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I know you will probably never read this but I feel like I am DESTINED to become a catwalk model and I would REALLY appreciate you passing my headshots on to your sister.
I checked Grey’s page to see if she’d posted recently. Grey Hollow, supermodel, had ninety-eight million followers. NINETY-EIGHT MILLION. There were pictures of her with other supermodels, pictures of her on magazine covers, pictures of her backstage at concerts with pop stars, pictures of her on yachts, pictures of her with her model boyfriend, Tyler Yang, at some pink-lit club—Cuckoo, I guessed—in Mayfair.
Grey had first told me about Tyler six months ago on our trip to Prague, after we’d each drunk a few shots of absinthe from delicate glasses. We sat close together at a booth in a nightclub, warm and glittery on the inside from the alcohol and the wormwood, her head resting on my shoulder as we watched Vivi move on the dance floor with a girl she’d met at the bar. Grey held up her left hand and I held up my right and we pressed our fingertips together in an arch. I felt her heartbeat in my skin, in my chest, felt the strong thread that bound us together.
“I think I’m in love with him,” she’d said quietly, her breath carrying a trace of sugar and anise. I could hear the smile in her voice. I already knew she loved him. I’d known it since the day before, when we’d met at Václav Havel Airport and I’d hugged her for the first time in months. She’d smelled different. She’d smelled . . . softer, somehow. It suited her. Being in love made her even more intoxicating.
I was surprised and unsurprised in equal measure. Unsurprised because I already knew they were together. I’d seen paparazzi shots of them holding hands on the front of tabloid magazines, and Tyler had started to appear more and more frequently in her Instagram stories. Surprised because Grey had never had a real boyfriend before, only lovers who interested her for a short time, and—unlike Vivi, who frequently offered the details of her love and sex life—Grey was a locked box. She shared no more than morsels.
“Tyler Yang?” I’d asked her, and she’d nodded sleepily.
“He’s quite special,” she’d continued. “You’ll know what I mean when you meet him.”
The meeting had yet to happen, but maybe it would tonight—if she bothered showing up.
Grey’s last post was from five days ago, an image of her in a green tulle gown lounging against a red banister with a glass of champagne in her hand, her skin saturated in fluorescent pink light, her blond head wreathed in baby’s breath. #TBT London Fashion Week, the caption read. The location was tagged as the Cuckoo Club. Just over fifteen million people had liked it.
There were two levels inside Jazz Café: the lower level with the stage, the audience pressed up close to it, the band soaked in orange light and laser beams. Overhead, a mezzanine restaurant and bar wrapped around the space for those who preferred sipping wine to getting doused with beer in the mosh pit. I spotted JJ sitting at a round table, both looking sullen.
Grey wasn’t there for the first song, or the second, or the third. Candace moved across the stage with Mick Jagger swagger, sex on legs, but I watched Laura, a thimble of a woman with Bambi eyes transformed into a she-beast as she attacked her drums. Hair in her face, sweat and spit flying, her T-shirt riding up to reveal a soft slip of stomach.
The crowd was loving the band, but by the fourth song I was distracted, worried. I kept looking around for my eldest sister, sure she would sneak up behind me and put her hands over my eyes at any moment, but she didn’t show.
Then, somewhere toward the end of the gig, something happened.
Onstage, Vivi stopped playing her bass and let her arms fall slack to her sides. She was staring at someone or something in the crowd behind me, a veil over her eyes. I turned to look at what she was fixated on, but the room was dark and crowded. Laura and Candace exchanged confused glances and tried to catch Vivi’s attention, without any luck. Vivi was frozen, wide-eyed, drawing quick, shallow breaths through her shuddering mouth. Candace moved across the stage as she sang and nudged Vivi, who blinked furiously and shook her head. She found my eyes in