“No you can’t, you’re taking pictures, remember?” Nico says. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “You don’t like parties, Mick?”
“I’m fine,” I protest, my face hot.
“She hates them,” Veronica says.
“It’s fine, please, honestly,” I say, desperate to get them talking about something else.
“I think hating parties is a sign of a healthy aversion to people,” Nico muses, eyes on the road again.
“Truth,” Veronica agrees. “People are terrible.”
“That’s why I married you.” Nico reaches out and messes with Veronica’s hair, and she ducks out from under his hand with a cry of protest.
“Wait,” I say. “You’re kidding, right? Married?”
Nico turns right onto a dark industrial street; we’re east of downtown, in an area I don’t know well.
Veronica grins over her shoulder. “No, we actually got married. In Vegas, by an Elvis impersonator with Marilyn Monroe as my maid of honor while my mom was out of town. It was magical.”
Are they … are they a couple? Wait.
Like Nico is reading my mind, he says, “We’re platonic. It was just something to do. We had a couple of fake IDs and wanted to do something more interesting with them than get drunk. Carpe diem and all that.”
“We did also get drunk, though,” Veronica says, and they laugh in unison.
Nico says, “You lost a hundred bucks on the slot machine in, like, five minutes! How is that even possible?”
“They manipulate you!” she cries. “It’s like you enter a fugue state!”
I interrupt them. “But wait, did your parents ever find out?”
They glance at each other. “I live on my own,” Nico says.
Veronica turns her body so she can sit sideways more comfortably. “I told my mom. I mean, she yelled at me about the dangers of driving to Las Vegas with all the drunk people. But we got married with fake IDs, so it’s not legal or anything.” She plays with my fingertips absentmindedly. It gives me chills. “I think I want a divorce,” she murmurs.
“My heart is broken,” Nico says.
“Whatever.” To me, Veronica says, “So you’re a lifeguard.” She gives me a grin and a lecherous eyebrow wiggle. “I want to come watch you guard lives. Can I?”
I can’t help but smile back. “You can watch me yell at children for peeing in the pool. I’m lifeguarding for a summer camp event tomorrow.”
“Wait. Back up. I’m stuck on the pee in the pool.”
“Urine is sterile,” Nico says helpfully.
“And there’s a lot of chlorine,” I add, which only etches Veronica’s comically exaggerated grimace deeper onto her face.
“We’ll be there,” Nico says.
“We?” Veronica wheels on him. “God, you’re such a—”
“I want to go swimming!”
“Ugh.” She folds her arms across her chest.
I laugh. “Nico can come.”
“She says I can come,” Nico tells Veronica, who replies, “I will smother you in your sleep.”
I feel relaxed now, their banter a current on which I’m drifting. I smile out the window, and for once, my reflection looks happy.
And then I remember the fight with my mom, and the smile falls away. When I got home last night, she was asleep, and this morning I left for swim practice while she was still in her room. What am I going to tell her? I have no idea if she really is planning to empty out my savings account to get revenge for my not doing this modeling thing. If so, am I willing to throw all that money away just to make a point?
It’s completely dark when we pull into a parking lot across from a giant, abandoned warehouse. I hesitate outside the car, not sure what kind of art show or party might be happening in a neighborhood like this. Even the streetlights are scary, flickering like they’re about to go out. Somewhere far away, sirens wail, echoing and then dying.
Veronica slams her door and turns to me. She’s wearing a tight black tank top, high-waisted jeans, and her camera around her neck. She points across the narrow, poorly lit street to the warehouse. “That’s where the show is.”
I don’t want to sound negative, but … “I don’t get it. It looks abandoned.”
“You’ll see.”
Nico waves at us. “You coming? Or did you want to stay out here and see if someone comes along to murder you?” To Veronica, he says, “Don’t get distracted and forget to take pictures.”
“I won’t.” She shows him her camera, clearly annoyed.
He pulls a bandanna out of his back pocket and ties it across his face, hiding his nose and mouth. Veronica takes my arm and leads me across the street.
I hesitate. She shoots me a questioning look, and I whisper, “Why did he cover his face?”
She smiles, waves it off, and pulls me along without answering. I feel like there’s some secret I’m not a part of, and it makes me even more nervous.
Nico knocks on a corrugated metal door that appears to have been rusted shut since before I was born. With great difficulty, it slides partway open, and a large man with long, stringy blond hair peers out. This man also wears a bandanna over the lower part of his face. A shaggy beard pokes out the bottom.
“To the ends of the earth and back,” Nico tells him, the words muffled through the bandanna.
These words must be a code, because the door opens all the way, squealing in protest. A wave of electronic music hits me, and the man ushers us in and closes the door behind us with a massive screech. Once we’re inside, Nico claps palms with him, a gesture of greeting, and Veronica lifts her camera to take a picture of the interior.
The warehouse has been transformed into a manmade forest, with a cloud of dry ice fog hovering over rolling, mossy earth. Trees are scattered around organically. It’s lit with black light, and everyone is a shadowy, blue-and-black silhouette. Dance music pounds from unseen speakers.
I stand shocked. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I feel like I’ve stepped into an alternate dimension.
“It’s an urban forest!” Veronica yells over the music. “They stole all of this.”
“They stole it? The trees? The rocks?”
She nods. Her eyes are wide and excited.
“How do you steal a tree?”
“Developers have been destroying this wildlife sanctuary, just leveling everything, so these artists stole the trees before they were demo’d.” She slips her hand into mine. It’s warm and soft.
“So why are you, like, the designated photographer?”
“Oh.” She hesitates. “Nico’s a fan of these artists. I said I’d document this for him.” I feel like she’s hiding something, but we don’t know each other well enough for me to dig deeper.
We walk around, Veronica stopping to take photos. Some of the trees have fake flowers and fruit hanging from the branches, larger-than-life apples and lemons and oranges. Hundreds of people mingle around, dancing, smoking, drinking, making out. One group brought picnic blankets and is eating pizza while the music booms all around us.
The trees creep me out. I feel like they’re watching me. It’s sad, actually, this transplanted nature, these trees dying slowly in this forgotten warehouse. I tell Veronica, “I thought we were going to an art show. Are there sculptures or something in here?”