As though sensing the plea, Jenna’s hand reached down the front of her leotard and emerged with two tiny tablets between her thumb and forefinger, tablets that had been concealed between her breasts. She placed one in her mouth and reached toward Will with the other.
“What is it?” he said.
She opened her mouth wide and said Ahh.
“Don’t be a baby,” she said. “It’s mild.”
He kept his teeth clenched, and then opened, tentatively, and her fingers were in his mouth before he could retreat. She kept her fingers there until he swallowed, and then she removed her hand and smiled contentedly. She turned back to the stage and found a gap between the male shoulders in front of her. He looked at the sky and waited.
The ashcloud gave the outdoor show the sensation of indoor-ness. The thump beat back from the clouds like an echo, like the reverb of a cathedral. The lights on the stage reflected off the low belly of the silver sky, and the blue lasers disappeared up into its wool. It seemed the ashcloud had grown denser since lunch. Like it had added a dimension. The way a school of fish balls itself into something enormous when under attack. It was as though, Will thought, the ashcloud knew its days were numbered.
“It’s definitely going to rain again,” Will said at a lull.
“Huh?” Jenna said.
He pointed at the cloud and she shrugged and kept moving in her four square feet. Her arms were at her side, but she’d found a way to dance maximally in a small amount of space. He gave in. He tried it himself. It was steamy. The air was thick. He was still wearing his dumb jeans and he was starting to feel the heat in his pants. The heaviness. They would be stuck here forever, wouldn’t they? He had no choice but to let it in. He opened his pores. He opened his mouth and his nostrils and the rest of the holes in his head. Then he closed his eyes. He accepted an exchange, a passing of something important from the stage into his body, and something important of himself into the concrete and the crowd. It was probably just sweat, but it felt significant. He couldn’t have checked his phone if he wanted to. He couldn’t have escaped this place if his life depended on it.
Jenna was lost in something all her own, a field of consciousness she seemed to have no trouble turning on and up and into. All this was normal for her. But it was something else for Will. He’d resisted at first. But now he melted into it. He was down the road, wherever it was heading. It made him feel more interesting. He was keeping up with the beat. It was effortful, it was work. He’d reached a plane that resembled that floating point of a long run. The lights were pulsing now. They were fixated on something new—not just the DJ pumping the air, but a team of dancers or singers or models, somebodies dressed as kangaroos, moving in unison. Hopping and boxing. A master choreography that had been worked out for months. There was narrative. There was a war with winners and losers. There was enough of whatever it was in his brain to elevate him to a still higher floor. The dancing had brought it back out of him. He had fallen into it and now he was out of himself, watching himself, watching the way he had let himself slide into this place, the furthest he’d been gone in a long while. It was a much-needed loss of control.
There was a sudden flash of light, greater than any of the pulsing blue lights onstage. It didn’t take Will long to spot the lightning in the low clouds, the warning shot. The branches of electricity didn’t reach out for the land or the water, but bounced around wildly up into the mass, a rubber ball in an empty apartment. Because of the nature of the music, the ability to hand off the beat from one DJ to the next, nothing changed at first. The music kept coming, even as the kangaroos scattered. A stagehand came out and waved to the engineer at their backs. And still, due to the hit of the interminable beat, only some of the crowd seemed to have noticed.
Then, all at once, the crowd started moving away from the stage. Will turned and there was a great pressure at his back. Will held his ground, but the mass was collective and impossibly forceful. There were groans and then some shouts and then some screams. Then there was an earsplitting boom—an explosion. There were new screams, hordes fleeing up the incline. A woman in front of Will tripped and fell and the people behind Will nearly pushed him down on top of her. Will was able to hold off the others from trampling forward, and to lift the woman to her feet. But there was still the pressure of the stampede at their backs. He found
