“Wait, really?”
“Nope.”
Ames pushed open a door on the second floor. “Here you go,” she said with an elaborate gesture across the threshold.
It wasn’t a bathroom.
“Is this...?”
“Where the magic happens, yep.”
If the rest of the house was a museum of Carolinian history and architecture, Ames’s bedroom was an exhibit on teenage squalor. Noam was fairly certain the carpet was blue under all the discarded chip bags and T-shirts.
“I thought for sure y’all had maids.”
A comment Ames chose to ignore.
“Bathroom’s through here.” Ames made her way through the maze of debris with the delicate elegance of a dancer to kick open another door. This one actually did lead to a bathroom, one that was bigger than Noam’s entire apartment growing up.
“Are you serious?” he asked, staring at the marble counters.Marble.
“Dead serious. Do you have to pee or not?”
“Not, actually.”
He wandered in anyway, mostly to examine the gold taps. Ames followed.
“Want some?” she asked and pulled a bag of white powder from her trouser pocket.
“Don’t tempt me.” Noam hitched himself up onto the counter, legs dangling in midair and shoes bumping against the mahogany cabinets. “But I think if I took an upper right now, I’d end up trying to fistfight your dad over Marxist-Leninism.”
It was the least judgmental thing he could think to say. And hewasjudging her—but only a little, and only because rich people had no need to use drugs. The people Noam knew who used had lives that weren’t worth living sober. Ames’s family was too rich to have problems.
“Oh, my dad’s a card-carrying capitalist all right,” Ames said and shook a tiny pile of coke out onto the counter. “Don’t know how he and Lehrer can stand each other. Mutual interests, I guess.”
“Only your father pushed through a whole lot of anti-Atlantian legislation last year,” Noam said. “Not exactly Lehrer’s style.”
“I suppose you’d know,” Ames said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Nothing.” She drew a couple short lines—with her fingers, not a razor. “Anyway. Dara thinks you’re cool, which means I think you’re cool. So be cool and do a line with me.”
“Dara thinks I’m cool?”
Ames rolled her eyes dramatically and hunched forward. The first line disappeared up an elegant metal straw she seemed to have produced from thin air. “Oh Jesus. Don’t go all pathetic. I know Dara can’t help it—he justtransformsgay boys into these drooling stalkers by existing in proximity, but I don’t want to start puking this early.”
“Okay, well, I’m not gay. Must be your lucky night.”
“Noam. Come on.”
He kicked his heels against the cabinets and smiled at her.
Of course, now he wanted to know about these pathetic gay boys. He wanted to know who all Dara had been kissing. If Dara kissed a lot of men. If Dara kissedonlymen.
“Dara and I aren’t together, in case you were wondering,” Ames said, straightening up. When she met Noam’s gaze, arms crossed over her chest, it felt like a challenge.
Noam pushed himself back to his feet. He moved closer to Ames, one step, then another, until he could lift his hand and brush a bit of white powder off the tip of her nose. A part of him braced for her to flinch the way Dara had, as if Noam carried some deadly disease.
