All Our Pretty Songs

and leans forward to wipe it away with his thumb. Aurora beams at him. I tear apart basil and cilantro and heap them on my noodles, stir in plum sauce, don’t look up until he leans back in his seat again. Aurora dumps in half the bottle of chili sauce, gets to work with her chopsticks. She always eats like it’s her last meal. I try to be dainty for Jack’s benefit, but I am not graceful under the best of circumstances, and I give up quick. Aurora sings under her breath, a line about driving down the coast at night. It’s from one of her dad’s songs.

Without warning I’m seized by happiness so huge I want to jump up and hug them both. This is my life, I think, these are my friends. Jack is a mystery, but he’s my mystery, smiling at me now like we both know a secret that’s too good to keep to ourselves. There’s Aurora, shoveling noodles into her mouth, licking chili sauce off her fingers: the most beautiful girl in the world, but also the funniest and the most generous and the easiest to love. The air is that kind of warm where you feel like you’re floating, and I’m full and my Vietnamese iced coffee is thick and sweet but not too sweet, and Jack is holding my hand under the table. Everyone in the restaurant keeps turning to look at us. Summer is happening, and our whole lives are in front of us, and here we are, making a circle out of love.

Later, Aurora drives us back to her house. I call Cass and tell her I’m sleeping over. “Okay,” she says, yawning into the phone. “See you in the morning. Tell Aurora I’ll do her chart this week if she wants.” Aurora is privately dubious when it comes to Cass’s magical powers, but she takes Cass’s astrological advice like it’s straight gospel. I’m more skeptical. Getting life advice from your mom is always a bad call anyway, even if technically it’s coming from space rocks.

Aurora wants to watch The Abyss. We pile into her bed like puppies. I stretch out between the two of them and they curl into me, Jack’s arm around my shoulders, Aurora’s head on my chest. I run my fingers through her hair and she dozes until the alien tongue of water makes its way through the cabin to say hello. That’s her favorite part. When Coffey shuts the hatch on it and it collapses in a giant wave, she turns her face up to Jack. “I like you,” she says sleepily. “You can stay. But if you fuck with my sister, I’ll slit your throat in your sleep.”

“Stay frosty,” he says, and she opens her eyes wide.

“Wow,” she says to me. “This one, you must keep.” I hug them closer. We fall asleep like that in her big soft bed, tangled up in each other, and when the white light of morning wakes me I can’t tell where my body ends and their bodies begin.

When Jack leaves in the afternoon Aurora makes us cup o’noodles and milkshakes—about all she can manage in the kitchen—and we go back to bed. She flips through channels until she finds an X- Files marathon. “Wicked,” she says.

“Oh my god,” I say, “this one is so scary.” It’s the episode where Mulder and Scully are in the woods. They hike in to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a timber crew and end up trapped in a cabin with a dying generator and an ecoterrorist. At night, clouds of minuscule bugs come down out of the sky and mummify anyone who strays outside the circle of the cabin’s light. I’ve never seen alien bugs when I’m hiking, but it’s not an entirely inaccurate portrayal of the peninsula. I love it out there, but those woods aren’t what I would call friendly.

“This one rules so hard,” Aurora says, slurping noodles.

“My baby girls.” Maia’s standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

“Hi, Maia,” Aurora says, without looking away from the TV.

“Who spent the night?”

“Oh,” I say, “sorry, we should have asked.” It makes me feel better to pretend sometimes that Maia is a normal parent, a functional human with concerns like those of other humans with offspring. Is my daughter home safe, is my daughter fed, is my daughter opening the door of our house to strange men. Et cetera.

“You know I don’t care,” Maia says, coming over to sit on the edge of Aurora’s bed. “I like to meet your friends.”

“Ssssssh,” Aurora says. It’s a tense scene. Mulder and Scully and the ecoterrorist stare at the sole remaining light bulb flickering dimly in the cabin. The edges of the dark teem with bugs. The generator coughs.

“When was the last time you ate real food?” Maia asks.

“The last time you bought some,” Aurora snaps.

Maia presses a hand to her chest, pretending to have been shot, and rolls her eyes. She’s looking pretty good today. Black hair washed and glossy, eyes bright. More or less dressed: ragged flannel shirt that’s way too big for her and must have been Aurora’s dad’s, leggings, Converse. You can mistake her for a teenager until you look in her eyes.

The episode cuts to a commercial. Aurora sucks noodles into her mouth, chugs the last of the salty broth. Cass once made me read the list of ingredients on a cup o’noodles aloud. “I want you to picture that inside your body,” she’d said. I chew contentedly on a salty cube of rehydrated carrot. Mmmmmm.

“So who was that?”

“This boy I’m kind of seeing,” I say. “I think.” Blushing. Like a teenager. Which I am. But still.

“Her boyfriend,” Aurora amends.

“He is not my boyfriend.”

“He is definitely your boyfriend.”

“I don’t have a goddamn boyfriend!”

“Is he dreamy?” Maia asks.

“He’s a musician.”

Maia laughs. “Does Cass know?”

“Yeah. She’s kind of not stoked.”

“I’m sure. Where’d you meet him? A show?”

“Here, actually. At Aurora’s party. He played in the yard.”

“You had a party?” Aurora’s watching a commercial for tampons as if it’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a party?”

“You were at the party, Maia,” I say cautiously. “We talked. Remember?”

“Was I?” She doesn’t seem surprised. “Aurora, which party was it?”

Aurora doesn’t answer. She chews on the edge of her Styrofoam cup, pats around next to her for her cigarettes without moving her eyes from the screen. “You know you’re not supposed to smoke in here,” Maia adds. Aurora rolls her eyes, an unconscious echo of Maia, but doesn’t answer. I never tell Aurora, because she goes from placid to enraged in the space of a single sentence, but they’re so alike it’s comical sometimes.

“It was just a few people,” I say, although this isn’t at all true. “You probably weren’t downstairs for very long.” I fight the urge to reach over and push up one sleeve of Maia’s flannel shirt, check for red lines tracking down her brown skin. It’s not like there’s anything I can do. Aurora finds her cigarettes, sticks one in her mouth, lights it without looking away from the television.

“Baby,” Maia says, and takes it out of her mouth. “Come on.”

“Jesus,” Aurora mutters, throwing herself back into the pillows with an exaggerated sigh. Maia stretches like a cat. You can still see it in her, the magic Aurora’s inherited, that tangible haze of sex and glamour. Even the drugs and sadness haven’t ravaged it out of her. She clambers over me and burrows between us. Aurora makes an annoyed noise but relents, puts an arm around Maia’s shoulders. The commercials end and we’re back to the forest. Mulder and Scully are going to make a run for it. Rain pours down. The road out of the woods is a mess of mud and water. The bugs gather. I know how it ends, but I still hold my breath.

“Do they make it?” Maia asks.

“Oh my god,” Aurora says. “Seriously. Shut up.”

Jack invites us to come see him play at the OK Hotel. The club is already packed when we get there. Crow- haired goth girls in rosaries and lace dresses lean against the bar, surrounded by boys in leather and spikes and big boots, tattoos snaking up their arms. Aurora is wearing white, as always, a silk slip from the forties edged in fraying lace, rhinestone clips holding her hair away from her face, dusty old brown cowboy boots. In the gloomy club, she shines like a firefly among all these dark moths. She tried to get me into one of her dresses, but I didn’t like the feel of the night, wanted to know I could run away if I had to, or fight. So I’m wearing the same clothes as always, dark jeans and my favorite disintegrating Siouxsie shirt, boots for kicking. I did let Aurora outline my eyes,