The noise from the TV in Carl's room woke her up.

The local news channel was covering Alex's disappearance. "Shark River Hills has instituted a strict curfew. No persons shall be permitted to loiter, idle or congregate in the public streets or parks of Shark River Hills between the hours of eleven p.m. and six a.m. The neighborhood watch seeks volunteers to help enforce the curfew."

A patch of sunlight baked Lacey's pillow. She rolled over and grabbed her cell phone. There was a text from Nathan.

I need you. Come to the Stop and Shop at 2 if you're free.

Weird text. She crinkled her nose, not wanting to get up. It was already almost two and maybe Tom had seen the text and gone to see what Nathan wanted. He should have been job hunting.

She wanted pancakes. With yogurt maybe. So Lacey threw a skirt on and zipped herself up. With bright pumps and some lipstick, she felt ready to begin her quest for both pancake ingredients and the answer to what Nathan could possibly want from her.

The supermarket had a sign with a yellowish tinge and an outdated illustration from the 1960s, as was often the case for businesses on the West side of the tracks.

The masses crowded the entrances and exits of the Stop & Shop, parking their carts askew and leaning into them like they had no spines to keep them upright. Lacey pushed through them. Each time somebody got in her way she would clear her throat, and say, "Beep beep."

As she skimmed the aisles for Nathan, she noticed a couple staring and whispering. She checked that she had remembered to wear a bra. People were supposedly friendly in the suburbs as long as you wore the uniform. In her beige dress shirt and vintage plaid skirt, she felt she'd made quite an effort. The couple stared anyways. If it wasn't the tattoo on her neck, it was her clothes. If it wasn't the clothes, it was her hair.

The woman kept staring long after the man had moved on to potato chips. She had short hair with the tips perfectly curled out. She held her eyebrows a millimeter higher than normal people. Her man had artfully messy hair. He was thin for his height, but androgynously attractive, and in his stylish shirt-vest combination, he most likely had not dressed himself.

Lacey wanted to march up and confront the woman, but she remembered her sincere effort to fit in, to lay low, to look like everybody else. Just walk away, she told herself.

In the privacy of the skin care aisle, she slipped a bottle of eye cream up her sleeve and covertly dropped it in her purse. Nathan was nowhere to be seen and she was bored, so she popped out her cell phone and pretended to be chatting on it as she picked up a few items.

"Oh honey, we can't possibly make it to the Kensington's for dinner." Nail polish, in the purse. "I can't stand Felicity Kensington! I won't have the energy to put up with her." Fake eyelashes, very nice; in the purse they went. Lacey came back around the dairy section and she heard a familiar sounding voice nearby. It was deep and devoid of inflection.

"There you go," said Nathan. He handed a cell phone back to one of two young ladies who tittered and nodded.

"Thanks," said the girl as she played with her hot pink bra strap. "I'll call you if I see her... and maybe even if I don't."

Nathan nodded. "If you see her."

They passed Lacey as they disappeared around the corner. The other girl couldn't contain her giggles. "You're such a slut!"

"What? I want to support my troops."

Lacey clacked over to Nathan on her plastic heels.

"Were you just hitting on those teenagers?" she asked.

"No," he said. And that was all he said. He apparently didn't need to justify anything to her. "Your lipstick matches your shoes."

"Nice observation," said Lacey. "So what's with the 'I need you' text? You're going to make my boyfriend jealous."

"I thought you and Tom were open."

"We are. I'm fucking with you."

"Right. I didn't mean it like that. I need your help with something. I want to find out what happened to this girl I was seeing. You know, the one that's missing."

"The one you just broke up with."

"Yeah. I need information, but people know me too well. They won't tell me what she was really up to. But they might talk to you."

"Hmm. All right. I'll try, but first you have to help me."

She made her way to the makeup aisle where rows of lip color stretched down the shelves, their clever names seemingly infinite. Gypsy Rose. Mauvelous. Vintage Wine. She ran her finger over the different shades until settling on Fire Red. She pulled Nathan into a giddy hug and slipped the lipstick into his pocket.

"Lacey!" he whispered.

"Shh. You're done. So what do you need me to do?" Nathan didn't say a word and gestured for her to follow him. He stopped short and hid behind a tall display of cereal boxes, showing her the checkout girl with dreads. Her splotchy skin told the story of meth addiction and Lacey couldn't suppress her quizzical expression at what Nathan said next. "I need you to go up to her and ask her where you can score some crystal."

"You think she'll tell me?"

"No, but I know she won't tell me. Everyone knows I'm best friends with Tom, the cop's kid."

"Fine." Lacey squared her shoulders and approached the checkout girl. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Hey, do you remember me?"

"Yeah, you're um—."

"Keep your voice down. I need you to think fast and act a certain way."

"What's going on?" the girl asked.

"Don't look around. If you don't want Jacob to bash your fucking face in, I need you to act as shady as possible. Like lean in and whisper in my ear."

"Isn't that what we're already doing."

"Yep," Lacey said, nodding. "Okay. Thank you."

"Yeah, sure."

She went straight outside and waited for Nathan to join her in the parking lot. They reconvened at her car, where she helped herself to a cigarette. The vanilla cloves crackled in the paper as she inhaled.

"What happened?" he asked.

"She said her boyfriend's a cook and that he can hook me up, but he lives in Camden."

"That's no good."

"What's all this about, Nathan? You trying to score some meth?" she asked, smiling and taking another drag.

"No. That girl hangs out around Jacob's house. If she named him as her dealer it would give me some leverage when I go to talk to him. I think he has something to do with Alex disappearing. Can I get one of those?" Nathan asked. Lacey handed him a clove, which he lit with a zippo lighter. In return, he gave her the red lipstick.

"You're pretty crazy," she said, applying her new shade of fire. "Quite the vigilante."

"I just want to find Alex."

"Yeah, sure. You servicemen are all adrenalin junkies." Lacey rubbed her lips together and tapped away at her cigarette ash.

"What do you know about servicemen?"

"I've slept with enough of them."

Nathan nodded and took a drag on the clove, hiding his gray eyes from her. There was a tremor in his left hand like a flicker of lightning. His fingers clenched into a fist.

Just as Lacey was beginning to relax, she noticed the couple that had been eyeballing her in the store. They carted loads of bags to their family size SUV and as they passed, the woman whispered something and both she and her man snickered.

"Looking for another rush, marine?" asked Lacey.

"Huh?"

Lacey dashed her cigarette under a car and shouted after the couple. "It's rude to stare, assholes!"

The man loaded up the bags. He had just slammed the hatch shut when Lacey ambushed them. "You think I can't hear you laughing at me?" The woman folded her arms and threw back her shoulders.

"Nathan?" She elevated her chin like she was some kind of royal.

"Hey, Becky. This is my friend Lacey."

"You're friends with a pro?"

"A what?" Nathan said, as if he assumed he had misheard her. Lacey knew he hadn't, because now it was all coming back to her. She recognized that clean-shaven hipster standing quietly behind his wife.

"Jim was at a bachelor party in the city and your friend here asked if he wanted a threesome with her and another stripper."

Jim addressed Lacey now. "You said I could pay each of you two hundred bucks."

"You're mistaking her for someone else," Nathan said in her defense.

"No. I remember her, because I was surprised that she was selling herself so cheap. I turned her down, but one of my buddies brought her and the other girl back to his room."

Lacey swallowed a lump in her throat, flames rising in her gut. Rather than feel ashamed and deny everything, she decided she would much rather humiliate this Jim guy as much as possible.

"Yeah. That was me. But I remember you too, Jimmy. I remember how after you turned down the threesome, you asked if I would suck your dick. And I tried, but you couldn't get hard. Which was awesome for me, because I always get the money up front."

Jim laughed and rolled his eyes. "That's not remotely true. I didn't ask her for anything."

"I know, babe," said Becky. "Make sure you wear a rubber with this one, Nathan. Those whores from the city have HIV. Oh my God. Are you crying?"

Lacey tightened her lips and held her breath. Against her will, her eyes were stinging.

"What's your problem, Becky?" Nathan said. "You get off on being a bitch?"

The woman scoffed into her hand. "Just looking out for you."

Lacey wielded her new lipstick and stormed the SUV's rear window.

"What are you doing? Jim! Stop her!" Becky squealed. Lacey went to scrawl the word "CUNT" in big, red letters.  Just as she was finishing the "N", Jim pried her away. A feral, piercing scream poured out of her as she felt the man's arms lift her off the ground. She dropped the lipstick and it rolled across the concrete.

"Psycho bitch!" the man snarled.

"Let go of her!" Nathan ripped her away from the other man and shoved him. There was a loud snap as Nathan slugged the guy. Clutching his jaw, Jim got into his car and demanded that Becky get moving. Lacey bent down, grabbed her lipstick and finished the "T" just before they drove away. The SUV lurched forward into the next lane of parking, tires screeching.

"Holy shit," Lacey whispered. "That was badass." She knelt down on the ground, laughing so hard there were tears falling from her eyes. Grains of asphalt pressed into her knees. A crowd came out of the store to investigate the commotion.

"Is she okay?" a young employee asked. Lacey nodded, still laughing like a madwoman. She waved the kid away, brushed herself off, and headed to the side of the building. She would never belong in this place. She would have to live in a hut like an apostate while Tom did the grocery shopping.

She sat down on the edge of the sidewalk next to the rows of shopping carts and checked her face in a hand mirror. Mascara was still intact.

Nathan came over and sat down on a nearby bench.

"You know those assholes?" she asked.

"I went to high school with Becky, but we were never friends or anything. That wasn't right for her to shame you like that. And for what it's worth, it doesn't make me think any less of you."

"That's impossible."

"We all do things we regret. I've done horrible, meaningless things." Nathan looked off into the distance, like he was about to say something else. He became very still.

"I don't have AIDS. Fucking bitch."

"How did you end up in the business?"

"I was lazy. I liked making my own hours and being glamorous. I started out at fetish parties and then I found out I could make more stripping, a lot more. Once I was doing that, I didn't shy away from anything. It was just so easy. Hell, most the time it was fun. Get paid to snort coke and party. All it costs you is the respect of your fellow man."

"Don't feel ashamed.  It pisses me off that people can try to make you feel ashamed for getting guys' rocks off, and then they turn around and thank me for the shit I've done, as if they have any idea what they're thanking me for."

"Were you ever afraid to die?" She wanted to deflect the focus from herself, and anyway, she was curious.

"Yeah. In the beginning, sure. But that goes away. You carry your own death certificate in your helmet, all filled out in advance, knowing nobody's going to remember you if you're the unlucky guy who steps on a mine that day or gets picked off by a sniper. But you do your job and you don't think about things until later. And then you really think about them. You think about the kids you scared, or the people you saw vanish in the dust. You wonder if they made it somehow. In videogames, they track your kills, but you don't get that in real life. What's your death toll? How much suffering? It's like coming out of berserk."

"I'd guess you have things to atone for."

"Everyone does. There are only three types of people in war. You have the guy who does messed up shit, the guy who stands by and watches and then the poor idiot who tries to stop it."

"And which were you?"

"Whatever they told me to be." Nathan always had a cold, guarded kind of heart, but in this moment, that heart seemed to be growing quills.

"We all take different roads, Nathan. We think we choose the roads, but really we don't. The world turns in endless cycles of creation and destruction. And we all end up doing what's in our nature."

Lacey reached over and ran her fingers over the scar tissue that peppered his left arm. It was an innocent moment for her, a rare moment. Nathan looked into her eyes and an overwhelming sensation consumed her, a buzzing joy that spread like a whirlwind.

"It's hard for me to say what I'm thinking," he said. The statement came out of nowhere.

"Some things don't need to be said." Lacey took a deep breath as she gathered herself, wiping her face clean with her sleeves.

Nathan took her hand in his, examining the sun star symbol on her wrist. "What is this?"

"Some henna I got at the beach."

"But what is it?"

Lacey smiled at seeing the fascination in Nathan's eyes. "It's the Seal of Solomon."

"Who did the henna?"

"This guy Harrison. He owns the paranormal bookstore. It's only ten bucks if you want something small."

"Think you could help me again? Maybe ask him some questions for me?"

"Well, Wednesday night, he's hosting a very hush-hush meet & greet for local pagans."

"You're a pagan?"

It occurred to Lacey that Nathan wasn't actually interested in neo-paganism. She shrugged. "No. I worship one god like everybody else. You hear things when you're bartending. And actually, I can't go with you. Pagans freak me out."

"Fair enough," he said. "Thank you. For everything, Lacey. I'm really glad Tom found such a cool girl to be with."

She felt more naked than she ever did climbing poles at the Pussycat Lounge. She felt like the little girl from Chalmette again. A mad feeling fluttered in her chest, like a cave swimmer experiences upon discovering a cylinder of light, gasping as she comes up for air, hopeful and terrified all at once.

____________________

Music: "Survival" Muse

This song always gives me chills... This is a long chapter. You don't have to read all of it. Here's the watty sparknotes:

Lacey meets Nathan at the Stop & Shop. She pretends to help him find Alex but actually blocks him from making progress. A couple accosts her with information about her sordid past and Nathan stands up for her. Lacey starts to see Nathan in a new light.