Page 13 of The Debutantes
I shrugged, deflecting. “It’s still a whole year away.”
But Lily was right. Seventeen years in the South felt like plenty, and I was already itching to get somewhere with seasons and a general public who wouldn’t balk when I held a girl’s hand, if I could ever get over my crippling anxiety enough to start dating one.
“Well, sinking or not, I’m sure as hell staying,” Margot said. “Like, there has to be something spiritually wrong with you if you have the chance to go to a school with Mardi Gras break and don’t take it.” She looked at me again. “I love you, April, but you are disturbed.”
She smiled, but there was something sad simmering beneath it—something I felt a sudden urge to capture, if only so I could examine it later.
“I never said I wasn’t.” I lifted my camera. “Smile.”
Now I turn away from Lily’s house, focusing intently on the trees bending above us until we get home. Before the engine’s even off, I’m pulling off my clunky heels and climbing out of the car, desperate to unhook this dress and take my first gulp of unrestricted air in hours.
“Careful with your skirt!” Dad calls behind me. “The ground is dirty.”
Shooting him a thumbs-up, I bundle the giant puff of fabric as I walk up our front steps, the brick chilly on my bare feet. As much as I can’t wait to move out, our houseispretty cool. Like a lot of the homes in our neighborhood, it’s at least a century old. It’s a renovated double shotgun—a New Orleans classic, named because of their long, straight design, where you could stand in the entrance and, theoretically, shoot a bullet clean through the back door. It’s got that famously colorful Uptown style: canary-yellow clapboard with a porch framed by bright white columns, an iron gas lantern hanging above the front door, which is painted the same robin’s-egg blue as the window shutters. The colors don’t match, but no one in New Orleans gives a shit. They match because we say they do.
I glance through the front window to see Mouse curled up on the piano bench, licking her mittened paws. I bend down and tap on the glass.
“Hey, gremlin. How about you, me, and aDoctor Whobinge?”
Her tail flicks—as close as this cat will ever get to showing approval—and I smile. Just as I’m about to get back up, my phone buzzes. When I see the name on the screen, my dress feels even tighter.
Lily.
Meet me at the Deus Den tomorrow at noon, it says.We need to talk about Margot.
5PIPER
DECEMBER 30, 11:55A.M.
In the long list of things that piss me off, being left on read has got to crack the top ten, especially when it’s about something this cryptic.
Meet me at the Deus Den tomorrow at noon. We need to talk about Margot.
When Lily sent the message last night, I responded immediately to ask for more details, but she still hasn’t gotten back to me, despite the very clearREAD AT 9:50 P.M.banner beneath my text—which, as far as I’m concerned, could be classified as an act of psychological warfare.
I send her another text:
I’m here
Five minutes early,I mentally add.Not that anyone’s counting.
Shielding my eyes from the sun, I look up at the Den. From the outside, it’s nothing special, just a long warehouse buildingwith a high arched ceiling. But inside, the place is magical. Or it used to be. I haven’t been here since I was little enough that Dad still held our hands as he walked me and Wyatt down the long aisles of floats, pointing out the one he’d be riding on in the parade: the Fool’s Float, one of the first and most historic in the lineup, with the big laughing jester at the helm.
The floats used to scare Wyatt so much that he’d cry at the giant papier-mâché creatures staring down at him, but I loved them. I always ran ahead, eager to touch the gold-leaf flames and see if they’d really burn me, half-afraid they would.
I still love when Dad tells that story. Maybe because, for once, the roles are reversed: I’m the fun one, the carefree one, while Wyatt hangs back, overthinking.
I check my phone again, but Lily still hasn’t read the message. I sigh. She’s never been punctual, which she usually gets away with on account of being, well, Lily—pretty and popular and charming, all qualities that don’t come naturally to me. Tardiness is also high on the list of things that piss me off, but I try to tamp down the frustration.
I’m not sure why Lily has summoned me to the Den, of all places, but if she knows something about who projected Margot Landry all over the ballroom last night, then this is an opportunity I can’t pass up—even if it means waiting alone on a sketchy-looking street just off the highway.
“Piper?”
I spin around at the unexpected voice, instinctively grabbing for the pepper spray in my purse.
“Oh my god, it’s me!” Vivian Atkins holds her hands up, blocking her eyes.
I lower the spray, suspicious. For all the times Vivian hasbeen at our house with my brother and their friends, I don’t think we’ve ever really exchanged more than a casual hello.
