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In an instant, the stage lights switch to pink, and when Annie throws out her right hand, a flood of rain starts pouring down from the ceiling above the stage.
The music comes back funky and loud and ballsy—Chaka Khan this time, “Like Sugar”—and two things become clear very quickly. The first, as water splatters from the stage and into their drinks: this is why Isaiah suggested they might need ponchos. The second: Annie made her outfit out of something that dissolves in water.
Within the first thirty seconds, her miniskirt and bra have melted, and with a twirl, she whips the last sugary wisps across the stage, leaving behind ornate red latex lingerie. Backup dancers come sashaying out from backstage and hoist her onto their shoulders, spinning her under the falling water, the crowd damp and transported and screaming themselves hoarse. August grew up a short drive from Bourbon Street, but she has never, ever seen anything quite like this.
She thinks of the last text Jane sent: a picture of fireworks from the Manhattan Bridge, Give the queens my love.
It’s hazy, but she remembers Jane telling her about drag shows she used to go to in the ’70s, the balls, how queens would go hungry for weeks to buy gowns, the shimmering nightclubs that sometimes felt like the only safe places. She lets Jane’s memories transpose over here, now, like double-exposed film, two different generations of messy, loud, brave and scared and brave again people stomping their feet and waving hands with bitten nails, all the things they share and all the things they don’t, the things she has that people like Jane smashed windows and spat blood for.
Annie twirls across the stage, and August can’t stop thinking how much Jane would love to be here. Jane deserves to be here. She deserves to see it, to feel the bass in her chest and know it’s the result of her work, to have a beer in her hand and a twenty between her teeth. She’d be free, lit up by stage lights, dug up from underground and dancing until she can’t breathe, loving it. Living.
Jane would love this.
Jane would love this. It keeps coming back and back and back, Jane tossing her head and laughing up at the disco ball, pulling August into a dark corner and kissing her dizzy. She’d love this, specifically, slotted right into place in August’s family of moody misfits, tucked against August’s side.
The second August lets herself really picture it is the second she can’t pretend any longer—she wants Jane to stay.
She wants to solve the case and get Jane out from underground because she wants Jane to stay here with her.
She’d promised herself—she’d promised Jane—she was doing this to get Jane back where she belonged. But it’s as blazing and unforgiving as the spotlight on the stage, nothing left in August’s sloshy drunk brain to hold it back. She wants to keep Jane. She wants to take her home and buy her a new record collection and wake up next to her every stupid morning. She wants Jane here in full-on, split-the-pizza-bill-five-ways, new-toothbrush-holder, violate-the-terms-of-the-lease permanence.
And not a single part of her is prepared to handle any other outcome.
She turns to her right, and Wes is standing there watching the show, mouth agape. The grip on his cup has gone slack, and his drink is slowly dribbling down the front of his shirt.
August gets it. He’s in love. August is in love too.
11
[ariana voice] yuh @chelssss_
UMMMM on the Q this morning this little kid was getting picked on by two older kids and before i could do anything this hot butch girl jumped in and the bullies SCATTERED hello 911 how am i supposed to work now that i’ve seen an angel irl????
7:42 AM · 8 Nov 2018
Myla’s hair smells like Cajun fries.
August’s nose is buried in it, upside down behind Myla’s ear, sucking curls into her nostrils.
There’s something wrapped around her, something too warm and slightly itchy and, if her stomach doesn’t subside soon, in imminent peril of being puked on.
She tries to pull her arm free, but Wes has a freaky death grip on her wrist as he white-knuckles through REMs. There’s something lumpy with weird corners crushed between August’s arm and one of Niko’s shoulder blades. She cracks one eye open—a Popeyes box. Which churns up: one, a hazy memory of Niko putting on his soberest face at the Popeyes register downstairs, and two, the too-many apple cider margaritas in her stomach.
As far as August can tell, the four of them collapsed into a pile on the couch as soon as they stumbled through the door last night. Niko and Myla are on one side, tangled up in each other, Myla’s jean jacket thrown over their bodies like a blanket. Wes has spilled halfway off the couch, his shoulders digging into the floor where one of the rugs should be.
The rug that’s… wrapped around her?
Noodles trots over and starts cheerfully licking Myla’s face.
“Wes,” August croaks. She nudges one of Wes’s knees with her foot. He must have liberated himself of his pants at some point before they passed out. “Wes.”
“No,” Wes grunts. He doesn’t relinquish her wrist.
“Wes,” she says. “I’m gonna throw up on you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I literally am,” she says. “My mouth tastes like hot ass.”
