Page 87 of The Debutantes
I’ve walked all the way to the river before I finally hear from Renee. She hasn’t answered my calls, but a text pops up on my screen.
I’m safe
Can you meet? There’s something I need to tell you
I breathe out, sinking to a seat on the rocks at the edge of the Mississippi. The water churns at my feet as I text back.
Yeah, I’m at the river—where should I meet you?
She responds almost instantly.
Getting my car now, I’ll pick you up
I pull my knees to my chest and look out to the horizon, the twinkling spires of the Crescent City Connection.
In the daylight, the Mississippi is ugly and brown, filledwith trash and barges and probably also several creatures that could eat you alive, if the current doesn’t get you first. At night, though, it looks different, the surface like a shimmering watercolor in the glow of downtown. It looks, now, like the powerful, monstrous thing it is—a living creature that bent this city to its whim.
This must be how Margot always saw it.
And now that I’m here, now that I feel her with me, I finally let myself think of that night, soaking in the details like salt in a wound.
It was the night of the ball last year, when Margot was Queen. I wasn’t there—she hadn’t invited me, which was just another nail in the coffin—and so when I saw Margot’s name flash across my phone late that night, I jolted upright in bed. It was the first time she’d reached out in months.
I’m at the Deus Den, she’d texted.Can you come?
She didn’t have to ask. When I got there, I half expected to find her in her Queen costume, but there she was in a classic Margot outfit: giant hoodie, leggings, and her favorite Doc Martens, the ones she said made her feel like she could stomp on any heart in her path. There was a black plastic bag on her arm, the kind they used at her favorite fake ID–friendly liquor store. From a distance, she looked worried, picking off the pearl-pink manicure that was so unlike her regular blue-black color. But when she saw me, she ran over to pull me into a hug.
“Thank god,” she said, squeezing tighter. She smelled like her cotton-candy vape, a gross habit she’d picked up that year, even if the scent was weirdly comforting. “If I had to talk to one more debutante, I swear my head was going to explode.”
There was something different about her—a fire crackling in her eyes, this almost frantic energy—but it was so good tohear her voice, to be near her, that I didn’t question it. Neither of us brought it up, the rift between us. It was like acknowledging all the time we’d spent apart would break the spell, send us back to real life.
Instead, we went inside. The Den was cavernous in the dark, a forest of papier-mâché creatures looking down on us from their floats. Margot pulled a pint of vodka out of her plastic bag, passed it to me.
“Cheers,” she said.
“What are we toasting?”
“The end of my reign.”
I smiled, taking the bottle. “Thank god. I’ve heard you were a bit of a tyrannical ruler.”
She smiled back. “Let them eat cake.”
For a while, we wandered the Den, laughing and talking and exploring the playground of floats. The whole time, the real questions I wanted to ask her were brimming under the surface, seconds from crashing up for air, but every time I got close, I stopped myself. The night felt almost normal, and I didn’t want to ruin it. I didn’t want to lose her again.
So when Margot turned to me with a wicked look on her face, I knew I’d say yes to whatever she was about to ask.
“What if we wrecked it?”
I blinked. “Wrecked what?”
We’d only had about a shot each, so the wild spark in her eyes was from more than just the alcohol.
“All of it,” she said, gesturing around us. “This whole place.”
It was so far from what I expected that I was briefly stunned.
“Why?”
