13
“ARE YOU SURE THIS IS the right place?” Alix asked.
Cynthia was eyeing their surroundings doubtfully as well. It was a warehouse district, nondescript buildings all around. Old factories. Old redbrick. Cracks in concrete. “It’s in the flyer,” she said.
In the failing light, factory and warehouse shapes loomed menacingly. The little rusty Dodge bounced over railroad tracks as they drove deeper into the industrial area.
“What’s that up there?” Alix pointed.
“Car lights.”
Behind them, another car’s beams shone.
“It’s got to be here somewhere.”
They followed the lights. More cars were converging. People flocking to the secret point of contact. Total underground. Guerrilla party. Just ahead, cars were parked, people sitting on hoods in the warm spring night. Cynthia pulled to a stop, grinning.
“I told you I had it right.”
They got out and stood staring at the warehouse. More cars were pulling up. The busier it got, the more secure Alix felt about the venue. They were in the middle of industrial nowhere, but they weren’t alone.
“Let’s go,” she said.
But now it was Cynthia’s turn to hesitate. “I don’t know. We don’t have to do this, Alix. We could just go back.”
“Seriously? After everything we went through to get here?”
“I’m just saying that it’s no skin off my nose. The ’rents won’t know one way or the other, for me. It’s different with you. I don’t…” She shrugged.
Alix laughed and waved the bottle of vodka that she’d brought along and offered it to Cynthia.
“I’m already busted,” she said. “I’m not doing the time, if I don’t get to do the crime.” She popped open the vodka bottle and took a swig, making a face, and then tossed it to Cynthia. “Come on. I need a party.”
Alix headed for the entrance. Every time the door opened, the throb of bass reverberated from deep within the warehouse. She paused, looked back, and grinned. “We can’t be daddy’s girls all the time.”
That did it. They were nearly racing each other by the time they made it to the door. They paid some feral-looking Latino street kid who looked like he was about twelve to get in, and the kid pushed the door open for them. A deep growl of thumping bass emanated from its maw, welcoming them.
Inside, the huge warehouse was already thick with bodies. The bass was a deep thrum in her limbs, in her bones, rubbing out Death Barbie and all the hassles of the last two weeks. Lights strobed. Dancers gyrated to the driving sounds, wearing kandi cuffs and masks, glow sticks dangled around dancers’ necks, illuminating skin and sweat and bodies ecstatically entwined.
Alix pushed into the crowd, loving the intensity of the music. She started letting her body move to its rhythms, trying to shake off all the irritations of 2.0’s interference in her life. Trying to loosen up, to feel the vodka that she’d already drunk, the freedom of the crowd and music, and the joy of being completely out from under anyone’s thumb. Free. Completely free.
She swayed with the beat, enjoying the spectacle of hundreds of people filling the space, dancing up on old warehouse crates that had been illuminated with strobes, while others danced inside enormous industrial metal cages, clutching bars and writhing like they were the prisoners of some postapocalyptic dance tribe. Rusted sheet metal hung from the walls, sprayed with green glowing icons. Radiation, Bicycle Lane, Peace, Biohazard, Migrant Worker Crossing, Chairman Mao… a Dada procession of symbols against the industrial metal decay. At one end of the floor, Alix glimpsed a massive rusted iron wheel, like some kind of insane steroidal hamster wheel, that spun with glow lights, blurring and pulsing to the beats of the DJ.
Alix took another swig of vodka and passed it to Cynthia, grinning. They danced. Cynthia drank and handed it back, and Alix decided she’d had enough and let the bottle go, gifting it to a stranger, who mouthed thanks and then sent the bottle… wherever. It didn’t matter to Alix. She threw her hands up and danced. She didn’t need to be drunk. She was already glowing.
They danced, feeling the ecstasy of the beats, of movement, of being completely alive. Cynthia was grinning at her. Her tight white T-shirt glowed blue with the black lights of the space. The vodka burned in Alix’s blood. Perfect.
Someone was handing out orange and lime glow sticks. Alix tied one around her wrist, another around her neck. The music went on and on, an ocean of sound flowing through her.
Cynthia disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a pair of pills.
“What is it?” Alix shouted.
“What do you think?” Cynthia said.
The old Alix would have worried about where it had come from and what was in it, but this Alix, this newly alive Alix, didn’t care. For once, I just want to have fun. She didn’t want to have to look over her shoulder anymore. Just for a little while.
Fuck it.
She popped the pill and danced.
Her body felt warm and delicious. She was high and drunk, and the music rolled over her. A girl was spinning fire, arcs whirling fast and hypnotic, tracing lines and circles around her sweating body, her dreads spinning wide. Cynthia was dancing between some boys, one on each side, and she was laughing.
Alix danced until her limbs felt heavy. She let the crowd push her out toward the edges of the dance floor, looking for space, for room to breathe. She moved toward the wall, tired, slowing.
A streak of blue caught Alix’s eye, down along the wall. She stopped dancing, her chest heaving.
There it was again…. A blue spark slipping along the edge of the warehouse floor.
A blue rat.
Alix laughed out loud.
Whoa. Cool drugs.
She’d never seen a blue rat.
Alix laughed again. Jesus, she was high. The rat wasn’t blue. It was white, turned bright and ethereal by the black lights of the rave. Alix stared at the rat, loving how it looked, how it moved. It was mesmerizing the way it dashed back and forth along the edge of the dance floor, disappearing behind crates, streaking past lovers making out, ducking behind the big industrial dance cages. Darting this way and that…
Gorgeous.
Alix couldn’t help wanting it. She stumbled after it, wondering how the thing had gotten here all the way from Seitz. She could imagine it thumbing a ride up from the school. Cute rat… Cute little guy like you shouldn’t be out like this, she thought. You’ll get stomped.
She followed the rat as it slipped behind the DJ’s stage and racks of amps. This close to the speakers, the music wasn’t something that Alix heard so much as felt. A physical envelopment pressing through every pore of her body. Mom and Dad would have been shaking their heads and reminding her that she’d be deaf by forty, but Alix couldn’t be bothered to care. She felt fantastic, and she’d found the most amazing blue rat.
As she eased past the amps, she caught sight of the DJ up on his stage, looking down at her. Gorgeous blond boy, slender as willow, his headphones held to his ear as he mixed beats. Alix smiled up at him. She waved, feeling delighted and drunk and high and fine. The beautiful boy smiled back, and the beat shifted, hammering chimes began filtering into the music, gothic, dark, and ecstatic.
The blue rat flashed across the floor again. Alix followed, winding behind the amps, stumbling over scaffolding and cords. She felt unsteady on her feet. How much vodka had she drunk? Part of her wanted to go back to the dancing and feel the throb and rush of all the other dancers around her, but she couldn’t quite let the blue rat go.