Burning Kingdoms. Lauren DeStefano

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СКАЧАТЬ looks at me like this is the stupidest thing she has ever heard, and maybe it is. I scan the city, hoping for something I can use to change the subject. Thomas is right. This is the sort of talk that can send her spiraling.

      Whether or not it’s a welcome one, a distraction finds us in the form of brassy music streaming through a door that’s been left ajar. Pen stops us from walking and looks inside. There’s the smell of smoke and tonic. Giggles and clatters. Sparkling drinks floating on trays.

      Pen is hypnotized. “What is this?” she says, swatting me when I try to pull her away. I follow her gaze to a woman who is gyrating on a table. Her beads swish around her throat in shimmering ovals, and she kicks her leg in an arch right over the head of some lovesick boy. Her lips are red, and I see now what Birdie has been trying to model herself after.

      “It’s a brass club,” Birdie says. Her voice is almost too soft to hear.

      Pen, stars in her eyes, takes a step forward, but Birdie pulls her back. “We can’t go in there,” she gasps.

      Pen looks with heartbreak at the hand that’s holding her back. “Why not?”

      “We just … can’t,” Birdie says.

      “It must be late,” I say.

      “We’re already going to have to sneak back in,” Pen says. “Why not have a little more fun?”

      Birdie stutters and looks worriedly over her shoulder.

      “Don’t hold out on us now,” Pen says. “I saw you come home after the stars had gone to bed.” With that, she plunges into the crowd.

      “I’m so sorry, Birdie, she can be like this,” I say, and hurry after her. I can’t imagine the trouble Pen could get into in a place like this, with tonic shimmering in glasses everywhere.

      Pen has already progressed through curtain after curtain of smoke. She’s made a direct beeline for the dancing woman, who is tall and so skinny, she’s concave. A man at the table holds what must be her shoes.

      The dancing woman smiles at Pen, and it’s as though they have a sort of kinship somehow, for in the dancing woman’s eyes is a melancholy under all that cosmetic.

      Or maybe the melancholy belongs to me. I can’t be certain.

      The music doesn’t cease, but it changes. The dancing woman climbs down, and as she does, the man who holds her shoes leans in for a kiss. “Sorry, Mac,” she says, smiling with all her teeth. “The bank’s closed.”

      Birdie stands beside me, both of us watching the dancing woman talk to Pen. We can’t make out her words, but she wraps her long arms around Pen’s shoulders and says something before kissing her cheek. And then she’s gone, waving her shoes above her head, to begin another dance.

      Pen spins around to face us, giddy.

      Birdie and I are on her at once.

      “What did she say?”

      “You have to tell us!”

      “She said, ‘Now is our time to be queens.’” She stands a bit taller for having repeated it. “And then she told me not to take any wooden nickels.”

      I don’t know what that means—any of it—but Pen is glowing. With a single hand she lifts three nearly empty glasses from the dancing woman’s table and hands one to each of us.

      “Pen!” I say.

      “What? It isn’t as though anyone is still drinking out of them. Come on, a toast.” She raises her glass. “To the coronation of three queens. Oh, don’t look like that. You aren’t going to make me drink alone, are you?”

      Birdie raises her glass warily. I believe she’s never had a drink before, though nobody here would suspect it by the looks of her; she’s made up so confidently. I raise my glass to show her it won’t be as bad as all that.

      “What’s it like?” Birdie asks.

      “How should I know?” Pen laughs. It’s a beautiful, free laugh. “This is your world, not mine.”

      “There now,” I say. “Bottoms up.”

      The tonic of the ground has a greater burn than anything I’ve ever tasted on Internment, even from the myriad of bottles Pen and I found after we’d picked the lock in her mother’s cabinet. Birdie coughs, and Pen pats her back sympathetically. “Come on,” Pen says. “We’ll look for something yellow or pink. Nothing pink is ever menacing.”

      By the fourth or fifth glass, Birdie has stopped spluttering the stuff back up before she can swallow it. “I can’t hear myself think in here,” she says.

      “Isn’t that the point?” Pen says, mimicking the dance moves she’s been observing all night. They make her look deranged, like she’s trying to stomp invisible bugs.

      I laugh. “What is that supposed to be?”

      “I don’t think anyone knows.” She snorts, which sends us all into hysterics. “The dancing and the music and the hair and the dresses—it’s all so brilliantly tacky.”

      “We really should go,” Birdie says.

      “For a girl who sneaks out at night, you really are no fun,” Pen says.

      “Birdie’s right,” I say.

      “Morgan, you more than anyone should be glad we’re here. Isn’t this exactly what you’ve been dreaming about all your life?”

      She’s right and she’s wrong all at once. I have dreamed of the ground for as long as I can remember, but the most talented imagination in human existence couldn’t have foreseen this. It’s all so bright and fast and terrifying.

      “Dance with me!” Pen says, grabbing my arms. I backpedal, pulling her for the door.

      “You, my friend, are ossified,” Birdie says, and giggles at Pen. I don’t know what that means, but I suspect it applies to her as well.

      When we burst outside into the cold air, Pen opens her arms and throws her head back and says, “I can’t believe we could get away with that in public.”

      “There aren’t any speakeasies on Internment?” Birdie asks. She slips on a patch of ice, and I catch her by the arm.

      “Only bottles and locks and drawn curtains,” Pen says, trying to balance on the edge of the sidewalk, to little avail. “This cold is drawing the burn right out of my veins,” she sulks. “I think I’m already sober.”

      “You aren’t,” I assure her.

      “I don’t know how you’re both holding it so well,” Birdie says. “The ground is tilting.”

      “Isn’t it great?” Pen says. With a shriek she topples into a pile of snow. “Morgan is a sensible drunk,” she tells Birdie as she picks herself up.

      “Some sense,” I say. “I don’t even know where we are.”

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