Girl Defective by Simmone Howell

swayed like tendrils. I counted seven of them. Seven girls in silver scarves. The lights dimmed again. The audience aah ed. The curtains parted and a big screen showed slides of abandoned barns, plane wrecks, clouds. The band wandered out wearing animal masks and started up some moody swirl of noise. Otis—the fox—took his mask off. He was in a sharkskin suit and had a silver scarf, same as the girls. The thought hit: the Girlfriends of Otis. I remembered Nancy then and cast around for her, but the images on the screen tumbled down and I felt as though I was tumbling with them.
    Otis emitted a series of sobs into his microphone. He had hair like bracken and skin like space dust. His songs were spells that floated up and weaved around the chandeliers and then were swallowed by the crowd. When he smiled, it was like his face fragmented and I didn’t know where to look. It was merge music—there were no sharp edges; it was all meandering and liquid.
    After a long time he lifted his hand and the band stopped. The audience seemed to be holding its breath. Otis’s speaking voice was higher than I’d expected. It didn’t completely break the spell, but it woke me up a little.
    â€œIt’s the end of an era,” he piped. “The Paradise’s coming down. Take a piece before you go.”
    I saw Nancy then. She was on the edge of the stage, half-hidden by the curtain. Her face was flushed and dreamy—almost unrecognizable.
    One by one the band members ambled off the stage until it was only Otis left with the hum of the amplifiers. Then: Crash. Shudder. Blink. It was over.
    Otis lingered talking to various scarf girls. Nancy inched forward and picked up his fox head. She looked weird standing there, cradling it and staring at him with an expression that wasn’t far from Gully’s dazey-face. Then Otis was talking closely to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. I could hear the scarf girls seething. It was like a hive, the noise.
    I called out to Nancy. She saw me, but she didn’t move. I climbed onto the stage, but even when I was standing next to her, she felt far away.
    â€œHey.” I tugged her sleeve.
    â€œHey.” Her eyes stayed on Otis. He turned to talk to someone else, and then Nancy was fumbling in her pocket, trying to give me something. Money.
    â€œFor the taxi,” she said.
    Otis was moving, and she followed after him, somehow wormed her way back under his arm.
    I held the note dumbly and watched as they glided to the exit. Nancy’s eyes were straight; her mouth hid her smile. The scarf girls formed two lines to make a kind of bower. They waved their scarves, and if one or two hit Nancy full in the face, she didn’t seem fazed.
    Then someone grabbed the song list. Someone else tore down a poster. All around me people were stealing their pieces of the Paradise. I went back to the ladies’ room, where a girl was fashioning lengths of the beaded curtain into necklaces. It was Quinn Bishop. She recognized me and raised her eyebrows. “Sky lark . Do your parents know you’re here?”
    And just like that, I started crying. It was weird. Embarrassing. The tears kept coming.
    Quinn watched me cry. She placed an awkward hand on my shoulder. And then she looped a bead necklace over my head. I splashed water on my face and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t look startled anymore. I looked wretched.
    Quinn squeezed my shoulder. “What are you on?”
    â€œMy friend gave me something.”
    â€œGood friend?”
    I nodded, wiping my eyes.
    â€œYou going home? You want to walk with me?”
    I was so grateful I had to stop myself from blubbering all over again.
    As we walked out of the theater, all I could think of was wreck and plunder. As well as the beads around her neck, Quinn had an SLR camera. She took my picture. Then she snapped the emptying street, the passing cars.
    â€œSo you’re into