“Closer”—Lemaitre, Jennie A.
“Trust”—Boy Epic
“Complicated”—Avril Lavigne
“One Day At A Time”—UNSECRET, Tim Halperin
“Throne”—Bring Me The Horizon
“Speechless”—Rachel Platten
“Howl’s Moving Castle—Merry-Go-Round of Life”—Vitamin String Quartet
“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)”—Fergie, Q-Tip, GoonRock
“Pink Shoe Laces”—The Chordettes
“Speechless”—Naomi Scott
“Alpha”—Little Destroyer
“Animal”—AG, MOONZz
“Born for This”—CRMNL
“This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”—Taylor Swift
“Champagne Supernova”—Oasis
“Clean”—Hey Violet
The Jazz Age
Daisy & Gatsby
Jazz music blares across the lawn, its brassy notes filtering through the trees, softened by whispering, green foliage and delicate darkness.
I pause by an oak, bracing myself against the trunk while I take off my T-straps. Leaving the shoes there, I continue in my stockings, not really caring if they’re full of runs tomorrow.
The champagne I drank sparkles in my head, punctuating my dark thoughts like the fireflies winking on and off across the shadowed expanse of the lawn. I round the corner of a hedge, taking a last backward glance at the up-lit pinnacles and glowing gables of the great house from which I’m fleeing.
Tonight’s party is a masquerade, so I’m wearing a half mask covered in faux pearls, lent to me by my best friend, Jordan. Now that I’m away from everyone else, I could take the mask off, but it feels like a shield, like protection. A layer of mystery between me and whomever I may encounter.
I had to escape the party—“Gatsby’s party” they said. A man named Gatsby, though no one could tell me his first name and no one seemed to know where he was or what he looked like. I’ve never been to a party where the host was so scarce—it’s rude, I think, not to make oneself known to one’s guests. Especially when someone has a name like “Gatsby.”
I knew a Gatsby once, years ago. He went off to war, and I waited…I waited so long, until Mama and Daddy insisted I marry someone. It was odd, they said, for a young woman of twenty-two to be unmarried. I was on my way to being a dried-up old maid, they told me, and we couldn’t have that in the family, no we couldn’t. It wouldn’t do for a dynasty such as ours, old money with a name to uphold.
So I let Tom Buchanan tether me to him with a long string of pearls, roping me as surely as any pretty heifer being led to market. The wedding is in one week.
My family and I are staying with Tom’s parents at their Long Island estate until the big day. Afterward my parents will go back to Georgia, and I’ll stay here, to be Tom’s fire bell, his devoted wife, his dutiful escort to all business dinners and society affairs.
The world is changing. I know it. I feel it—I can taste it. But I’m being left behind. Once I’m married, I’ll be trapped in Tom’s family, and they’re high society, old money, like mine. That sort of wealth comes with expectations—rules I’m expected to follow, etiquette I’m supposed to know.
Sometimes I think the poor girls working as typists or clerks in the city have more freedom than I do. That’s why I let Jordan sneak me out of the house tonight so we could attend this party. It’s more than just a dance—it’s my last gasp of liberty before I resign myself to married life. The music is wild, the place is hopping, and the whole event is a speakeasy right out in the open—’shine flowing in fountains and damn the snoopers. I suppose someone with a house like that and money like that can just pay off the cops if they come poking around.
It was fun at first…and then as time passed and I saw nothing of the party’s host, I began to feel hollow. I could hear the clock in my head, ticking down the minutes until dawn, when I’d have to hobble home on weary feet and give myself up to the inevitable reality of being Mrs. Tom Buchanan, the oven in which the next generation will bake.
Mama hates it when I talk like that, but it’s true. To Tom, I’m a pretty little fool, a lovely trophy to be admired when I’m with him and to be used whenever he feels the urge. Of course, I say none of this aloud. I keep it in my head, where it belongs. That’s what good girls do. They know their place, and mine isn’t among the glad whirl of people howling and laughing and dancing their shoes to ribbons in Gatsby’s courtyard and halls. My place is amid huge rooms of silent, deadly elegance; endless beauty rituals to keep myself perfectly polished and pleasing to my husband; lawn parties and teas and occasional trips into town, where I must smile and keep my voice low and never speak out of turn.
And my alternative? Without any education or training, no money of my own? I’d have to rely on friends like Jordan, and she’s tied to her own family. She’d be shunned in our circles for helping me, and I can’t destroy her like that. Which means I have no choice. To survive, I have to marry, and I’ve said no to far too many suitors—waited far too long, hoping one person would return and ask me.
He never did, and I can’t put this off any longer. That string of exquisite pearls is constricting around my neck. It’ll be over soon, and then I won’t feel anything.
While I wait for the noose to cinch tight, the green gloom behind this hedge is a decent place to hide.
I pluck idly at the leaves of the bushes as I walk, snatching, tearing, sprinkling the bits like confetti over the grass.
I don’t know what I expected from this party tonight. I knew its host couldn’t be the same Gatsby—my Gatsby. That Gatsby was a soldier with no family or fortune. Penniless and perfect. He had the sweetest face, the warmest brown eyes, and a smile that said I was the most important soul in his world—the most exquisite being in the universe.
I miss that smile.
Something rustles behind me and I whirl around. I suppose I shouldn’t be out here in the dark without a companion—some grifter could be lurking around, looking to do mischief.
“Is anyone there?” I ask.
Another rustling step, and a broad-shouldered, suit-clad figure emerges from the gloom. I can’t see his face, but he’s big—a regular bruno. His mask is carved in the shape of a leering, fanged face, like a demon I once saw in a stage performance of Faust.
“I was just going back to my friends,” I murmur, backing away.
