The Predicteds (13 page)

“Not to mention,” Cuteny adds, “the danger you put yourself in just by associating with someone like that.” We all turn to look at Kelly Payne, who is sitting with her shoulders slumped and her elbows on the long, empty table.

“You need to be careful, Daphne,” says Dizzy. “You can't trust these predicted people, right, Jesse?”

Josh laughs uproariously, like he's in the front row of a comedy show.

Jesse doesn't respond. In fact, he looks like he's on another planet. He's staring at some point off in the distance, but when I follow his gaze, I see nothing but kids holding trays of pancakes and lunch ladies with mustaches. I nudge him with my shoulder. “Jesse?”

“Jesse,” Dizzy says impatiently, “I'm talking to you.”

Jesse stands up, all six feet or so of him towering over Dizzy. His eyes are flashing. “Dizzy, why can't you ever just shut the hell up? For once, just close that goddamn mouth of yours! Nobody wants to hear your inane babbling! Nobody!”

We all sit in shock as he storms out the side door.

***

“Hey,” I say, climbing up on the aluminum table. I've found Jesse out back, sitting on top of one of the picnic tables, staring out toward the grade school playground. In the distance, there are happy little kids running around, climbing monkey bars, totally unaware of just how shitty life can get once you grow up. I never realized how lucky I was when I was eight.

He runs his hand through his hair—that one piece is out of place, as usual—but he says nothing.

“Dizzy is like that sometimes. She talks a lot, doesn't she?” Jesse still doesn't answer. I sit quietly until I start feeling annoyed. My grandfather used to do this to my grandma; he'd just ignore her until he was ready to talk. Meanwhile, she had to sit around and look like a fool just waiting for him to get tired of not speaking.

“It's not that big of a deal,” I say. “Dizzy was just talking. I'm sure she didn't know that you would—”

“Stop it!” Jesse yells. He's so loud that the smokers standing off in the distance puffing on their cigarettes look over at us. “Shut up!” he yells into the distance. “Shut up!” Now I can't tell if he's talking to me or the little kids who are running around like maniacs, playing some kind of hyperactive game of tag.

I stand on the seat of the table and then jump to the cement. My wedge sandal heels make a satisfying
thwack!
on the pavement. “I'll just leave you alone,” I say coldly.

“No,” Jesse says, standing and grabbing my arm. “No, don't go.”

I hesitate, but then move back to the table. We both sit on the bench, me with my arms crossed, Jesse with his hands tightly clasped together, looking like someone deep in prayer.

“It's not you,” he tells me. “It's me. It's them. It's January. It's everything. It's—”

I interrupt him. “January is fine, right? I mean, I just saw her this morning. Sure, it must suck to be predicted, but that doesn't mean that everybody has to get all melodramatic about—”

It's his turn to interrupt me: “You don't get it, Daphne. This is so much bigger than you. You have no clue what's going on. You just walked in here, what, like a month ago? You don't know the first thing about January. About any of us.” He waves his hands in front of him. “Do you have any idea what it's like to know the things that January knows about herself?”

“Of course,” I say, offended a bit that Jesse seems to think I'm so dim. “Of course I get it. We've already talked about this. I just think—”

His look stops me mid-sentence, and his eyes narrow slowly. “Don't you get why I'm mad? Why I can't stand all those ignorant snobs in there who think they can judge people—that they can judge January—because of some stupid test? It's not right. It's not fair. Daphne, how can I
not
be mad?” He rests his chin on his knuckles. He's pensive now, watching a garbage truck trying to back into an alley across the street.

“Oh,” I say, realizing for the first time how passionate Jesse is. About January. Because when it comes down to it, Jesse's interest in January—his outrage at the injustice being heaped upon her—seems overdone. It's like he's in love with her or something. A series of flashbacks light up in my mind: Jesse and January at the mall, at the diner together, everywhere together. Jesse running to rescue January at the train tracks. Jesse and January together while I rolled around beside them like a third wheel—a really dense third wheel, come to think of it. Do I need a neon sign to spell it out for me? Wait! I practically had that. Isn't that what Sam was saying that night by the Coleman Center? Maybe he should've taken out a full-page ad in the newspaper or rented a skywriting plane. Then maybe I could've figured it out. “Oh,” I say, the realization hitting me straight in the gut. The few bites of pancakes that I managed to choke down at lunch have turned to paste, threatening to shoot up my throat and all over the picnic table. I swallow hard. “I get it,” I say quietly.

I stand up, the pancake globs settling down, my anger rising. Why didn't he tell me? Why drag me into this mess? Why make me feel—whatever it is I feel—about him? The anger reaches my lips. “Look, I came out here to help you, not to be your punching bag. If you want to act like an ass, be my guest, but I'm not going to stand out here and listen to you.” I wipe the seat of my pants with my sweaty palms and stalk off.

“Daphne,” Jesse calls. I hear his voice—sad, firm…pleading, maybe—rise above the little kids who are lining up to go inside.

I pretend I don't hear him. I just keep walking. Dignity demands it.

Jesse is my stepbrother, but that doesn't mean I like the guy. Honestly, I can't stand him. Everybody always thought he was perfect. Even my mom liked him better than she liked me. But he's nothing but a loser. I tried to tell Daphne that.

—Josh Heller, quoted in the book
T
he Future of the Predicted
, publication forthcoming

I am not against parties in principle. It's just that I've always hated big groups of people who are just standing around with nothing to do except comment on how much fun they are having standing around. That's pretty much the dictionary definition of a frat party, if you add beer and random hookups.

On Saturday night, Dizzy and I are walking down a dark street, peering at the houses, trying to figure out which one is Delta House. “Are you sure we'll get in?” I ask.

“Of course,” Dizzy says. “We're girls. They always let girls in.”

Dizzy and I are wearing tank tops and tight jeans with flip-flops, outfits that Dizzy assures me will camouflage the fact that we are not in college. I yank my tank top up high. Dizzy does the opposite and lets her attributes get plenty of air. Eventually, we give up squinting at signs and painted frat names on the sides of ivy-covered houses and just follow the crowd of people in front of us. Dizzy pokes me in the ribs with her index finger. “I like these odds,” she says nodding her head toward the swarm of guys.

“I thought Josh wanted to get back together with you,” I say.

“So?” she shrugs. “That doesn't mean I don't want to make him jealous. He's gotta work for it.” She beams.

I feel strangely relieved to be back in her good graces. We've had an uneasy truce since Wednesday, the day at the cafeteria when Jesse blew up at her. In Dizzy's mind, Jesse's outburst warrants an eternal cold shoulder—from her, me, and everyone else in the universe. The fact that I had the nerve to go after Jesse that day in the cafeteria is, to Dizzy, tantamount to an outright betrayal of her. This is in spite of the fact that I've been avoiding Jesse myself since Tuesday.

He called me that night: “It's not you, Daphne,” he'd insisted. “Tell Dizzy I'm sorry. That was completely out of line. I need to learn to control my temper better.” I'd simply said, “Okay,” and hung up. He didn't come to school for the rest of the week. Somebody told me he had the flu. Jesse was avoiding me. Or avoiding everyone. I'm not even sure anymore. I pretended not to care, but it must have been obvious to everyone that I cared a lot. Even Melissa has noticed that I can't sleep and I can't eat, and this is a woman who once failed to notice that I didn't take a bath for two weeks. (I was seven at the time.)

The inside of the fraternity house is a disaster zone. The kitchen countertops are filthy and covered with empty plastic cups. People are standing around wherever they can find space. One girl is sitting with her butt in the sink.

“Money?” says a guy wearing a sideways baseball cap. He's sitting at a card table in the middle of the room.

“Excuse me?” I say.

“Money. Three bucks apiece to drink.” He holds red plastic cups toward us. Dizzy grabs them, and pulls a twenty out of her pocket. “I'm not going to drink,” I tell her.

“Still costs you,” Sideways Cap says. “And it's five bucks for guys. Three bucks a cup for girls. You girls don't drink as much,” he tells us. “Keg's downstairs.” We carry our cups toward an open door that leads to some steps.

“Hey,” Sideways Cap suddenly yells, “you girls underage?” Dizzy and I freeze. “Yeah, you are,” he says. “You run if the cops show up.”

“We will,” Dizzy assures him.

“Cops?” I say. “Dizzy, maybe we should leave.”

“Oh, don't be such a bore,” she says and flits down the steps.

At the bottom of the stairs, we see a basement rec room that's been converted to a dance floor. Some people are dancing in the middle of the floor where strobe lights are shooting off bright, flashing rays that make my head hurt. The kegs are in the far corner of the room, next to the bathroom. The line stretches around in circles, and I realize that a lot of the people who appear to just be standing around are actually waiting to refill their cups.

“Dizzy,” I yell. She leans over until her ear is practically touching my lips. “I don't want to drink.”

She nods at me and yells back, “I know. Me neither. Let's just get some to hold. We'll look dumb without cups.”

“I don't want one,” I protest, but she's already talking to the guys in front of us.

When we finally reach the front of the line, Dizzy hands over her plastic cup to the guy who is filling cups from the keg. She grabs mine and hands it to him as well. “Fill them up,” she says.

He takes one look at her—her hair twisted into a complicated French knot, a hairdo that was last seen on my grandmother, circa World War II—and he smiles widely. “Hello,” he says.

“Hi,” I answer. He only looks at me briefly before he turns back to Dizzy.

“Y'all ready to party?” he asks, but it's clear he's only talking to Dizzy, who shakes her hips and waves her hands over her head in answer.

“Let's mingle,” Dizzy says after we get our beer, and I try to follow her through the crowd of people, but there are just too many people. After trying to move around for awhile, I accept that the best we can do is stand in one place and let the crowd carry us around the room with it. After an hour, my beer cup is still full. I haven't even tasted it, because it smells vile.

Dizzy starts to dance, beer sloshing out of the sides of her cup. The guy standing next to her is trying to dance with her. “Hey,” he says and grabs her around the waist. They slow dance to a fast song, and the next thing I know, I'm left alone in a sea of people, close to the stairs. While people with red cups are still entering the basement area, others are fighting their way up the stairs, an epic traffic jam. I follow the crowd up to the kitchen, which is packed with people. I make my way through the living room, stepping over entwined couples on the floor.

I find another staircase leading up—this one is narrow and not carpeted. It's so narrow that I have to squeeze flat against the wall when a thundering herd of beefy guys comes running toward me. I think I feel the staircase shake. At the top of the stairs, closed doors line the hallway. Each door sports either a poster of a partially nude girl, a sports-themed poster, or a handmade sign with something rude scrawled across it.

The door of the room across the hall opens, and a muscled guy steps out. He's not wearing a shirt, and his jeans are unbuttoned at the top. “Hey,” he says to me. “Can you come here?” I step closer to him. “Do you know anything about girls who can't stop throwing up?”

I don't, but I follow him into the room, where I see a skinny girl covered with a blanket huddled at the edge of a bunk bed, her face stuck in a small 49ers garbage can. The smell is awful, and I almost gag when her vomit hits the can. “She's been doing this for like a half hour now,” Shirtless tells me.

“Cody,” she moans, and it echoes dully in the half-full metal garbage can. She lowers the can, revealing her face. It's January. Her short hair is wet, probably from sweat, and slicked back into a smooth cap covering her head. She looks pitiful. “I'm dying,” she says.

“How much beer have you had?”

“We had vodka,” she says, pointing to the bottle, which has rolled under the bed.

Cody holds up his hands. “I didn't know she'd drink so much so fast!” He picks up a shirt that has been draped over a desk chair and says to me, “Can you stay with her? I better get back to the party.”

I want to tell him no, but I feel sorry for January, whose head is lolling in circles, her eyes not focusing on anything in particular. Shirted Cody leaves, but he doesn't close the door all the way. I hear other guys in the hallway, and he says to them, “Hey, drunk slut in that room.”

“Cool!” the others say.

“No, don't go in there,” Cody tells them. Such a gentleman.

I can't leave January now—it would be like leaving a corpse to vultures. I sit down next to her and try not to inhale through my nose. “January?” I say. “Do you need to go to the doctor?” I try to remember what the signs of alcohol poisoning are. We learned about it in health class, but I can't remember anything except pale skin. I peer now at January's face, trying to tell if she's unusually pale or blue-tinged underneath her makeup. She reaches out, grabs my hand, and squeezes tight. “Stay with me?”

“I'll stay with you,” I tell her.

“I didn't let him do it,” she tells me. “Cody, I mean. I didn't let him do anything to me.”

“It's okay,” I say. “He's gone now.” I see a small fridge in the corner. I open it and find it stocked with beer. There's one Coke in the very back. No water in sight. I grab the Coke and open it. “Drink something,” I tell her.

“It's not like I am a virgin,” she tells me, “but I've never had so much vodka before. I just met him tonight. I didn't want to do anything with him. I wouldn't do that kind of thing.” She gags slightly, but she doesn't throw up.

“You'll be okay,” I reassure her, not knowing if this is true or not. Could this really be the girl Jesse loves? Pale and shivering, she looks so pitiful. I put my arm around her in a fit of sympathy. Maybe this is what Jesse sees in her. He wants to protect her.

“Yeah,” she agrees, and then she puts her head on my shoulder. “Do you hate me?” she asks after a while.

I answer honestly: “No.”

“Even after what my brother did?”

“You aren't your brother,” I say firmly. “You weren't the one with the gun.”

“I could've been. We share the same genes. What's to say I won't be standing at school with a gun pointed at you on Monday, Daphne?”

My hand trembles on her shoulder. I have no response to what she's just said. “I'm so drunk,” she says, her head lolling against my shoulder blade.

I suddenly begin to worry about Dizzy, who is also drinking, also downstairs with all these fraternity guys who are waiting for girls to get drunk. “January,” I say. “Do you think you could wait here while I go downstairs for a minute?”

“No,” she says, looking frightened. So I sit with her for a long time until her head drops back and she begins to snore loudly. I try to position a pillow behind her head, but she's sitting at such an awkward angle that I can't do it.

I get up quietly, leaving the trash can next to her. I open the door and look around. At the far end of the hallway, on the opposite end of the staircase, two guys are standing by the radiator. Both of them are wearing Sigma Delta Tau shirts. Dizzy informed me tonight that Delta is the coolest frat on campus. I worry that if I lock the door, January won't be able to get up to let me back in. I consider shutting it and leaving it unlocked, until I hear one of the voices from down the hall say, “Some of these whores are so wasted. It's not even funny. Scoring isn't even work. It's just like tackling midgets or sneaking up on deaf people.”

“Yeah,” says the other voice. I wonder if these guys have been tested by PROFILE. Could we make them wear giant
P
's so we'd know?

I go back in the room, quietly close the door, and lock it. January is half-awake again, rolling her head around. I look around the room for a phone, but there isn't one. It drives me nuts that I don't have a cell phone. Recently, I saw someone on TV say that the pope has an iPhone. I'm truly behind the times. The pope is probably updating his blog from some remote village right now, and I'm holding a puke bucket.

“January,” I say. “I need to use your cell phone.” It takes her a while, but eventually she wakes up enough to point to her purse—an odd-looking satin pouch—which is thrown halfway under the bed. I have to get on my stomach and extend my arm to get it.

I search January's contact list, looking for familiar names, trying to decide who to call.

“I have to throw up again.” January interrupts my search. She says
fro up
, like a little girl. I know I should help her, but instead I get up and move to the other side of the room. She retches so violently that I wonder how she doesn't regurgitate an organ or something.

“Ohhh,” she moans. “Take me home, please.”

I flip through the contact list and find one number I recognize: Jesse. I hesitate for only a second. And then I flip the phone shut. I can't call him.

I could drive her home myself, but I don't know if I could even get her to stand up, let alone walk out of the frat house all the way to the parking lot. And what about Dizzy? I can't just leave her. I think briefly of calling Melissa, who would help me. And she wouldn't lecture me about it either—she would just come and take care of things. But I don't want her to see me at a frat party. Even though I haven't been drinking, I'm sort of embarrassed for even being here in the first place. Melissa thinks parties are for people who have no goals in life.

I close the phone, and then open it again and search the contact list again. I have no choice.

“I need to ask you a favor,” I say without even saying hello.

“Daphne?” he asks. “What's wrong?”

“It's January. Can you come and get us?”

He doesn't ask why. He simply says, “Where?”

I tell him Delta House and give him directions to the room upstairs. “And bring five bucks,” I say, remembering that they won't let him in otherwise.

I'm almost asleep when I hear footsteps outside the door. “Jesse,” I call.

“Shhh,” January says. “My ears.”

“Jesse,” I call again, louder.

The footsteps stop outside the door, and I hear it open. I gently push January's head off my lap harder than I intended, and then I have to reach to catch it before it cracks on the hard, uncarpeted floor. I try to stand up, but I fall back on the bottom bunk as soon as I do because my leg is so numb. A million pins cut through it, and I'm in so much pain, I hardly notice that the person standing in the doorway isn't Jesse.