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Kaye tried to smile, but she couldn't help wondering how double-edged those words were.
"Want me to drive you home?" Kenny asked.
Kaye looked up, about to thank him, when Fatima interrupted. "Why don't you take Janet home, and I'll drop off Dough and Kaye."
Kenny looked down at the scuffed tops of his Doc Martens and sighed. "Right."
Fatima drove Kaye home in relative silence, and she was grateful. The radio was on, and she just sat in the passenger seat and pretended to listen. When Fatima pulled up in front of Kaye's grandmother's house, she cut the lights.
"I don't know what happened with you and Kenny," Fatima began.
"Me neither," Kaye said with a short laugh.
The other girl smiled and bit one of her manicured nails. "Look, I don't know about Robin and you or anything, but if you are just looking for some way to piss off your boyfriend, don't do it. Janet really loves Kenny, y'know? She's devoted."
Kaye opened the door and got out of the car. "Thanks for the ride."
"No problem." Fatima flicked the car lights back on.
Kaye slammed the door of the blue Honda and went inside.
When Kaye walked into the kitchen, her mother was on the phone, sitting at the kitchen table with a spiral notebook in front of her. When she saw Kaye come in, she gestured toward the stove. There was a pot of cold spaghetti and sausages. Kaye took a fork and picked at some of the spaghetti.
"So you think you can get Charlotte?" her mother said into the phone as she doodled band names on the pad.
"All right, call me when you know. Absolutely. 'Bye, chickadee."
Ellen hung up the phone, and Kaye looked over at her expectantly.
Her mother smiled and took a sip from a mug on the table. "We're going to New York!"
Kaye just stared. "What?"
"Well, it's not totally definite, but Rhonda wants me to front her new all-girl group, Meow Factory, and she thinks she can get Charlotte Charlie. I said that if they can get her, I'm in. There are so many more clubs in New York."
"I don't want to move," Kaye said.
"We can crash with Rhonda until we can find another place to live. You'll love New York."
"I love it here."
"We can't impose on my mother forever," Ellen said. "Besides, she's a pain in your ass as much as mine."
"I applied for a job today. Grandma will be a lot happier once I'm bringing home money. You could join a band around here."
"Nothing's set in stone," Ellen said, "but I think you should really get used to the idea of New York, honey. If I'd wanted to stay in Jersey, I would have done it years ago."
* * *
A hundred matchbooks, from a hundred bars that her mother played one gig in, or from restaurants that they got a meal in, or from men that they lived with. A hundred match-books, all on fire.
She was on fire too, aflame in a way she was not sure she understood. Adrenaline turned her fingers to ice, drawing her heat inward to dance in her head, anger and a strange sense of possibility thrumming through her veins.
Kaye looked around her dark bedroom, lit only by the flickering orange light. The glassy eyes of the dolls danced with flames. The rats curled up on one another in the far corner of the cage. Kaye breathed in the sharp smell of sulfur as she struck another matchbook, watching the flame catch across the rows of white match heads, the cardboard covering exploding into fire. She turned the paper in her hands, watching it burn.
Chapter 5
"I ate the mythology & dreamt."
