Page 9 of Rev

“Awww, but it is. I’m a jaded old bitch, deep inside. Seen some shit you wouldn’t believe, honey.” She reaches down and wiggles her heels off. “Pure thing like you, it’s like a breath of fresh air bein’ around you. I don’t think I even heard you say a curse word.”

“‘Z cuz I don’t swear,” I mumble. “Need to close my eyes.”

Angel chuckles. “I got you, boo. Just chill.” I feel the plastic bag crinkle into my hands. “Use this if you need it.”

She moves away, and I hear conversation around me—someone asks if I’m okay, and Angel reassures her I’m just white-girl wasted for the first time. Laughter. A lurch as the bus moves.

Low conversation, loud bursts of laughter. A squeal.

The bus sways me side to side, lulling me. The world spins, and something hot and sour works its way slowly up from my belly to my chest to my teeth, and then presses against the inside of my teeth, a hot sour pressure.

I fumble open the bag just in time, get it pressed around my mouth as a stream of hot vomit erupts out of me, and then it just won’t stop coming. A male voice asks, somewhat peevishly, if I’m using a bag, and a female voice assures him I am.

Angel is beside me, holding my hair at my nape, rubbing my back. “There ya go, Carolina. Feeling’ better, now, I bet.” Cold plastic is put in my hands and touched to my lips.

Cold water ices past my teeth, soothing the acid burn in my throat, washing away the sour taste. I sip slowly, not wanting to induce another round.

“Haven’t thrown up since I was eleven,” I murmur.

“But you feel better, yeah?”

I open my eyes—beyond the window is nothing, pitch black. And I realize that I do indeed feel more normal. “Actually, yeah.”

“See?”

Lights ahead, and then we’re in an industrial area, surrounded by warehouses; I catch a glimpse of an open warehouse, fluorescent lights bathing everything white, showing a vignette of men in hard hats and a forklift and pallets of things. Then a parking lot, sparsely dotted with cars. Streetlights cast orange-yellow cones of light on the road.

Around a corner, and beyond the headlights, empty desert. Then, a wide parking lot brilliantly illuminated by new LED streetlamps, and a large black building, a huge rectangle hulking against the night, more white lights shining up against the walls from spotlights on the ground. The parking lot is full, and as the bus trundles slowly around the outer edge of the parking lot, I see that most of the cars in the lot areveryexpensive. Porsches, Mercedes, Ferraris, Bentleys, a line of black stretch limos.

“Where are we?” I ask.

I feel Angel’s shrug. “Hell if I know. Some secret club Cassie’s fiancé Isaiah got us into. I guess it’s super exclusive, invite-only.” Her voice lowers. “Cassie says Isaiah says celebrities love this place, so we could even see some famous people.”

I sit upright, twist in place to loosen my back and shoulders—as I do so, I see Cassie and another girl in a row together, hunched over with their heads touching; I hear a sharp snort, and then another.

Angel touches my chin to turn my face away. “You don’t want none o’that, Carolina, trust.”

I understand in a vague sort of way that they’re doing cocaine.

What have I gotten myself into?

“Do you?” I ask.

She shakes her head vehemently. “Fuckno. Fuck that shit. Miggy and I used to do blow, but then he OD’d and almost died, and now we don’t do none of that shit no more. He barely even drinks, anymore. And honestly, I don’t either. I ain’t been this shitfaced in aminute.”

I laugh. “You seem totally sober. And I don’t understand it atall.”

She cackles. “I just don’tseemdrunk until I’m blackout. Plus, long as I stick to tequila, I’m good. I could drink Patrón all night long, baby.” She laughs again. “But trust me, honey, I’m feelin’ it. I just been partyin’ a hell of a lot longer than you.”

“How’d you meet Miguel?” I ask.

She smiles, and it’s a smile that says she loves him like crazy, and even thinking about him makes her happy. “I walked into his bar. We hooked up after he was done, and I ain’t spent a night apart from him since. Been eight years.”

I frown at her. “How could you have walked into a bar eight years ago? You can’t be older than me.”

“How old are you?” she asks.

“Twenty-four.”