“The party is half a mile from Eastside,” I said. “There might be people I know.”
It was a good excuse; Dad knew I didn’t want to be recognized. Ellie Dante, the semihomeless chick who had dropped out halfway through sophomore year.
“I see how your eyes sparkle when you’re onstage,” he said.
When I’m onstage, sure. But what about afterward?
“Can I just stay in the RV? Please?”
Dad sighed and scrubbed a finger across his mustache. “All right, you don’t have perform. But I need you to stage-manage.”
Before I could argue, my ancient prepaid phone buzzed in the cup holder, and I snatched it up. The call was from an unfamiliar number with a Las Vegas area code. It might be a client, and we needed one—badly. I answered, but there was only a hiss of static before the call dropped. No service out here in the land of corn and soybeans. I unclicked my seat belt and stood up.
“I’ve got homework.”
I made my way toward the back, holding on to bolted-down furniture as I went. Behind the captain’s chairs, two couches faced each other. At night, one of them folded down to form a bed where Dad slept. Beyond them was the kitchenette: a tiny sink, a propane stove, and a mostly empty pantry, its door secured with bungees so they wouldn’t fly open on a curve. A half-sized restaurant booth occupied the port side—that was where we ate and I did homework on my obsolete laptop. The bathroom was behind it, and at the very back of the RV was my luxurious eight-by-ten “suite.”
I closed the flimsy accordion partition behind me and flopped down on the mattress, feeling the rumble of the diesel engine beneath me. I had tried to cover every inch of the faux-wood walls with posters, but it was still nothing like a normal teenager’s room. Normal teenagers had closets instead of cubbyholes. Desks instead of fold-out tables. Beds that didn’t vibrate at sixteen hundred RPMs.
Someday, I would live in a real house with a real shower and a back door and a foundation.
I sat up, trying to banish my spiraling thoughts. I needed to take my history test online before midnight, so I grabbed my phone and checked my usage stats: only two megs of data left, not nearly enough. I would just have to hope that tonight’s gig site had Wi-Fi so I could take it while Dad was performing. In the meantime, I opened my dusty copy of The Grapes of Wrath and tried to focus. My phone dinged with a new text.
Ripley: Existential crisis pending. Assistance required. Are you alone?
Me: Out of minutes. Can you text?
Ripley: Ugh. Really need to talk. Where are you?
Me: On the road. Will try to get wifi and call after show
The three dots bounced for a moment, then disappeared. Maybe Ripley had been interrupted while composing his reply, or maybe he’d just given up. I couldn’t blame him if he had; I was the most unreliable friend ever.
The adrenaline from the heist was wearing off, and I could almost taste the stress hormones turning sour in my bloodstream. In harmony with the low rumble of the engine beneath me, the chorus of an old Rihanna song began to play on a loop in my head: Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh . . . Over and over. I tried to shut out the song, to summon any other melody, but “Umbrella” only corkscrewed itself deeper into my mind. This happened off and on—some jagged shard of a song would get lodged in my mind and play itself back relentlessly. Once it was “Wrecking Ball,” and another time it was “Believer” by Imagine Dragons. Those weren’t so bad—but during the whole first semester of freshman year I’d had “It’s a Small World” stuck in my head, and I’d nearly flunked out—and then for no apparent reason it had just stopped. The depression that followed had been long and deep and colorless. So I’d come to recognize these repeating song fragments as a warning that gray days were coming.
I reached into the drawer next to my bed and grabbed my prescription bottle. A single pill rattled inside the orange plastic cylinder, and I felt an invisible belt tighten around my chest. I wished I could save this last one for an emergency, but that wasn’t how the medication worked. It had to build up in the bloodstream; if I stopped taking it, the effects would wear off quickly. How many days did I have left? Three? Five? A week?
I tapped the tablet into my palm and swallowed it dry. I had to be on tonight.
We needed the money.
CHAPTER 2
WHILE DAD PULLED PROPS OUT of the equipment trailer we towed behind the RV, I mounted the steps to the big Victorian house and rang the bell. A moment later, the door opened, and a boy stood on the threshold, shouting over his shoulder so that I didn’t immediately see his face. He was slim but muscular, probably ROTC or crew team, maybe home from college for the weekend.
“I don’t know anything about the centerpieces,” he called back into the house. “I’m on bar duty.” He turned and looked at me, and my skin turned to ice.
I knew him.
His name was Liam Miller, and we had worked together during Eastside’s winter production of Damn Yankees when he was a senior and I was a sophomore. He joined the cast as a distraction between baseball seasons, and I designed the special effects for the show. We rehearsed together for a month, and I thought we had formed a sort of awkward, unlikely friendship. But when the play ended, he went back to being a sports god, and I was still a sophomore theater nerd.
Liam tilted his head. “Ellie Dante? What are you doing here?”
He remembered my name. For a moment I considered bolting back to the RV. Instead, I did my best not to scowl.
“My dad’s the magician.”
“Oh, right. Dante.” He shook his head. “I’m an idiot.”
I agreed, but I didn’t say so. How was I supposed to act around this guy?
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“My sister is the bride.”
“Oh.” Now who was the idiot? I should have recognized the last name when his dad booked us.
Liam smiled, revealing a deep dimple on his left cheek. “Come on in.”
I stepped inside—and tried not to gape. The foyer was opulent: marble floors, grand piano, massive crystal chandelier. His parents were obviously rich; I wondered why he had even gone to a public high school.
“We’ve got a dressing room for you,” he said, gesturing at the wide marble staircase. “Upstairs, second door on the right.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“I’ve got to go lift heavy things for Princess Becca. See you later?”
“Unless I disappear,” I said. Liam gave me a quizzical look, and I wanted to break my own skull against the door frame.
I watched him retreat into the house, his back muscles moving against the fabric of his T-shirt. Was he strutting like that on purpose? It might have worked on the baseball groupies at Eastside, but it didn’t work on me.
A moment later, Dad appeared on the doorstep carrying two heavy trap cases and a shoulder bag. Despite the cool air, his temples were already damp with perspiration.
“Let me,” I said, taking one of the cases. He protested, but I shut him down. Carrying heavy things up stairs was on his doctor’s no-no list.
The dressing room turned out to be Liam’s bedroom. It was twice the size of our whole RV and impeccably clean, probably for the occasion. There were posters on the wall—the 2016 Chicago Cubs, Panic! at the Disco—but instead of being thumbtacked, they hung in expensive frames. A photo of the Manhattan skyline dominated one wall, and a Notre Dame baseball pennant in a shadow box was mounted above the hardwood dresser. I stared around in envy. My whole “suite” would have fit inside Liam Miller’s closet.