Page 128 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

up her house to “all my Eurovision bitches,” which turned out to be not that

many. Just Maisie, Day, and Aisha, until Michael showed up, with two friends,
Luca and Thalia. A taxi pulled up outside of Maisie’s house and Michael, Luca,
and Thalia got out, the three of them dressed in silk sheaths—real, heavy silk.
Maisie rushed to the front door: “What? Who are they? Are the Supremes really
about to come in right now? I must have saved a nation in a past life . . .”

—

IT TOOK DAY A COUPLE of hours to get around to talking to Thalia and Luca. She
only had eyes for Michael. For the first time she was seeing that he had
everything she coveted from pre-Technicolor Hollywood. Hip-swinging walk,
lips that tell cruel lies and sweet truths with a single smile, eyelashes that touch
outer space. If Bette Davis and Rita Hayworth had had a Caribbean love child,

that child would be Michael just as he was that night. They hugged for a long
time, and later they talked on the balcony outside. “Thank God for the Internet,”
he said. “I wouldn’t have found Luca and T without it. All sorts of nutters out
there, but mine found me . . .”
He settled on the name Pepper. Day remembered the rest of that night in stop-
motion—galloping, shimmying, the speakers turned up so loud that the singing
shook the air and the beat of the music was like being knocked on the head. The

backbeat was a hammock you fell into. Ring a ring o’roses, pan flutes, trumpets,
and yodeling—Day was holding hands with Luca, who held hands with Aisha,
who held hands with Maisie, who held hands with Pepper, who held hands with
her, dancing around in a circle with bags and coats stacked in the center,
cheering for the countries whose stage performances made the most effort or
projected the most bizarre aura. Luca and Thalia became Day’s too. “For life,

yeah? Not just for Eurovision . . .”
Thalia didn’t even like Eurovision. She said she’d come along to meet Day.
“This one’s always going on about you,” she said, gesturing toward Pepper.
—

DAY’S STEPDAD, Anton, who’d had trouble remembering Michael’s name, hailed
Pepper with joy, even as he teased Day about the times she’d said Michael was

the one. Day just shrugged. Pepper wasn’t always on the surface, but whether
she was with Pepper as Pepper or Pepper as Michael, Day had found the one
she’d always be young with, eating Cornettos on roller coasters, forever honing
their ability to combine screams with ice cream.