When I woke up my mother was standing in the doorway of the bedroom holding my cell phone. "I've been calling and calling from downstairs. Selinda's been calling your phone."
"What?" I blinked through eyes crusted over with day-old makeup. I stretched my legs out, and my feet touched my cats who were at the end of the bed.
The sun was alive again, glowing brightly. Bursts of light threatened me with a headache if I opened my eyes.
"Rough night?" my mother leaned against the wall and took a drag on her cigarette.
I rubbed my eyes. My knuckles came away black, red and glittery.
"Selinda's on the phone." My mother sounded amused at having to repeat herself. "You want me to tell her you'll call her back?"
I shook my head and took the phone. "Chello?" My voice was hoarse.
My mother left the doorway, and I heard her thump down the stairs.
"What happened last night?" It took me a couple of seconds to understand what Selinda was asking.
"Oh. Nothing. Orion tried to catch me, and my shirt ripped."
"Artemis! How come you ran away? I thought he'd done something terrible to you! We were fighting all night about it."
"I didn't think you'd believe me," I said flatly.
That must have sounded enough like a best-friend excuse because Selinda's tone softened. "Come on, Artemis. Of course, I believe you."
I struggled for what to say to the unexpected kindness. "Are you okay?" Selinda asked.
"I met someone on the way home last night." I sat up in bed, realizing that I'd gone to bed with my bra, skirt, and nylons still on. No wonder I felt uncomfortable.
"You did?" Selinda sounded surprised and almost skeptical. "A boy?"
"Yeah," I said. I wanted to say it aloud, to hold on to it. Already my recollection of Jay was distorted by the sun, the way a dream fades when you don't write it down. "He had brown eyes and long hair."
"Like a metal head?"
"Longer," I said. I wrapped the black comforter more tightly around me. Like everything else in my bedroom, it was slightly too big.
"Weird. What's his name?"
"Jay," I said, a little smile on my face. I was glad Selinda couldn't see me right now—I was sure I looked idiotically happy.
"Like the letter? Are you for real? Did he hit on you?"
"We just talked," I said.
Selinda sighed. "You didn't meet anyone, did you? You're making this up."
"He's real," I said. He was real, the most real person I had met in a long time.
"The party sucked anyway," Selinda said. "I almost kicked this girl in the face. Dare kept telling me to chill out, but I was too wasted and upset. Well, come over and I'll tell you the rest."
"Sure, okay. I've got to get dressed."
"Okay, 'bye." The phone clicked as Selinda hung up. I turned it off and dropped it on the comforter.
I looked around my bedroom. My clothes lay in huge piles on the floor, most still in the black garbage bags. All the furniture was the same as it had been when I was young, over-sized black furniture, red walls, and a select arrangement of books in the bookshelves.
I have to find Whisper and Dreamer. I hadn't ever needed to call them before. They'd always been around when I had needed them. But that was when I had been little when I had believed in everything. I sighed. I guess that I wasn't really completely pure anymore. Maybe that kind of thing mattered.
