9
jo
Every inch of the Kings’ house dripped with disparity and greed. It drove me up the crown-moulded wall to walk through a house so full of excess, when on the way over here we’d passed by a group of homeless men sharing the scraps of a meal they’d dug out from the trash of the creole restaurant just off base.
Of course I knew that the Kings couldn’t feed the entire city. Well, maybe they could, but it’s not their fault that there are people less fortunate than them—but it was hard to remember that as I walked past a table full of neatly placed lines of bottles of champagne.
I always hated the feeling that crept over me when someone was staring at me. I had an uncanny ability to feel their eyes on me the moment they hit me. I waited a few seconds to look up, and when I lifted my eyes, I saw a tall man with brown hair staring at me. He was dressed in his Class A’s, making me wonder why he was wearing his military dress uniform to a New Year’s Eve engagement party. When he saw me staring back at him, he smiled. I didn’t like the way his face changed when he smiled. It wasn’t friendly or welcoming; it was expecting and assuming.
Since I didn’t know what else to do but smile back, I did just that. It was a tiny, awkward thing, though he must have taken it as an invitation to approach me because he set his beer bottle down on the closest table and made his way over. I looked around for Meg but couldn’t find her, so in the brief moment the soldier flicked his eyes away from me, I dipped between two elderly women and turned around the corner.
I took another corner and another until I passed the kitchen, full of staff, busying themselves to feed the hundreds of people crammed into the mansion. The smell of corn bread and rosemary made my stomach grumble angrily. I should have eaten more than Bugles and a cucumber sandwich all day.
As a man carrying a tray walked through the archway, I grabbed a snack as he passed. Looking down at the food in my hand, I thanked my lucky stars that it was meatless. It looked like some sort of tomato salsa on bread. I recalled Beth making something like that before but couldn’t remember the name of it. I took a bite and my stomach grumbled again.
I kept walking, looking behind me to be sure the man wasn’t following me. Not seeing him, but wishing to take no chances, I took another corner and walked up the empty staircase near the back door. It was so quiet back there, and I wondered for a second if I should even be in this part of the house. Meg had told me a few times that Mrs. King was weird about certain rooms of the house, but I really wanted to get away from the party, if for only a few minutes.
I passed two closed doors and reached the end of the hallway. There was something in the corner . . . It looked like a bench, but I couldn’t see clearly because a curtain covered part of it. I walked closer to see if I could hide there for a little bit.
I pushed the curtain aside and immediately bumped into a statue sitting atop a marble podium. My hands shot out in front of me to steady it before it crashed to the floor, and once I finally settled it, I spun around to sit on the bench.
“Ow!” a male voice grumbled, and I jumped back up.
Laurie was sitting on the bench with a can of Coke in one hand and my arm in his other.
I jerked away and pulled back the curtain to escape. “Sorry! I didn’t see you here.”
Out of all the places in this mansion, he had to be sitting in the only quiet spot I could find.
Laurie put the soda can down on the floor in front of his feet and looked up at me. “It’s okay. I was just hiding back here.”
Even sitting down, I was reminded of how tall he was. His mouth was open, and I looked at it briefly, just enough to feel the heat in my cheeks, then looked away.
“I’ll go.” I turned away from him.
He touched my elbow. “No. Stay.”
When he said those two simple words, I felt something like déjà vu, which wasn’t possible since I had only spoken a few words to him. I thought maybe I was losing my mind, mixing dreams with reality, but I swore I had heard him say those two words to me before.
“I just don’t know anyone and I’m not great at making conversation with strangers, so I would rather hide back here until it’s time to leave.”
“If you don’t know anyone, who tells you when it’s time for you to leave?” I asked.
He tilted his head and stared at me a moment. His legs were so long that they sprawled out to the rug on the floor. I hoped it wasn’t animal fur that he was pressing his black boots into.
“Good question.” He smiled at me. “And, what about you? Who tells you when it’s time to go? Your older sister?”
I shook my head.
He stared at me for what felt like minutes but was actually only about ten seconds. I counted five breaths while I waited for his lips to move. His lips were so full, like mine, and I wondered if he got called mean names in school the way that I did, or if his good looks saved him from the ridicule of his peers, the way they did Meg.
“So, what are you doing at the party if you don’t know anyone?” I asked.
He patted the seat next to him and I sat down, keeping as much distance as possible from him. The bench was so small that it was only about two feet of space.
“People-watching.”
“And how was that? Did you see any people you liked watching?”
What did that even mean? I silently asked myself.
He seemed to understand and smiled at me. “Your sister is nice to watch, that Meg Spring.” His hair was pulled back into a bun, and I thought he should be a model.
“Oh. My sister, of course.” I laughed. “Everyone likes to watch Meg.”
“I can imagine that to be true.”
He leaned against the back of the cushioned bench, and I stared past him down the long hallway. This house seemed even bigger from the inside than the outside. Old family portraits were on the wall, hung in perfectly symmetrical lines.
“It’s a little creepy, right?” He spoke quietly and quickly, and his lips moved so fast. “To have immortalized the entire family and hung them on the walls up here where guests obviously aren’t supposed to be?”
“Yes, very.”
“So, what about you? Who are you watching out there?”
I shook my head. “No one.”
It was true. I wasn’t watching anyone the way he was watching Meg. Laurie’s face was turned away from me, and he was fixing the cuffs of his dark jeans just above his boots.
When I could no longer stand the ensuing silence, I asked, “Is it true that you’re from Italy?”
He looked at me. “Yes. My mother is Italian. A painter. I lived there when I was young, then we moved to the US, and last year I lived there for the school year, until I got sent back here.”
His tiny accent made sense now. I pondered whether it would be rude to ask him to speak Italian for me, just so I could hear it.
“What’s Italy like? I want to go to Europe so badly. When I work for Vice, I have this entire plan of places to go and stories to cover. I want to see so many more places than here; I’ve seen the same things over and over my entire life. The same people, the same mentality.” I got so lost in my own words and dreams for my future that I had nearly forgotten where I was or who I was talking to.
“So, Jo Spring. You’ve got dreams, do you?”
I decided right then that even though I would most likely never have another conversation with him, I needed to hear about Europe. “Yes. Shouldn’t we all?”
“Are you speaking generally, or about me specifically?”
I knew then that this was what Meg had warned me about. Boys who play games. Laurie Laurence was definitely a boy who wanted to play games. Word games were only the beginning.
I could play, too. It didn’t matter that I had never had a boyfriend. I had three sisters. I was the queen of games.
Okay, so maybe Meg was the queen, but I was the princess. For sure.
“I really need to get going,” I told him, instead of moving my piece onto the board. I knew that I could play games, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to hear about Europe and the world outside my little one, but he didn’t seem willing to share.
“What? Why?” He stood up with me, but I hurried away, closing the curtain behind me before he could speak.
Checkmate, Laurie, I thought as I rushed down the stairs.