Alive (24 page)

“But nothing. This is my life. And I’m done with having other people decide what’s safe for me and what’s not. Find another job.” He opens his mouth, but I cut him
off before he can speak. “And I’d have thought we were good enough friends that you’d have gotten over the whole jealousy thing by now.” I lift my eyebrows. It’s mean.
I know it’s mean. Too mean. Henry’s face crumples. I might as well have kicked him in the groin. But for some reason I can’t stop. “I’m sorry I didn’t go to the
stupid concert with you, Henry. But he didn’t ruin things between us. If I’d wanted to be with you, I would have. Quite frankly, you remind me of a past life I’d rather forget,
okay?” Kick, kick, kick. “Why’d you agree to sell him the tickets if you were going to act this way?”

“I didn’t sell him the tickets.”

“Oh, really? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.”

Henry’s brow line lowers until it’s cloaking the top half of his eyes. He looks away and then back at me. “I gave them to him.” He pauses for that to sink in. “I
wanted you to be happy. Stupid me.”

The revelation plunges into me like a javelin and I snap, a caged animal. “Good news. It worked.” This doesn’t change anything. “I’m with Levi now, whether you like
it or not. So you can stop trying to convince me I’m dating a psychopath.” Henry’s Adam’s apple bobs. “Seriously, Henry. It’s pathetic.”

I pivot on my heel and storm off in the direction of the math building, tears cropping up in my eyes that I pray nobody will notice.

I spend the first half of Calc cursing Henry in my head, telling him he’s stupid and ugly and a world-class asshole. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That much is true,
at least. He doesn’t know Levi. He hasn’t tried to know Levi.

For Christ’s sake, I put up with him when he dated Tess Collars. And, what, he can’t handle the fact that now I have someone? That I’m not the fallback prom date he thought I
was? He asked me out a few days before he thought I might die. And that qualifies as some grand romantic gesture? Please. What’s more, who asked Henry to martyr himself? Certainly not me.
Surprise, I’m not as desperate as he thought I’d be. I didn’t fall headlong in to the arms of the first person who stood by me.

I pinch my leg hard to keep from tearing up in class. By the second half, I’m still pissed, but regret is seeping in, too, and I wish I hadn’t said what I’d said quite the way
I’d said it. Henry was still wrong, though. I’m not backing down from that.

The bell for class rings and I realize I haven’t listened to a single word. Were we talking about functions of derivatives or derivatives of functions or limits of properties or continuity
of a function? It’s always something of something, and I know nothing of nothing.

I have a flash of the Stanford application stuffed in a drawer in my room. The essay I told my parents I’d write, but haven’t started.

I squeeze through the door with the crush of other students trying to steal a spare minute or two of a social life between classes. My mood is foul, rancid, and putrid to the point I think
students passing by must smell it decaying around me as I storm across campus, head down, hands shoved in my pockets.

As I walk, though, I feel a shudder slink up the back of my neck. The odd, uncomfortable feeling that somebody’s eyes are on me unfurls over my shoulders and, without wanting to, I quicken
my pace. What am I thinking? Nobody’s watching me. Henry put this in my head. Out of principle, I refuse to look back. I mean, I know I could look back and it would be fine. But I
won’t, because that’d be giving his stupid theory power over me. So I won’t.

This is so Henry’s fault.

I haven’t been to a lot of parties. At least not lately, but here’s what I remember:

The best part of any party happens before you even get there. It’s the getting ready. The listening to loud dance music with your friends while curling your eyelashes and mixing lip
glosses into the perfect shade. Attempting that smoky eye tutorial you saw online. The taking an hour to choose an outfit. It’s the driving to so-and-so’s house singing at the top of
your lungs in your best friend’s car with the windows rolled down, but here’s what it’s not:

It’s not the actual party.

I’ve been lucky so far. And I use that term extremely loosely. My partygoing has been, up to this point, pretty much devoid of the typical pitfalls that bring the average party experience
down (or so I’ve heard). For instance, I’ve never had to lie to my parents about where I’m going. I’ve never gotten in trouble for going to a party. My parents have never
once checked my breath for booze. These are sick-kid perks. The benefits of the fact that (a) when you’re measuring your life in months, things can’t really get worse and (b) the sick
kid in question (me) apparently deserves some semblance of normalcy, and parties, apparently, qualify. (Thankfully, my parents are still operating under the tenets of [b].) That said, it was still
never the party—the loud, booming speakers, the hot-potato game of trying not to get stuck standing alone, the sloshing liquids on new clothes—that was fun. That stuff was all pretend,
straining-to-look-like-I’m-having-fun fun.

This time’s different, though. This time I have Levi.

I’m still curling my lashes. I’ve chosen a bright, berry lip gloss and a tight T-shirt with skinny jeans and riding boots, but now it all has a point, an audience. Levi.

“He’s here!” my mom calls upstairs. I peek through the curtain and see the Tahoe’s headlights sweeping into the driveway. The ache in my chest opens up again, making me
hurry faster.

“One second!” I yell back, swiping the flatiron over my hair one last time. Grabbing my pink cell phone case and debit card from the nightstand, I stuff them both in my back pocket
and gallop down the stairs.

“So can I finally meet this young man?” My dad appears in the foyer. His shirt’s unbuttoned, tie strung over his neck and hanging at loose ends. There’s another pinch of
guilt. He’s been working late again. For me.

I pause at the bottom of the flight of stairs. “Dad,” I whine. My head tilts and my arms hang limply at my sides. “Please? We’re running late and—”

He waves one of his pawlike hands. “Fine. Fine. I get it. Too cool for your old man. Can I trust you?” At this he drops his chin and gives me the dad look. The one he’s been
giving me since I was two. “Because I know I can’t trust him.”

“Yes, you can trust me…and him,” I add.

Mom pops out from the hallway bathroom. The ends of her hair are soaked and she’s holding a naked, slick-skinned Elsie. “Back by two,” she says.

“Definitely,” I call over my shoulder as I bolt out the front door. I’m down the path cutting across our front lawn before they can consider changing their minds.

And it’s worth it. Levi’s leaned up against the Tahoe waiting for me, legs crossed one in front of the other. I catch a moment of abstracted fatigue on his face as if the day has
worn him out, but he straightens as soon as he sees me, right before I run headlong into him and throw my arms around his neck. Relief washes over me as the throbbing in my chest dulls. I wish I
could stay pressed up against him like this forever, but I can’t. Instead, I let Levi take my hand and help me into the car.

“You look pretty,” he says, grinning and staring. Sometimes I like the way he seems to feel me up without even touching me. Like I’m his prize.

“You saw me only a couple hours ago.” I smile back at him. “You don’t clean up bad yourself.”

Levi rubs his eyes and traps a yawn behind his hand. “Sorry.” He squints and tilts his head. My face goes momentarily slack. “Didn’t sleep well. I’m ready,
though.” He grins. “Swear.”

“Okay,” I say. “But you’re going to have to shape up, Zin. I’m watching you.” On second glance, I see that the creases around his mouth are deeper and his
expression more drawn. Not that this does anything to detract from his appeal.

Levi’s in a soft gray T-shirt that hugs his biceps and chest. His hair’s still soaked and he smells like a river on a hot summer day. There are even a few beads of water streaming
down his neck. I breathe him in, wishing I could bury my face in the fabric of his T-shirt and kiss away every last drop. Maybe later. If everything goes well, there could be plenty for later.

Already, I can tell I’m right. Tonight’s going to be different. A million times better than any night before it.

Outside, mist covers the windshield as we drive. It’s not raining, but the tiny droplets hit the front of the car like someone has spritzed it with a giant bottle of Windex. I imagine
it’ll wreak havoc on my hair before the night’s over.

“So,” I start, slapping my palms to my thighs. “Your first Duwamish High party. Are you ready?”

Levi smirks, but behind it there are shadows forming underneath his eyes. “Can’t be that different than other high school parties, can it?”

“Probably not. Red cups, sticky floors, ill-advised attempts at keg stands. You get the gist. What was your old high school like, anyway?”

Levi drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “You know, it’s weird. I can barely remember. It was…” His face scrunches up and he gazes off down the road.

“Levi.” I laugh. “It’s been, like, five seconds since you left.”

He huffs quietly. “I know. I guess. I mean, I didn’t come straight here. Straight to Duwamish, you know. There was a little…break.”

“There was?”

He nods. “Yeah, but before that, I don’t know. I mostly hung out with my best friend, Dan, I guess. I’d play guitar and he’d play the drums. We used to jam in his garage
and drink beers from his dad’s icebox.”

“Will you play guitar for me sometime?” I clasp my hands together, begging.

“If you’re good. I’ll warn you, though, that I sing better than I play guitar. But I love guitar more.”

“Why don’t you play anymore?”

“Maybe I will. One day. One last time at least. I don’t know.” One thing about Levi is he has a tendency toward the melodramatic. One moment he’s all sparkly eyed and
flirtatious, then the next he’s spinning off into the philosophical, going on about firsts and lasts and the end of the world as we know it. It’s all very exciting when each
conversation seems to take on a meaningful weight that I don’t experience with any of my other friends, but sometimes it can be hard to keep up.

“Will you sing for me then?” I brighten.

He rolls his chin toward me and peers up through his eyelashes. “I
have
sung for you, Cross.”

I think back to the Action Hero Disco concert and the first restless flutters in my chest before he put his hand on my leg. “Yeah, but that didn’t count.

“Well, the night is young. And maybe”—he reaches over to take my hand and I swear I could melt into the seat right there—“we’ll get a moment
alone
later.” There’s a warmth in his ordinarily cool eyes, and I feel the heat in my cheeks return it tenfold as I smile.

I try to look unfazed, but I had already searched whether it’s safe for a recent transplant patient like me to engage in sexual intercourse. Oh God, I sound like my mother.
Engage in
sexual intercourse
. Sex, Stella. It’s called
sex
.

I comb my hair with my fingers, flipping down the overhead mirror, so as to look busy and
not
preoccupied with the previously mentioned alone time.

It’s as if my life has been divided into two halves. Before and after. Darkness and light. No Levi and Levi. Simple as that. I sink into the seat, relishing the quiet in my heart. For a
girl for whom pain is a constant, the lack of it comes with its own distinct feeling—relief.

When we pull up to Mitchell Boerne’s house, I know we’ve timed our arrival right. The bass is thumping in the air outside of the house and I can see a whole mess of kids through the
window. A beer-pong table is set up next to the garage below a rusted basketball hoop, and a few of the guys from the swim team are tossing Ping-Pong balls and guzzling booze.

Mitchell’s house is in a big subdivision where each home is spread out a half acre from the next one. The two-story mansion backs up to a field full of Douglas firs and a man-made lake
that I can just make out from the car, where the crescent moon glints off the water. His parents had to be either totally oblivious or clinically insane to leave him home alone here for a weekend.
Have they never seen a teen movie before?

Now that we’re here, my knee bounces involuntarily and my palms sweat. I forgot about the pre-party jitters. It’s not that I’m nervous. Not exactly. But the truth is, I
don’t know a ton of people. At least not well. Since I’ve been in and out of school for a couple years, I’m not past the small-talk stage with many people other than Henry, Brynn,
and now Lydia. And one of those people isn’t even speaking to me.

Not that I can unravel whose fault that is anymore, mine or his.

I pull out my phone and text Brynn.
U here?

Brynn knows everyone from cross-country and so does Lydia. I’d never admit it, but it bothers me that Brynn has other friends besides our small group, and I don’t. God, that sounds
selfish.

My phone buzzes. “Brynn’s in the kitchen,” I relay to Levi.