Raven

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  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Dying Ember

  Nameless

  Beguiling

  Ever Dare

  Loneliness Unbroken

  Unmerciful Disaster

  Faint Footfalls

  Fiery Eyes

  Weak and Weary

  Sad Soul Smiling

  Demon Dreaming

  Gentle Rapping

  Undaunted

  Mystery Explore

  Soul Hath Spoken

  Velvet Sinking

  Ebony Bird

  Uncertain Rustling

  Unseen

  Darkness

  Blessed

  Days of Yore

  Into the Tempest

  Whispered Word

  Shadow

  Ghost

  Midnight

  Angels

  Street Pharm Excerpt

  Snitch Excerpt

  About Allison van Diepen

  To my mother, Georgina Fitzgerald, for more reasons than I can name

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Michael del Rosario, editor and former hip-hop dancer, for his enthusiasm and insight, and the wonderful teams at Simon Pulse and Simon & Schuster Canada for their support.

  My love and appreciation to my parents; Sarah, Jeffrey, and Claire; and “G.” A special thank-you to my husband, Jeremy, for his endless support during the writing of this book.

  DYING

  EMBER

  Ask me the exact moment I fell in love with Zin, and I’ll tell you it’s the first time I saw him dance.

  If you’ve seen him dance, then you understand.

  If you haven’t, then trust me—there’s nothing he can’t pull off on the floor.

  Ask him why he isn’t dancing backup for some big-name star, and he’ll say he doesn’t do anyone’s choreography but his own, plus he’s happy as hell working the bar at Evermore. It’s the sickest club and ripest breaker battleground in Manhattan. He can’t believe he actually gets paid when he’d be there anyway.

  When Zin is working the bar, he’s everywhere at once, just like on the dance floor. He wears black tanks and low baggy pants belted with clunky silver chains. He’s an Arabic kind of beautiful, with short black hair and green eyes. His olive skin is pale from lack of sunlight, since he’s mostly a nocturnal creature. He rarely goes to bed before six a.m., rarely wakes up before two p.m.

  You should have seen Zin’s face the first night I showed up to work.

  “Carlo hired you? When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday. Aren’t you happy?”

  “Yeah, of course.” He wraps those lean, muscular arms around me. “Are you sure?”

  My knees weaken at his breath against my ear. God, he smells good, like Ivory soap and aftershave. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Don’t you have to do homework or something?”

  “College applications have already gone out. I’ll only be working here on weekends anyway.”

  “Your call.” He smiles that leonine smile. “I hope you’re ready for some serious cash.”

  Evermore’s home is a converted church. According to Zin, the place was gutted by fire six years ago. The elderly congregation, mainly from nearby Little Italy, couldn’t afford to rebuild, so they joined another several blocks away. Carlo bought the place soon after, and now what was once a sanctuary holds a huge dance floor, velvet lounging areas, and tea-lit alcoves. He also restored the balcony, a perfect place to make out in privacy or spy on the action below. He left the surviving stained-glass windows as is, partially blackened by the fire, giving the place a gothic feel.

  It’s just before ten and the place is pretty deserted. DJ Gabriel’s acid jazz echoes a hollow bass. There are two couples here on first dates; I can tell because the guys are trying not to look at my legs. (After a few dates, most guys allow themselves a look.) One of the guys is drinking heavily, and the girl is slapping off his hands. The other date is going well—the girl is in his lap already.

  “Battle at midnight. I hope you have clothes,” Zin says as he’s fixing the drinks.

  “I do, but I haven’t asked Carlo if I can take a break then.”

  “He’ll let you. He knows the dancing brings in customers.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “Spinheads.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Of course.” Battling is the one thing Zin never jokes about.

  “We’ll do the new routine?”

  “Yeah.” He pauses, and I can tell he’s going over the choreography in his head. “You’re gonna do a dizzy run—end it with a buttspin. Then some applejacks while Slide and I are crabbing.”

  “Got it.”

  He loads the drinks onto my tray. “Don’t forget to share your tips.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He laughs and slides down the bar to a customer.

  Just before midnight the rest of the Toprocks show up: Slide—tall, lanky black kid; Rambo—short, spiffy Puerto Rican; and Chen, who’s got the muscular build of a gymnast thanks to intense training and protein powder. They’re all Brooklyn born and bred, except for Zin. And we’re not only a breaker group, we’re BFFs.

  I want to warm up with them, but I figure I’ll wait until the Spinheads show up before asking Carlo if I can take my break.

  Turns out they don’t show up until twelve thirty. By then Evermore is packed, a blazing sanctuary of dancers.

  The Spinheads know how to make an entrance. They’re wearing lime green tracksuits over purple tanks. We’re not impressed. We don’t need to follow some old-school dress code to know we’re breakers.

  “Can I take a break to battle? The Spinheads are here.”

  Carlo nods. Black-haired and thirtyish, he’s known for his Gucci suits, unplaceable accent, and business savvy. “I look forward to it.”

  “I’ve only been training a few months. I’m still pretty much a beginner.”

  “We shall see.”

  I like the way he says it; I don’t know why. Carlo seems like a strict boss, but deep down, he’s really cool—Zin said so himself.

  I change into some leggings, then hit the dance floor.

  It’s no surprise that Chen starts the battle by backsliding in front of the Spinheads and making angry hand gestures. The crowd forms a circle, and Chen begins with some toprocks. Then he drops to the floor and spins on his hand. From there he breaks into a jackhammer.

  The crowd cheers. Chen hoists himself into a handstand finish, slowly opening his legs. Zin runs up and front-flips over him. They move back and wait for the rebuttal.

  Jam and Spinman jump into the middle together, locking arms back-to-back, with Spinman flipping over Jam’s back and taking over the floor with a series of L-kicks. I see Zin and Chen exchange a look—it’s a new move for Spinman.

  Zin gives me the signal and I’m in with a dizzy run, adrenaline giving me an extra kick of energy. I finish with a buttspin. I back away, and Zin hits the floor, starting off with a few knee drops, then twisting into a headspin, after which he crabs around with Slide, weaving through his legs while I’m doing applejacks. Then Zin is doing airswipes, kicking his legs high in the air as the crowd cheers him on.

  How can anyone rebut that? Zin is an Olympic athlete on the dance floor. No one can match him.

  The Spinhead girl comes out with two steps.
She’s not bad. Her teammate T-Rex jumps in with six steps before lifting himself into a flare and finishing with an airtrack. His execution is flawless. I don’t dare look at Zin’s reaction.

  Chen’s back in, kicking his legs and twisting his body in a mobile skyscraper. Next, Rambo does some robotics. They pull back, and Zin leaps in with an aerial flip. He drops into a windmill, then pops up and flips onto his back.

  For the final retaliation, Spinman does handless headspins called halos. T-Rex and Jam drop and start doing halos on either side of him. Their synchronization is awesome. Then, one by one, they each freeze in a different pose—a head freeze, a side freeze, a back freeze.

  The crowd wilds out.

  Damn it! They’ve won.

  Zin throws up his hands and stalks off the dance floor. Chen looks like he wants to start something with Spinman, but Slide talks him down. He doesn’t see that Rambo has got his hands on an empty beer bottle. I grab Rambo’s arm, tell him to put it down. I don’t know why Rambo always wants to fight. He’s such a nice kid most of the time.

  Electricity still in my blood, I dance for another minute. And then I feel it: I’m being watched. Not by groupies, not by breakers, but by my boss.

  He’s leaning against the bar, all dapper black suit, all class. He curls his index finger.

  I go up to him. “Sorry I took so long.”

  “It’s all right.” His eyes focus on my hair. He gently brushes a lock out of my eyes. “You dance well, Raven.”

  Carlo has eyes so black you can’t tell the pupils from the irises. It occurs to me that if I were ten years older, and if I weren’t in love with Zin, I might be interested in the mystery behind those eyes.

  I approach customers and start taking drink orders. I like that he called me Raven. I like the darkness of it.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I have a teardrop pupil in my left eye. It is exactly what it sounds like. My friends used to say it looked like my pupil leaked and the spill was contained in the iris.

  If my eyes were brown like my dad’s, instead of blue like my mom’s, it would be less noticeable. But I’m not that lucky.

  When I first meet someone, I often suspect they’re staring at my pupil. Of course, it’s hard to tell, since people are supposed to look you in the eye. If I’m going somewhere new, I sometimes wear dark brown contacts. It saves me from having to wonder what they’re really looking at.

  It doesn’t matter, because when people look into your eyes, they don’t really see you, anyway.

  NAMELESS

  My house is haunted by a ghost that isn’t dead.

  It might have been easier if he were dead. At least then we could remember him in the good days, the days of potential.

  Mom hates it when I talk like that. She lives in hope.

  Dad doesn’t. He’s a realist like me. He knows hope is a sham, at least when we’re talking ghosts.

  The house is quiet now. The ghost used to love loud, throbbing music bouncing off his bedroom walls. Me, I always preferred my earbuds, the music up close and personal. Now the only sounds are the low buzz of CNN or one of Dad’s sci-fi shows.

  The last time I saw the ghost, I spotted him in Chinatown in the early hours of the morning, smoking weed on a street corner with a white trash girl with dreads. I hadn’t seen him in months. He looked different, worse. A long cargo jacket several sizes too big. Ripped jeans hung off him. He had a goatee of shaggy carelessness, the look of anarchy.

  My feet hesitated. Should I stop? Or keep walking? The ghost didn’t see me. My feet kept moving.

  Zin saw that something had got me spooked. “Nic? You okay?”

  “Shhh.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The first day of a semester is always the same.

  Teachers see my last name. They ask about him, what he’s up to these days, expecting big answers. I tell them he’s doing fine, working.

  What about Columbia?

  He’s taking some time off. I shrug like it’s no big deal.

  And they are confused, because the ghost never did things halfway, never took breaks. He graduated with a 4.0. They remind me of this when I hand in any assignment that isn’t an A. I rarely do.

  “How many days of high school left?” Chen asks.

  “Ninety-two,” Slide answers.

  “That can’t be right. You said eighty-seven last week.”

  “I wasn’t including exam time. Now I am.”

  “Fine, but I hope the days start going down soon, because I don’t know how much longer I can stand this hellhole.”

  Kim Tran, Chen’s girlfriend, pats his arm. “Poor Chenny Wenny.”

  In senior tradition, we skip the cafeteria and eat lunch next to our lockers. We’re all noshing on raw veggies out of mini Ziploc bags. Slide is into the raw food craze, thinking it’ll boost our immune systems and give us an edge on the dance floor. It’s better than Chen’s suggestion last month that we do protein shakes twice a day. I’m not exactly going for the muscle chick look.

  I turn to Slide. “You handed in your Lit paper, right?”

  He nods. “Finished it on the bus this morning.”

  “Good.” Slide needs a kick in the ass now and then. He’s gifted ADD—too smart to be interested in his classes, too hyper to focus on one thing for long. It’s not a recipe for high marks, but excellent for a breakdancer.

  “Forty-six days till early acceptance,” Slide says. “Nic, you’re gonna be the first to find out. I bet you’ll get in everywhere.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “C’mon, you and Kim got nothing to worry about,” Chen says. Being the spawn of two accountants, he’s inherited a brain, he just doesn’t use it enough, as most of his teachers point out. He’s not worried about it, though. He fully expects that Kim will support his dancing career one day.

  “Well, I don’t have much extracurricular,” I say. Everyone knows you need extracurricular for scholarships, and I doubt being part of a breaker crew counts.

  My friends don’t know that a ghost bleeds my parents dry. They don’t even know that he’s become a ghost.

  My cell phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s got to be Zin. It’s 12:43—he woke up early today.

  It’s a text message.

  HEY NIC

  HOPE YR DAYS GOIN GOOD.

  DONT 4GET PRAC 2NITE 730.

  CU

  Z

  Kim pokes me. “That from Zin?”

  “Yeah, just a reminder about tonight’s practice.”

  “He never sends us reminders,” Chen says. He leans over my shoulder. “Ooh, he’s wishing you a good day. I swear you guys are dating behind our backs.”

  I wish.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Keep going, Nic! Go, go, go!”

  I swing my legs around in a coffee grinder, faster and faster, until I’m in the zone where I’m just spinning, weightless.

  I stop on a dime.

  The guys cheer.

  Slide pauses the music. “That was sick! Since when did you get that fast?”

  I pick myself up from the mat, blood rushing in my ears. “Downed a double shot of espresso before practice.”

  “Red Bull’s better.” Slide unpauses the music as Zin hits the mat with spinning headstands. His legs thrust out in a V, and I can’t help but notice his gym shorts falling back to reveal a serious amount of muscular thigh. Damn. Another thing about caffeine kicks—they make me extra horny.

  Zin gets to his feet, his long black eyelashes spiked with sweat. “We gotta wrap soon, guys. I’m working later.”

  “I wish I could work on weeknights,” I say.

  “You’re lucky, Nic. Carlo doesn’t usually let people just do weekends. Guess he likes you.”

  “Well, I haven’t spilled anything in a customer’s lap—yet.”

  We usually practice twice a week, not to mention the actual breaking at Evermore on weekends. Zin formed the Toprocks a couple of years ago after putting up posters at a few dance clubs and holding auditi
ons. Spinman was part of that initial group, but he and the other guys butted heads a lot, so he eventually defected and started the Spinheads.

  The Toprocks didn’t want to take on a girl back then. Even Chen and Slide, who knew me from school, questioned my intentions. They thought I was a groupie turned wannabe breaker, and at first, they were right. I thought taking up break-dancing would get me more time with Zin. Hell, I had no moves back then. I didn’t even know I had them in me.

  Zin showed me that I did.

  I fell in love with Zin and with dancing. It’s all one and the same.

  The Toprocks warmed up to me soon enough. I earned my spot in their crew through countless hours of training with instructional DVDs, a mat, and an iron will. Turned out that having a girl breaker in the group—one who could really dance and wasn’t a prop—was good for our street cred.

  True, I have some limitations they don’t have. I don’t do headspins because I don’t have the confidence or a spare neck if I break mine. I dance hard, but I’m not a risk taker like they are, especially Zin, whose airwork is wild. And I don’t do anything backward. Don’t ask me to do a back roll, don’t ask me to flip over your back, I just can’t. But for all my limitations, I’ve got solid groundwork, control, and charisma, or so they tell me.

  “C’mon, Chen, do it!”

  We expect a lot from Chen, since everybody knows that Asia is where the breaking is at right now. You can tell by the World Championship winners—they’re all Asian. Sometimes we talk about saving up the money to take a trip over there, hitting the clubs where the breakers hang, learning from them. Chen says he’s got relatives who could put us up in Shanghai.

  When practice is through, we slide Zin’s furniture back into place and the guys take off. I decide to stick around until Zin goes to work. I don’t feel like going home.

  Zin heads to the bathroom for a shower, and I raid the fridge, grabbing pitas, hummus, pickles, cheese, and spreading them out on the table. Even when he’s had dinner, he’s always starving after practice.

  Zin’s one-bedroom is at the top of a five-story walk-up a few blocks from Evermore. He can afford to live by himself, thanks to drunk people who tip generously. The place has minimal furniture: a coffee table from IKEA, a worn leather couch, a kitchen table with mismatched chairs. It works out well because there’s not much to move when we practice. For decoration, Zin put up movie posters—Raging Bull, Scarface, Goodfellas.