Eternal Kiss (32 page)

“Nah. You can just drop me off at my house. I don’t want to go.”

“You want to go to the Bleu again. The boring old Bleu.”

That’s where you wanted to go five minutes before Mitzi descended from on high to invite you.
“No, I’ve got homework.”

“Please. It only ever takes you five minutes to do your homework. I’m driving, you’re coming with me. You have to. I can’t go deal with those squealing idiots all on my own.”

Why go, then?
But I gave in. Oh, I played like I wasn’t going for a while, until she got irritated and threw a cookie at me. Marisa sighed and whisked the plate away. I finished my milk and picked the cookie up. I didn’t eat it though. I’ve got some pride.

But I did say, “Okay,
fine
. I’ll go. Jesus.”

Which made Gwyn all sunny again. She’s always like that when she gets her way.

Some guy’s house, up in the Hills. There was a keg, thumping music, and a lot of whooping going on. Someone’s parents were away—I think the ratfaced guy in the corner taking shots with a bunch of pimpled jocks was the host, but I never found out for sure. It was a warm night, the winds just starting up. Full moon like a big wheel of boiled cheese coming up over the coast, rising above the broken pleats of the Hills. It was a nice view, through whole walls of glass. As soon as we got there Gwyn went for a beer and I was left all by myself near the front door, staring at groups of kids I didn’t know.

I saw Mitzi in the corner, and she perked up when she saw me. When I say
perked up
I mean
swelled up like a frog preparing to spit poison
, and I suddenly got a very bad feeling about this.

The bad feeling lasted. I found Gwyn in the kitchen, her golden head together with Trisha Brent’s. They were giggling
over something, and I began to feel a little lightheaded. There had to be a hundred people in here. One kid started barfing in the pool just as I passed the wide-open French doors out to the patio. I peered out, the madrona trees down the hill moving gently as the wind poured past me.

It felt good. I wanted to step outside, but the kid horking into the pool kind of destroyed the mood. I stood there, hanging onto one edge of the open door, and someone got a little too close.

When I looked up, it was to see Scott Holder.

Half the girls at St. Crispin’s were in love with him. Blue eyes. Blond floppy emo-boy haircut. Plays soccer and goes to Ignatius Academy, which is the closest thing to a sister school we’ve got. The end-of-the-year dances put Iggies and Crispies together, with the staff of both watching like hawks. Guess they don’t want any of the Catholic escaping.

He was saying something, those chiseled lips moving. I stared at him. He was still in the prep outfit Ignatius makes the boys wear, though he’d ditched the jacket and unbuttoned the shirt. The necklace—a single canine tooth on a hemp cord, its top wrapped with gold wire—was definitely not regulation. He grinned at me, showing those white white teeth.

“What?” I had to yell through the music.

He said my name. “Right? You go to Crispy.”

I nodded.
What the hell do you want?

“Want to go outside?” He was too tan and perfect to be real. For a second I actually thought he was asking
me
to go outside
with him, and a weird little double-track fantasy popped up inside my head. It was Scott Holder picking me up from St. Crispin’s in his maroon Volvo, me throwing my bookbag in the back seat and getting in, and Mitzi and her pals watching enviously from the sidelines.

Then I woke up to reality, looked over his shoulder, and saw Mitzi and Gwyn, standing really close together. Mitzi looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary, and Gwyn’s mouth was a round
O
. They were staring right at me, and I recognized my only friend’s expression.

It was the same way she looked on April Fool’s Day. Gwyn doesn’t have much in the way of subtlety. Mitzi whispered something to her, cupping her hand and rolling her pretty, avid, gum-ball-blue eyes. And Scott’s smile was beginning to look like an inverted V because his eyebrows had gone up.

He looked really sure that I would follow him out the door onto the patio, where the kid throwing up had subsided into a gurgle and a bunch of laughter echoed around him.

Everything fell into place behind my eyes. It’s the sort of thing that happens every day in schools across America. Someone makes a choice and hangs someone else out to dry.

I pushed past Scott, hitting him hard with my shoulder. He swayed aside. I plunged through the crowd and my stomach started revolving. I think I heard Gwyneth call my name once or twice, but I ignored it. The living room was a mass of kids all hopping around to some hip-hop anthem. I got jabbed with sweaty elbows and knocked around until I made it through to
the foyer. Pot smoke hazed the air.

Normally Gwyn and I would’ve found a spot to sit and watch, sharing a beer or a joint and making snarky comments about every idiot in the room. But this time I slipped out through the front door and down the wide palatial steps.

The winds had arrived. They smelled dry and burning, but not as burning as the tears flooding my eyes. They splashed on black silk, and I made up my mind not to give the stupid shirt back.

The party had spilled out the front door. Groups of kids were standing around laughing. A line of shiny new cars stretched around the circular driveway and poured down the hill. I kept walking, my Mary Janes slapping the pavement. The roads up here were twisty but had shoulders and ditches, the madrona whispering and moving on either side. Stars of light were houses up and down the hill, none of the neighbors too close to make a fuss.

I had to walk for a while before I reached the little red Miata. Gwyn had left her door unlocked, so I could pop the trunk and get my bookbag and blazer. If I remembered rightly, down at the end of the hill was a crossroads and a higher-end Circle K, in case anyone ran out of booze or Twinkies up here in the rich section of town.

It was gonna be a long walk. The wind whispered and chortled.

Gwyneth yelled my name. It was faint and faraway, like she was standing on a train platform and I was pulling away.

I turned around, hitched my regulation bookbag up on my shoulder, and started walking.

There wasn’t a cab, but there was a bus going downtown. I climbed on, swiped my pass, and sat right behind the driver. That’s the safest place at night, especially if you’re crying. I had to dig in my schoolbag for anything that might possibly be called tissues, found nothing, and ended up wiping at my face with my white school shirt. I had to do the laundry anyway.

It took a solid hour, though the bus only paused at one stop for no discernable reason. I could have been back at the party, necking with Scott Holder and making an idiot of myself. Or maybe they had something else planned. Who knew?

We dropped down into the valley, wound through one of the industrial districts, and ended up at the edge of downtown.

As a matter of fact, I pulled the stop cord before I thought about it, and climbed out in front of the Bleu. It was early yet in the night, only a few minutes after ten, and the all-ages club that was our sad excuse for party central was lit up like a Christmas tree. There was a gaggle of kids out front, some smoking, some just leaning against the wall and trying to look tough. Lots of eyeliner, lots of ratted-out hair, girls that weren’t Crispies in tartan skirts and platform Mary Janes. The goths had taken over the club bigtime tonight.

I paid two dollars in dimes and nickels, got a fluorescent hand stamp. I plunged into the air-conditioned darkness flashing with
strobe lights and thumping bass. My bookbag went to the check counter. I stuffed the tab in the little hidden pocket of my skirt and hit the dancefloor. They were playing some industrial trash, but it had a beat and the music shook me out of myself. Everyone was sweating despite the air-conditioning, and the hot salt water on my cheeks was touched with cool little puffs of evaporation.

When you’re dancing, time disappears. Everything goes away. It’s like being a drop of water in a body-temperature ocean, all the rough edges smoothed. When the crowd presses close and the sweat rises on the back of your neck, when you’re jumping or waving your arms and there’s the soft pressure of bodies against you, it’s like not being lonely again ever.

I bumped against him four or five times before I realized he was dancing with me. A shock of dark curling hair, a white shirt, threadbare designer jeans and boots. He looked about seventeen, dark eyes and high cheekbones. The music welled up in crashing beats, he leaned in, and I smelled peppermints and the clean healthiness of a boy. It wasn’t like Scott Holder’s expensive cologne. It was something else. My pulse spiked and I whirled away, but the floor was packed too tightly. He was behind me, his arms sliding around me, and the tears came in a hot gush. I leaned back into the anonymous arms for at least two songs. We were a still point and the rest of the dancefloor whirled around us, a kaleidoscope of eyes and lips and kids dressed up and painted.

A chunk of the crowd broke, and I lunged for freedom. The arms fell away and I made it past the bar (only soda and overpriced water—all-ages means no fun) and through the stiles out onto the
street where the wind was still blowing. Stopped, tipped my face up, my cheeks drying and my hair lifting. Kids came out behind me—it was about time for a smoke break, and they were all shouting and laughing. I swayed back and forth as they bumped me, and waited for the bouncer to yell at me not to block the door.

“Hey,” someone said. Right in my ear.

I flinched. The bouncer, a thick pseudo-military guy who probably couldn’t get a job at a real club, yelled. But not at me. I opened my eyes and looked up, and it was him.

If he’d been too pretty, I wouldn’t have even paused. But he looked almost normal. Even the jeans could have been a thrift-store find. He was looking at me funny. A vertical line between his eyebrows, his mouth a little tense.

I swiped angrily at my cheeks. My feet hurt, and I’d wasted two bucks on this. Why? “Hey.”

“Johnny.” He stuck his hand out. “Hi.”

I looked at his hand, up at him, and Scott Holder’s blue-eyed smile, so full of itself, drifted through my head. But I shook his hand. “Hi.” His skin was warm and a different texture, not sweaty like mine. I pulled away after one limp shake. My bare calves tingled under the wind pouring up the street and rubbing against the edges of buildings like a dry cat.

“Mystery lady.” His eyes passed down me once, took in the silk and the skirt and the white socks and the Mary Janes. “I’ve seen you here before. With that blonde girl.”

“She’s not here tonight,” I said immediately. He’d just struck out.

“Good. It’s hard to talk to girls when they’re with each other. You guys do it on purpose.” He grinned slightly, the tips of his teeth peeking out. “You want a cigarette?”

I stared at him. My eyes were hot and grainy, and my entire face felt flushed and blotchy. “No thanks.”

“Good. Let’s dance some more, huh? It’s early.” He hunched his shoulders, sticking his hands in his pockets. His hair was like mine, only curls instead of frizz. He looked very sure. And there was something wrong.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive, because he was. He just looked so
sure
. You never get a teenage boy who looks that certain about everything. If they do it’s a front.

But he looked … it was weird. I couldn’t figure it out and didn’t want to stare at him. “I’ve got to go.”

“You just got here.”

How the hell do you know?
I shrugged, rubbed one Mary Jane against the back of my sock, polishing it. My ankles hurt; I’d walked a long way down the hill to the bus stop. I was going to have blisters.

“Come on. Say yes.” He didn’t grin now. Instead, he looked serious.
Very
serious. His eyes had gone deep. “We have to stick together, you and me.”

Say what? I don’t even know you, kid.
“Why’s that?”

“Because otherwise they’ll eat us alive. Let’s dance.” He offered his hand again, palm-up.