Dangerous Girls

“Tate!” I yell again, helpless.

He meets my eyes for a minute, anger burning in his expression.

Then he turns away.

HALLOWEEN

“Enough photos, you guys!” AK raises a bottle of vodka, yelling over the pounding rock music that fills the kitchen. It’s late-night Halloween, and I’m sandwiched between Elise and Tate, posing for the flash of his cell phone camera. AK gestures impatiently, spilling his drink. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

“Who votes that AK doesn’t drive?” Chelsea laughs as she swipes the bottle from him and takes a gulp. Her tanned skin is dusted with glitter in her tiny Leia bikini, her long hair wound up in fat braided whorls.

“What are you talking about?” AK doffs the cap of his revolutionary war costume. “I am as sober as the grave.”

“Bad metaphor, it’s the day of the dead,” Elise points out, still draped around me, holding the kitchen knife we’ve smeared with fake blood. “Graveyards are party central—all the spirits going crazy.”

“C’mon, you don’t believe that stuff.” I turn to her. “Ghosts and spirits and all that bullshit?”

“Oh shit!” Elise giggles. “Okay, if this was a horror movie, you’d have just doomed yourself to some serious undead revenge.”

“Woo!” I cry, waving my arms around. “You hear that, evil spirits? I mock you and your very existence. Just try to come get me.”

“And . . . I vote that Anna doesn’t drive either.” Chelsea watches, laughing.

Lamar looks up from his phone. “I just checked in with my buddies, they say the party’s going hard.”

“Then let’s roll. Max!” Chelsea yells, without pausing for breath. He wanders in, smoking the end of a fat blunt.

“Dude! Not in the house!” Chelsea snatches it away from him. “Do you want our parents to freak again?” She moves to throw it down the garbage disposal, but not before taking a quick toke herself.

“Whatever.” Max grins through the thick zombie scars on his face. He looks down at his football uniform, dirtied and stained. “Hey, can I get some more blood up in here?”

As Elise goes to smear him with more fake-blood makeup, I feel a new pair of arms slip around me; lips kissing, soft against the back of my neck. I shiver, leaning back into Tate’s embrace.

“Did I tell you how sexy you look in that costume?” he whispers in my ear.

I laugh. “Only ten million times.”

“Well, you do.” His lips press against my neck again, but this time he bites down softly, playful. His arms tighten, his breath hot against my skin. “I can’t wait to get you out of it.”

His words send another shiver of excitement through me—this time edged with unfamiliar uncertainty, but before I can reply, he’s pulled me around so I’m facing him, his lips hard and searching on mine. I melt into him, falling back against the kitchen cabinet as we kiss, long and deep. I hear the chatter of the others in the room; music loud; the low, sweet scent of weed, but it all falls away, the way it always does when I’m kissing him.

It still amazes me, how we can create a different place, a whole world, just in the place where our bodies meet. Ours. Even here, in the brightly lit kitchen, it’s the same as when we’re alone, the two of us, in the dark fort of covers in a bedroom at night. All he has to do is touch me and I feel that quicksilver longing, breathless and expectant—

“Okay people, into the van!” Chelsea yells loudly, cutting through the drum of my heartbeat. Tate pulls away from me, we’re both smiling, bashful but conspiratorial. “Andiamo!” she claps, shooing us. “Vamos!”

• • •

We grab our bags and coats and head out to the front of the house, piling into the Newports’ van—crammed together in a tangle of costume hats and fake blood and weaponry. “I told you these costumes would be killer.” Elise beams, crushed up against me. Our tiny cheerleader skirts cut off midthigh, and we’ve streaked blood down our faces, dripping from our fangs.

“You didn’t say you were matching,” Mel complains from her other side.

Elise and I share a look of exasperation. Mel sees it. “What? You didn’t. I would have gotten one too.”

“You look great,” Elise placates her. “You always look cute in that outfit.”

Mel tugs at her catsuit tail, her whiskers quivering. “Still . . .”

Elise turns away from her, back to me. “So”—she drops her voice meaningfully—“you were getting cozy there in the kitchen.”

I shoot a nervous look to the front seat, where Tate is scanning through Max’s iPod, the music already too loud in the packed car.

“Relax,” Elise says, and grins, keeping her voice low. “He can’t hear us. Tonight’s the night?”

I shrug, blushing.

“Aww, my little girl’s going to be a woman,” Elise squeezes me close. I fight half-heartedly.

“Don’t . . .”

“It’s cool,” Elise reassures me. “I’ll cover with your parents if they call.”

“They won’t.”

My quiet reply is drowned by Chelsea. “Elise, what was that song you played for me? The one from that show . . . ?”

As the group chatters and bickers, I gaze out the window at the dark freeway, hugging my arms around myself. It’s clichéd, to plan something like this, to be so nervous, but this is my first time. For all of Elise’s and my wild partying, the most I’ve ever done with a guy is almost everything: hot fingers in a dark room, an unfamiliar taste in my mouth. Tate and I have fooled around, sure, but I’ve been holding back, waiting, never quite certain I should take that step over the edge.

It’s not about the physical stuff; I know want him. I’m consumed with wanting him. That’s the problem. I’ve never felt so reckless in my life before—so out of control. I hide it—from him, Elise, everyone—but sometimes I can’t sleep for the desire racing in my system. I lie awake at night, poring over memories of us together: the look of dark intensity in his eyes, a deliberate grind of his hips against mine, the blurring gasps of surprised pleasure. I lie in the haze of desire, imagining everything that would follow if I would only just say yes: mouths and fingers and that final push of friction my body seems to demand, crying out in a language I don’t even understand.