A Song to Take the World Apart (25 page)

“Nik told me about Lisa.”

“Of course he did. I mean, it sucked for her too, you know. Lying and sneaking around and—”

“I'm not her, though.”

“Of course you're not.” Chris sits up and gestures to Lorelei. “Come here,” he says.

“No.”

“I can't abandon her,” he says. “I can't—”

“So don't abandon her. Make time for both of us. You could do it if she knew.”

“I can't tell her.”

“What do you think she'll do to you? Kick you out of the house? If she loves you, she'll give in eventually.”

“I don't want her to give in, though,” Chris says. “I don't want to hurt her and I don't want to hurt you. And I love you too much to lie about you, but I love you too much to just forget about you. Can you see, Lorelei, how much this sucks for me?”

Oma knew what she was when she made her choice to keep silent. Petra didn't when she sang to Henry and pulled him down with her, to live under her spell. Lorelei knows who she is, and what she's capable of. She's not going to keep quiet and she's not going to walk away, or let Chris walk away. Not without a fight.

“Do you believe that I love you?” she asks.

Chris nods.

“I want us to sing together,” she says. “Just once. The duet. Like we talked about.” She'll tell him how she feels—really tell him—and let him make up his own mind.

“God, I would love that,” Chris says, and kisses her again.

Lorelei marches downstairs and makes herself another drink before she can think better of what she's just put into motion.

The alcohol keeps agreeing with her decision. It's a very rough approximation of whatever Carina mixed her earlier—too sweet, almost sticky—but it doesn't matter, really. Zoe is hanging on Daniel's arm in the center of a small, sparkling group, and Carina is sitting on a low couch, smoking out an open window. Angela and Jackson are wrapped around one another in the kitchen, laughing.

Paul is sitting in the center of a group of guys, and even though she's never cared about him, not really, the way he avoids looking at her stings.

Lorelei knows she doesn't belong anywhere in this sharp-cornered room. When she tries to look outside, she just sees her own face reflected back and forth in the windows, superimposed over the dark stretch of ocean below. She'll get Chris back and they'll leave the minute his set ends. They'll get in a car and drive somewhere together, singing along to the radio, holding hands the whole way home.

Chris comes back downstairs a few minutes after she does, and The Trouble starts tuning up in earnest. Zoe sees Lorelei and breaks away from Daniel to come stand with her. “Sorry,” she says. Her breath is astringent with citrus and vodka. Lorelei watches her pour herself another drink, the shine of the liquid mixing sluggishly with the quarter inch of melted ice in the bottom of the glass. “Did I totally abandon you?”

“Nah.” Lorelei regrets the second drink; she wishes one of them was clear-headed. “I went to talk to Chris, actually.”

“Talk,” Zoe says. She runs her fingers through Lorelei's tousled curls. “I'm so sure.”

“We're going to sing together. Like we talked about before we broke up.”

“Oh, I'm so excited!” Tipsiness makes Zoe's face mobile and childlike. “I've never heard you sing before!”

“I mean, it probably won't be that great.”

“It will, though.” Zoe regards Lorelei very seriously. “It will be great, because you are so great. The greatest, really.”

“I'm not sure about that,” Lorelei says, trying to make it a joke. “I'm pretty sure Paul doesn't think so.”

Zoe will not be swayed. “Whatever to Paul. Seriously, Lorelei. You are the greatest and best, and I'm just…I wanted to say, all I want is for you to be happy. I think it's amazing that we're friends.”

“I think so too,” Lorelei says.

“I love you,” Zoe tells her.

“I love you too,” Lorelei says.

Zoe wouldn't love her if she knew, maybe, but then, she doesn't have to. No one does. If it works right, all it's going to do is open a door. Lorelei's family is good at singing, but better at keeping secrets, and she's her mother's daughter, and her grandmother's too.

By the time she's called on to perform, she's had plenty of opportunity to get nervous again. The Trouble seems to blow through their set with unusually polished ease, and Daniel's drunk hipster friends dance around happily, whooping and hollering between songs. Lorelei sees some of the girls eye Chris with interest, watching his shaggy hair and full, bright smile, the way he gets close to the mic and cups it in one long-fingered hand as he sings.

When it's time, he invites her up with a nod of his head. “This is Lorelei,” he says to the crowd. “Everyone say, ‘Hi, Lorelei.' ”

“Hi, Lorelei!” Zoe's voice is loudest of all.

Chris puts his arm around her. He's warm and solid, the surest thing.

I love you,
Lorelei thinks.
I love you, and I need you to be brave for me.

Her nerves disappear the minute the beat kicks in. It's the same slow, driving build that caught her that day in their practice space. Chris takes the first verse slower than she's ever heard it and he looks at her while he sings. It's so clear, in that moment: Whatever there is between the two of them is palpable, and powerful. It's too big for Lorelei to deny any longer.

She comes in on the chorus. She meant to sing it a little on the low side, the safe side. She knew what she was doing with Jackson, but she's never tried singing in front of a crowd before—not on purpose, anyway—and she's not sure whether her siren powers will work on just Chris or if there will be collateral damage. So she looks at him. She thinks only of him.

When she starts to sing, though, sound pours out of her. It's like opening a valve or tapping a vein: Lorelei wails under the pressure of so much at once, sound and feeling exploding from behind a broken dam. The spaces within her that seemed to be hollow were in fact full of longing. Now months of desperate craving are laid bare for the world to hear.
I love you
becomes
I need you,
and
I need you to be brave
becomes
I need you, I need you, I need you to save me, I'm so scared of losing you, of being on my own, of having no one to take care of me. I need you. I need I need I need I need I need I need you.

Lorelei's knees buckle as the chorus ends. She sways, almost stumbles, but keeps her feet.

Chris starts the second verse, but his voice is mechanical and flat. His eyes are locked on hers; if she didn't need the song to keep going, he would cut it off and let it drop. On the second chorus he steps away from the microphone, handing it over to her.

Lorelei thinks she should be scared but she isn't. The first chorus was a little messy, but she'll clean it up now. The second time is like the second drink: so much easier to swallow. She sings out as sweet and serious as she can, the same words again, again.

She hears someone calling her name faintly. Zoe is saying
Lorelei,
waving and smiling, dancing in Daniel's arms. Even Paul is dancing, not frowning or avoiding her anymore.

Lorelei looks out at Zoe and loves her. She looks at Carina and loves her. She loves Daniel for making this happen, and she loves all of his dumb, rich friends.

Lorelei wants to stay like this forever. She never wants it to end.

The bond between her and Chris has been twisting and fraying, sparking like electrical wire. Lorelei feels the moment when she loses control, and it snaps and then spreads: she can feel herself catching them up in turn, everybody in the room coming under some version of the spell, and it's not love, that's not it, they're just—dancing, and smiling, glassy-eyed, like they can't stop. Lorelei surges forward, trying to rush her way to the end of the song.

But even she is caught up now. The floodgates are open, and the sound she's kept locked in the back of her throat is unleashed. It roars through her, a force all its own. There is no stopping it until it's done with her. Jackson and Bean and Chris keep playing. She makes it through the chorus once more, just once. All of the room's attention is focused on her. She's at the center of everything.

Lorelei closes her eyes and wrenches herself out of the song with all the strength she has. The boys keep playing.

“Come on,” someone calls out. “Keep singing!”

“Keep singing,” Chris says. He leans against her too heavily. “Please, Lorelei—”

“I'm done,” she says to Bean and Jackson. “I'm done,” she says again. “The song is over, let's—”

“Keep singing,” Bean calls over the frantic beat. Everyone keeps moving in time with it. They're caught up in a crazy, synced unison. No one can break away from it. There's a compulsive regularity to their movements.

“Stop,” Lorelei cries out. “Stop, stop,
stop.
” The last
stop
comes out as a piercing shriek, high and thin and awful.

Bean drops his drumsticks. It takes a moment for the fuzz of the guitar and bass to fade from the amps.

The whole house descends into sudden, total silence.

No one moves. Everyone watches her. Lorelei is frozen to the spot, rigid with terror.

“Lorelei?” Zoe asks, soft and sweet.

It's her voice that breaks the spell. Lorelei is shot through with adrenaline, and she turns and runs back up the stairs, to the room where she and Chris kissed—an hour ago, maybe, or in some other lifetime. She slams the door behind her and locks it for good measure. She thinks to herself over and over:
What just happened?

And then:
Oh my god, what have I done?