“It’s not something you’d expect a guy to draw all the time. Mermaid after mermaid after mermaid. Where are all the guns, man? No one’s going to read your story without more guns.” Zoe’s voice was mocking as she bent messily out over the page, her sweater brushing across Dorian’s nose as she leaned down to take a closer look. He smelled lavender soap and musty wool. “Actually it’s always the same mermaid, huh? Is that like your main character? Of the whole story?”

“She’s going to be. I’m still mostly doing character sketches.” Dorian tried to shift away a little.

“Do you ever draw real stuff? From life?” Zoe lost her balance on the armrest and caught herself by throwing one leg across Dorian’s lap so that her boot slammed into the seat cushion next to his hip, then smiled at him crookedly as she pulled the leg back much more slowly than she needed to. She was sixteen, with a snub nose and soft cheeks. Her greenish hazel eyes were round and thickly lashed, gazing into his face as if they were trying to discover something there. Dorian noticed that Steve was scowling at them from the far side of the room.

Dorian tried to act oblivious. “I mean I have. I took this community college class in Chicago where they brought in models sometimes. But I don’t usually.”

“Because I could pose for you. Right? Wouldn’t it be more of a challenge to draw something real?” Now there was a distinct edge of contempt in Zoe’s voice, and she flicked her hand toward the page on Dorian’s lap. “Instead of just getting all obsessed with some fantasy?”

21

Forgetting

The voices roiled over Luce’s head in a storm of outraged hissing. Tongues of air darted down to prod at her, squeal inside her ears, claw her lips. Luce curled on her side with her head on the shore, her lips pinched tight and her hands pressed over her ears, but even so threads of wind wormed their way between her fingers and up her nostrils until shrieking flowers seemed to blossom in the core of her brain. The voices were too angry to form words. They only yowled, the din they made gradually amplifying as it beat back and forth inside her skull. Her head ached with horrible seething pressure, and rip tides of shrill snarling whipped the inside of her skull. Frantically Luce thrashed her way under the water, trying to shake the voices out of her head, but it was no use. “Stop it!” Luce yelled at them. “Get out of me!”