The Party (5 page)

Nick did not go to the infirmary. He didn’t know where it was, and he didn’t want to run into The Rock and his pals if he
was
able to find it. He took a shower instead and afterward held a wad of toilet paper to the cut on his scalp. Eventually the bleeding began to subside. The resulting scar would be hidden under his hair, but because he had hit the mirror with the side of his head, and not the back, the flesh between his left temple and left eye had also begun to swell. He worried what his father would say when he saw it. His father had a violent temper.

Besides having given him walking orders to stay out of trouble, his father had also told him not to come home that afternoon without a job. Nick had figured his best bet would be the nearby mall. He knew roughly where it was and thought he might be able to walk there in less than an hour. He’d worked before, in his old neighborhood, loading freight at the docks. He wondered if the stores in the mall would want him to fill out all kinds of papers before letting him show what he could do. He hoped not.

Before he set out for the mall, he stopped at the soda machines in the courtyard. He was disappointed to discover he didn’t have enough money to buy a Coke. He was standing there, fishing through his pockets for a possible hidden dime, when a small Hispanic girl came up at his side.

“May I?” she asked. He was blocking her way. He stepped aside hastily.

“I don’t have the right change,” he mumbled. He’d seen the girl before, at lunch, sitting by herself beneath a tree hugging her knees. She had long black hair tied back in a ponytail that reached to her waist.

“Oh.” She put in her change, made her selection. A can of orange soda popped out below. “What do you need?”

“Nothing, I wasn’t that thirsty.” He was dying for a drink. “Thanks, anyway.”

“No,” she said, glancing up at him with big, lustrous eyes, a serious, perhaps sad, expression. “I have change.”

Nick shrugged. “I need a quarter.”

She reached in her tiny purse. “I have three dimes.”

He took out his dime and three nickels. This was all the money he had in the world. He’d gone without lunch. This was another reason he needed a job in a hurry. He had to buy almost all his own food. He took her dimes and bought his Coke, giving her back the spare nickel. “Thanks,” he said, opening the can, shifting nervously on his feet. She was staring at him,

“Do you know you’re bleeding?” she asked finally.

He touched the side of his head. It had started again. “It’s nothing. I cut it.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. A little. It will stop in a minute.”

She went to touch the area. He recoiled automatically, and she quickly withdrew her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s really nothing,” he said quickly.

“You were in a fight, weren’t you?”

He began to shake his head, stopped. “Yes, I was.”

Her next question caught him off guard. “Did you win?”

“I don’t think he’ll want to fight me again.”

She offered her hand. l’m Maria Gonzales. You’re Nick, aren’t you?”

He shook her hand briefly. Her skin was cool, very soft. “How did you know?”

“I’ve watched you this week. You walk from one place to another. You never talk to anyone. I did that when I first got here.”

She had a strong Spanish accent. He wondered if she had only recently come into the United States. He’d had experience with a variety of ethnic groups in his old neighborhood. He suspected she wasn’t from Mexico, but from farther south, from El Salvador or Nicaragua. “I don’t know many people here,” he said.

“Do you know anybody?”

“I know the name of the guy who threw me into the mirror.”

She smiled faintly. She had deep red heartshaped lips, smooth high cheeks untouched by makeup. Her pink dress hung loose and cool but he could tell she had a fine figure. She had a freshness about her he had seldom seen in his old neighborhood. She had probably led a clean life.

“And I bet he knows your name,” she said.

Nick smiled, too, pleased with himself for having made a mildly funny remark, and happy to be talking to someone who was kind. Yet at the same time he felt the sudden urge to curtail the conversation. Perhaps he wanted to quit while he was ahead. Maybe he didn’t think he was good enough to be talking to someone like Maria.

“Nice meeting you,” he mumbled, backing up a step. “I better be going.”

“Do you take the bus home?”

“No.”

“Oh, you have a car?”

He stopped. The truth sounded so poor. “Not really.”

“Where do you live?”

In a shack.

“Near Houston and Second.”

“I live over that way. You don’t walk home every day, do you?”

“Sometimes I hitch a ride.” No one had picked him up so far.

“You should take the bus. There’s one coming in about ten minutes. You shouldn’t be walking home after getting hit like that on the head.”

The urge to get away intensified. He felt exposed, as though any second this girl was going to see something repulsive in him. He took another step back. “I’ll be all right. I’ve got to go. Thanks again for the Coke.”

“Take care of yourself, Nick.”

He hurried off the campus, walking in the direction of the mall. He didn’t understand it. She had sounded concerned about him.

Sara Cantrell approached the soda machines seconds after Maria Gonzales and Nick Grutler finished talking. Sara was feeling pretty good. She was glad she had spoken her mind about the candidates in the assembly that afternoon. The whole country was in love with phonies, she felt. The bamboos on sitcoms, the rock dopers on MTV, the rich liars in D.C. It made her sick just going into the supermarket and having to look at all those fakes on the covers of
People
magazine. One day she’d like to start a magazine of her own where she could interview people like herself, people who knew it was all a big joke.

Sara had a bad thirst. But when she put her quarters in the soda machine and punched the Up button, nothing happened. She tried the other buttons, then the coin return, and still nothing happened. Her good mood went right out the window. Those were the only two quarters she had! What did this stupid machine expect her to do, drink water? She pounded it with her fists, kicked it with her feet. Her quarters must be stuck.

The administration’s probably behind this. Trying to weasel extra money out of us kids to buy themselves magazines for their goddamn lounge.

She remembered a move a guy had done on one of the soda machines at lunch. He had grabbed ahold of it with both hands and tilted it slightly on edge, coughing up not only his money but a couple of free cans as well. Setting down her books, she stretched out her arms, trying to get a grip on it. She was not a big girl, nor was she particularly strong. Nevertheless, when she tilted the machine to the right, she was surprised to see it rock right out of her hands. It hit the asphalt with an incredible bang, causing her to jump. Taking a quick look around to make sure no one had seen her, she collected her books and hurried toward the front of the campus. At Mesa High she’d never once had a soda machine fall over on her. This was a stupid school.

Sara was supposed to meet Polly and Jessica in the parking lot directly across from campus. They had been forced to put their cars there; Tabb’s lot was filled. Sara was temporarily without wheels. Her dad had taken them away when she had received her third ticket in a month for running a red light. It was a real drag—and totally unfair. She had only gone through the lights after stopping and looking both ways. Why, she thought, should she have to sit and wait on a mechanism that didn’t care if she crossed the road or not?

Her dad didn’t know she had picked up Jessica and her folks at three in the morning. She’d run half a dozen red lights driving to the airport.

A row of bushes separated the school from the sidewalk that ran along its west side. They were tall, thick shrubs, and putting one foot onto the sidewalk, Sara couldn’t see more than a few yards in either direction. She didn’t even hear Russ Desmond coming.

When he hit her, she hardly felt a thing. One second she was walking, the next, flying. She must have closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was sitting in the bushes with a branch running up her pant leg and a flower stuck in her ear.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. A guy with the greatest set of legs she had ever seen was standing over her breathing hard.

“You all right?” he asked.

“What happened?”

“You got in my way.”

“Really?” Did this guy throw every chick that got in his way into the bushes? She sat up with effort, a muscle in her lower back protesting. The guy grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the sidewalk as if she were light as a feather. The second he let go of her, she reeled backward. The sidewalk wobbled under her feet.

“Thanks a whole bunch,” she muttered, blinking. “Who the hell are you?”

“Russ Desmond.” He wiped his sweaty face on his arm, still panting like a dog. “You’ve got leaves in your hair.”

“I didn’t grow them, believe me.” She tried to brush them away and poked herself in the ear. Her hands were trembling. Maybe she had a concussion or something. The guy looked pretty farout, like a biker in a track uniform. “I’m Sara Cantrell. You must have seen me at lunch.”

“Huh?”

Just then a multicolored herd of variousshaped teenage boys came storming down the sidewalk. They had appeared from around a corner, and there was only a second to get out of their way. Russ Desmond watched them pass without a great deal of interest.

“Do the guys migrate at Tabb or what?” she asked, getting back down from the steps where she had run for safety.

“We’re just having a little race is all. What did you mean, I must have seen you at lunch? What happened at lunch?”

It hit Sara then what was going. “Wait a sec, you’re in the middle of a race?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“No, I mean,
you’re
in the race?”

“Yeah.”

“But you were winning!” She looked down the sidewalk in the direction of the rapidly vanishing group of crosscountry runners. “Get going. Go after them. Hurry!”

“I will,” he said, sounding vaguely annoyed. “In a minute. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m all right. Get out of here.”

“First tell me what happened at lunch?”

“I gave a speech. Didn’t you hear my speech? It doesn’t matter. I’m sure someone taped it. You can listen to it after your race. Now get out of here. Go. Scoot. Goodbye.”

He nodded, gave a quick smile. “You’ve wrecked my time, Sara.”

Watching him run off, pulling leaves from her hair, she muttered, “Well, you wrecked my makeup, Russ.”

Russ Desmond.

Polly and Jessica showed up a few minutes later. They were talking about Alice’s party, or rather, arguing about it. Sara loved arguments. She hated to simply discuss things.

“Food doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Jessica was saying. “We don’t have to feed everyone dinner for god’s sake. All we need are a few sweet and salty dishes, and plenty to drink. Isn’t that right, Sara?”

“That is true.”

But people are going to be showing up with beer,” Polly said. “You remember what happened at Alice’s last party? Claudia Philips got drunk and threw up all over Kirk Holden.”

“So we won’t invite Claudia,” Jessica said.

“Or Kirk,” Sara added.

“And we can put on the invitations that no alcohol will be allowed,” Jessica said.

Polly grimaced. “We have to print up invitations?”

“Of course,” Sara said. “We have to show these barbarians we have class.”

“Who’s going to pay for all this?” Polly asked. “Me?”

“No, of course not,” Sara said. “Alice will.”

“Alice has the same account as I do,” Polly complained. Then she paused, staring at Sara. “What happened to you? You have leaves in your hair, Sara.”

“Well, you have a fat ass, Polly. And this evening I’ll wash my hair and look just wonderful, and you’ll still have a fat ass.”

“You wouldn’t look wonderful if a car full of plastic surgeons ran over you on the freeway,” Polly retorted.

Sara wrinkled her nose. “Huh?”

“Stop it, you two,” Jessica said. They had reached Jessica’s and Polly’s cars. Jessica had a Toyota; Polly, a Mercedes. Both cars were brandnew. Sara had had a nice car once, before she had run into a stupid telephone pole. Jessica continued, “We have to decide whether we want to make it a swimming party or not. What do you think, Sara?”

“Definitely. We can go skinnydipping.”

“We’re not going skinnydipping,” Polly said. “It’s against the law.”

“Only when you’ve got a fat—” Sara stopped, looking around. “Where’s Alice?”

Jessica and Polly glanced at each other. “She went home early,” Jessica said.

“What’s the matter?” Sara asked. “Does she have cramps?”

Polly hesitated. “Yeah.”

“That’s a shame,” Sara said. She liked having Alice around. That girl could take an insult better than anybody; she always just laughed.

Jessica yawned. “Let’s talk about this later, at the game. I’ve got to take a nap now or I’m going to turn into a pumpkin.” She opened her car door. “You want Polly or me to take you home, Sara?”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I can drive us to the game,” Polly said eagerly.

“Whatever,” Jessica nodded, still yawning. “Get in, Sara.”

When they were cruising down the road, the air conditioner on full and Polly following on their tail, Sara asked, “Why are you going to the game? You should stay home and rest.”

Jessica rubbed her tired eyes beneath her glasses. She had only put on the glasses at Sara’s insistence. Lately Jessica’s sight had gotten so bad that Sara hated to get in the car when she was driving. That morning in political science, before she fell asleep, Sara had noticed Jessica straining to see the screen. The girl had a history of allergies; her eyes were too sensitive for contacts, even for soft lenses. Yet she resisted wearing her glasses, even when there was no one else around; simple vanity, there was no question about it.

“I would, but I told my journalism teacher I’d take some pictures for the paper,” Jessica said.

“You volunteered?”

“Not exactly. The teacher saw the pictures I’d taken last year for Mesa’s annual. She likes my work. I think she’s been waiting for me and my camera to show up. I don’t mind. I’ve got to do something now that I’m not a cheerleader anymore. And I promised Alice I’d come. She has this guy she wants me to meet.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bill Skater?”

Jessica smiled. “I wish. It’ll be fun watching him play tonight.”

“It might be
funny
. I wasn’t kidding in the assembly when I said I’d heard he was awful.”

Jessica shrugged. “I could care less what he can do with a football.”

Sara sneered. “What makes you think you’re ever going to find out what he can do with you?”

Jessica grinned. “It’s only September. I’ve got till June. Fm going to invite him to the party.”

“I know.”

Jessica lost her grin. “You don’t think we’re pressuring Polly into something she doesn’t want to do, do you?”

“Polly’s just being Polly. If we didn’t give her a shove every now and then, she’d be mummified in her bedroom closet. Besides, the party was Alice’s idea.” Sara rubbed her aching arm. A purple bruise was beginning to appear below her elbow. “I have someone Fm going to invite, too.”

“Who?”

“This guy I ran into.”