how good it felt.