Concrete Underground, Moxie Mezcal [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

up at me as I sat down, sniffing loudly and filling her nostrils with the strong alcohol stink I was emitting. "So have you been drinking already this morning, or are you just still drunk from last night?"

"A little of both," I said.

She peered at me disapprovingly over her iced latte. We were sitting at a table in front of a strip mall coffee shop. Jenny was wearing huge gold-rimmed sunglasses and had a decent collection of shopping bags gathered at her feet.

"Busy afternoon?" I asked.

"Just picking up a few things for Mexico. We leave tomorrow morning."

My attention was drawn away by a group of men in black jumpsuits standing around in the parking lot next to a white van with the red Asterion logo painted on its side. It was hard to tell, but I thought one of them was the same guy I'd seen on the Light Rail a couple days before, the one who'd been reading the paper.

Jenny seemed to notice my distraction and followed my gaze. "Is something wrong?"

"No, it's just those Asterion guys seem to be everywhere now. I guess business must be booming."

"Yeah, we hired them last month to archive our old financial records," Jenny replied. "They came in and hauled everything away, I was so happy to get all that empty space back. Of course it doesn't really matter now, since I'm going to have to find a new job when I get back from the honeymoon.

"Anyways, I'm rambling," she admitted good-naturedly. "So what did you want to talk to me about?"

"I wanted to ask you about someone I met last night."

She bared her teeth ecstatically in a knowing grin. "Really? A woman, I presume."

"Settle down, it's not like that. She's just a girl who said she can help introduce me to Dylan Maxwell."

"Was it Natalie?" she asked.

"I don't know. She was wearing a motley dress and a black veil."

"Yep, that's Natalie," Jenny confirmed.

"She said her name was Columbine."

"Ugh, she's still doing that?" Jenny smacked her lips in disgust. "That seems so macabre and distasteful."

I paused. "Well, you know it has nothing to do with Colorado, right?"

Jenny ignored my comment. "She's Brad's cousin - James' daughter. She's kinda the black sheep of the family, if you couldn't guess."

"Do you think she could really get me an interview with Maxwell?" I asked.

"If anyone can, it'd be her. They're good friends."

I pulled the rave card out of my pocket. "She told me to meet her at this party. I was kind of on-the-fence about going - it really doesn't look like my kind of scene."

"You should go," Jenny said. "I think it would be good for you two to get to know each other. She's a good kid, but she's - I don't know - lost, maybe. You could be a positive influence on her."

"Really?" I asked in a voice that plainly showed my surprise. I don't think my sister had ever described me as being a positive influence on anybody.

Jenny nodded. "Yeah. Now, Brad may not be so enthusiastic. He was pretty worked up last night when he heard that the two of you had locked yourselves in the men's room, but I assured him that Natalie isn't your type and nothing probably happened."

I smirked, picturing him simultaneously clenching his jaw, his fists, and his sphincter as he imagined me defiling his little cousin in myriad unspeakable ways on a filthy bathroom floor.

"So please don't fuck her," she added. "Not even to spite Brad."

I screwed up my face as if it was ludicrous to even suggest that. But secretly, if only for a second, the thought actually had crossed my mind.

"You still haven't told me what he thought of my article."

She shook her head. "Why do you keep asking? It obviously pissed him off, is it really that important for you to hear it from me?" I grinned, enjoying watching her get wound up. She realized that was what was going on, and it just made her angrier.

"Fine. You really want to know what he said about it? He thinks you just wrote it to get attention from me. He thinks it's your weird, passive-aggressive play to sabotage our marriage, like you're trying to make me choose between you and him. I told him that was crazy - that you wouldn't endanger your career and your professional reputation over something as stupid and petty as that."

I kept my eyes downcast so as not to meet her gaze and instead focused on the black-on-black symbol on the glossy rave card.

6. Labyrinthine

I showed up at the address on Columbine's invitation just before eleven; it was a converted warehouse in an industrial zone on the city's north side. Since it was a Saturday night, everything else was empty for miles. The parking lot was filled with sports cars, hybrids, and shiny suburban tanks. The door facing the parking lot was open, spilling out muted lights and the din of yuppie chatter. It cast a somewhat foreboding aura over the entrance.

The first thing I noticed as I approached was the beefy refrigerator in a rented tux blocking the doorway. The second thing was the surveillance camera perched on the wall above his head.

I had stopped home and changed first, so I was sure I was dressed mostly appropriately for some rich faux-hipster art party - charcoal gray pinstripe jacket over a TV on the Radio t-shirt, skinny cuffed jeans, Docs, and a black fedora. I certainly didn't look any worse than the other idiots I saw filing in and out of the door. I even had an invitation. So I was fairly confident I'd be able to gain admission to this thing without incident.

"No, absolutely not," the doorman said, pressing a meaty palm into my chest.

"I was invited!" I said, exasperated. "I have documentation." I waved the rave card in front of his face.

"No dice."

I stepped aside to let a couple of aging goths through the door and wondered for a moment if the doorman somehow knew who I was. Then I noticed the ear piece he was wearing and my eyes darted back to the surveillance camera.

"Motherfucker," I spat and raised both arms to flip off the camera.

I didn't know it at the time, but at that moment Dylan Maxwell was sitting in front of a wall of monitors, laughing his ass off.

I circled around the building, looking for some kind of alternate entrance. To my chagrin, all the windows lined the top of the building over thirty feet above my head. Reaching the back, I found a series of roll-up doors on the loading dock and one normal door that for didn't appear to have any handle or knob. It clearly opened only from the inside.

I cursed angrily under my breath, and just as I turned to descend the stairs off the loading dock, I heard the door open behind me. I twisted my head to see a woman emerge, her thick, long hair dyed a vibrant shade of purple.

She stood there, framed by the open doorway, looking statuesque and regal in a full-length black trench coat with a the belt cinched tight around her waist, showing off the curve of her hips. She had large brown eyes that seemed just a little too big and dark compared to the rest of her pale face. The rest of her features were angular and severe. I guessed her to be around my age and of Eastern European descent.

I watched her with my mouth hanging open as she propped the door open and pulled a pack of cloves from her pocket. Before I realized it, I had bounded back up the steps and pulled out my Bic to light her cigarette. She leaned in to touch its tip to the flame, her eyes rolling up to look at me. Then she uprighted herself and blew a steady stream of smoke into the night air.

"Thanks," she said.

I pulled out my own cigarettes and lit one for myself.

"Did you lock yourself out?" she asked with an amused grin.

"Nah," I explained, "the gestapo at the door wouldn't let me in, so I was looking for a way to sneak in."

"Really? Why wouldn't he let you in?"

"It's all political," I replied with a shake of my head. "Best not to worry about it."

"Political?" she repeated skeptically.

"Yeah, he's a dyed-in-the-wool Trotskyite, and I was trying to expound on the merits of Bakunin. I suggested that a state apparatus might not be necessary for workers to manage the means of production, and he just lost it."

Her grin spread wider. "So if I let you in, I'd basically be granting asylum to a political dissident in exile."

"Pretty much, yeah."

She took a few more drags of her cigarette in silence while looking me over, trying to decide what to make of me.

The last third of her cigarette dropped to the ground, and she crushed it out under the ball of her bare foot.

"Okay, you're in," she said, taking me by the arm and leading me through the door. "I'm Violet, by the way."

"I'm D."

"I thought you might be," she said nonchalantly. I looked at her inquisitively and wondered whether it was just a coincidence that she had run into me back here.

She continued, "You're Col's friend, right?"

I nodded my head. "Have you seen her in there?"

"Not yet, but I'm sure she's around."

She led me down a narrow hallway. I could hear the sounds of the party grow louder as we approached. We emerged through a set of black curtains onto a small makeshift stage. In front of us was a stool and a simple wire framework that looked like a crude skeleton of a person. The frame was partially covered by thin gold strands draped delicately from anchor points on the wire, creating a kind of skin over the skeleton.

Violet removed her trench coat, revealing a thin, gauzy gold gown underneath that was more or less completely see-through and clung maddeningly to the curves of her figure. Through the thin material, I could make out what looked like big burn scars running along the entire left side of her body.

She sat on the stool and resumed her sculpture. She took a few small thin rods of glass and wrapped a long gold stand around them, then delicately hung the whole piece with the others on the wire frame. She seemed to be using the glass rods to give the work it's shape. The whole process looked impossibly intricate and extremely unstable. A stiff breeze could have probably collapsed the entire structure.

I stepped off the stage and joined the small group of people who gathered to watch her work. She weaved the strands together with gentle and precise movements. Her eyes were locked on her work with a singular intensity.

I noticed that while she worked, her legs parted enough for the crowd to be able to see more-or-less clearly between them. This realization made my cheeks turn red, and I wondered whether she realized it or not. Then I saw the placard mounted