Magnetite Tonight (pt 2).

Katrina and Jay take you to see Star Wars, which you saw the poster for and thought was going to be kind of stupid, but when it’s over you and Jay can’t stop talking about it, walking with Katrina trailing you in bemusement because she thought it was just okay. The next day the three of you drive two hours to Chicago because Katrina wants to go shopping on Michigan Avenue, but it’s too expensive and she thinks the stores don’t look like they should, like they do in the commercials, so you wander downtown looking for something to salvage the day and luck upon an outdoor art fair where you walk the plaza observing the sculptures and feeling very grown-up; when that gets old you find seats on a bench and watch people and eat hot dogs, and when Jay leaves to go to the bathroom Katrina tells you that his hair plucking is a nervous tic. They sent him to a shrink, she whispers, but it got worse. When Jay returns and she takes her own trip, Jay tells you that she is a witch. Really, he says, starting to pull at the hair on his knuckles until you swat his hand away. Her mom is too, they cast spells and all of that stuff. It’s wild over at her house.

South of the art fair is a 50-story office building closed for the weekend but Katrina is able to find a way in and an elevator that takes them almost all the way to the top, letting them out onto a floor where entire walls are made of windows; you press your foreheads to the glass, hovering high above the freeway ribbons and the uptown office buildings and the aquamarine lakes with manmade islands and the high rises and the parks and the rivers and the giant smear of Lake Michigan.

What do you think it would be like to fall from way up here? Jay asks.

I wouldn’t fall, Katrina says, her fingers brushing his. I’d fly all the way down.

She looks at you. Even if you pushed me, right through the glass. I’d be just fine.

I wouldn’t do that, you say.

There’s no way to really know, is there? She smiles at you thoughtfully and then she points to some spot below them. My father is down there, she says. He’s got some bizarre case going of these supposedly indigenous people trying to get back land they say the city stole. My father says they’re retards but he thinks he can make it work. I guess they’re going to pretend it’s their religion or something. I’m sure they’ll win but they’re frauds. She piles her hair on her head and lets it fall.

Give me a break, Jay says, scoffing; he walks to the other end of the deck, shading his eyes from the sun as nonchalant as can be – you lean over to speak in her ear but then she turns her head and you kiss her, hard, and she does it right back.

Why’d you do that? you ask her.

What do you care? she says. You don’t have to have reasons to do things, reasons are just stories we make up so other people don’t think we’re crazy. I do whatever I want, she says; her eyes are green and they give you a headache.

She kisses you again, this time flicking her tongue across yours, and when you reach for her she pulls away, surprising Jay by hooking her arm through his; they press their fingers on the window glass and watch their prints disappear.