“Come on,” Bats says, pulling me away from the sign and leading me down the hallway.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ridley

THE LOUNGE AREA is nice and empty, which is good considering we’re a peacock and apparently a middle-management bat. I found this place the other night when I was stress-pacing around the hotel and have been sporadically hiding out here ever since. Other than hotel employees or a few random stragglers, no one ever comes in.

I drop down into an oversized red velvet chair, and she sinks into the one beside me, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet up underneath her. She’s sort of half sitting on her knees thanks to the tightness of her dress, and I try not to stare at the way the slit on her thigh creeps up a little higher than it’s meant to. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to be a creeper.

dontstaredontstaredontstaredont

My hands are all sweaty, which is the only reason I let go of hers in the first place, and I rub them on my jeans, trying to be discreet. I’m trying to be as casual and seem the least freaked out as possible, but.

“Are you going to take that off?” She flicks my mask, dragging my attention back to her face.

“I don’t think so?” I say. I don’t mean it as a question, and yet. She kind of makes a face, and a fresh round of self-consciousness washes over me. “I can, if you need me to.”

“I don’t know if I need you to—”

“Okay, great,” I say, and she makes another kind-of-confused face that makes me feel like I missed something. And I probably have. I miss a lot when my head is spinning out with nerves like this.

“Are you ever going to answer me, though?”

I scrunch up my face; didn’t I just?

“How’d you end up at the prom if you hate crowds so much?”

Oh. That. I shrug. I could tell her the truth, that it’s my father’s event and my deep-seated insecurity about my place in my family has left me desperate for approval and validation that never comes, but that seems too heavy to drop on someone whose only real conversation with me so far has been when I said “Nice balloon” and she said “What?”

Time to deflect.

“Why’d you leave if you love it so much?” I don’t mean to be blunt, but I also really want to know.

“I wanted to talk to you more,” she says like it’s no big deal. Like she didn’t just dump a shit ton of dopamine right into my brain, making it hard to think.

“Same,” I lie, or half lie, really, because it seems like the right thing to say, but also because in this moment I can almost believe it’s that simple.

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