Only Everything (13 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Charlie

My phone beeped as I locked my bike to the bike rack on Tuesday morning. It had been beeping for hours. Since before I woke up. Stacey telling me what she was having for breakfast. What she was wearing. Who was being interviewed on
Today
while she ate her Special K. Stacey texting me her address, her home number, her favorite color. Every time the phone beeped, my shoulders tightened a bit more. There was also one text from Corey telling me to call him—like that was gonna happen—but most of them were from Stacey.

I mean: What. The. Hell? I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with girls, but this couldn’t be normal. I knew for a fact that Chris and Corey had never had to deal with this kind of thing from the girls they’d gone out with. Of if they had, they’d never told me about it.

I let the lock clang against the bike as the next text came in. The sun beat down on the back of my neck. I scanned the crowd hanging out in front of the school doors. True. I had to find True. So I could strangle her.

A car door slammed behind me. “There you are! Charlie!”

I stopped and closed my eyes. The sound of my name had never made me so tense. I reached for my drumsticks and gripped them both in one hand, wishing there was a kit nearby. These flashes of irrational anger were the one thing I had in common with my dad and brothers, and I hated them. Of course, my brothers used to take out their angst on me or each other with surprise wrestling matches, but I had no one to pound on like they used to. Instead I had my drums. So I took a deep breath, started playing my jazz solo in my mind, and gripped those sticks. There. Slightly better.

Slowly I turned to face Stacey, who was jogging up the steps after me. She wore a purple T-shirt with flowers embroidered around the collar, and her hair was in one long braid. She really was pretty. Or she would have been. If she wasn’t psycho.

“Where were you? Didn’t you get my texts?” she asked, her brow wrinkling.

“I . . . I turned my phone off last night, and I guess I never turned it back on this morning,” I lied, twirling one stick between my fingers.

“Oh. That sucks.” She pouted slightly. Behind her, a school bus pulled up and a bunch of kids poured out. No True. “I thought you were gonna pick me up.”

“Pick you up?” Not one of her texts had said anything about picking her up.

“I texted you my address,” she said, like that made sense.

“I didn’t get it,” I lied again. Twirl, twirl, twirl. Faster, faster, faster. “And I don’t have a car.”

“You don’t?” She seemed disappointed. Good. Maybe now she’d break up with me. Not that we were together, but it was pretty clear she thought we were.

“Nope. My dad dropped me off yesterday and I rode my bike
today,” I told her, nodding my chin toward the half-full bike rack.

“Oh.” She looked slowly over her shoulder, and for a moment I was staring at her braid and a tiny brown mole on the back of her neck.

Please let this be a deal breaker. Please let this be a deal breaker.

“That’s okay,” she said finally. “Walking together is much more romantic anyway.”

She reached for my hand, but the drumstick stopped her. Caught between giving her what she wanted and having no desire to hold her hand, I shrugged. So she wrapped her arm around mine instead. Right. So Stacey was smart, but not so good at the hint taking.

Ugh. Why couldn’t I be a man and tell her I wasn’t interested? Honestly. There was something wrong with me. It was like I’d been born with my default setting on “polite” and that’s where it would always stay. Even if it meant I had to go out with someone I didn’t even like.

“Come on,” she said, pulling me close to her side. “I want to introduce you to my friends! They’re dying to meet you!”

I didn’t know how she’d had time to tell them about me, considering how many texts and e-mails she’d fired at me last night. Obviously the girl was an overachiever. I saw the pack of them notice us as we approached, nothing but bright colors and big smiles and lots of giggling. One of them looked me up and down like she was sizing me up for herself, and my fight-or-flight reflex kicked in. If I got in with Stacey’s friends, it would be that much harder to get out. At least, that’s what my instincts were telling me.

“Actually, I gotta go,” I told Stacey, slipping from her grasp. “I told Roon I’d stop by before class.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I . . .”

Have to lay into the drums before I explode?

“Told him I would,” I mumbled instead.

“Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll see you—”

The rest of her sentence was drowned out by the guilty, embarrassed pounding in my ears as I sprinted toward the front entrance. First I was going to hammer out some aggression on the drums, and then I was going to very calmly, very rationally, kill True Olympia.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Katrina

“Honors English? Seriously? Isn’t that, like, a lot of work?”

Lana leaned back against the windowsill next to me and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. She’d finished applying false eyelashes seconds before, and now she couldn’t stop blinking.

“I did it last year,” I said, scrolling through the calendar on my phone to check my mother’s schedule.

I saw that my mom was working this afternoon and evening and breathed a sigh of relief. I could go home, do some laundry, and be out of there before she got back.

“Yeah, and you flunked out of it,” Raine pointed out.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“What?” She raised her hands, then ashed into the cup she and Gen were sitting around. “Do I not speak the truth?”

“Well, now I got back in,” I told them, bumping the toe of my boot against the floor. I dropped my phone back into my bag and zipped it up. “And I don’t mind doing the work.”

“Really?” Gen asked.

“C’mon, KitKat. I was psyched we were in that class together,”
Raine said, pushing her legs out and crossing them at the ankle. “Who’m I gonna cheat off of when we have a quiz?”

I laughed. She didn’t. Neither did Lana or Gen. They really did think I should stay in CP English for Raine. So she could cheat. Suddenly I was reminded of the fact that Lana and Gen had been Raine’s friends first. And clearly, still were.

“Raine, you’re going to be fine. Ms. Day is a great—”

At that moment, the door flew open and we froze. A tall, scrawny girl in a red baseball cap lurched into the room. Her nose was clearly sunburned, but the rest of her face was so pale she was practically see-through. Before any of us could react, she opened her mouth, let out this awful, choking burp, and spewed all over the floor.

“Holy shit!” Gen shouted, jumping up. A dark brown chunk slid down to the hem of her skirt and dropped off, splatting into the puddle that was oozing over the tiles. My nostrils filled with a horrible, sour stench.

“Omigod, I’m gonna barf. I’m gonna barf,” Lana rambled, waving at her face with her free hand while she held her cigarette at arm’s length with the other. She was blinking like crazy, and I was sure she couldn’t see where she was going.

“You’re supposed to puke
in
the toilet!” Raine shouted, flattened back against the wall. I didn’t even know how she’d gotten there. Two seconds ago she was sitting on the floor, where the vomit lake was slowly expanding. Now she strong-armed Lana, almost slamming her head into the paper towel dispenser to keep her from stepping in barf.

The puker didn’t hear a word anyone said. She was bent over in the doorway with one hand clinging to the handle as she heaved
for breath. Her long dark hair hung forward over her face, a whole clump of it tangled and dripping.

“Are you okay?” I asked, not breathing.

“What
was
that?” she demanded, looking up with her eyes without moving her head. Even in the chaos, the gorgeous shade of blue stunned me. But she looked totally terrified. Like she thought she might be dying or something. “What did I just do?”

“Uh, you upchucked everywhere, you freak,” Raine said, skirting the lake of barf and dragging Lana with her.

The girl moaned and leaned against the doorway.

“I have to get out of here.” Lana tossed her cigarette into the nearest sink and blindly shoved past the puker into the hall. Gen and then Raine followed.

“Are you coming?” Raine demanded.

“Shouldn’t we, like, help her?” I asked.

Raine’s eyes widened and her lip curled. “Girl,
that
is gross.” And then she was gone.

The puker turned her head and groaned. A tiny drip of brown goo clung to her chin. I grabbed a paper towel, wet it, and tiptoed around the ooze, pulling her out into the deserted hallway. Once the door closed behind us, I sucked in a huge breath.

“Here.” I dabbed at her chin with the towel, and her face fell forward. She let out a rancid sigh and I almost heaved. Alcohol. I could smell alcohol behind the stench of puke.

“Are you . . . hungover?” I asked, scrunching up my face.

The girl’s eyes popped open and she stared at the floor, unfocused. “Oh my . . . maybe!” she said, her forehead wrinkling. “But that’s not possible. I had only two bottles of wine!”

“Two bottles? Yourself?” She was definitely tall, but even skinnier than Gen. A lightweight like her could never handle that much wine.

“What? It’s never affected me before,” she semi-whined, leaning her shoulder into the wall. She slid forward and went down on her knees. I somehow managed to catch her before her face hit the floor.

“Okay. This is not good,” I said, hooking my arms under hers and dragging her to her feet. She weighed practically nothing, but she was limp. As I tried to get her to stand up, we both slammed against the wall.

“Hey, Katrina! What’re you—”

Zadie stopped in her tracks as she came around the corner, her thumbs crooked around the straps of her pink Hello Kitty backpack. She looked at the puker and grimaced.

“Is she okay?”

“Not exactly,” I said, pushing the girl against the wall. Her eyes were at half-mast. “You’ve gotta go home,” I told her. “If any of the teachers see you like this, you’re screwed.”

“No!” the girl wailed loudly, her voice bouncing off the walls. She threw her arms around my neck and let herself go, hanging her full weight on me. “I can’t go home now! I have work to do! One down, two to go!”

Somewhere nearby a door slammed. A hushed conversation echoed down the hall.

“That’s my dad!” Zadie hissed, her eyes wide.

“Crap,” I said under my breath. “We have to get her out of the hall.”

“What about the bathroom?” Zadie asked.

I shook my head emphatically. “Not an option. Trust me.”

The girl hiccuped and burped. It was totally foul.

“Okay. I have an idea. Zadie, can you take one side?” I asked.

Zadie nodded and ducked under the girl’s arm. “Got it.”

I slung her other arm around my back. “Band room, on three,” I directed. “One, two, three.”

Together, Zadie and I struggled down the hall and around the corner, somehow managing the girl’s dead weight between us. At the door of the band room, I stood on my toes to peek through the high square window. Empty. I yanked open the door, and Zadie and the girl tripped inside.

“Here.”

I opened the heavy door to the first soundproof rehearsal room and flicked the light switch. The old fluorescent fixture blinked to life with a hum. Pushed up against one wall was an ancient leather couch stacked with boxes of weathered sheet music, one broken snare drum, and a teetering pile of programs from last year’s graduation. I leaned the puker against the door.

“Can you clear the couch?” I asked Zadie.

She jumped right to work and shoved everything into the far corner, next to the broken-down piano with the random missing keys.

“You can sleep it off here,” I told the puker. “My friends do it all the time.”

“Thank you.”

She took two blind steps forward, fell face-first onto the couch, and passed out, her hair trailing over her shoulder and down to the floor. For the first time I really looked over her outfit—a long white summer dress that was practically see-through over a pair of baggy jeans, and brand-new cheerleading sneakers with fuzzy white socks. Plus the red baseball cap. Where the hell had this girl come from? Mars? The Amazon? Victoria’s Secret? Although, if she’d come from there she’d probably be wearing a bra.

“I’ll come back to check on you later,” I promised. Not that she
could hear me. There was a band jacket on a hook near the door, and I tore it down and tossed it over her, then snuck quietly out. Zadie waited for me in the open area of the band room.

“Thank you,” I told her.

“No problem,” she said, bouncing on her toes, jittery. “Is she gonna be okay?”

I lifted my shoulders. “I hope so. I don’t even know her name.”

“Well, I guess I should get to homeroom,” Zadie said. She took a step, then hesitated. “Are you going to the library again today?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if you do, I’ll be there. I’m there pretty much every day,” she said. “We can sit together. If you want.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

Zadie grinned and traipsed out into the hallway. Someone grabbed the door before it could close and came inside. It was Charlie. He was wearing a white T-shirt with black sleeves and the logo of a band I’d never heard of on the front. His drumsticks were gripped in one hand. My pulse started pounding at the very sight of him.

“Hey!” he said. “What’re you doing here?”

He adjusted the one backpack strap he had slung over his shoulder. I didn’t want to tattle on the puker, but maybe he’d know what to do.

“I’ll tell you if you swear you won’t tell anyone.”

“Ooh. Intrigue.” Charlie rolled the drumsticks between his palms. I smirked.

“C’mere.”

Opening the door to the rehearsal room a crack, I let him peek inside. The puker let out a huge snore and rolled over, her arm flung over the side of the couch.

“True?” he whispered. “What the hell?”

“You know her?” I asked, closing the door.