Levitating Las Vegas(39)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Holly tried to breathe normally. Nothing was wrong. It was just a tunnel, and not a very long one. She could see the end, a semicircle of light straight ahead. She panted anyway. She couldn’t move anything in here. She couldn’t move anything anyway—her power was her delusion, stronger and stronger as the Mentafixol wore off—but even if she’d been able to levitate, she would have been no match for this mountain. She sensed the whole huge weight of it above her.

“Hey.” Elijah slid his hand from the gearshift onto her knee. Electricity surged up her thigh. “Keep your eyes on the light.”

She did. She focused on that faraway exit, holding her breath as the light came closer and loomed larger. She thought she might pass out before they reached it. Her whole body sparkled from Elijah’s touch and Mentafixol withdrawal and lack of oxygen.

“And here we are,” Elijah said. When the car broke free from the shadows of the tunnel, he kept his hand on her knee, even rubbed his thumb gently across her skin, giving her something to concentrate on besides her disorientation.

As the sunlight hit her full in the face, Holly gasped her relief and squinted toward Icarus. Elijah had told her its claim to fame was that it was one of the highest towns in North America, making it a minor tourist attraction. He hadn’t mentioned that the entire town seemed to be one long street lined with historic buildings, or that this street was perched on the very edge of the cliff, as if to say towns and tourists and drug seekers had no business here. From this distance, it didn’t look real. It resembled a model for movie special effects. Godzilla would step carefully over the nearest mountain peak and stomp toward them any second.

She managed to say, “Pretty.”

“Very.” He piloted the car up the street and paused at an inexplicable traffic light, gazing up at the quaint two-story buildings emblazoned up top with the year they were built, Holly assumed: 1878, 1880. They passed the town hall, a bar, a grocery store, another bar, a fire station, still another bar, a hotel with a whole three stories and a restaurant, lots of gift shops, and a bar, as they cruised down the deserted road. A few cars were parked along the sides, but not a soul appeared on the wooden sidewalks in the brilliant summer morning.

He drove almost to the end of the street and stopped the car in front of an adorable two-story wooden Victorian, all gingerbread and lace, with a sign out front painted in careful cursive: TWO MILE HIGH CANDY CO. Holly turned to look at Elijah in question, but he gazed past her at the house. She looked where he was looking. The windows were dark. A hand-printed sign on white paper took up one pane of glass in the door.

“It’s closed,” he breathed.

“Is this the factory where Mentafixol is made?” Holly asked. She hoped he only meant to buy her another candy bar. If he thought their medicine was made at a candy store—wow, he was crazy.

In answer, he killed the motor without putting the car in gear. It lurched forward in one final burp before dying. Before, he’d saved her from a quick stop before by throwing his arm in front of her. This time he didn’t notice. She caught herself with both hands on the glove compartment before her seat belt snapped her backward. He bailed out of the car and jogged past the front bumper and up the sidewalk.

She stared after him, fighting the urge to scream. She hadn’t really believed there was a factory in Bumfuck, Colorado, that made her psychoactive drug, had she? But Elijah had seemed so sincere. He obviously believed the story himself. She had wanted to believe him.

And now . . . waiting to go crazy here, with him, was better than waiting to go crazy on the velvet couch in the casino dressing room, under the watchful eye of her parents. Elijah needed her.

She slipped her shoes on and hurried after him, the sun strong on her bare back. In the shade of the wide front porch, she stood beside him and read the sign. REOPENING AFTER THE PARADE.

They looked at each other.

They looked one way down the street, toward the quiet historic town.

They looked the other way up the street. A few more storefronts led to a dead end at a mountain that towered frighteningly close over them, bright orange against the blue sky.

“A parade?” she mused. “Is it a holiday?”

“Not in America. We missed Flag Day.”

“Maybe they celebrate the country of their ancestors. France? Bastille Day isn’t for another three and a half weeks.” She tried the doorknob—locked—and then rang the doorbell, which chimed forlornly inside the shop. “Allons enfants de la Patrie.” She placed her forehead on the wooden window frame so she could see inside beyond the glare of reflected sunlight. Chocolates beckoned her from a display case, and café tables and chairs awaited her arrival, but no aproned and paper-hatted attendant appeared to let them in. “Le jour de gloire est arrivé,” she said, straightening. “But maybe not for a few hours. We’ll come back when the parade is over.”

Elijah’s low voice escalated into panic. “We don’t even know when the parade is, so we don’t know when to come back.”

“It’s not this morning or we’d see them lining up for it already,” she said soothingly. “It can’t be tonight or there’d be no point in them opening the store afterward. It must be this afternoon.”

“That won’t do us any good,” he said breathlessly. “It will be a few hours shy of two days off the pill for you. At that point off the pill, I was already completely insane. That means two of us insane, Holly. What will I do without you to keep me sane? God damn it!” He reared back with one foot to kick the door.

Just what they needed—to look crazy when they were going crazy, and to get arrested for attacking a candy shop. Holly surged forward to stop him.

His foot paused in midair.

She remained standing next to him. She hadn’t actually moved toward him to block his foot from the door. She’d only blocked him with her mind. Sparkles swirled around her limbs like golden candy sprinkles spilling from the store.

This hadn’t really happened. She’d only imagined it. Elijah had stopped himself.

His sneaker still hovered inches from the door. Without looking at her, slowly he lowered his foot to the floor of the porch.

She ran her eye up and down him. His arms were folded tightly across his red T-shirt as if he was cold in the warm morning, his strong biceps stretching the cotton. The light brown waves of his hair quirked into odd shapes in the breeze. His green eyes were wild and worried, still scanning the storefront for a way in. He was insane and adorable, and so vulnerable after ten hours of machismo.