“Shall the spiritus interruptus return again this year?” Eureka waved the flyer.
He took it from her hand. He didn’t look at it. It was like being slapped.
“You’re too cavalier,” he said. “That psycho wants to hurt you.”
Eureka groaned, then inhaled a whiff of patchouli, which only meant one thing:
Maya Cayce was approaching. Her hair was woven in a long, intricate fishtail that draped down her side, and her eyes were lined with heavy kohl. She’d pierced her nasal septum since the last time Eureka saw her. A tiny black ring looped through her nose.
“Is that the psycho you’re talking about?” Eureka asked Brooks. “Why don’t you protect me? Go kick her ass.”
Maya stopped at the door to the bathroom. She flicked her braid to the other side and looked over her shoulder at them. She made the bathroom look like the sexiest spot on earth. “Did you get my message, B?”
“Yeah.” Brooks nodded, but he didn’t seem interested. His gaze kept moving toward Eureka. Did he want to make Eureka jealous? It wasn’t working. Not really.
Maya blinked heavily, and when her eyes opened, they were on Eureka. She stared for a moment, sniffed, then slipped inside the bathroom. Eureka was watching her disappear when she heard a tearing sound.
Brooks had ripped the flyer. “You’re not going to this party.”
“Don’t be such a drama queen.” Eureka slammed her locker door and spun away—right toward Cat, who’d rounded the corner, hair wild and makeup smudged, like she’d just been interrupted in the Maze. But knowing Cat, she might have spent an hour perfecting that look this morning.
Brooks grabbed Eureka’s wrist. She twisted to glare at him ferociously, and it was nothing like wrestling when they were kids. Her eyes were exclamation points of anger. Neither of them spoke.
Slowly he let go of her wrist, but as she walked away he called, “Eureka, trust me. Don’t go to that party.”
Across the hall, Cat extended her elbow to Eureka, who slipped her arm through. “What’s he yapping about? Hopefully something lame, because the bell rings in two and I would much rather gossip about Madame Blavatsky’s latest email. Hot.” She fanned herself and dragged Eureka into the bathroom.
“Cat, wait.” Eureka looked around the bathroom. She didn’t have to kneel down and search to know Maya Cayce was in one of the stalls. Patchouli was pungent.
Cat plopped her purse on the sink and pulled out a tube of lipstick. “I just hope there’s a real sex scene in the next email. I hate books that are all foreplay. I mean, I love foreplay, but at some point, it’s, like, let’s play.” She glanced over at Eureka in the mirror. “What? You’re paying good money for this. Madame B needs to deliver the goods.”
Eureka was not going to talk about The Book of Love in front of Maya Cayce. “I didn’t … I couldn’t really read it.”
Cat squinted. “Dude, you’re missing out.”
A toilet flushed. A door lock clicked. Maya Cayce exited a stall, pushing between Eureka and Cat to stand before the mirror and touch up her long, dark hair.
“Do you want to borrow some of my bitch gloss, Maya?” Cat said, rummaging through her purse. “Oh, I forgot. You bought every tube of it in the world.”
Maya kept smoothing her braid.
“Don’t forget to wash your hands,” Cat chirped.
Maya turned on the tap and reached over Cat to get some soap. As she lathered her hands, she watched Eureka in the mirror. “I’m going to the party with him, not you.”
Eureka nearly choked. Was that why Brooks had told her not to go? “I have other plans anyway.” She was living in a bruise where everything hurt all the time, one pain exacerbating another.
Maya turned off the faucet, flicked her wet hands in Eureka’s direction, and left the bathroom like a dictator leaving a podium.
“What was that about?” Cat laughed when Maya Cayce was gone. “We are going to that party. I’ve already checked in on Foursquare.”
“Did you tell Brooks I saw Ander yesterday?”
Cat blinked. “No. I’ve barely talked to him.”
Eureka stared at Cat, who widened her eyes and shrugged. Cat stammered when she lied; Eureka knew that from years of them getting caught by their parents. But how else would Brooks have known she’d seen Ander?
“More importantly,” Cat said, “I will not let Maya Cayce psych you out of the best party of the year. I need my wing girl. Are we clear?” The bell rang and Cat moved toward the door, calling over her shoulder, “You have no say in the matter. We shall dress to attract the crows.”
“We’re supposed to scare the crows, Cat.”
Cat grinned. “So you can read.”
20
NEVER-EVER
The Trejeans lived on a restored plantation in the wealthy district south of town. Cotton fields flanked the small historic neighborhood. Houses were columned, two-storied, snug in blankets of pink azaleas, and shaded by antebellum oaks. The bayou bent around the Trejeans’ backyard like an elbow, providing a double waterfront view.
The entire senior class and the well-connected underclassmen had been invited to the Maze Daze. It was customary to catch a boat ride and pull up bayou-side to the party. The year before, Eureka and Cat had made the journey in the rickety motorboat with a creaking tiller that Brooks’s older brother, Seth, left behind when he went to LSU. The freezing half-hour ride up the bayou from New Iberia had been almost as fun as the party.
Tonight, since Brooks was not an option, Cat had put out feelers for other rides. As she was getting dressed, Eureka couldn’t help imagining Maya Cayce sitting next to Brooks on the boat, plugging her metal-heavy iPod into the portable speakers, caressing Brooks’s bicep. She imagined Maya’s hair streaming behind her like the tentacles of a black octopus as the boat skimmed across the water.
In the end, Cat scored a ride from Julien Marsh, whose friend Tim had a mint-green 1960s party barge with empty seats. At eight o’clock, when Julien’s truck pulled up outside Eureka’s house, Dad was standing at the window, drinking cold leftover coffee from the maroon mug that used to say I love Mom, before the dishwasher sanded down the paint.
Eureka zipped her raincoat to cover the low sequined neckline of a dress Cat had just spent five minutes on Face-time convincing her was not trampy. She’d borrowed the satin shift from Cat’s closet that afternoon, even though she looked terrible in brown. Cat was debuting a similar dress in orange. They were going as fall leaves. Cat said she liked the vivid, sensual colors; Eureka didn’t voice her perverse enjoyment at dressing as an object with a second life when it was dead.
Dad raised one of the blinds to look at Julien’s Ford. “Who’s the truck?”
“You know Cat, what she likes.”
He sighed, exhausted, just off his shift at the restaurant. He smelled like crawfish. As Eureka slid through the doorway, he said, “You know you want better than those kinds of boys, right?”
“That truck doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s a ride to a party, that’s all.”
“If someone does have something to do with you,” Dad said, “you’ll bring him inside? I’ll meet him?” His eyes turned down, a look the twins got when they were about to cry, like a swollen cloud rolling in from the Gulf. She’d never realized they inherited that meteorological event from him. “Your mom only ever wanted the best for you.”
“I know, Dad.” The coldness with which Eureka grabbed her purse made her glimpse the depths of the anger and confusion rooted inside her. “I’ve got to go.”
“Back by midnight,” Dad said as she walked out the door.
The party barge was nearly full when Eureka, Cat, and Julien arrived at Tim’s family’s dock. Tim was blond and skinny, with an eyebrow ring, big hands, and a smile as constant as the Eternal Flame. Eureka had never had a class with him, but they were friends from back when Eureka went to parties. His costume was an LSU football jersey. He held out a hand to steady her as she stepped onto the party barge.
“Good to see you out, Boudreaux. Saved y’all three seats.”
They wedged in next to some cheerleaders, some theater kids, and a boy from the cross-country team named Martin. The rest of them had taken the party barge last weekend, Eureka realized from the jokes they cracked. This was the first time all year she’d been out with anyone besides Cat or Brooks.
She found the back corner of a bench where she’d be the least claustrophobic. She remembered what Ander had said under the tree about enjoying being cocooned. She couldn’t relate. The entire world was too tight a space for Eureka.
She reached down to touch the bayou, taking comfort in its fragile timelessness. There was little chance a wave bigger than a boat’s wake would come coursing through. Still, her hand shook against the surface of the water, which felt colder than she knew it was.
Cat sat next to her, on Julien’s lap. As she penciled a few leaves on Eureka’s face with gold eyeliner, she made up a Maze Daze song to the tune of “Love Stinks,” accompanied by shimmying against Julien’s chest.
“Maze Daze, yeah, yeah!”
A six-pack appeared while Tim filled the tank. Tops popped around the boat like fireworks. The air smelled like gasoline and dead water beetles and the mushrooms rising from the soil along the bank. A slick-furred nutria cut a tiny wake as it swam past them on the bayou.
As the party barge slowly left the dock, a bitter breeze slapped Eureka’s face and she hugged her arms to her chest. Kids around her huddled together and laughed, not because anything funny had happened, but because they were together and eager about the night ahead.
By the time they got to the party, they were either buzzed or pretending they were. Eureka accepted Tim’s help off the barge. His hand around hers was dry and big. It gave her a twinge of longing, because it was nothing like Ander’s hand. Nausea spread through her stomach as she remembered sugarcane and skin as white as sea foam and ghastly green light in Ander’s panicked eyes the night before.
“Come along, my brittle little leaf.” Cat swung an arm around Eureka. “Let us tumble through this fete bringing all glad men to grief.”
They entered the party. Laura Trejean had classed up her brother’s tradition. Tiki torches lit the pebbled allée from the dock to the iron gate that led to the backyard. Tin lanterns twinkled in the giant weeping willows. Up on the balcony, overlooking the moonlit pool, everyone’s favorite local band, the Faith Healers, tuned their instruments. Laura’s clique mingled across the lawn, passing tin trays of Cajun hors d’oeuvres.
“Amazing what a lady’s touch will do,” Eureka said to Cat, who snatched a mini fried oyster po’boy from a passing platter.
“That’s what he said,” Cat mumbled through a mouthful of bread and lettuce.
You didn’t have to tell Catholic school kids twice to dress up for a party. Everyone came decked out in costume. Maze Daze was explicitly not a Halloween party; it was a harvest celebration. Among the many LSU jerseys, Eureka spotted some more inventive attempts. There were several scarecrows and a smattering of tipsy jack-o’-lanterns. One junior boy had duct-taped sugarcane stalks to his T-shirt in honor of the harvest later that month.