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.”