Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [13]
“So does SpongeBob. Problem is, they both fall short on the monumental answers.”
Rupert laughs but his eyes are sad. “Nick misses you. So do I,” he says. Then he hugs me. People do that a lot. It seems to help. Them.
“Off you go, then. Join the fun,” he says, handing me a pink paper parasol.
“Um, Rupert? It’s not sunny in here.”
“It’s a shield, my dear. Iago’s bad, but Edmund, the new one, is the devil himself.”
I pop the parasol open and walk from room to room, feeling like Cio-Cio-San searching for Pinkerton. Half my class is in the kitchen. There are empty bottles everywhere, spent cigarette packs, parrots and parasols, but no Nick.
Someone offers me a glass of wine, but I decline. Alcohol doesn’t mix well with my pills. It brings on some nasty side effects.
I started on the drugs about a year ago. I was seeing Dr. Becker, a psychiatrist, because I couldn’t eat or sleep or go to school. Beezie recommended him and my father made me go by threatening to stop my lessons with Nathan if I didn’t. I was supposed to talk about things with Dr. Becker, but I barely opened my mouth—except to say what a waste of time it all was. After a few weeks of that, Dr. Becker prescribed Paxil. Then Zoloft. When those didn’t work, he bumped me up to Qwellify, a tricyclic antidepressant. If that doesn’t cut it, it’s antipsychotic time.
I keep moving through the Goodes’ house, looking for Nick. I wish Vijay had come with me so I’d have someone to talk to, but it’s a Saturday night during winter break, so of course he’s home working on his thesis “Atom and Eve: Technology, Religion, and the Battle for the Twenty-first Century.” So far, he’s managed to get quotes from five world leaders.
I veer off into the parlor. Music’s blaring. Kids are making out on the sofa, a chair, the floor. There’s a portrait over the mantel, a huge black-and-white nude by Steven Meisel of Lady Goode IV. She’s twenty-three. And a model. And not around very much. But as Rupert himself will tell you, and often does, “With breasts like those, one can do as one likes.”
I head into the library. Shiva Mendez is sharing slides of her latest art installation, Void, which involves three hundred and sixty-five bottles of laxative and some unspeakable footage. It’s part of her senior thesis. The Whitney’s including it in an emerging-artists show. Bender Kurtz, fresh out of rehab for the second time this year, is talking up his thesis—a memoir of addiction. He’s already got a book deal. Now he’s trying to pimp the film option. “My agent’s really excited,” he’s telling some girl. “Wes might attach.”
They make me feel tired, my classmates. Achingly, crushingly, epically tired. Listening to them makes me want to lie down on the floor and sleep for twenty years, but I can’t—there’s too much bird poop on the rug—so I decide to leave. Nick’s nowhere in sight. At least, not anywhere down here. He might be upstairs, but I’m not brave enough to start opening bedroom doors in this house. As I head for the hallway, I feel an arm circle my waist and lips press against the back of my neck. A gravelly voice says, “I knew you’d come. But who did you come for? My guitar or me?”
“Your guitar. Most definitely.”
“Coldhearted siren,” he says, tugging on one of my earrings, and then hands me the guitar. Like it was nothing. Like he was handing me a stick of gum.
“I can play it?” I ask. In a whisper.
“Yah. Absolutely,” he says, barely paying attention. Arden’s giggling in his ear and hooking her thumb toward the kitchen. And then they’re gone, and I’m holding Keith Richards’s guitar, and the weight of it in my hands feels thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Like I’m holding a cobra, a bag of diamonds, a bomb.
I strum it. My fingers curl around the board into A minor, E7, then G—the first chords