chapter twelve

“If you keep eating it, you’re not going to have anything left for your costume.”

“I don’t see why we have to waste chocolate when we really just need the packaging,” Nora grumbles.

Choo and I continue playing our video game as Crosbie and Nora bicker at the dining table. They’re putting the finishing touches on their costumes, which involves gluing a number of miniature candy bar wrappers—and a few actual bars—to sweatshirts and baseball caps. My costume, a nightstand with a hole cut out for my head and typical nightstand accents glued to the top, waits nearby. Choo’s costume—an airplane neck pillow he painted to resemble a magnet and to which he sewed a bunch of stuffed baby chicks—sits beside him on the couch. Dane got roped into helping set up for the party, so he’s not here.

“How do I look?”

I pause the game to check out Marcela when she emerges from the bathroom. She’s wearing her high school cheerleading uniform, which consists of a short white top, pink skirt and matching knee socks. She has two pom-poms clutched in her hand and has added glittering letters to her chest that read “GOOOO CEILING!”

“I don’t get it,” Choo says, frowning. “Goo ceiling?”

“Gooooo ceiling!” Marcela cheers, waving the pom-poms and kicking up her leg. “Get it? I’m a ceiling fan.”

Choo tries to look amused but winds up looking constipated instead. “Right,” he says. “Very clever.”

“You glued some chicks to a magnet,” she points out. “Don’t judge.”

Choo clutches the magnet defensively. “You know, for someone who’s been badgering me to be my plus one to the Sports Banquet, you’re not very nice.”

“That’s why no one likes her,” I say, secretly relieved that she’s set her sights on someone else for an invite to the next major event.

“Ha ha,” Marcela says, uncaring. “How do I look?”

“Super hot, darling.”

“Right answer, loverboy.”

“Okay,” Crosbie calls. “Everybody ready? Let’s head out before Kellan and Marcela’s very electric chemistry makes us all sick.” A giant paper cut-out of Eminem is stapled to the front of his sweatshirt and he’s dotted all over with candy bar wrappers. Baggy jeans and a backward baseball cap round out the look. Nora’s dressed nearly identically, except her shirt features a picture of Missy Elliot.

“Work it,” Choo calls, pulling on his chick magnet and standing.

I shut off the game and Crosbie and Choo lift the nightstand so I can duck under and squeeze inside. It’s topped with a small tablecloth, a framed picture of a sailboat, a coffee cup and a toy phone.

“Candy rappers, check,” Nora says, pointing between herself and Crosbie. “Chick magnet, check. Ceiling fan, check. One night stand, check. Let’s go.”

Marcela pulls on a jacket over her skimpy outfit and sticks her feet into a pair of furry boots, then helps me squeeze out the front door.

“She still won’t tell you her costume?” she asks as we trudge down the frost-covered sidewalk. The night is dark and crisp, the stars out in full force. It’s two days before actual Halloween and just a few brave souls have dared to put jack-o-lanterns on their doorsteps. With no trick-or-treaters, the street is quiet except for our puntastic crew.

“Nope.” Andi’s being annoyingly secretive about her costume for this thing and even declined my generous offer to get ready at my place. The only nice thing she did was assure me that she wasn’t getting ready at Crick’s place, either.

“How about Nate?” I ask. “Any clue?”

“None. The last time he had a girlfriend she was in the shop all the time, but I’ve never seen his mysterious ‘date.’ I asked him today if he was still coming and he said he was. That’s as much as I’ve gotten out of him. I don’t even know why he’s coming; frat parties aren’t exactly his scene.”

“It’s probably because you told him you’d be wearing your high school cheer outfit,” Nora says dryly.

“I can’t help it if he has a thing for cheerleaders.”

“You totally could.”

“He also has a thing for puns,” she adds. “I’m not sure which he likes more.”

Two blocks away from the Frat Farm we can feel the thudding bass of the music, and I see Crosbie reach down to take Nora’s hand. I didn’t know it at the time, but Halloween is when they first hooked up last year so this is kind of their anniversary. Paired with the candy covered sweatshirts, the visual is sweet and weird at the same time.

“I’m so excited,” Marcela says, jogging in a tiny circle, her sparkly pom-poms rustling. “I haven’t been to an awesome party in forever.”

“That’s because you’ve been banned from most of them,” Crosbie calls over his shoulder.

She tips her head in acknowledgment.

“So what’s the plan?” I ask her. “Did you prepare a special cheer for Nate? Give me a coffee! Give me a tea! Give me a kiss you fucking idiot and get this charade over with!”

She gives me a dark look. “Like you and Andi are any better.”

“You know what’s going to happen?” Choo says. “Nate and Andi are going to meet and fall in love, and you two losers will be sitting by yourself at the wedding, wishing you’d made better choices.”

“Dude!” I exclaim. “Your date said maybe she’d come to this party. If we’re at this horrible wedding, you’ll be right there with us, flying solo.”

“She’s coming,” Choo says, adjusting his magnet. “She’s just playing hard to get.”

“Or maybe she’s too polite to say no to your face,” Marcela suggests.

“Go cheer for a wall,” he retorts.

“Boys and girls,” Crosbie interrupts as we approach the house. “No fighting on our anniversary.”

“This is our special night.” Nora manages to keep a straight face as shrieks of cackling witches and tortured souls spill out of the fraternity. As usual the front walkway is lined with flaming torches, the yard transformed into a garish cemetery with disturbed plots and crumbling tombstones.

Marcela rolls her eyes. “It’s such a beautiful moment.”

“I love you,” Crosbie tells Nora.

“I love you too.” She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him as a cereal killer races by, chasing two girls dressed as bottles of spice.

We shuffle into the house, my unwieldy costume helping clear a path in the throbbing mass of bodies. Most of the interior bulbs have been swapped for either red or black lights, and the music and sound effects are so loud it’s impossible to hear myself think. Someone presses a drink into my hand and I toss it back, swallowing what feels like an eyeball in the process.

Choo’s looking for his date, Marcela’s looking for Nate, and I’m looking for Andi. We’re all just using each other to not look alone.

“There she is,” Marcela says. She tries to elbow me but hits the frame of the nightstand instead and curses, rubbing her arm. She nods toward a group standing near the entrance to the kitchen, Crick towering above the crowd. At his shoulder I can see Andi’s uncharacteristically tidy bun, but I can’t make out her costume because of the sea of bodies between us. I begin to edge my way closer, greeting friends and pretending to understand their costumes, my neck and shoulders really regretting my choice of attire.

Dane spots me and waves me over. He’s dressed as a homemade superhero, with a red cape and a gold mask, the letters EGO printed across his chest. “What are you?” I shout when I squish into the circle and almost knock him over.

“Super ego!”

“Like an egomaniac?”

He stares at me for a second. “Sure! Yeah!”

I turn to greet everybody else. Crick wears antlers and a sweatshirt with OH written on the chest; next to him is a girl dressed as a cow with a halo made of silver pipe cleaners; and between us stands Andi in a little black dress with a bunch of words scrawled on it in white ink. The largest letters are written across her chest, the fabric for which dips into a deep, lace-lined V, exposing her clavicle. Nice breast dress, it reads. I frown at her, but she just drinks whatever concoction someone passed her and avoids my stare.

“Anyway,” Crick announces loudly. “As I was saying, that’s where McVey got the blow job at the May Madness party.” He points past us to the sitting room. “If you don’t believe me, there were like, twenty witnesses—just ask them.”

It feels like someone punched me in the stomach. I look at Andi but she’s looking miserably into her drink while Holy Cow giggles into hers.

“Come on, man,” Dane tries. “We don’t—”

“You hooked up with Dane’s sister, right?” Crick continues. “Was that on the back porch? Or wait—was it his cousin on the back porch and his sister in the bathroom?”

Dane already knows about the hookups, but having them thrown in his face isn’t helping matters.

“I’m sorry,” I say under my breath. “I—”

“Anyway,” Crick continues. “Back to the tour. If you look at the far corner of the living room, there’s normally a ficus plant over there. Well, at last year’s Welcome Party, McVey met this grad student...”

I back away from the group, feeling sick. I want to hit him, tackle him, tear him to pieces for doing this, but I can’t lift my arms that high with this fucking table. Besides, it’s not like what he’s saying isn’t true. I fucked Biology Grad Student behind the ficus, then again in front of the ficus. At least there was no one in the room at the time.

The bottom of the staircase that leads to the bedrooms is cordoned off with more crime scene tape, but I push my way through and climb up as quickly as I can while shouldering a nightstand.

Dane and Choo have rooms at the end of the hall and I bump against the walls as I stumble that way, trying first Dane’s door, which is locked, then Choo’s, which is open. Maybe he was hoping his date would find her way in.

“Kellan.”

I ignore my name and hustle into the room, whacking the corner of the table so hard against the door frame that I almost fall right back out. I steady myself then slam the door shut behind me, focused on nothing but getting this stupid nightstand off.

“Kellan.” The door bangs open and hits me in the ass, pitching me forward. Only Andi snagging the back of the table stops me from face planting on the floor, my arms flapping uselessly at my hips like a penguin.

“Fuck, Andi!” I holler, whirling around as best I can. “What are you even fucking—I can’t—I’m not—Just get this thing off me.”

“Okay.” Her voice is very calm as she closes the door then steps in to grip the sides of the table. Together we ease it over my head and onto the floor, then I turn around to open the window and stay facing it, letting the cold night air wash over me.

“Just go,” I say, when she doesn’t do anything else.

“I’m sorry,” she says instead. “I joined the conversation about thirty seconds before you did. I didn’t realize what he was doing.”

I try to sound nonchalant, but fall far short. “It’s true.” I rub my hands over my face, then the back of my neck. My skin is prickling all over, hot and cold and numb at the same time. “It’s all true.”

“I know, Kellan.”

There’s no judgment in her tone, nothing smug or condescending or even sympathetic. She just knows. I glance over my shoulder and see that she’s perched on the edge of the nightstand, tugging on the hem of her little black dress.

“What are you?” I ask.

Her eyes flicker up to mine. “What?”

“Your...costume. That dress.” Nice breast dress.

“It’s a Freudian slip,” she says.

“I don’t get it.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I exhale and look around the room. It’s surprisingly tidy, for a fraternity, and for Choo, who’s known for sometimes wearing other people’s shoes when he can’t find his own. The bed is made, the desk neatly organized, the wardrobe doors closed and bare of decoration. The only artwork is a poster of LeBron James mid-dunk.

“What do you see in him?” I ask eventually.

“I don’t know,” she says, not pretending she doesn’t know I’m referring to Crick.

“He’s obsessed with me.”

Andi laughs wryly. “Well, who isn’t?”

“I’m serious. He mocks me, but if he could have half those girls—half the reputation—he would. In a heartbeat.”

“Is it worth it?”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

I sigh. “I wanted to get over you when I came to Burnham. I told you I wanted that summer to be practice, and I did. At first. But when I got here I didn’t want to be the fucking campus stud, I just wanted to forget you. And girls were looking at me and nobody knew me—I could start fresh. I could be everything they thought I was. So I was.”

“And?”

“Now I don’t know.”

“Why not? You have a pretty good life.”

“Because it’s a trap. People have this idea about what kind of person you’re supposed to be, what type of role you have to fill.” I think of Jazzy in the Student Union bathroom. “And when you’re not, they’re disappointed. And when you are, someone else is disappointed. There’s no happy medium.”

“Why do you have to make a bunch of strangers happy?” Andi asks. “Why can’t you just do your own thing and forget what everybody thinks you should be? If you’re happy, you’re happy. If they want something else, they should be that something else. It’s not your job to fulfill them.”

“I’m in my third year,” I point out. “It’s too late to start over. I still haven’t declared my major.”

“Well, what you want to do?”

I stare at her, all long legs and messy hair and pouty mouth and confusing dress. “I want—”

A pounding on the door interrupts, then Choo and Dane burst in. “There you are,” Choo says. “I heard about Crick, man. Sorry.”

“Whatever.”

“Cool. I need you to go into the basement and get forty torches. Quick.”

“I’m kind of...”

“Also, I need you to get out of my room. My date showed up and she’s a spice girl and I did not know turmeric could be so hot.”

“It’s not.”

“Get the torches!” he bellows, ushering us out and slamming the door.

In the hallway, I turn to Dane. “Don’t tell me that magnet actually worked.”

He looks as confused as I feel. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“What are the torches for?”

“What aren’t they for, at this point?”

I look at Andi. “I’ll be quick. Don’t go anywhere.” I peek at the words on her chest again. “You look nice, by the way.”

I rush down the stairs and elbow my way through the mob of dancers to the basement. With the door closed behind me and the concrete walls doing a pretty great job of sound proofing, this is quite possibly the quietest place in the house. My bones are still vibrating and my ears might never stop ringing, but the sudden peace is enough to make me ignore the chill in the air and the ominous shadows cast by the bulb at the base of the creaky stairs.

I descend slowly into an old, unfinished basement with pocked concrete walls and a poured cement floor, liberally scarred and chipped from years of careless use. The two small windows at the back let in no sun, not even during the day.

The space is mostly used to house old furniture, broken furniture, and stained furniture no one knew how to dispose of. There are at least a dozen couches, two collapsed pool tables, and countless lilting boxes that store everything from holiday decorations to the abandoned belongings of former frat brothers. Stashed in the very far corner are row upon row of tiki torches. They’re stacked ten deep and two high, with a few open boxes at the front, the wooden tops peeking out.

“Forty,” I mutter to myself. “How many are in a box?” I crouch to study a package in front, but none of the writing is in English and I don’t see any numbers to help me guess.

“Who are you talking to?”

I yelp and jump up so fast I have to grip a torch to steady myself. I whirl around and there, ten feet away, wearing a box of Life cereal around his neck and a party hat on his head and looking far scarier than a cereal killer, is...Nate.

“What are you doing down here?” I demand, clutching my chest to keep my heart from leaping out. I check his hands but all he’s holding is a red plastic cup.

“I got locked in,” he says, sipping the drink. “Someone said there was a porch down here and I wanted some air and the front door was blocked, so I came down and...” 

“You thought there was a porch in the basement?”

“I was hoping, man. But now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure they said ‘torch.’ You guys really have a lot of torches.”

I let out a shaky breath and run a hand through my hair. “I know. This guy’s uncle sells them. Wait—did you say you were locked down here?”

“Yeah. I pounded on the door for a while, but no one could hear.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. It could be worse. There are some books over there and I can get cell reception.”

“I guess that’s why you’re the life of the party.”

He gives me a patronizing smile. “Very clever. And you are...?”

“My costume’s upstairs.”

“Ah.”

“What about your date?” I ask. “Did you text her to tell her where you were?”

He takes another drink, then winces and clears his throat. “I don’t have a date. I have a deal with one of the girls to give her free snacks for the volleyball team bake sales in exchange for her invitation.”

“Why did you even want to come?”

He stare sat me like I’m obtuse. “Guess.”

“I want to say Marcela, but... I don’t.”

“Marcela,” he confirms.

“Dude, you work with her like four days a week. She told me she practically threw herself at you and you turned her down. What’s your game here?”

He fiddles with the cereal box. “I don’t have game. We can’t all be you.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Have you ever jumped off a cliff?”

“What?” Maybe he is feeling a little homicidal after all. I mean, if anyone was going to be waiting down here to kill me, it’s Nate.

“My family used to spend summers at this cabin upstate and there was a cliff you could jump off, into the lake. Every year I’d hike up and every year my family would jump and I...just couldn’t.”

I look around for a weapon, should one become necessary. “Uh-huh.”

“I wanted to,” he continues. “Pretty desperately. But then I’d get up there and my mind would race and I knew I just wasn’t the kind of guy who jumped off cliffs. So I started waiting at the cabin while they went swimming.”

“Is Marcela the cliff?” I ask shrewdly. “Is that where we’re going with this?”

“She’s more like the lake. Like all of the people in the water yelling, ‘Come on, Nate, jump.’ And I can’t help but worry that even if I jump, it won’t be good enough. That there’ll be something else. Swim across the lake. Touch the bottom. Dive off this time. And that’s not me. And I can’t really bear the thought of having her and losing her.”

“So you’d rather just not have her at all?”

“I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this.”

“It’s probably because we’re locked in a basement and that punch is like, a hundred proof.”

He squints into the cup. “Maybe.”

“You know we’re not really together, right? And we never were? Even tonight, she just wanted me to invite her because she knew you would be here.”

“It kind of proves my point, doesn’t it?”

“How?”

“She loves these things. Your stupid frat parties, your chest-pounding brothers and the loud music and the cheap beer. And I came to see if I could be into it—hell, if I could even tolerate it—and instead I end up locked in the basement.”

I can’t help it. The guy’s pouring out his hipster heart, but I laugh.

“It’s not funny,” he mutters, though I see him trying not to smile.

“I know,” I say. “Sorry.” I pause, then decide to go for it. “I’m sorry for everything that happened last year. For what it’s worth, she spent all our time together talking about how much she wasn’t even thinking about you.”

“She told me you weren’t the douche bag she thought you’d be.”

“That sounds like Marcela.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It does.”

Stomping from upstairs sends clouds of dust raining down from the rafters, and we cough and cover our faces.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“The door’s locked.”

I jog up the stairs to check it anyway, but he’s right. I knock and shout for a minute, but there’s no way anyone’s hearing me over the deafening music. “Window it is.”

The first window is painted completely shut, but the second has clearly been wedged open by a trapped frat brother or two, and with the help of a rusty screwdriver and a tiki torch, we manage to get it levered open just far enough to squeeze through. I abandon Choo’s request for torches, give Nate a boost, and climb on a box to pull myself out, aided by Nate half-choking me as he yanks on the back of my shirt.

“Wow,” I wheeze, on my knees in the damp grass. A few partygoers linger on the porch at the opposite end of the house, but it’s sufficiently dark and they’re sufficiently drunk and distracted that they don’t notice us.

I push to my feet and Nate does the same, wiping our hands on our thighs and hesitating awkwardly. “Life of the party,” he says, pulling off his party hat and flicking the elastic band with his finger before checking his watch. “Eleven forty-two. Time to go home.”

I don’t know how long we’ve been in the basement, but I think it’s safe to say Andi’s no longer waiting for me to return and without her I can think of no reason to be here, either. We make our way around to the front of the house, cutting through the back of the mock cemetery, waves of costumed people still arriving. “Wait,” I say, when we reach the sidewalk.

Nate glances at me warily. “What?”

“This is probably the only night we’re ever going to have a sincere conversation.”

“Agreed.”

“So then, in all sincerity, don’t go home. Put your lame party hat back on, go inside, and—”

“Please don’t say it.”

“Jump.”

Nate rolls his eyes. “I can’t take advice from you.”

“Why not? I’ve had two fake relationships with Marcela. You should do exactly what I say.”

“And what about her?”

“She’s still into you. I don’t know why, but she is.”

“No, not Marcela. What about her?” He nods at something over my shoulder and I turn to see Andi on the front step, wearing a coat and watching us over the crowd.

“That’s nothing,” I lie. “It’s just...Andi.”

“I know who it is. Marcela told me all about you two.”

“There is no ‘you two.’ She’s here with an asshole basketball player.”

“The Oh Dear guy?”

“That’s the one.”

“She’s not here with him, you idiot. She’s here with your friend. Didn’t you see the costume? Super Ego?”

I frown. “You mean Dane?”

“You jocks are all the same to me and I don’t have time to explain Freud to you, but yeah. Freud, the id, the ego and the super ego?”

I stare at him blankly. I know who Freud is, but that’s it.

Nate sighs and clarifies, “She wore that dress for you.”

I look at Andi, who’s still watching us. I’d love to believe she wore that dress for me, but I don’t know if I doubt it more because of the source or because of what it might mean. I wave to indicate that she should come over and she slowly descends the steps, swallowed up by the crowd of puns.

“Andi doesn’t know how to play those types of games.”

“You have zero experience with women who play hard to get,” Nate corrects me. “Take it from someone who does.”

“I don’t want your advice anymore than you want mine.”

“Too bad, you’re getting it. If I have to go in there and jump, you have to—”

“Jump,” I finish.

“No, Kellan.” He sounds exasperated. “Don’t jump, for once. Think about jumping, plan for jumping, and then when you finally jump, do it right.”

Andi emerges from the crowd. “Hey,” she says, looking between us curiously.

“We got stuck in the basement,” I explain, relieved to not have to hear the word “jump” anymore.

“Oh. Of course.”

“This is Nate. He’s into Marcela.”

“I know,” she says. “She’s in the kitchen with Nora, counting the number of push-ups Crosbie can do with a keg on his back.”

“Seriously?” I say. “How many?”

Nate puts on his hat. “I guess I’ll find out. Good talk.”

“It was just so-so.”

He ignores me and walks back into the fray. I can’t envision a world in which we’re friends, but as I watch him wade through the crowd of people who fit in much better than he does, I might have a smidgen of respect for the guy.

“That was odd,” Andi remarks. “Are you feeling any better?”

I actually do feel better, so it takes me a minute to remember what happened upstairs. “Yeah,” I say. “Sorry about that.”

“You don’t have to apologize. It’s normal to be upset when someone insults you.”

“I was mostly upset because I couldn’t get the nightstand off.”

“Is that a metaphor?”

“I barely know what a metaphor is. Nate had to explain your dress to me.”

She looks down but her jacket is zipped up to her chin. “Well,” she says.

“You came with Dane?”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “How’d you know?”

“Obviously I know all about Freud, the id, the ego and the super ego.”

“Obviously.”

“What about Crick?”

Her gaze darts away. “I don’t want to say.”

I feel myself tense. “Why not? What did he do?”

“It’s not what he did.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s what he wants to do.”

“Screw you?”

“Be you!” she exclaims, pushing me lightly and starting to walk down the sidewalk. I hurry to catch up with her.

“You didn’t believe me when I said that upstairs.”

“That’s because you’re conceited. And I don’t want someone...” Her voice trails off.

“Like me,” I finish. She could have hit me in the face with a brick and it would hurt less.

“Like who everyone else thinks you are,” she corrects.

“Who do you think I am?”

She glances over at me, a wisp of hair catching in her eyelashes until she pushes it away. “I don’t know anymore.”

“That makes two of us.”

She offers a tiny smile. “Well, at least you’re not a one night stand.”

“I’m trying.” And it’s true. For the first time in my adult life, I’m honest to God trying. And not because I want to get laid, but because I want...more. Of what, I can’t say. Just more than what I’ve been looking for.

“Why now?”

“I’d like to take all the credit it for it, but the answer is...”

“Gonnorhea,” we say in unison.

“God,” I groan. “Let’s never say that together again.”

“Deal.”

“It’s just... Consequences suck,” I finish eventually. “And even though I really enjoyed myself first year, that diagnosis changed something for me. I tried to go back to how things were, but I couldn’t.”

I watch my feet navigate the frosty sidewalk as we walk across the dark campus in companionable silence. At least, outside my head it’s silent. Inside my skull a thousand miniature Kellans are screaming at me to jump. And historically, this is exactly the time I’d be preparing to jump. With the exception of Jazzy, I’ve never actually taken a girl home without, well, taking her home. Going inside and removing our clothes and mindlessly generating another name for the wall. But Andi is not just another name.

McKinley residence is quiet as we approach. Andi pauses and turns, her breath hanging in the air, the only thing separating us. Jump! my inner demons screech louder.

I reach over to tuck her hair behind her ear, letting my fingers linger for a second. But instead of doing what my head and my heart and my groin are urging me to do, I ignore their wailing and lean over to kiss her cheek. I step back, secretly enjoying the perplexed look on her face.

“Good night,” I say.

“Good night?”

“Yeah. Hurry up and go inside.”

“Who are you?” she replies.

“I’ll let you know when I find out. Go inside.” Go inside because Kellan 2.0 is on thin ice and those demons are on the other side, threatening to break through.

I watch Andi climb the steps to the front door, swipe her pass card and peer over her shoulder to ascertain one final time that I’m serious about this. I wave, hoping she misinterprets the trembling in my fingers as cold and not hormonal overload.

She disappears inside and I turn to go home, alone.

I hate Nate.