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I bent down and she stood on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek, and when she decided to get closer to one of the stages, I didn’t hesitate to follow her. The music filled the night, and people were swaying along to the melody. I danced with her and felt like that was all that I needed. This was the life I knew: easy, unworried, with nothing to get under my skin. I took her hand and smiled before turning her around. Madison tripped over her feet and almost fell, but I grabbed her in midair and we both cracked up laughing under the dark sky of deep night. Then I felt my cell phone vibrate.
I let her go and walked away from the music.
“Axel? Can you hear me, Axel?”
“I hear you. Is this you, Blair?”
“Yeah. I need your help…” I couldn’t understand the words that followed. “I can’t find her… We’re close to the second stage, by one of the food stalls, and I…I didn’t know what to do…”
“Don’t move. I’m on my way.”
I ran to the other end of the field with my heart in my throat. The mere thought that something might have happened…
I found Blair where she said she would be.
“Where’s Leah?”
“I don’t know. We were fine all night. She seemed like she was having fun… She was like the person from before, but then she went off with a guy we know and it’s been more than half an hour and I can’t find her. She left her bag, I got worried, I didn’t know what to do…”
“Stay here, I’m going to try to find her.”
I walked around the stage trying to pick her out from the crowd drinking, laughing, and jumping to the sound of the music, but it seemed impossible that I could see her among all those people. I left behind unknown faces, tons of long-haired blonds that weren’t her. I looked all over, shaken, my nerves raw. I was thinking of all my options, putting a fucking poster with her face on all the lampposts or readying my speech for Oliver about how I lost his sister the way you lose a Lego, when I saw her.
I took a quick breath of air and walked toward her. She was all I saw. Her, and the boy’s hand under her T-shirt caressing her back, and her eyes closed, as if in a trance; how she didn’t react when he kissed her on the lips and pressed into her body, which danced to the rhythm of a slow song, swaying under the spotlights and lampposts like a marionette under someone else’s control.
“Get away from her!” I grunted.
The boy let her go and Leah looked at me with half-shut, shining eyes. She wasn’t just drunk; she’d spilled a drink or two on herself, she stank of rum, and her T-shirt was soaked. I grabbed her hand and dragged her off in a hurry, ignoring her protests. Or babbling. Or whatever it was.
We got out and away from the multitudes.
I put her in the car. She didn’t say a word. She hardly looked at me. And that was better, because anything would have been enough to make me fly off the handle and start screaming.
Of all the scenarios I had imagined could occur at Bluesfest, this was the one I hadn’t expected. I thought she’d spend the night pissed off, on her own in some corner. Spend a little time with her friend and then call me when she got bored. I never thought I’d find her drunk and…in this state.
I parked in front of the house, still on edge.
The silence grew denser when we went inside and I threw the keys on the sideboard. I ran a hand through my hair, thinking of what to say and how, but finally I let go and shouted.
“So it’s true, I really am your fucking babysitter. What were you thinking, Leah? You go out one night after a year of not doing anything, and you end up like this? Can you not control yourself and act like a normal human being? What the fuck were you doing with that dude? Are you serious? How could you even think of just vanishing without your phone, without telling anyone, and…?”
I stopped talking. I stopped because Leah wrapped her hands around my neck, leaving frozen the words I would never utter, and kissed me. Fuck. She stood on tiptoe and kissed me. My stomach turned when her lips grazed mine, and I had to grab her hips to push her away.
“What are you doing, Leah…?”
“I just wanted…to feel. You said…”
“Yeah, but not like that. Leah, babe…”
I stopped, uncomfortable, seeing her there so vulnerable and small and broken. I just wanted to hold her for hours and relieve whatever she was starting to feel. I had forgotten how she was, that intensity that blinded her, that impulsivity that called to her to leap into the void.
Ironically, she was everything I wasn’t.
“I don’t feel good,” she moaned.
A second later, she vomited on the living room floor.
“I’ll clean this up, you take a shower.”
