Chapter Six
3 years, 14 weeks, 0 days
Kayla’s front lawn is crowded with cars. I wedge my Beetle into a parking space between a tree and a BMW, and rush into the warmly lit house.
“I come bearing gifts!” I shout above the already thumping music. There must be a hundred people here, if not more. A little get-together, Kayla said. Pft. I could power a small jet plane on the body heat crammed into this room.
I dump the cups in the kitchen, where bottles of Jack and Bacardi crowd the counters. I guard my frosting jealously, nibbling on it as I meander through the party looking for Kayla. The usual writhing group of dancers congregates around the speakers, and the equally writhing make-outs are happening on every chair and couch. Someone throws a roll of purple streamers around, someone has on a plastic horsehead mask that creeps me out, and someone else is wiping puke off the bookshelf with a TV remote. I don’t recognize half the people in here; some of them must be from Midvale High. Kayla’s in the garden, a gorgeous gathering of ivy trellises and a gently burbling fountain. She’s breathtaking—her blue tube top and white skirt make her look like a tanned tennis goddess. She’s talking to some of Avery’s crowd, but when she sees me she trots over, smiling.
“Hey! You made it!”
“Yeah, cups are in the kitchen.”
“Awesome. Thank you so much. You look really great.”
“You, too. Gonna be on high alert tonight, fight off those creepers with a baseball bat if I have to.”
“Oh, chill out.” She laughs. “Go get something to drink!”
When I come back with a rum and Coke, Kayla’s gone. I look around for her and find her dancing with some guy. He isn’t grinding on her or staring at her tits 99 percent of the time, so he’s fine with me. For now. When he happens to catch my eye I point two fingers at my eyes and then at him in an I’m-watching-you-fuckstick warning, and he must get it because he smiles nervously back and nods. Good boy.
“Threatening the male populace as usual?” a familiar voice says. I turn to see Wren in a casual polo shirt and jeans. He’s clutching a drink, grinning in that sunny way and staring at me in that creepy hell-bent way.
“Yup. What’s up with you, homes? Why are you here? Oh, that’s right—you’re the super cool prez. You don’t tattle on boozers.”
“If I did tattle I wouldn’t be friends with quite so many people now, would I?”
“Ah, I see. You’re hungry for that popularity game.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “It’s not so much popularity as it’s . . . What’s the word? Amiable? I just like being liked.”
“Huh. Is that rooted in a deep-seated need for approval fostered by your alcoholic mother and workaholic father? That’d explain why you volunteer so much—trying to do good because no one does good for you.”
He looks like I zapped him. I wave my hand and laugh.
“I was kidding. I get crazy conclusion-y when I get buzzed.”
“How did you—” He stops himself. “I guess I should stop asking that at this point. You and he never cease to amaze me.”
He. He means Jack. I point at his cup to get him off the subject.
“Whaddya drinking?”
“Grape juice.”
I laugh. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I’m the designated driver for quite a few people tonight.”
“Ahh, prez.” I slap his back and he slops juice on the floor. “Always so straight-edge. You gotta learn to live a little!”
“I do! I live constantly!”
“Yeah, but it’s all living for other people and shit. No time to yourself. You’re gonna start resenting everybody pretty soon if you keep doing stuff for them and not you.”
Wren looks away. I smile.
“Look, sorry. I’m poking my nose where it definitely doesn’t belong. Like in an armpit.” I stop. “Gross.”
Wren sheepishly looks back at me and laughs, and I laugh with him. There’s a silence the music fills, and before it can get too uncomfortable, I change the subject.
“The football team sure doesn’t like Jack, huh?”
“You could say that.” Wren nods. “They liked him even less freshman year.”
“And then what happened?”
“And then Jack snapped. Before Christmas break, they tried to give him a swirly in the bathroom, and, well . . . Let’s just say Brett’s nose wasn’t broken in three places from playing football. And Jeremy won’t stay in the same room as Jack for more than a minute for a good reason.”
“So he beat them up.”
“All four of them,” Wren confirms.
“Jesus,” I hiss.
“He’s done worse,” Wren says. His eyes are distant, like he’s deep in a memory I can’t see. The words ring ominously, and I’m both curious and concerned. But the alcohol is hitting me quickly. I can only grab on to thoughts for a half second before they slip away. The song changes to something I like for once, and I scream a little and shove my cup at Wren.
“Hold this! I gotta go dance!”
“You dance?”
“Uh, yeah, I am well-versed in the butt-tango, thank you.”
Wren looks between the dance floor and me, his eyes darting back and forth.
“You wanna dance with me?” I shout.
“What?” His face drains pale in a split second.
“C’mon! It’ll be fun!”
“I don’t dance.”
“Yeah, I don’t poop.”
“What? That sounds a little unhealthy.”
“C’mon, prez!” I grab his hand and pull him toward the “dance floor,” which is just ten-by-ten of carpet in the corner pushed free of couches. I do my stupidest dances—making myself look like an idiot so Wren won’t feel so uptight about dancing “right.” People who don’t dance worry about making fools of themselves, but when you make a fool of yourself as often as I do, dancing is kind of easy. Sort of. I still keep thinking people will point and laugh at the way my fat jiggles, but the urge to push those nasty thoughts out of my head has me dancing harder. Wren laughs when I kneel on the floor and try to do a breakdance head-spin. I end up taking down two people before Kayla kicks me in a friendly manner to get me to stop. Wren bobs a little to the beat, looking nervous as hell. I dance around him, mostly, and when a slower song comes on, I put his arms around my waist and show him how to slow dance. Except he already knows.
“You lied! You do know how to dance.”
“Ballroom classes,” he says. “My mom made me take them when I was little.”
He doesn’t have cologne on like Jack, but his natural smell is pleasant compared to all of the sweaty boys who are dripping Axe from every pore. It’s then I notice someone sitting on the couch on the other side of the house, staring at me. The icy blue of his eyes is very familiar. What is he doing here? Did Kayla invite him? And why does his gaze linger where Wren’s arms are around my waist?
Finally, I get bored of being stared at, and rush back to where our drinks are. Wren follows, downing his grape juice in one thirsty gulp. I do the same, the stale Coke burning as it goes down.
“I’m wayyyyy too hot,” I say. “Physically my booty is hot, but I’m also hot temperature-wise, so I’m going outside.”
Wren laughs. “All right. Thanks for the dance.”
“No, thank you, prez.”
“Wren! There you are!”
I watch Kayla run over to him, beaming. Wren almost drops his cup and his glasses slide off his face. Kayla bends to pick them up for him and he stammers an apology. I take my exit and let them fumble through the awkward.
I swallow cool air and try to catch my breath. I haven’t danced in, well, forever. I hadn’t been invited to parties after what happened with Nameless in Florida. His influence spread far and wide, so I was kind of barred from any and all get-togethers. Not that they invited me, the fat girl, to begin with. But still. I’d danced before but this was the first night in a long time, and it felt good. I sweated off some of my worry over Mom in those few minutes. And to think, I danced with Nameless’s cousin. The devil’s kin! I laugh and slap the bench I’m sitting on.
“Hitting inanimate objects now? Your violence knows no bounds,” a bored voice says. I don’t even have to turn around to know who it belongs to.
“Jackoff!” I slap the bench harder. “Weren’t you being paid to bed a girl tonight? Where is she? Did you bring her?”
“She canceled. Her father had a stroke.”
“Poor guy. Probably will have another stroke when he finds out the money he sends her for college goes to blow and hookers.”
“I’m not a hooker.”
“You’re an escort.”
“They’re separate things.”
“But you get paid to bed girls.”
“Women are different. Most of them aren’t sex-obsessed like men are. I get paid to take women out to dinner, too.” He sniffs. “Or go to weddings and high school reunions as their arm candy. Or I pretend to be their boyfriend to make their exes jealous, or I cover for their lesbianism in front of their more traditional family. Sex is only sometimes a part of it.”
I quash the weird wave of relief I feel at his words. I couldn’t care less if he bangs the entire population of suburbia, but now that I know he doesn’t, a bunch of anxious weight I didn’t even know I was carrying lifts from my chest.
“Excuses, excuses!” I crow. “Come! Come sit by me. It’s a nice bench. Nice and lovely on the butt.”
“You’re drunk,” he counters, and runs his hand through his bangs. They flop back in his eyes like he’s in a soft drink commercial.
“Yeah, and you’re ugly, but do I complain about it? No! Because I don’t complain about things that I can’t change. That’s called intelligence. How’d you find the party, anyway?”
“I remember Kayla squeaking to me about it earlier today. Then I saw you with the red cups and put two and two together.”
“Wow. So smart. Such intelligence.”
“You reek of rum.” He sits by me and sniffs the air.
“It’s a good thing I’m not a sexy-ass pirate, otherwise I’d repeat the same line to you over and over about the rum being gone and make a movie out of it.”
“You like Johnny Depp, then.”
“Like him? The man is my dreamboat on my dream car in my dream house in my actual dreams!”
Jack’s lips crumple into a half sneer, half incredulous scoff. “Riiight.”
“Ah, what do you know about sexy?” I sputter and wave him off. “You know nuthin’.”
“I know some things, I like to think.”
“Yeah? Don’t tell me—sappy compliments are your idea of sexy. You just lay ’em on thick and hope some girl—I’m sorry, your client—is stupid enough to buy them.”
“Most of my clients are fairly stupid. And shallow. It’s sort of inevitable when you work for a club that hires you for your looks.”
He sounds tired; that exhausted, world-weary edge is in his voice. I lean against his back. His spine is rigid, his shoulder blades a comforting sort of hardness on my own.
“D-Did you at least get to use the rope?” I hiccup.
“Not at all.”
“Dang. Must’ve been some nice rope, since she was rich. Like, golden and shit, with gold threads, and, like, sapphires in the knots.”
Maybe I’m so drunk I hallucinate, but I swear I feel him laugh, the rumbling vibrating through his back and the sound clear. But it’s quickly swallowed up by the music before I can concentrate through the drunken stupor and determine if it was an actual laugh or just another angry scoff. The garden is quieter, people making out behind bushes. I point at the slightly yellow fountain.
“Somebody peed.”
“I’d bet money it was you.”
“I wish! How awesome would it be to pee in that thing! Us girls don’t have the luxury of a portable piss-tube, okay? We can only pee on things we can squat on. A fountain is not one of said things.”
“With your pigheaded stubbornness, I’m sure you’d find a way.”
“Absolutely. I’m gonna try it right now.”
I stand a little too fast, wobbling on my feet. Jack grabs my wrist, pulling me back to the safety of the bench, but when I collapse backward on it, I sit slightly on his knee. I squeal and reposition quickly.
“Phew! That was almost a disaster. Dis-ASS-ter. Get it? I’m so good.”
“You’re so drunk,” he insists.
“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”
The fountain burbles, and somewhere a cricket starts up his high-pitched engine legs.
“I wanted to thank you.” I squint hard at Jack’s face.
“For putting you in your place, you little hellion?”
“I don’t even know what hellion means. Where do you get all these words? You’re like that one nerdy dude they put on Jeopardy! all the time. Minus the neckbeard. And the English degree.”
“It’s like, a crazy person. An insane sort of . . . tornado type of person. Someone who just tears through people like paper in his or her madness.”
“Oh. Yup. Cool that they made an entire word just to describe me.”
“It’s Shakespearian.”
“He had a vision. Of me. A million years in the future. And that caused him to make up that word. Little-known fact.”
The world is spinning. I’ve definitely had too much to drink. Somewhere someone breaks something made of glass and yells, “Oh shit.” I see Kayla rush upstairs through the windows with a broom and dustpan.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” I start again. “I wanted to thank you.”
“For what, exactly? I thought you hate me.”
“Oh, I do! But I still owe you a thanks. You . . . It’s hard to explain, but I never thought, um. I never thought. It’s, when you’re someone like me, you don’t think it’ll ever happen to you. I just sort of gave up on it, you know? I was happy with never getting one, because people like me don’t get them, or deserve them, really. We’re not the sort of people those things happen to.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” He narrows his eyes.
“I just!” I shout, then whisper. “I just wanted to say. Um. Thank you. For. Um. Kissing me.”
He arches a brow. “That was a joke kiss. You were annoying me with the rumors; I had to put a stop to them somehow. It wasn’t serious.”
“Oh, I know! I think we, uh, previously discussed that, actually. No, I mean, I know. It was, ha-ha, definitely a joke! Just. Thank you anyway.”
Jack goes very still, and then looks at me like he’s seeing me in a new light all of a sudden.
“Do you mean— You’ve never— That was your first kiss?”
“Ha-ha. I mean, it’ll be my last, too, since, you know, people like me don’t get kissed, except when it’s a joke of course. Ha-ha. But it was, uh, an experience. And. And I’m happy it happened to me, since I never thought someone would ever want to do something like that with me. So. Um. Yeah. Thank you. I mean it.”
“You’ve never—”
“No! But that’s not really weird for someone like me; I mean, look at me!” I gesture to my clothes and face. “I’m not, uh, you know, Kayla. I’m not even close. And plus I have too many huge dumb issues. I’m never gonna trust anybody to do those things with. But still. It was nice. And cool. And a joke, duh, but things can still be nice even if they’re jokes, I think. Ha-ha.”
Jack’s blue eyes are shocked, or maybe I’m just awfully drunk.
“But you’re so—” he starts.
“Loud? Annoying? Bitter? Yeah, I know. Guys have called me that before.”
“I was going to say,” Jack adds sharply, “confident. Charismatic. And cheerful. You’re like . . . It just seems like a lot of guys would’ve gravitated to . . . I don’t know.”
“There you go again with the really gross flattery. I’m not a client, okay? So you don’t have to flatter me when you don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it. I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“Except when you’re working.”
“But I’m not working now. There is no girl I’m being paid to woo here, so what I’m saying is honest and true.”
“Well, apparently you haven’t quite flipped the correct switches from work back to your normal life, so. It’s okay. The compliments are nice, even if you don’t mean them.”
“I mean them, all right? Stop questioning my sincerity.”
“Stop saying lies.” I sigh. “I’m none of those nice things you just said. But it’s okay. I can pretend.”
He rubs his forehead. “God, you’re infuriating.”
“Ooh, that’s another good adjective to add to my list!”
“If I had known—” He runs a hand through his tawny hair, but it flops back down to shade his eyes. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have done it. A first kiss . . . that’s something a girl should cherish. It’s something you should share with someone you really love. You shouldn’t lose it in a petty high school battle of wills to someone you hate.”
“Yeah, well. Never gonna love someone again, so. It’s okay. I’m glad I lost it, at least! It’s sort of nice to have gotten it over with.”
“You’re so sure of that, aren’t you?”
“Sure of what?” I blink.
“That you’re never going to love anyone again. You said it with such . . . conviction. Like it’s set in stone.”
“Oh! But it is!” I smile.
“So you won’t, in any one of the endless millions and trillions of possibilities that are your future selves, ever fall in love with someone again?”
“Yup! That’s right. It’s been three years, fourteen weeks, and zero days since I fell in love. And I’m never going to do it ever again. I learned my lesson.”
I get up and stretch to break the awkward quiet between us.
“I’m gonna get some more booze. You want any?” I ask.
“I don’t drink.”
“Oh ho! Is that so? You and Wren, both terrible Goody Two-shoes! Whodathunk it.”
“We used to be friends, in middle school,” Jack says softly. “He and I.”
“And then what happened?”
Jack looks up at me, icy eyes glowing with an unholy fire in the faint light from the house. The shadows hug his cheekbones, making him look savagely handsome and savagely terrifying all at the same time.
“I did something very bad.”
His tone sends shivers down my spine, but I keep my face light and unaffected.
“Oh. Like, uh, put snow down his pants? Kissed his girlfriend? Or does it have something to do with Sophia?”
Jack laughs. He really laughs this time, the sound clear like when he was with Alice. But nothing about it is pleasant or amused. It’s bitter, old, full of guilt. Jack gets up and leaves; my curiosity roars through me and darts my hand out to grab his shirt to pull him back and make him explain. I trip on the lip of the fountain, and all at once there’s a horrible jolting down my spine, a heavy weight falling next to me, and water in my nose, my ears, my mouth. The cold shock whisks my booze-haze away and leaves me sputtering and struggling to get out of the fountain. Jack is likewise wet from his pants down, and glowering at me, his jeans clinging to his thighs and showing me much more than I ever wanted to see. The entire party inside is mashed up against the windows, looking at us and laughing, and the garden crowd is practically rolling with laughter.
“How do you fall in there? It’s like two feet wide.”
“Fucking idiots!”
“Carl peed in there, too!”
Jack and I drip in solidarity.
“You did that on purpose,” Jack mutters, and I swear I see his eyebrow twitch with controlled rage.
“N-No! I tripped and— Oh God, there’s something green on your crotch. Not that I was looking there. It just happened to be very green! Right there!”
He picks a wad of algae off his crotch and throws it onto the face of a laughing guy nearby. It makes a wet splat, and Jack is gone before I have the chance to apologize properly. Not that I was going to at all, since I’m at war with him and what am I thinking, apologizing? And thanking him for kissing me? What the hell am I on other than ethanol-based depressants? I have to work this accident for all it’s worth! I hold up my hands and pump my fist, shouting.
“Take that, Jackass Hunter!”
The party laughs, some people shake their heads. I go back inside, squishing over to a shocked Kayla.
“Sorry about your floor. I love you. Have I mentioned that lately? I really love you and please don’t be mad I shoved your crush into a fountain, please, it was an accident but I’m making it look like it wasn’t because that’s how smooth I am.”
There’s an anxious span of quiet in which I reconsider all my life choices up until this moment. She wrinkles her nose and smiles.
“You smell like pee.”
I exhale in relief, inhale, and immediately regret it.
“I smell hells like pee.”