Backslide

Prologue Both Back in the Day

Tonight, they are charmed.

Nellie feels it like a charge.

Tonight, instead of barking “Too many people!” and peeling out, the first cabdriver that pulls over on Seventy-Ninth and Broadway takes all five girls without hesitation, like it isn’t illegal. Like he can’t deny the magic.

And he doesn’t get annoyed. Not even when Nellie settles onto Cara’s lap to fit, her hand flat against the taxi’s ceiling to protect her head each time they hit a pothole or stop short at a red light.

Even though Sabrina, Cara, Nellie, and Sabrina’s two other random friends have clearly already drank too much fizzy Zima and fruity Alizé.

Even though, as the city blows past in trails and Cara starts to hiccup, they laugh and laugh and laugh.

Still kind of like children, though they imagine otherwise.

Tonight, the list girl hops off her stool, opens the velvet rope, and lets them through without an arched eyebrow or a wait. Compliments Nellie on her skintight crop top, baggy jeans, and platform Docs. (Nellie’s decision to freeze her ass off without a coat was obviously solid.)

The nine-foot-tall bouncer in a leather jacket that smells like cigarettes and cowboy almost smiles as his eyes barely graze their fake IDs and he pulls the absurdly huge door open.

They step through into inkier black.

Torch sconces line the walls, and Nellie is reminded of Gothic estates. She is reading Jane Eyre in AP English. But school—her cheerful classroom with Shakespeare quotes tacked to the walls—is a world away, though it’s technically only thirty blocks uptown.

Here, she is a different person. Here, there are different rules.

The music grows louder and louder as they strut down the hall. It sizzles in their chests. Layers of Biggie. Mary J. “Murder She Wrote,” like a reggae anthem.

Like they’re strutting into a coliseum. Like it plays for them.

And then Sabrina, shiny black hair dramatic against her pale skin, pushes the heavy crimson curtain aside—and they have arrived.

The two girls they barely know instantly disperse.

And Cara glues herself to Nellie’s side as they stop to take it all in—while Sabrina, always fearless, runs up to the boys she knows.

The ones from her school who invited them to the party.

They’re standing with other boys who are decidedly not from any high school—older, grittier, with oversized hoodies and appraising eyes.

Sabrina stands on tiptoe—in her new nose piercing, bandeau top, and Carhartt overalls—and kisses the boys each on the cheek beneath their Yankees and Stüssy caps. One by one by one.

Nellie waves casually to the two she has met with Sabrina before. One short and stocky with brown hair; one tall and stocky with blond. They nod, too cool to smile.

This is not the girls’ first time at one of these parties, thrown by promoters their own age and filled to capacity with posturing teenagers, drunk on freedom and, somehow despite being underage, flowing liquor.

Like the overstuffed cab, technically illegal.

But the grown-ups in their world are too busy with wars and political affairs and murderous former football stars to care.

The helicopter parents have not yet landed. It’s still latchkey all the way.

The dance floor is packed. Bodies in motion. Pressed together and teased apart. Bodies, bodies everywhere.

In baggy jeans. In bamboo earrings. In fades and slicked-back ponytails.

In platforms. In Princess Leia buns. With flannels around their waists and Ring Pops in their mouths.

The bass invades them all like a subway car thundering into a station. A pleasant rumble to the core that doesn’t apologize.

Possibility hums.

The ground is sticky. A smell of malt liquor and CK One permeates—just this side of rancid. The scent of bad behavior.

Nellie takes one more scan of the space. And just like that—the lights strobe, but time stands still. The music, the bodies, the sweat. It all disappears.

When she sees him, he is in a spotlight. At least, he is to her.

He is sitting a distance away on a raised platform that she will remember as a stage. He wears cargo pants and a thin white T-shirt, and he leans over his legs, his elbows resting on his thighs, as he nods to the music.

His baseball cap is slightly askew. Maybe on purpose.

And maybe that’s a little douchey, she allows herself to admit.

But it doesn’t matter. Because nothing can counteract his effect from moment one—his tan skin, his twinkling eyes, his toned arms straining against the cotton, the killer smile he flashes when a friend nearby cracks a joke.

He is beautiful, admittedly. But mostly it is just him.

Though she can’t explain it. The way, through her lens, he glows brighter than everyone else.

It takes her a moment to realize she’s being talked to. Yanked on. By someone else.

“What?” she asks, distracted, loath to tear her eyes away.

“Let’s go get a drink!” Sabrina is demanding. And Nellie shifts her gaze back to her friends, suddenly conscious that she has been staring. At a full stranger.

Still, she misses the lovely view.

But Sabrina is bopping in front of her, ready for takeoff. Tugging on Nellie’s arm.

Cara—dark skin aglow in the strobes above her more demure striped tank top and baggy jeans—nods like let’s go. She is the shy one. She is also the wild one. But she needs a minute—and probably a drink—to get her sea legs.

That tall blond boy from Sabrina’s school comes up behind her now, apparently all smiles once his friends aren’t looking. Mocks her dance moves with a hand at her waist, and she leans back into him, swats him and laughs.

He has light eyes and light lashes. He is a clown. And he is trouble. Anyone who bothers to look can see that.

Nellie touches Sabrina’s arm to get her attention.

“Who’s that?” she asks, gesturing with her chin toward the other boy, the suddenly deeply important one, still sitting on the platform. She’s surprised at herself for asking out loud. But she must know.

Sabrina shrugs, looks up at her blond friend, points at the mystery man and then at Nellie. “What’s his name again? My friend wants to know.”

Sabrina mostly ignores the social scene at her school, opting to hang with Cara and Nellie instead. It tracks that she doesn’t recall.

The tall boy can’t hear her question above the music. Or at least he acts that way, gesturing toward his ear in confusion as he takes the opportunity to step closer to Nellie. He lays a large hand on her shoulder and leans in. “What did you want to know?”

She stands on her tiptoes to reach his ear. “Who is that?” she asks. “In the white T-shirt. Sitting on the stage.”

“Oh, that?” He shrugs, his breath—almost his lips—brushing her ear. On another night his proximity might have affected Nellie, raised her curiosity and even interest, but she is single-minded in her focus now. “That’s just Noah,” he says. “I told him not to wear that wack hat.”

“Totally,” Nellie says. She must save face.

Noah.

Mercifully, the tall boy doesn’t ask why she wants to know.

Maybe girls are always asking about Noah.

She wouldn’t be surprised. Instead, he grabs her hand and pulls her in the other direction toward the bar.

And, since she can’t just stand there staring all night, she surrenders to the velocity.

But, as they begin to weave through the room of partygoers, she allows herself a single glance back.

He is still there. That boy. Noah.

And that’s when he looks up and, from a distance, their eyes lock. His mouth drops open. He tilts his head, like she’s a question. Like maybe he knows her. But does he?

Their chests rise and fall together, pulses quickening, pupils swelling. And then, just as quickly as they each came into view, they are blocked by a mass of other teens. She thinks maybe she sees him crane his head, trying to look beyond the crowd. But no luck.

For the rest of the night, as they each navigate the room, dancing and shout-talking and blurring edges, they glance around periodically for a glimpse of each other. But Noah and Nellie don’t see each other at the party again.

Tonight, they never speak. But still the world teeters—and then tilts on its axis.