The Devil & Me

Chapter Two: Late Night Visitings

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I had two friends at Fortuna: Luce and Grace. Grace was a small girl, sort of bookish, quiet, with glasses and the best curry recipe known to man. Luce, of the three of us, the model, nearly six feet tall, with glowing, red-hued skin and braids to her waist. I'd suspected that Luce, unlike Grace and I, was rich. My suspicions turned out to be true the summer she'd invited us camping. There I quickly learned that their camp wasn't a tent in the woods, but a house overlooking a lake, on a compound that had its own stables. Why she chose to stick around with Grace and me is anyone's guess. I think it has to do with the fact that, well, she's black and most of Fortuna's legacies are white. You can probably only stomach Rex Orange County, or Tame Impala (or whatever white boy they've chosen to worship for the week) for so long.

I knocked on the door and only had to wait all of two seconds before it opened. Luce looked at me, her fingers twisting around a bubblegum pink braid. I grinned.

"What did your mom say?"

"Guess?"

I cleared my throat and put on a deeper, more authoritative one. "Pink hair, never mind pink hair to one's buttocks, is the height of trashiness."

"Ma," Luce said, "I do not care."

"I told you not to say that! If you don't care, who will care? Lucinda. Lucinda get back here. Lucinda, do not slam doors in this house!"

Luce flopped onto her bed, her chest rolling in laughter. "That's exactly what it was like. Jesus, I wish I could just show her what she's like."

"Okay, rich girl," I said. I looked at Grace's top bunk, where she sat applying eyeshadow. She didn't have her glasses on. I frowned and climbed up to meet her. "New contacts?" I asked.

She nodded. "You should try them. No droplets in the rain and no mist in the cold."

Where the hell did she get contacts money? But I thought better than to ask. "That looks nice," I said, leaning into her makeup. "Are you going out?"

"To a party?"

"A party?"

Grace looked at me, her face crumpling a little at my surprise. "I just thought that..."

"No, of course, go if you want to go. I just never took you for a partier."

"Because that's my job," Luce called out from below. Grace grimaced, and put down her brush.

"I thought I should go to a few. Just to see them. You could⁠⁠—should come with me. How can Luce have all the fun?"

I laughed, reached forward, and brushed loose dust from her cheeks. Maybe for Christmas, I'd take the money from my part-time job and buy her a luxury palette. "That's not my sort of fun, so you'll have to soak up everything for me."

Her smile was wan and sad. Was I missing that much? I don't think so. I almost felt sick with fear, remembering the pulses of music, the thrum of a body against mine. Then a tide of chicken's blood down my body, and its slimy warmth⁠⁠—

"You don't have to go," Luce called out. "I can hear you imagining the end of the world from up here."

"I'm not."

"I bet you're thinking about the chicken blood incident."

"I'm not," I snapped. Luce kissed her teeth. I was. She knew. I sighed. "I just want peace this year. No parties. No boys. Just my books and my friends. And working, of course."