Her smile was fond and pitying, and I despised myself for being both cynical and naïve.

  Daisy kept going.

  “Wait,” I said again.

  She turned back. “You’re a dear for worrying, but I’m just fine.” She smoothed her skirt. “I don’t need him anymore.”

  “Then why do you need any of this?” I asked. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ve dreamed of this. And look at the trouble Jay’s gone to. Do you really think I’d let Tom ruin it?”

  I stood with the haunting emptiness of getting exactly what I’d wanted and finding it hollow. Finally, she was casting Tom aside. But she still wanted all of this. It wouldn’t end with Tom. She’d be the prize of the next man who’d have her. She’d keep making herself into a smaller, paler version of herself. She’d keep shoving Daisy Fabrega-Caraveo into the shape of Daisy Fay.

  The only man I knew who wouldn’t do that to her was the man I, selfishly and shamefully, wanted for myself.

  He loved her. He would be good to her. He would let her be Daisy Fabrega-Caraveo. It was his arm she belonged on tonight. But I didn’t know if she was thinking clearly enough to know it.

  I followed after her. “Daisy.”

  She only stopped when she found Jordan.

  “I’m going to go dress,” she said, and flitted off.

  “Daisy, listen to me,” I said. “Please.”

  “Nick,” Jordan said. “Stop.” It was as much reassurance as command.

  Daisy squeezed my hand. “I know what I want.” Her laugh was an echo of that laugh in the hall, and she said with delighted surprise, “I truly know what I want.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Jordan told me. “We’re very good with each other. She takes care of me every time I panic before a tournament. I took care of her before that ridiculous party with the Buchanans. We’ve done this a hundred times.”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  “Gatsby?” I had looked for him, and now I had called his name a dozen times. But his name was on so many lips that my voice vanished into the chorus.

  “Jay?” I tried instead.

  The guests were so drunk on champagne and beauty that there was no use asking anyone.

  Then all conversation condensed into a single shared gasp.

  Daisy stood at the top of the curved staircase, radiant as a fairy queen. Her skirt was a cloud of tulle, and each step revealed another layer in a slightly different shade of pastel pink or blue.

  Tiny roses—were they real, or well-made fabric flowers?—trimmed the neckline of her gown. Garlands trailed each seam of her skirt like seaweed. The cape flowing from her shoulders gave the effect of enormous wings that flashed between powder blue and green. Pink and white peonies and what I thought were water lilies crowned her hair. She even carried a scepter of a wand topped with a gold-edged bloom. In her other hand, she held a bouquet so enormous she had to brace it against her waist. It was a globe of the same peonies and water lilies, with a train of blue ribbons that each ended in a rose or a bow or a cluster of orange blossoms.

  She made a perfect, demure bow. Her skirt billowed as she lowered herself, and then she rose.

  She looked like she was floating. She looked like a water lily who’d taken the form of a girl. I couldn’t have been the only one thinking it. She seemed to be the living equivalent of Monet’s paintings. Nymphéas, Reflection of a Weeping Willow.

  The mischief in her smile told me everything. By looking like a flower grown from water, Daisy was reminding everyone that she had braved the sea. Her dress harkened to the image everyone had of her underwater. By morning, every paper would sing not only of her beauty but her dauntlessness. She would be the debutante who laughed in the face of her own mortality. And really, what did anyone here want to be except young and lovely and fearless?

  Every camera rushed to capture her. And any camera that didn’t flashed in the moment after, when Jordan Baker appeared next to Daisy Fay.

  Daisy shifted to one side to make room for both their skirts. Jordan had changed from her simple dress to a gown as spectacular as Daisy’s. It was the blue of a gas flame, and even with the weight of the lavender beading, the skirt moved and floated. It turned to deep purples and greens toward the hem, the colors of a peacock wandering a garden by moonlight.

  Magnesium cubes popped in every direction. The sharp smell filled the air alongside delighted gasps and thrilled murmuring.

  “Is that…”

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s Jordan Baker.”

  Before the end of the night, they would call it the fashion statement of the season. An upstart socialite had burst onto the social scene with a golfer whose style matched her skill. The Muldoons and Hornbeams would express their pity for any other girl debuting this summer.

  Within days, newspaper columns would herald Jordan and Daisy as an illustration of the new age, one in which girls and women forged their own paths across ballrooms and into the world.

  * * *

  “Nick.” Tom shoved his way through the crowd. “What’s going on here?”

  In that same moment I spotted Gatsby. He stood near the base of the stairs, watching Jordan and Daisy descend.

  I expected him crestfallen, wondering why, if Daisy wasn’t alongside Tom, she couldn’t be alongside him.

  But Gatsby looked contented, filled with new and endless pride.

  On her way by, Daisy clasped his hand and squeezed it, and then she and Jordan progressed toward the gardens.

  “Good for her.” Gatsby said it so wistfully I thought he might have been talking to himself. But he turned to me and said again, “Good for her.”

  Adoring guests gathered close to Daisy and Jordan, giving them only enough room to sweep out into the flower-scented night.

  When Tom couldn’t get to them, he settled for me. “What’s the meaning of all this?” he asked.

  Gatsby’s smile was catching. I was smiling with him now, both of us watching Daisy and Jordan.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know.”

  “You think this is funny?” Tom asked. “If Daisy had had a debut at my family’s country club, you and half these people wouldn’t be allowed in unless you were serving the drinks.”

  Gatsby snapped away from his tranquil state. “Get out of my house,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Tom asked. “Everything’s gone to hell since the two of you came into her life, and you want me out of your house? And you.” He looked to me now. The louder he spoke, the more his voice blurred, showing just how drunk he was.

  This was what I thought of as he threw a slur at me. He’d probably been holding it back since the night I first came to East Egg. I thought of how drunk Tom sounded so that the full weight of the word wouldn’t strike me.

  Pulling back from the moment slowed it down. But then it sped forward, and I saw Gatsby grabbing Tom and shoving him toward the door.

  Tom threw a punch, but in his stupor he’d lost his polo player’s aim. His fist hit the banister, and he howled at the impact.

  “Do you need help finding the way out?” Gatsby gripped Tom’s jacket and turned him. “I’m happy to oblige.”

  Tom elbowed Gatsby in the stomach.

  The crowd was pulling back from the fight, leaving room, and I rushed forward.

  Gatsby grunted with the impact. But he straightened up in a way that revealed a soldier’s bearing and readiness. It was in such contradiction with his typical leisurely stance, as though the specter of fourteen-year-old Gatsby had come to see Daisy’s debut.

  Martha took Tom Buchanan by the tie of his tuxedo. She stood two stairs up. The gentle slope of her skirt looked like a dark sea she was rising from. The scalloped hem moved like the edges of waves.

  The world slowed again, and the only thing I saw clearly was the intricate embroidery on Martha’s dress. It encircled her sleeves and swept along the skirt, and I thought I remembered her telling me that it was patterned after the embroidery on a family challah cover. I remembered her telling me about how she slipped pieces of her life with her family into her clothes. A pocket square matched to a headscarf of her grandmother’s. Lace chosen because it was nearly identical to the veil her mother had worn to light Shabbat candles. And always, the thread from her grandfather’s tallis on her wrist.

  Martha carried her family with her. She wore their history on her body.

  How could I face my own family now, when I had heard Tom say that word, and I couldn’t even move my own body from where I stood?

  The world only sped up when I heard Martha’s voice.

  “You touch him again,” she said, “you touch anyone here again, my heel’s going up your ass. And I’m quite fond of them. They’re new. Don’t make me waste a Louie heel and an almond toe on someone like you.”

  * * *

  Tom didn’t leave the house so much as stumble out of it. He shoved away each partygoer who tried to sway him from his car. A little too much embalming fluid? Maybe we should call you a cab. He flicked his hands at the women as though shooing away moths. He pushed the men aside, slurring about Yale and the fine whiteness of the Buchanan line.

  “Jay.” Daisy flitted up to Gatsby, her gown a cloud around her. “We can’t let him go like that. He’s practically liquid. Could I borrow your car?”

  “I’ll go with you,” Gatsby said.

  My anger felt woven into my shirt fabric. At nothing more than my cousin’s request, Gatsby was again mired in the mess that was Daisy and Tom.

  Within seconds of ignition, Tom ran the blue coupe into a stone retaining wall. When he backed away from it, it looked like a wheel had fallen off, but still, he drove it. The blue coupe listed on one side, the scrape of metal growing louder as he sped off.

  “Come on.” Jordan pulled me outside.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She led me toward the cream finish and chrome of her car. “They’re going after a Buchanan on wheels.” Graceful as Daisy’s bow, she opened the driver’s side door and slipped into the green interior. “Do you really think they’re not going to need our help?”

  We were too far behind to see the blue of Tom’s car. But sometimes we caught glimpses of Gatsby’s, a distant point of lavender. We raced past West Egg village and toward the Ash Heaps.

  Jordan watched the road with such focus it cinched her eyebrows, but she spared a moment to scrutinize my face.

  “What are you sulking about now?”

  “He’s still following her,” I said. “He’ll always be following her. No matter what she does.”

  Jordan readjusted her grip on the wheel, as though steeling her patience. “Who did Jay get into a fight over tonight? Daisy? No. You.”

  “Because Tom was ruining Daisy’s party,” I said.

  “Wrong,” Jordan said. “It’s you, Nick. Which you’d already know if you’d stopped to think about it.” She looked over again. “You’re safe with him. And I don’t say that about people easily.”

  The landscape around us grew gray. Hills of ash rose from the ground. The windows of houses and a café punctuated the dark. So did the lights of the service station where a lavender car sat parked. Tom’s blue coupe was nowhere in sight.

  Jordan pulled to a stop.

  A group of young men, all red- and blond-haired, were cornering Gatsby. Two women stood by, a golden blonde I soon recognized as my cousin—more by her dress than her features—and a red-haired woman I placed as Myrtle Wilson.

  Myrtle noticed us before Daisy or Gatsby did, and she ran toward us.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Myrtle flapped her hands. “They’ve got it all wrong, you’ve got to do something!”

  “What happened?” Jordan asked.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Myrtle fiddled with the bracelets on her wrists. “I saw Tom’s car, so I ran out to try to catch him, but he just kept going. He didn’t even stop. And then that purple car came out of nowhere right behind him, and the woman, she braked so hard, she stopped so fast so she wouldn’t hit me. But I was already running out of the way. I really thought she was going to hit me.”

  I thought she might snap the bracelets off her wrists. “I was trying to run out of the way,” she said, “and I fell, and that boy”—Myrtle pointed a varnished nail in the direction of Gatsby—“he got out of the car to help me up and make sure I wasn’t hurt, and my brothers saw it, and now they think there’s something between us. Oh”—she bent her knees and then straightened up again—“they know something. They know I’ve been going out. They just don’t know the right thing.”

  Myrtle’s brothers were talking at Gatsby, the flood lamps showing the motion of their mouths.

  One of them shoved Gatsby’s shoulder.

  I ran toward them. “Lay off.”

  Jordan followed, her polished shoes kicking up ash. “What seems to be the trouble here, gentlemen?”

  “This character’s been ruining our sister,” one of them said.

  “And what would make you think a thing like that?” Jordan asked.

  “She’s been sneaking off at all hours of the day,” another said. “Are we supposed to think it’s some kind of coincidence that she runs right out and this guy is holding her hands like he’s about to recite Shakespeare?”

  I looked at Gatsby, begging him with my stare. Tell them it was Tom. Just tell them.

  “He thinks he can just come in here with his fancy car and disrespect our sister,” another said. “Not so long as she’s got us.” He shoved Gatsby’s other shoulder.

  I lurched forward.

  Jordan caught my elbow so hard it was almost a slap. “Yes, why don’t you turn this into a brawl?” she whispered at me, and then returned to her usual voice. “Boys, I think we’ve got a whole misunderstanding here. Don’t we, Daisy?”

  She looked at my cousin, who was frozen in all ways except how the ash-filled air stirred her hair and gown.

  Jordan gave a nod, encouraging and prodding.

  Daisy’s stricken expression warmed.

  “I’m so very embarrassed,” she said.

  Every one of the Wilson brothers found the source of that lovely voice and the girl who went with it.

  “It’s me, not him.” Daisy tilted her chin with great apology. “I’ve just been taking your sister into the city to have a little fun. We’ve struck up a bit of a friendship, that’s all. I didn’t mean any harm. I thought we’d see the park, and I wanted to buy her this lipstick at B. Altman. Oh, she reminds me so much of my sisters back home, and I miss them so very much.”

  Myrtle’s brothers looked almost sedated by Daisy. She would be the ethereal dream that floated across their closed eyelids tonight.

  Daisy didn’t so much cast spells as she was them, and the enchantment of her had saved us. But I despised it. There was something monstrous about the way my cousin breezed through the world. Maybe she didn’t care about what burned up behind her. More likely, she didn’t know. She never looked back to check.

  CHAPTER XXX

  When Daisy left the ring of light around the service garage, I followed her.

  “You let him do this,” I said.

  Daisy turned around. “Excuse me?”

  I caught up with her. “You followed Tom, and then you let Jay take the blame for all this.”

  “First, I didn’t follow Tom for Tom’s sake,” Daisy said. “He was under the table. I followed him for everyone else on the road. Second, I didn’t let Jay take the blame. I just told them I’m Myrtle’s friend, didn’t I?”

  “As though you’d be friends with anyone who’s not in the society pages.” I watched the night air fill the petals of her skirt. “Are you still going to marry him?”

  Her laugh was in tune with the stirring of clouds above us. “I doubt it. Goodbye to all that if this is how he behaves.”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, you can jump up and down if you want,” Daisy said. “Don’t pretend you’re not overjoyed.”

  But I wanted more than for Daisy to shove Tom aside.

  I wanted Daisy to either love Gatsby or let him go.

  And maybe that was why I said, “He did this all for you. Do you know that?”

  “What are you talking about?” Daisy asked.

  “The debut,” I said. “All of it. It was for you. To make you the debutante of the season.”

  “Oh, is that what it was for?” Her laugh was a cutting chirp. “Good of you to tell me. I’d be so lost without young men like you standing by to tell me things.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means I’m not your little soap bubble,” she said.

  “Whose?” I asked.

  “Yours,” she said. “Jay’s. Everyone’s.”

  “You came here to become exactly what you are,” I said. “You wanted this. You wanted to be the beautiful girl everyone’s talking about.”

  “So what?” she asked. “Am I not allowed to want that?”

  “Of course you are,” I said. “And we were trying to get you that. We were getting you everything you wanted.”

  “I don’t care if you were getting me the blessing of the archangel Gabriel himself,” she said. “You should have told me what you were doing. I’m not about to be the center of any of your little machinations without my knowledge.”

  “Oh?” I came closer, the ash-bitter night between us. “Is that why you didn’t bother telling me you’d disowned me before I even got to New York?”

  “I didn’t disown you,” she said.

  “To everyone here you did,” I said. “I wasn’t good enough for you.”

  “Yes, you were.” Her voice softened into pleading. “I brought you here. I convinced your parents. Don’t tell me you weren’t good enough.”

  “Fine.” My voice grew a hard shell. “Then too brown.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said.

  “You told Tom that I was your housekeeper’s son,” I said. “You could not have made it clearer that I didn’t belong to you, that I wasn’t part of your family.”