“Are you sure we’re safe?” I nudged Noah. I was still clutching onto him.
“Honestly.” He looked at me. “I don’t know.”
I nudged him again, a little harder this time. “Don’t say that.”
“Well, what do you want me to say? We are being led by strangers into a bunch of dumpsters in the middle of the night.”
“Oh shit,” I said.
“This way,” they said, walking behind one of the dumpsters now.
Noah and I followed, a little slower now, keeping a wider gap and a greater distance. We walked around the dumpster and were met by a discarded shipping container.
“Oh dear,” I mumbled, thinking about Dexter and his affinity for murdering people inside shipping containers.
But, regardless of all these thoughts, we followed them around the container anyway. I could hear the growing sound of music and chatter now, which made me feel a little safer. And when we turned the corner and got around the other side, I stared at the sight in front of me.
CHAPTER 51
“Look,” I said, turning to Noah.
“I can see!” he said, blinking a few times.
“Do wenotfit in here, or what?” I whispered to him.
“You can say that again,” he replied. I looked around me. There was a queue of people waiting in line to get through a small door in the wall. The door was so small you had to duck to get in. At the front of the queue were a group of girls. I’d never seen so many fishnet stockings in my life, and who knew you could wear them as a top. No bra needed, it seemed. Just some star-shaped leather bits stuck over your nipples. And who knew you could get your hair standing so high up off your head? And that girl with the luminous lime-green dreads down to the back of her knees! Who knew?
“Oh God!” I grabbed onto Noah as she turned and looked at us. Her eyes were completely white, and against her dark skin, they made her look like a demon that had crawled up from somewhere deep, dark and distinctly evil.
“Contact lenses,” Noah mumbled. “Must be contact lenses.”
“Yes!” I said, hoping that was the case.
I continued to scan the crowd. There were a few normal-looking folk, just in leather jackets with metal studs sticking out. But then, in amongst those, punctuating the line, were the extravagant ones. Like birds of paradise, they were so bright with their pink mohawk hair, or bright orange laces that crept up purple knee-high boots. And then there was that guy wearing a red kilt with the black fishnet stockings underneath and all those chains, so many chains, dangling off the kilt and hanging to the floor. A girl with a purple jacket that said “Born Dead” on the back, and another guy with the words “Fuck the system” across the back of his jacket.
“Um . . .” We definitely did not fit in there, or so I thought.
“Heeeyyyyy.” A girl with a lip ring stopped in front of me. “Nice clothes, like totally retro, you know.”
“Uh . . . you talking to me?”
“Yeah, like all tie-dye shit and all,” she said, putting a cigarette between her lips and inhaling. She cast her eyes to Noah and then burst out laughing.
“Dude, that is so cooolll.” She was pointing to the Polo logo on his white T-shirt.
“This?” Noah pointed at himself.
“Like, fuck fashion, right! Screw Polo and Calvin Klein and those Kardashians, or whatever. That’s, like, so ironic.”
Noah looked down at his shirt and then looked back up and nodded. “That’s exactly what I was going for,” he said, playing along. “Fuck fashion!”
“Coooool, see you inside,” she said, and then walked away in a cloud of smoke and mirrors. Literally. She had broken shards of mirror on the back of her purple leather jacket.
“Did you hear that?” Noah draped an arm around me. “We’re cool. You are retro and I am totally screwing fashion and being ironic!”
“I had no idea that’s what you were going for,” I teased.
“You guys coming?” Our skating traveling companions waved at us from the front of the queue, and Noah and I nudged each other.
