Dean snuck out a couple hours ago, but I’m too nervous to sleep. He’s told me so much about the prank over the last few days, I almost feel like I’m part of it, even if all I’m doing is waiting up and playing video games.
The call comes in the middle of the night. I hear the phone ring. Hear Dad’s feet stomping down the stairs like he’s trying to punch through the floorboards. The den door flies open, and he squints in the glow of the TV.
“Where’s your brother?”
I hit pause on the controller and try to look as honest as possible. “I don’t know.”
He makes an angry noise through his nose like it’s my fault Dean is gone and then stomps back upstairs. Normally, I do my best to stay away from my dad when he’s pissed off, but then I hear Dean’s truck creep into the driveway. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as watching the perfect son get in trouble for a change, and I hurry upstairs so as not to miss a second of it.
Pam wobbles from left to right in a frantic sideways kind of pacing. Her lips recite silent lists of worries, and wrinkles I’d never noticed appear around her brown eyes. She always looks at least eight years older whenever one of us is in trouble. Dad’s head is a red balloon on the verge of popping. That means things are bad. My body casually leans against the floral wallpaper while my mind claps its hands together with glee. The side door opens—it’s the only one that doesn’t creak—and Dean steps inside. When he sees the welcoming committee, his mouth falls open and everything in his face says, Oh, shit.
“Are you in trouble?” Pam twists her fingers while she waits for the answer.
“What? No.”
Dad’s head deflates.
“Yeah, so,” Dean pastes on a smile, but his eyes are shifty. “I just came by to get some stuff, but then I’m going back to Ethan’s house.”
In the middle of the night. Riiight.
Balloon-head Dad is back. “You’re not leaving this house for the rest of the night. Especially not to go pull a senior prank.”
The cocky smile rips in half, and Minotaur Dean emerges. “You told them?” he hisses at me.
“I didn’t tell anybody shit.”
“Spencer. Language.” Pam locks the side door behind Dean. “We got a phone call from the president of the booster club. Somebody tipped off the administration. They’re going to the school tonight.”
“We’re lucky that people care about seeing you play football,” says Dad. “There’s nothing there that’ll link you to the prank, is there?”
Dean’s face goes pale. “I gotta go warn the guys.”
My dad’s lips disappear between his teeth. “You. Are. Not. To. Leave. This. House.”
“You don’t understand. I just came home because I forgot the flamingoes. Everyone else is still there setting up the prank. Ethan, Mikey, Joel . . .”
Hope. I remember Hope is there. “Call them,” I say. “Call them right now.”
Dean pulls out his phone and dials Ethan. We wait and wait and wait, but it goes to voicemail. “Fuck.”
“Dean. Language.”
He leaves a quick voicemail warning, then some texts, then calls a couple more times. There is no response. He swings his phone around like he wants to throw it against the wall. “He’s not answering his phone. This is just wasting time, and they’re all gonna be screwed. I’ve gotta go up there.”
“No. What you gotta do is go up to your room and stay there.” Dad’s red eyes say it would be dangerous to argue.
Dean moves like he’s going to leave again anyway, and Dad grabs his shoulder. Minotaur vs. Minotaur. Their horns clash like stags fighting over a deer, but we all know Dean’s already lost. At times like this, I remember just how big my dad really is.
“You’ll go to your room if I have to take you there myself.”
Dean turns away from the door, but he’s still angry as hell, a teakettle about to shoot steam, and it pops out of his mouth before he can stop it. “This is bullshit.”
As soon as he says it, his face pales. We don’t swear at my dad. Ever. (In front of him, yes. But at him, never.) He’s old-school southern—the kind who believes in respecting your elders and belt whippings—and the way he looks right now, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t trade places with my brother for anything. Dad’s hand lashes out, and for a second, I think he’s going to smack Dean, but instead he grabs Dean’s phone.
“Your room. Now. You can have your phone back tomorrow.”
Dean goes. Neither of us argue that taking Dean’s phone hurts the wrong people. There’s no chance of him changing his mind once he’s made a Dad Decree.
I mutter something about my video games and slink back downstairs. I don’t think it even registers with them. Dean’s shadow hides me pretty well.
I grab my phone from the coffee table. I’m not friends with the seniors, but I can at least try Hope. I pull her up in my contact list and hit the call button. It feels like going back in time. Her voice makes me jump, but it’s just the pre-recorded, leave-a-message message. I text “CALL ME! PLEASE!!!” and try calling a couple more times, just in case, but get the same thing. So, I text “LEAVE NOW. ADMINISTRATION KNOWS.” Still nothing. Well, that’s it, then. There’s only one thing left to do.
Dean’s door is closed, but I think I’d rather do this on my own anyway. I walk right past my spot by the TV and stop in front of the door that leads outside. I can still hear my parents walking around upstairs, so I guess this is my only option. I tic-sniff approximately eighty-seven times while I freak out internally over whether this is really a good idea. I take a deep breath and release it. Here we go. I turn the handle, and the hinges shout my escape plan to the whole neighborhood. I grab my keys from the hook by the door. Run to the truck. The blinds are down, but I could recite the scene behind them. Now is the part when they wonder if they heard what they think they heard. I crank the engine. And now is the part when they know.
The side door swings open. A silhouette—my dad’s head in the porch light, blown up to full hot-air balloon.
I’m already gone.
I navigate through our neighborhood, and it occurs to me that I’m driving by myself for the very first time. And it’s nice. No one gripping the door handle and looking at me like I’m a time bomb. No one asking me if I feel sleepy. I focus on the road, and my tics hardly bother me at all. It also occurs to me that I’m breaking the teen curfew law, but at least there’s no one around to see.
When I get to the school, there are three cars parked in the south lot outside the cafeteria, and I recognize all of them. My lungs relax a little in my chest. I got here first. There’s still time.
I fly from my parking spot to the cafeteria doors, but something stops me. A circle of orange light that becomes Hope’s hand holding a cigarette and a surprised scowl framed by waves of white.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“Somebody’scoming they know about the prank.” I pause to breathe.
Realization flashes in her eyes. “That’s why you called before.”
Something about the fact that she’s still screening my calls hurts more than it should. I hope that she’ll say sorry or thank you or something, but she takes her damn sweet time puffing one last puff before she lets the cigarette fall to the ground.
Whatever. I’m still doing what I came here to do. As I pass through the cafeteria doors, I hear her say something behind me.
I turn. “What?”
“Where’s Dean? Your brother’s a douche, but he wouldn’t abandon his friends.”
“He didn’t. My parents won’t let him leave the house. They got a call—”
“What’s the narc doing here?” yells Mikey.
Hope shrugs.
The prank insanity taking place around me finally starts to sink in. The cafeteria has a huge row of windows, one glass panel right after the other, and they’ve been blacked out with paint except for where the letters S-E-N-I-O-R-S shine through, one giant letter on each window. It’s spelled out everywhere, even in the gaps between the tiny paper cups of water that cover the lunch tables. It’s everything Dean said it would be. And a lot of things he didn’t. In the hallway that leads away from the cafeteria, there are guys blasting door handles with cans of shaving cream and spray painting lockers with every four-letter word in existence. There’s no way my brother would have been cool with that. Mikey pops the lid off two huge buckets of what look like live crickets. This is bad. A Taxonomy of What Not To Get Caught Doing at School bad. The administration is going to annihilate them.
I remember why I’m here and yell, “People are coming! Y’all are gonna get caught!”
The guys debate the validity of this threat with a series of looks. Mikey stares at me, his face weirdly serious, and that’s when I notice. His eyes are all red, eyelids hanging lazily, and most of the other guys look the same way. Mikey cracks first, busts out laughing—that prick. And then everyone else is laughing, too, and going back to their water jugs and paper cups and F-bombs.
Except Ethan. “Where’s Dean?” he asks. His eyes are clear.
“My parents won’t let him out of the house.”
Ethan shakes his head. “He’d still let us know.”
I run my fingers through my hair and sniff twice. Even my tics are exasperated with these guys. “He tried. Check your phone.”
“Why do you even care? You can’t stand Ethan,” says Hope.
“I just don’t want anyone getting in trouble, okay? C’mon,” I tell her. “We need to go before they get here.”
Her eyes have a faraway look.
“Hope. I need you to come with me.”
She’s still not listening. They could be here any minute. I grab her hand and pull her toward the door.
She wrenches it away like I’ve burned her. “I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but I can take care of myself.”
I take a step closer, blocking the path that leads to Mikey. I sure as hell don’t want her driving with him if he’s high. “But—”
“You need to back off.”
Here we go again. No matter how much I care, or maybe because of how much I care, I come off looking needy or creepy or desperate or all of the above.
Hope’s anger sounds an awful lot like a sigh now. “Look, it’s not that I don’t—”
“Holy shit, you guys, stop!” Ethan’s got his phone pressed against his terrified face. “Dean says the administration’s coming. We need to go. Now.”
“THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU!”
Everybody’s running frantic. Toilet paper, paint, Post-its—all forgotten. Headlights flash in the windows on the north side of the cafeteria, and all hell really breaks loose. We sprint in different directions, scattering like geese after a gunshot. Everyone tears through the doors to the south lot. I’m praying the administration hasn’t reached that one, too.
Hope stops like she’s hit an invisible wall. “Shit. My phone.”
“There’s no time,” yells Mikey.
He keeps running to his car—to safety—but she turns back. “I have to get it, or they’ll know it was me.”
I stop in the doorway with the feeling of being torn in half. She bends to get her phone and races back, like she’s doing a gut sprint for Coach. I keep my eyes on the north lot doors. Stay closed. Stay closed. Stay closed. Another sixty seconds, and we could be in my car.
And then the unthinkable happens—Hope slips. The worst part is, I see it even before it happens, but I’m powerless to stop it. She’s flat-out sprinting, her eyes on the doors and not on the discarded can of shaving cream that rolls into her path. My mouth forms words of caution, but it’s too late. Her foot hits the can, ankle bending grotesquely. Her scream gets cut in half when her back hits the floor.
She’s groaning, and I’m pulling her up by the elbows.
“Can you walk on it?”
She touches her foot against the ground, but buckles in pain.
“Mother scratcher.” It comes out as a hiss.
I’d smile if we weren’t dead.
“That’s not gonna work.” There’s only one option, and I try not to think—just act. “Sorry about this.”
“Wh—”
I scoop her up like she weighs nothing. But it’s not nothing. This is complete sensory overload, and middle-school me is freaking out. Calm down, I tell myself. You’ll never be able to be friends again if you can’t be around her without getting weird.
She thrashes halfheartedly. “Put me down. I don’t need your help.”
I raise my eyebrows at her.
“Okay, fine. But just hurry, okay?” she says.
I get us to the doors, but maneuvering through them is tricky. Hope presses her head against my chest, her hair tickling my nose. Don’t breathe. Don’t you dare breathe. Her hair has hypnotizing properties, and, oh no, I had to. The human body needs oxygen, especially when it’s carrying another human body. And, oh hell, she still smells like honeysuckles under all that cigarette smoke.
I remind myself of a few important things: 1) She staked your heart like a vampire slayer. 2) You wouldn’t even be here right now if she hadn’t screened your call. 3) You’re really, really, REALLY happy with your girlfriend.
It helps. I make it to my car and get Hope settled in the passenger seat, and I’m no longer thinking about her as anything other than a friend, which means I’m safe.
Until a strong set of hands clamps down on my shoulders.