"Well, that we can test. Esmeralda's stereo is grouse. Wanna go dance in the dining room?" Dancing could definitely lead to more kissing, couldn't it?
"Sure," Jay-Tee said. "I'd love to."
* * *
Esmeralda's music either sucked or Jay-Tee'd never heard of it. They went through every CD and found nothing she deemed even slightly danceable.
"Mere's forty-five," she said, as if she were saying,
Mere's an alien
. "Old people's music always sucks."
"How about this?" Tom asked. He'd turned the tuner on and pressed FM, then turned the dial to a best of the seventies, eighties, nineties channel, pretty sure that Jay-Tee would hate it.
"Vile!" she said instantly. "Top forty crap. It smells so bad it might as well be rotten meat."
"Let me guess," Tom said, trying not to laugh. "You don't like it?"
She grinned. "It's disgusting. Guitars, bass, crappy singing. Boring old-people music."
He switched the dial, got Triple J. "How 'bout this?"
She shook her head. "Guitars, Tom, guitars! They're
so
over. Dance music! It's gotta, gotta, gotta be dance music."
Tom turned to the three other stations that were actual possibilities. On the second one, Jay-Tee nodded. "
That's
more like it. Feel that bass? It's skittering and thrumming. There's reverb. Perfect."
They drew the curtains so no one could see in from the street. Then got good and sweaty pushing Esmeralda's dining table, chairs, and the other moveable furniture against the walls, which left plenty of space.
Tom turned the music up two more notches and walked into the middle of the room. "Ready?" he asked, though he was nervous. He really liked dancing, but most of his friends didn't. So he'd mostly just danced in his bedroom, which was deeply pathetic. He'd also danced some at the year nine formal last year, but then Scooter and Ron had started snickering. So he'd stopped and joined them in mocking everyone else, even though he'd rather have kept on dancing. He didn't want Jay-Tee to think he was unco at dancing, given that she was so good.
Or used to be, when she was magic.
Jay-Tee stayed next to the stereo, with her back to Tom. He could see her move the tiniest amount, as if she were measuring the beat without actually dancing.
He took a deep breath for courage and walked over to Jay-Tee, taking her right hand in his and moving her into the centre of the room.
"I don't do that kind of dancing," she said.
Tom laughed. "Me neither, dancing holding someone— that's the daggiest dancing ever," he lied. He really enjoyed watching ballroom dancing and had wanted to try it himself for ages. He could certainly make way better costumes than those dancers normally had. "But there's more room to move here. Are you going to dance or what?"
"Dunno. Not sure I feel like it."
Tom dared himself to just start dancing in front of her. Even though he knew she'd laugh at him. Instead he did something almost as brave. He kissed her. Quickly, on the cheek. "You had plenty of rhythm when we were kissing out on the porch. I'm sure you've got heaps left over for dancing."
"It's not the same thing," she said. The expression on her face was so sad, it made Tom want to cry.
But then Jay-Tee smiled, put her arms by her side, and started jumping pogo-stick style. Tom joined her. They bounced like crazy all around the room, staying in rhythm, laughing like they would explode.
And then, after two songs of silliness, Tom watched Jay-Tee slide into proper dancing. As if her arms, her hips, her legs were disconnected, moving in a separate space of their own, yet connected too. He'd never seen anyone move as fast, as smooth, as charged as her. He followed as best he could.
Jay-Tee hadn't lost any of her dance.
16
Sweating
It wasn't the same. Jay-Tee
couldn't feel the dance sweep through her. She hoped she would find her rhythm, but when she didn't, and her eyes came close to leaking even more tears, she turned to Tom instead and kissed him.
He kissed her back, less tentatively than he had out on the back porch. They were both sweating from throwing themselves around the room. Their hands kept sliding off their damp clothes; they almost fell over.
Tom giggled. His cheeks were red and hot. So were hers. They fell back against the table. Jay-Tee grunted where the side of it dug into her lower back. Tom tried to kiss her again, but his lips landed on her cheekbone and then slid down to her chin.
"Sorry," he said. "Slippery."
It was a hot night. The whole room seemed to be sweating. Even without the dancing, they'd've been dripping. Even without hugging each other, they'd still have fused together.
She wondered what this would feel like if she still had her magic. How many threads would connect them? Without magic, Jay-Tee couldn't see the web that tied them together. Without magic, there probably
wasn't
any connection.
She pulled away from Tom, trying to see what wasn't there. He looked back at her, started to say something, but she put her hand up.
His skin was so white. He was so skinny.
"You glow," she told him. But not scary, like Reason. "A good glow."
He looked at his arms. His face went even redder. "I'm pretty white, eh?"
She put her fingers around his wrist. "Check that out." They both stared at Jay-Tee's brown hand against Tom's white, white arm.
"You're so much darker than I am," he said. "You're lucky. I get burnt really— "
"I like how white you are. I can see the blue veins so clear. It's pretty."
"Not as pretty as you. Not as gorgeous as— "
Jay-Tee put her mouth to his, hoping to get lost in kissing. With her eyes closed, she could remember what the web had looked like. All the magic catching between all the magic-wielders, pulling them together. What was pulling her and Tom together?
"Do you want to go upstairs?" she asked. The music was pounding, but without being able to catch its beat, it had become just noise. Something that verged on giving her a headache.
Tom blushed again. Though it was getting hard to tell. They were both so hot, so sweaty.
"I mean, upstairs'd be more comfy."
"You sure?" he asked, anxious.
"Yeah. The edge of the table's really digging in."
"I meant…"
She laughed. He was so anxious. "I know what you meant. It's just kissing, Tom. Relax."
Jay-Tee didn't want to have sex with Tom. She'd had sex three times. Twice it had hurt and the third time it was uncomfortable. Two different boys. One back in the Bronx, before she ran away. Diego, but everyone called him Dig. He was one of Danny's friends, another basketball nut, though not nearly as good as Danny.
They'd done it in his parents' basement, with her lying down on the unopened ironing board. Twice. Both times it had hurt so much she had to bite her lip not to cry.
There hadn't been any magic threads binding them together. Dig wasn't a complete dead spot, but he was close.
The other time was at Lantern, in one of the stalls in the girls' bathroom. She didn't know the guy's name, but he was a great dancer and she'd liked his smile, though now she couldn't remember what he'd looked like. Someone needed to go and banged on the door and screamed at them, even though there were other stalls.
But he had been magic. She hadn't realized till they were kissing and these strands unwound from him and unwound from her and tangled together, pulling them to each other. It was like fighting, each keeping their magic balanced— not giving any away, but not taking either. Like balancing a balloon on a pin, scared that it will pop.
Jay-Tee still hadn't liked the sex bit, but at least it hadn't hurt, and the kissing had been okay. And the magic had been strange and kind of cool.
She knew it was what you were supposed to do, so she'd done it. Already, kissing with Tom was better than kissing anyone else. The touching too. So maybe with Tom, a boy who'd never done it before, the sex wouldn't be too bad. Maybe it would bring the magic back.
"I like kissing you," she told him.
"I like kissing you too," Tom said.
She took Tom's hand and led him out of the dining room, up the stairs. He stopped her halfway and kissed her again. It was a warm, slow, gentle kiss. She felt it all the way to the soles of her feet, like getting caught in the right kind of beat, which she never would again.
She had to not think about that, to concentrate on Tom. He'd gotten a lot better at kissing really, really quickly. For a few seconds the kiss stayed slow; then their hearts heated up again, and they were kissing messily and fast.
Tom lost his footing, slipped down a step. Jay-Tee fell with him. She broke her fall on Tom; he broke his on the stairs.
"Are you okay?"
He nodded and was wrapping himself around her and she around him, with the stairs digging into her ribs and thighs. But kissing was too good.
Jay-Tee had no idea how long it took them to get to her room. But when they did, she was suddenly so tired she couldn't keep her eyes open. It felt like everything was hitting her all at once and the only way she could cope was to sleep.
For the first time in her life, Jay-Tee started to fall asleep in someone else's arms. And it was nice, even though he was bony, and she knew she was going to wake up bruised.
"You're lovely, Tom," she said, half asleep.
"You're lovely too," he said, and kissed her cheek.
17
907 Lights
I stayed close to the
surface so that I could hear Esmeralda but still be in Cansino's world. "Alexander?" she asked. "Here?" Her words went past me like rippling water.
"Yes," I told her. Until she replied I couldn't tell whether I'd spoken or just thought those words. I wasn't a body in the same way I was in the other world. My limits were a long way past the edges of my skin. Space leaked into me; I leaked into it. Esmeralda's magic danced nearby. If I wanted to pull it towards me I could. But I didn't know what that would do to her. Could I do that with Jason Blake? Pull him here?
At that second his magic disappeared, swallowed by the spiral door. Could he hear my thoughts?
"You've found the door he came through?"
"Yes." I stood up, sliding through the thickness. I could see the door Jason Blake had emerged from and just as quickly disappeared back into. I wondered if there was a way to slide through Cansino space that was quicker than the way I had been moving. Raul Cansino had seemed to appear out of nowhere. Could I do that?
I looked at the door again, but it wasn't one door; it was two. How had that happened?
"And it's not far?" Esmeralda asked.
"I don't know." I still didn't understand the correspondence between the real world and Cansino's world of lights. The two sets of light tightly bound together— the two doors— seemed to be side-by-side. Just a smidgen of textured darkness between them. The stuff that Jay-Tee was now entirely made of.
I doubted that they would seem like that in the real world. "There's two doors," I said.
"Two?"
"I can see two."
"Which one did Alexander go through?"
"They're too close. It's hard to tell." Jason Blake had disappeared so fast, I didn't know which was the one he had gone through.
I pushed my way back to Esmeralda's flat. This time the weight of normal gravity was too much. I crashed. And even though my eyes were wide open, I could still see Cansino's magic world in the corners of my eyes. It had eaten my peripheral vision.
"Reason? You okay?" Esmeralda poked her head out of her bedroom, squashed-up woollen things in her hands.
I nodded. "Just the heavy air. Should pass in a second. It did last time."
"You sure?"
"Uh-huh." I stood up, feeling the movement of each muscle. In the corner of my eyes, the three doors gleamed. My mother could be behind one of them. "Are you ready? We should go."
"Just let me grab a scarf. I left Sydney a bit empty-handed. Will you be okay dressed like that?"
"I don't feel the cold anymore."
"No," she said, staring at me. "I guess not."
* * *
The first door was close by, only a block away. First I recognised the street; then I recognised the building. Jay-Tee had taken me here. We'd had a snowball fight on the roof. But the door wasn't on the outside of the building.
It was inside.
I recognised the huge foyer with its floor of swirling coloured marble tiles and ornate plaster ceiling of interwoven doves carrying roses in their mouths.