* * *
• • •
We do not take the tourist ferry. We take the private A-Corp boat. We climb the steps to the VIP lounge. The woman at the door scans Tami’s ID and adds me as her guest. She looks at me like I do not belong here, like she knows just by looking at me that my own ID only gets me access downstairs.
* * *
• • •
I have always been the middle path.
* * *
• • •
I do not say to Tami, “Why me? Why’d you pick me?”
There are so many other girls on the island, private school girls, girls home from other boarding schools, girls so much more like Tami than I will ever be. But Tami is tired of those girls.
* * *
• • •
The casual rich of the island have transformed into their cocktail dresses and diamonds, their heels and pearls. The city glimmers across the water, promising something.
* * *
• • •
We are moths rushing toward the light.
* * *
• • •
I was supposed to be Ivy’s tour guide.
* * *
• • •
“You know why she wants to hang out with you?” Lily said. “Because you’re not a threat. Because you’re not competition.”
* * *
• • •
Tami pours a flask of something into my lemonade. “You know why I like you? I think we have a lot in common. We’re special. Not like all the basic bitches on the island.”
* * *
• • •
I am the girl homeless people ask for money. I wear a giant flashing sign that announces to the world: “I will listen to you. I will not be mean. My patience is endless.” I am a magnet for people’s secrets, but I don’t have any of my own. Not yet.
* * *
• • •
Tami called me special.
* * *
• • •
Maybe tonight I will make some secrets.
* * *
• • •
The city approaches quickly.
* * *
• • •
Tami says, “All the other girls on the island are jealous. I can’t trust them. You know what I mean.”
* * *
• • •
My patience is endless.
6
“Where are we going?” I ask Tami. She does not answer. She’s texting someone and smiling.
The Seattle boardwalk sparkles with shops and restaurants and the big ancient Ferris wheel. It is a place made for tourists. Security guards are everywhere, hired by the businesses to keep the vacationers safe.
A car is waiting for us. The driver already knows Tami’s destination, but I do not.
Our car exits the boardwalk, and a few small storefront shops and restaurants line the quiet streets, all mostly closed for the evening. Skyscrapers soar above us, majestic and expansive. This part of the city is spotless, everything high-tech and shiny, everything tidy and calm and orderly. Everything safe.
There are billboards everywhere, advertisements of things to buy: the latest high-tech gadgets, expensive jewelry, self-improvement seminars, do-it-yourself Botox home injection kits. There are notices from the government reminding us of our patriotic and legal duty to turn in undocumented immigrants. During the day, the sidewalks are packed with people, but at night, this part of downtown is empty. The walled section of the city is strict in its laws against sitting or lying on the sidewalk, against panhandling and scrounging through garbage cans. The street is devoid of human life, but there is still movement—the cars on their way to other places, the advertisements flashing, the little scrubbing Beauty Bots constantly cleaning the sidewalk, and the security drones buzzing just overhead, always watching. I get the feeling the city would still go on after all the people disappeared, like it doesn’t even need us anymore.
Before I left tonight, Daddy told me to be careful. There have been a lot of protests in the city lately. “There have always been protests,” I told him. Seattle is one of the few cities that still allows them.
“But they’re turning violent,” he said. “People are tense. A bomb was found in the parking garage of the Smith Tower.”
“I’m not going to the Smith Tower,” I told him. He did not find that funny.
I look at the sleeping city around me and see no sign of the unrest everyone’s always talking about. Everything looks peaceful.
“Where are we going?” I ask Tami again. She just hands me the flask and I drink without thinking whether I want to or not.
It tastes like fire. My voice is gone. Something lost burns inside me, something both remembered and brand-new. I feel a momentary shock of terror, like that feeling you get in a dream when you’re falling, when you have no idea where the bottom is but you’re pretty sure whenever you hit, it’s going to be the end of you. But then I jolt awake and remember where I am—in a car, in Seattle, with Tami Butler, on my way to who knows where.
“You’re not going to go crazy on me, are you?” she says. “Now that you’re drinking?”
“Why would I do that?”
She just arches her eyebrows like she thinks she knows me better than I know myself.
We continue up the hill, away from the water, through the dark gleam of the financial district, asleep for the weekend. Every time we pass an intersection, I see glimpses of the lights a few blocks to the north, the part of the city where people go to play. I do not ask why we are driving this way and not that way, why we are not turning, why we are staying on the street that will take us out of downtown and into the residential areas.
I look at Tami, and she’s texting again, with that same smile on her face that has nothing to do with me.
The office buildings and expensive condos give way to the massive apartment complexes on the other side of the hill, and we breeze through a security checkpoint that only checks people coming the other way. As soon as we leave the gated part of downtown, everything becomes suddenly dingier, older. Massive apartment buildings loom over the narrow streets, blocking the night sky. Paint peels off the dull streetlights. Garbage on the sidewalks. Homeless camped wherever they can find an empty spot. Between downtown and the walled communities of mansions by Lake Washington are these vast blocks of people packed tight, pedestrians and bicycles rushing everywhere, street after street of identical apartment buildings with businesses jammed side by side on the ground floor. Billboards display ads for no-interest A-Corp credit cards, synthetic beer, employment recruitment for a new mega-prison being built in New Mexico. It’s like a different world here. We’re allowed to come to this part of town whenever we want, but they have to scan their IDs and pay a toll to drive into downtown.