I said, “I was just following you.”
“Dark, and it smelled of garbage and dope. Stale urine, stale sweat, stale sex.”
“You were the brave one,” I said.
“And their voices were all sort of low and monotonous. The way the light was dim and diffused around the whole long room—it was like being underwater, among the drowned. It was like the house of death.
“Yuri told me,” she said. “At some point that night he told me what happened. They put dope into the frosting, when they gave him that piece of their wedding cake. By the time we got there they were all wasted, and Yuri was wasted too.
“I played every song I knew and some I hadn’t even written until right then. They wanted ‘It Makes Me Sick.’ You heard that, didn’t you? You were there then. But I didn’t. Play it or throw up. Yuri asked for it too, because he wanted me to do it because he asked. He wanted me to play it for him, but he wanted to be sure I wouldn’t, not even for him. I didn’t. Or I wouldn’t. I played all of the Dreams, and they danced. Yuri danced, and girls danced with him, and everybody danced. They knew why I was there. They knew what I wanted. Finally, I could sense it, they were willing to give him up.”
“What went wrong?”
“I don’t know, except they weren’t willing, not to give him up. It was so dark I couldn’t see anything clearly. Yuri was in a corner, with these girls all over him, but that wasn’t what he wanted. I am what he wanted, that’s not it. He said he should have known they would do something to the cake, he shouldn’t have taken the piece. He said he knew now he couldn’t get rid of it, he would always know he might fall back into it again. He would always never be sure he wouldn’t. He said he couldn’t stand living that way. Without any faith in himself.
“I couldn’t give him that. I could only give him my faith in him, and that wasn’t enough. He had to give himself faith too.
“Because he almost did come with me. He got up, stood up, away from those girls—and they were hanging on to him, everybody was hanging on to him, sort of, or hanging off one another, like a human chain. Yuri said he’d come home with me and they were holding him back at the same time that they were telling him to go for it, he’d be fine, he’d be happy, he was one lucky guy.
“And we almost made it.
“We got about halfway down the hall, and it was hard because they couldn’t let him go. It was up to Yuri. I was holding his hand. I was holding Yuri’s hand,” she said, and slipped into silence, remembering.
I kept silent too.
“Somebody called from behind us, from in the living room. Called out, ‘It hurts, man. You know how bad it hurts.’
“Yuri turned around and went back in.
“He pulled his hand free, as if I were holding him against his will, and then he stopped still. Looking at me for a minute. Before he went back down the hall, back into the living room.
“Only Yuri could have done it, for himself, and he didn’t. Or he wouldn’t. Or he couldn’t.
“Somebody tells him that it hurts, and what could I say, Enny?”
I didn’t know.
“I could feel him leaving me. I turned to him, without any song to sing. He turned away from me. He went back down the hallway. What kind of fools are they, they think life is never going to hurt? If they think they can be safe and never hurt and still be alive? Can you imagine it?” Orfe asked.
“Yes,” I said.
BOOKS BY CYNTHIA VOIGT
THE BAD GIRLS SERIES
Bad Girls
Bad, Badder, Baddest
It’s Not Easy Being Bad
Bad Girls in Love
THE TILLERMAN SERIES
Homecoming
Dicey’s Song
A Solitary Blue
The Runner
Come a Stranger
Sons from Afar
Seventeen Against the Dealer
THE KINGDOM SERIES
Jackaroo
On Fortune’s Wheel
The Wings of a Falcon
OTHER BOOKS
Building Blocks
The Callender Papers
David and Jonathan
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Orfe
Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers
Tree by Leaf
The Vandemark Mummy
When She Hollers
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Cynthia Voigt
First Simon Pulse edition, February 2002
Atheneum
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Designed by Debra Sfetsios
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Voigt, Cynthia.
Orfe / Cynthia Voigt.
p. cm.
Summary: Enny tells of her relationship with Orfe, an unusually talented musician, and of the love between Orfe and Yuri, a recovering addict.
ISBN 0-689-31771-9 (hc)
[1. Rock music—Fiction. 2. Drug abuse—Fiction.] I.
Title.
PZ7.V874Or 1992
[Fic]—dc20 91-46058
ISBN 978-0-6893-1771-2
ISBN 978-1-4391-1646-3 (eBook)