Butter (17 page)

Everyone laughed except a guy who looked Morgan up and down with a sneer. “Jeremy says you puked orange all over his carpet. Try to make it to a bathroom next time, lightweight.”

Morgan blushed and pulled her hood up until it halfcovered her face. Something small twisted in my gut. Morgan seemed nicer than the rest of them. I hoped she wouldn't be too busted up on New Year's when she realized I'd lied to her.

Anna wrapped her arms around herself. “I hope it warms up before the party.”

“It doesn't matter if it's cold,” Parker said. “My pool's heated, and the alcohol will do the rest.”

Nate leaned over to add his two cents. “Plus, I'm bringing some party favors that will make you forget all about the cold.” He winked.

“What do you mean?”

Nate laughed and slugged Parker on the shoulder. “Hey, Park, what do I mean?”

Parker laughed too.

“Party favors?” I pressed.

“Yeah,” Nate said. He held one hand flat and used the other to cover his right nostril. Then he pretended to sniff a line down his flat hand. “Y'know …
favors
.”

Oh!

“Coke?” I whispered.

“No way!” Parker and Nate said in unison.

I was confused.

“I don't snort anything I can't find in my mom's medicine cabinet,” Nate explained. “The prescriptions make you feel just as good, I promise. And they're from a pharmacy, so they can't really hurt you.”

“Totally safe,” Parker nodded in agreement.

What a pair of tools. I could list a dozen pharmaceutical drugs right off the top of my head that could
easily
hurt you, or even kill you.

Of course.

That's five.

A couple lines of what ever powdery substance Nate felt like sharing New Year's Eve night would be the perfect jump start to my last meal.
And it might just give me the balls to go through with it. The
Butter
balls.
I almost smiled.

Parker turned away to start a chant for Jeremy, who had just been sidelined.

Nate put his face close to my ear. “Dude, Parker doesn't like hard stuff at his house, but if you want blow, I can get that for you.”

“Oh, uh—no, no thanks.” I tried to smile, to be cool.

Nate shrugged. “Okay, no big. But find me at the party. We'll do a little somethin' somethin' over-the-counter style.”

“What party?” a voice broke in.

Jeremy was sweating and breathing hard, his face red and pinched. He looked pissed about being taken out of the game.

“My party, dick!” Parker laughed. “You forget already?”

Jeremy ignored Parker and looked right at me. “Don't you have something to do that night?”

I matched his stare and tried to keep my expression stony. “Maybe if you focused a little more on the game, you wouldn't fumble and get your ass knocked out.”

Parker and Nate howled.

“Fuck you, King Kong! Let's see you move
your
fat ass down that field!” Jeremy spit back.

“Break it up,” Parker said. “I've got a hundred riding on this game, so take it out on the other team, huh?” He smacked Jeremy's ass and pushed him back onto the field. “Trent! Get this guy back in the game!”

Trent nodded from the middle of the field and waved Jeremy back in to join a team huddle forming on the grass.

It was hard enough pretending to cheer Jeremy on before the attack. Now I was done; Anna's paper be damned. I tapped Jeanie on the shoulder—at least, I think it was her shoulder; she was drowning under my jacket. “I'm taking off. Mind if I steal this back from you?”

Jeanie's dark cropped locks poked out from the jacket's neck hole. “Sure,” she said. “But why are you leaving?”

Because if I spend one more second watching that prick play football, I'm going to start rooting for the other side.

“I've just got some stuff to do.”

Jeanie slipped out of the jacket and passed it to me. “Okay, but everyone's going to Jeremy's after to party.”

I would rather lie down naked on a pile of hot coals.

“Oh, fun. Sorry I can't go.”

“That's right, you can't go,” Anna said. “You're supposed to help me with my comp paper, remember?”

“If you want to stay, I can meet you after the scrimmage. You could come to my house or I could come to yours or we could meet at the library or a coffee shop or …”

Stop talking, asshole.

“Or we could go somewhere with Wi-Fi or somewhere outside or …”

Oh my God, I hate myself right now.

“Actually, I'll just come with you now, if that's okay,” Anna said.

Jeanie's eyes lit up and she grinned at me from an angle Anna couldn't see. “Yeah, then I don't have to take Anna home. Butter, you'll give her a ride, right?”

I don't know how I kept my cool.

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks,” Anna said, and started off for the parking lot.

I followed, my stomach clenching in nervous knots. I looked back just long enough to see Jeanie whisper something in Parker's ear and Parker turn to make a grotesque gesture with his pelvis and his fists. Then he gave me a thumbs-up and a salute.

I gave him the finger.

And I meant everything that gesture implies, but he only smiled like I'd waved good-bye. That's how these assholes communicated with each other, and I guess I was finally speaking their language.

The route to Anna's took us right by my mountain, and I don't know where my courage came from, but I found myself saying, “Hey, you want to see something cool?”

Anna tilted her head to me from the passenger seat. “Will it keep us from going home to work on this stupid paper?”

“Yup.”

“Then yes.”

Perfect timing. I made an immediate right onto the road that wound down to the mountain and parked in my spot.

Anna pointed to her sandals. “I don't exactly have my hiking boots on.”

I laughed. “Do I look like I can hike a mountain? It's just a short walk, I promise.”

Anna followed me down the familiar path to my spot. She
gasped as she rounded the corner and walked right to the edge of the outcrop.

“Careful!” I said.

She took a deep breath of desert air. “It's beautiful.” Then she spun around in a full circle. “Where did the city go?”

I laughed. “Isn't it great? You can't see anything.”

“It's just like we're in the middle of the desert.” She kicked a rock and listened to the echo as it tripped down the mountain. “I'm surprised we're so high up.”

“The parking lot is actually at the middle of the hill. It's a lot steeper on this side.”

Anna let her gaze fall down to the valley surrounded by little hills. “I wish we had bigger mountains,” she said.

“Any bigger and I wouldn't be able to hike 'em even halfway.”

“Well, I ski,” she said, finding a boulder to perch on, “so I like the big ones. And the smell of pine trees. Don't you love the smell of pine trees?”

“I guess.” I picked a larger boulder to sit on, close to Anna's.

“And gasoline,” she said. “I love the smell of gasoline too. Do you think that's weird?”

You smell like soap and oranges, and yes, you are weird, but I still love you.

“It's a little weird.”

She smiled. “Tell me something weird about you.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, like what's your most embarrassing moment?”

How about the day I spoke to you in the cafeteria and you let Jeremy insult me?

“I don't really have one.”

“
My
most embarrassing moment was at Jeanie's eleventh birthday party. There was this
huge
cake and …”

I tried to concentrate on Anna's story, but as she rambled on, my mind began to drift. I kept wondering if she'd always talked so much. It was one of those things that was hard to tell online. Sure, sometimes she wrote pretty long messages, but I always figured she was just a fast typer.

“… and there was this other time I almost
died
of embarrassment. We all went to Jeremy's swim meet …”

I noticed Anna hadn't pressed too hard for
my
most embarrassing moment. I shifted on the boulder, bored. On the Internet, she at least let me get a word in edgewise.

“Butter? Is something wrong?” Anna placed a hand on my arm, and a bolt of electricity from her fingertips surged straight to my chest, rebooting my heart. Online Anna may have been less chatty and self-absorbed, but this Anna was a lot warmer to the touch.

“No, nothing. Sorry. I just get caught up in this view.” I gestured out to the open space in front of us.

Anna's eyes followed my arm. “It is gorgeous.”

She turned back to me with a crooked grin. “And it's a perfect make-out spot.”

Something awful, something careless, something
hopeful
must have showed up on my face, because Anna's reaction to my expression was swift and sharp.

“Oh no! Not with
you
!” She leaned back on the boulder, one hand raised slightly in front of her, as if to ward off an attack.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

This is it. This is my most embarrassing moment.

Anna's eyes widened, and she lowered her hand. “I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that.”

I found my voice. “It's okay.”

“It's just that I don't know you very well.”

“I wasn't trying to—”

“But you're not my type.”

“I swear, I don't like you that way—”

“And I have a boyfriend.”

“An Internet boyfriend.”

Anna paused. “What?”

I fumbled, searching for a way to explain. “Trent, or Parker—um, no, it was Jeanie. Jeanie was talking about it at school the other day. She said you had an online boyfriend or something.”

“Oh.” Anna narrowed her eyes. “And what did everyone say?”

“Nothing really, just that maybe it was a little weird to meet a guy on the Internet.”

“Were they making fun of me?”

I shrugged, grateful for the quick change of subject. “Maybe a little bit. But that's what your friends do, right? Talk about people behind their backs? Judge them? Make fun of them?”

“No.” Anna's animated face looked almost liquid as her cheeks twitched and her forehead wrinkled. “My friends do not make fun of people.”

“Oh yeah?
Anna Banana?
”

Anna looked like I'd slapped her in the face. “You remember that?”

“Kind of hard to forget.”

“Okay, Jeremy's kind of a jerk. But the rest of them—you can't talk about them like that. They're all nice to
you,
aren't they?”

“Because of my website,” I blurted.

It was like that little truth had been building up inside me and just rocketed out of my mouth without my permission. I waited for Anna to excuse her friends, to say something sympathetic.

“Well, whose fault is that?” she snapped.

“What?”

“You made the website. You posted it for everyone to see. And now you're mad that people noticed and maybe felt bad for you?”

“I don't think it's sympathy when Parker's taking bets on how much I can eat without puking or just exactly how long it will take me to die,” I barked back.

“Like you're the first person Parker bet on to die!” Anna raised her voice so it reverberated around the valley below. “Last summer, he put down a hundred that Trent would drown trying to hold his breath underwater for two minutes.”

“And?”

“Well, he lost, obviously.”

“No, I mean, he just threw that money away? I'm sure he didn't want Trent to drown.”

“Exactly.”

My head was spinning. “So he doesn't really think I'm going to do it?”

“No way. Butter, come on. Nobody does. Isn't that why you have a password? So people who don't know you won't see it and get the wrong idea?”

Or the right idea. I didn't correct Anna that she didn't know me—that none of them knew me—before the website.

“Anyway,” she went on. “Don't you think someone would have told on you by now?
I
certainly would have. That's pretty messed up, if people really thought you were going to die and didn't tell anyone, don't you think?”

“Maybe,” I said, tucking my hands between my thighs and letting my shoulders slump. Anna had made me feel something I hadn't felt in a very long time.

Small.

The silence stretched out, and I knew Anna was waiting for something, some confirmation that I didn't really plan to kill myself any more than anyone expected me to. But I wasn't ready to make that kind of promise. I wanted more than anything for Anna to be right, for everyone to just be participating in some fad, but I didn't have the same faith in her friends.

No one's telling on me because they didn't believe me? More like no one's telling on me because they don't want some adult to come in and cancel the show.

Anna had me in a tight spot. I couldn't tell her I was serious and risk her telling her parents or something, and I couldn't tell her it was a hoax and risk her telling everyone else. I checked the time on my phone, mostly to stall while I thought of what to say, and the digital display surprised me. It was already afternoon.

“I bet the game's over now,” I said. “Is your mom going to wonder why we're not home working on that paper?”

Anna stood and stretched in an awkward fake yawn. “Actually, I'm really tired. Maybe we can do the paper another day?”

“Sure.” I tried not to let the sadness swimming inside ooze up into my voice. “I'll just take you home then.”