“Where’s Jeff?” Luke shouted over the din of music and feet
pounding the dance floor. His younger
brother had been right beside him a minute ago.
“What?” Sasha looked a little dazed.
Ana
didn’t hear him at all. She was dancing
as hard as anyone, whipping her hair around like she meant to hurt somebody
with it.
This
time Luke put all his mounting anxiety into his voice. “WHERE’S JEFF?”
Sasha
opened her mouth. “He’s right
over—” Her pointing hand drooped. “No, never mind, he’s not.” She reached out and tapped Ana’s shoulder
instead.
Ana
spun around to face them finally.
“What? What’s going on?”
“We
don’t know where the hell Jeff is,” Luke yelled hurriedly, before Sasha could
explain and make it sound reasonable.
“What?” Ana’s eyes were trying to focus but her feet
were still tapping to the music.
“My
brother’s gone.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. She said something more that Luke could not
catch over the buzzing pulse of the synth bass.
“What??”
She cupped her
hands around her mouth. “Is that
unusual?”
Sasha shrugged and
folded her arms, as if defending herself from accusation.
Luke tried to step
closer to Ana but was blocked by a flailing set of arms. “I told him to stay close to us!”
“Chill, man,” she
shouted back. “He’s seventeen, I think
he can take care of himself.”
“Mom said I have
to look out for him.”
“Gosh, it’s a
pretty tame club, what do you think’s gonna happen? He’s too old to get kidnapped and too poor to
get mugged.” She rolled her eyes and
launched herself back into the dance.
Luke looked
helplessly to Sasha.
She bit her
lip. “He probably just went to the
bathroom.” She looked very pretty doing
it, and he was angry at himself for thinking like that when his brother could
be in trouble.
He sighed. “I’ll check.”
Sasha nodded. “Okay.
Go for it. I’ll stay here in case
he comes back.”
Luke moved off
across the dance floor, pushing through body after whirling body as he tried to
make it to the back of the room and the pale, glowing signs that denoted the
restrooms. The more he struggled through
the waving legs and arms and hair, the more that sign looked like the promise
of a distant haven of safe rest. This
had not been his idea. Ana had set it
up. They had been going to go out for
Josh’s birthday, but Josh himself had not shown.
Typical, Luke thought.
Edging past a
heavyset guy in leather, he finally broke free of the dance floor, though not
of the incessant beat that had burrowed into his skull through his
eardrums. The restrooms glowed up ahead,
and he plunged on, ignoring the tables piled high with t-shirts, posters, and
CDs. The bearded and tattooed guy nearby
watched him lazily.
The restroom door
was heavy, as if resisting the revelation of its secrets. Luke pushed savagely past it.
No one was
inside. It was absolutely empty.
But it smelled of
cigarettes and vomit.
Luke edged over to
the loosely hanging door of one of the stalls and gently opened it with his
knee. The toilet was backed up, and the
toilet paper was spread out maze-like on the floor. Something greenish was dripping down one of
the walls. “Pretty tame club,” huh? He was not so sure anymore. But then, he did not have much experience
with clubs in general. Not nearly as
much as Ana anyway. He was not sure what
drew here to places like these. Otherwise she seemed remarkably studious,
almost geeky. She even wore math
t-shirts sometimes. But she seemed like
a different person here, like she had to have this experience to let loose
something that she usually kept carefully locked up behind equations and
rational statements.
He checked the
next stall, and wished at once that he had not.
Multi-colored barf was splashed all over the toilet seat and the
floor. He almost turned away in disgust,
but then something caught his eye.
Flecks of Cheetos orange. Jeff
had consumed almost a whole bag of Cheetos in the car during the long ride
here. Shoot.
Luke shook his
head and started out. He almost ran into
a skinny man in a black polo with a mop coming in. The name of the club was emblazoned across his
chest.
Luke pointed over
his shoulder. “There’s some barf in that
stall. And the toilet in the other one’s
clogged.”
The corners of the
man’s mouth drooped. He nodded thickly
and proceeded to edge past Luke. “I know
that, man,” he mumbled. “I was just in
here. You don’t have to be a royal jerk
about it. This is my job, but I don’t
have to like it. I saw it man, I saw it. Kinda hard to miss that kind of evidence of a
good time. Why you think I’m bringing a
mop in here?”
Luke put his hands
up. “Sorry, dude.” He turned to go again, but again a thought
stopped him. He tapped the skinny man’s
polo-clad shoulder. “Hey, if you were in
here a minute ago, did you see anybody?”
The man turned and
the mouth corners drooped sourly again.
“Do I look like I care?”
“No you don’t,”
Luke admitted, backing up a step, “but I’m looking for my younger brother and
I’m afraid he’s missing or in trouble or something. I think he might be the one who barfed in
here.”
“What makes you
think that?”
“Well, he was
eating Cheetos earlier, and—”
The man laughed
humorlessly. “Oh, yeah, I saw that too,
Sherlock.”
Luke rolled his
eyes. “Was he in here when you were
before?”
The man
sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Yeah I guess you’re probably right. I guess he was. It wasn’t pleasant, either. He was barfing, for sure, and didn’t look
like he was feeling too good. Too much
of a good time for the little guy, I suppose, heh heh.”
Luke felt
something creeping into his stomach.
“Which way did he go?” he demanded.
“Out into the
sunlight,” said the guy. “Probably
sitting on the front sidewalk now, wishing he was man enough to still be
dancing.”
Luke glowered.
“I oughta punch you.” He walked
out.
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