Read Underneath Everything Online

Authors: Marcy Beller Paul

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Dating & Sex, #Friendship, #Homosexuality

Underneath Everything

BOOK: Underneath Everything
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UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Advance Reader’s e-proof

courtesy of
HarperCollins Publishers

This is an advance reader’s e-proof made from digital files of the uncorrected proofs. Readers are reminded that changes may be made prior to publication, including to the type, design, layout, or content, that are not reflected in this e-proof, and that this e-pub may not reflect the final edition. Any material to be quoted or excerpted in a review should be checked against the final published edition.

Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Dedication

[dedi TK]

Contents

Cover

Disclaimer

Title

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

CHAPTER 1

WE’RE RUNNING THROUGH the parking lot toward the smell of burning wood. I tighten my grip on Kris’s hand as we weave through rows of empty cars, but our palms start to pull away from each other, forcing our fingers to stretch and twist to stay together.

I keep going, toward the field full of black shadow-bodies and smoke curling into the sky above them, until we’re standing behind our old intermediate school, on the edge of dead grass, staring at the Thanksgiving bonfire.

Kris’s fingers slip out of mine. My hand drops to my side.

“So.” Kris crosses her arms and exhales through pursed lips. “Is it everything you imagined?”

“Are you going to be like this all night?” I search the faces in front of us. It’s hard to see in the dark, but every so often the crowd parts and the shadows shift. Flames sneak through, throwing an orange glow on a nose here, an eye there. The same noses and eyes and cheeks and mouths I’ve seen a million times since nursery school.

“Don’t act all surprised,” Kris says. “You know I didn’t want to come.” She slides a pack of Camels from her pocket, and I reach for my lighter. She brings the cigarette to her lips and cups her hands in front of it to block the wind. I flick open the cap of my Zippo to light her up, which is when I notice—she’s wearing lip gloss. A shade between brown and deep red, like her hair. Kris never wears makeup. Neither of us does. Then again, we don’t usually hang out with anyone but each other after school hours, either. At least, we haven’t for over a year.

I laugh, nodding at the heart-shaped stain on her filter.

“Yeah, sorry to drag you out of the house. Looks like you barely had time to change out of your pajamas.” I reach up and grab the cigarette, take a long drag, then hold it out to her, my lips forming a kiss.

“Shut up.” She snatches the cigarette back and tucks it into the curve of her smirk. “It’s tinted ChapStick.” She blows smoke out the side of her mouth.

“Then give me some,” I say.

Kris pulls a round, thin tin from her pocket and unscrews the cap. I swirl my finger around the mushy wax, smear it across my lips, and rub them together. Then I turn to her for an opinion, since she knows my face as well as I do, or she should, anyway. She’s been looking at it since the day Mrs. Singer assigned us seats at the same table in first grade. But suddenly she seems different—the light from the bonfire jumping over her face, lengthening her long red lashes, whipping up her thick, wild ponytail, highlighting her soft, round cheeks and freshly glossed lips.

I wonder if I look different, too, now that my smile is wet and low-lit. But if I do, Kris doesn’t mention it. After a careful survey of my face, she nods in approval and slips the tin back into her pocket.

“I don’t know what you’re expecting,” Kris says, waving her hand in a wide arc over the huddled groups that make up our high school. Our class alone is at least two hundred people, which is sort of like a small forest: just big enough to get lost in, just small enough for a single mistake to burn down the whole place. “Bonfire or not, somewhere in there is the same crowd we ditched last year.” She takes the last drag of her Camel, then flicks the lip-printed filter a few feet away. “A flock of sheep that big can’t lead themselves, you know. Wish I could stick around to see what happens after June, when they try. Actually, no, I don’t.”

“Hey, Smoky, put out that fire.”

“Half the field is in flames, Mats; do you really think it matters?” But we watch the glowing ember anyway, until someone steps on it. “Problem solved.” Kris sighs. “So what’s the plan, now that we’re here?”

Here: Westfield, New Jersey. Division 18. Block 273. At least that’s where we are on my 1921

Sanborn—the coolest map in my collection. But Kris asked me a question. I pull myself out of the pepto-pink paper version and into the real thing: Black sky. Crisp night. Senior year.

“Don’t have one,” I tell her.

“You’ve been carrying a to-do list since second grade,” Kris reminds me. “You’re going to tell me you spent all that time convincing me to come, telling me we couldn’t possibly miss our last bonfire, and you don’t have a plan?” Kris asks, as if I’ll realize how weird the words sound when they’re coming from her mouth.

I shrug my shoulders inside my jacket. I
did
want to come. I wanted to do
something
. But I never thought Kris would agree. It’s the one thing I hadn’t planned on. Here’s the thing, though: plan or no plan, we’re sticking together. Not because we’re “best friends.” Kris and I are a lot of things—we’re sleepovers and secrets, mind readers and fortune-tellers; we’re unconditional—but we’re not “best friends.” That’s just a label. It doesn’t mean anything.

“Okay,” she says, eyeing me. “Then follow me. I’m freezing, and I hear there’s a huge fire in Block two hundred.”

“Two seventy-three,” I correct her.

“That’s more like it.” Kris pulls me through the cold crush of arms and shoulders until we reach the center, where everybody glows. The charred pile of wood is twenty feet across and surrounded by a thick ring of blackened ground. We stare into the fire. Neither of us has been to a party in a while, and I’m not sure how to get started. I scan the crowd, but everyone keeps turning to talk, or lifting their chin to chug, or throwing up their hands to wave to someone; and when they turn or lift or throw, they lose the golden light, and I can only see half of them. One time I think I spot Jolene diagonally across from me. But then the girl turns, and I realize it’s not her.

The wind blows black smoke in our direction.

I’m about to ask Kris if she sees anyone interesting when Bella barrels into us, throwing her arms around us both like she meant to meet us here, when the truth is we haven’t hung out with her in over a year. But that’s Bella for you.

“Whoa, down, girl!” I shout, digging in my heels and using all my strength to stay upright. But she’s in full-on Bella mode, so there’s no stopping her.

“You gu-uys!” she squeals, giving our necks one last squeeze. “You’re totally here!” Bella’s lined lips stretch into a smile. Her big brown eyes go wide. “Wait”—she grabs our hands and pulls us through the tight-knit groups—“come this way. The light from that thing totally makes my bronzer look orange.” She’s walking backward into the cold darkness when she bumps into Scott Strickland.

“You know you want me, Bella!” he shouts. Doubtful. He’s put on at least twenty pounds since he graduated last year. He reaches for Bella but grabs my arm by mistake. I pull it away, and he squints at me, racking his brain for a name; but nothing comes, because I’m nobody, so he lets me go and turns around to find his friends.

“Eat it, Prickland!” Bella screams to the sky. A freshman girl whips her head around at the sound and falls into her friend. The two of them topple and crash-land, asses on the ground, heels in the air. Bella doubles over in laughter, crouching down as far as her black, patent knee-high boots will allow. “I swear to god, you guys,” she says, her voice a soprano shriek between fits of giggles, “I’m gonna pee my pants!

The look on that girl’s face! I can’t take it.”

Kris’s smile bursts open and then mine does too, so that the three of us are standing in a small patch of dead grass behind Thomas Alva Edison Intermediate School, laughing about nothing. Because that’s what hanging out with Bella is like. I’d almost forgotten.

“Oh my god.” Bella sighs, gently blotting the tears beneath her eyes. “That was awesome!”

“Classic,” I say.

“Vintage,” Kris agrees.

Bella stands up. I forgot how short she is. Even with those killer heels, the top of her curls barely hits my chin. She puts her hands on her hips and gets all fake-serious.

“So, what’s
up
, you guys? I mean, I just want to say that I totally called it. I knew you’d remember.”

What Bella remembers: Freshman year. The four of us on the floor. Me, Kris, Bella, and Jolene, giving up our deepest wishes to the dark. It was Jolene’s idea. Most things were. She turned off the lights and tiptoed through the room to where we lay waiting. With bits of sleeping bag bunched in her fists, she asked us what we’d be if we could be anything. And with our wishes still fresh on our lips, she swore we’d make them real. Right before we all promised to meet here senior year.

What I remember: how Kris and Bella fell asleep in bags on the floor while Jolene wove braids into my wet hair and words into the pink underside of my skin.

“I told Jolene you’d be here and she didn’t believe me, obviously, but I was so right and you’re here and it’s awwwwesome.” Bella jumps up and down without leaving the ground, like the cheerleader she is, and grabs our arms again as if we’ll disappear if she’s not physically touching us. “So, you’re coming over after this, right?”

I can almost feel the lashes that landed on my cheeks that night; Jolene had dared me to swing the finished braids back and forth as fast as I could.

I bring my hand to my face, smooth the stray hairs.

“Of course we’re coming,” I tell Bella. I don’t have to look at Kris to know she’s clenching her jaw.

Not only because I said we’d go to a party at Bella’s—something we swore we’d never do again—but because I didn’t check in with her first. “Everyone that’s anyone, right?” Our old motto. Which suddenly strikes me as hilarious, because me and Kris, we’re no one.

“Yaaaayyyy!” Bella sings, as if she might actually burst from excitement. And the way she’s jumping up and down in that tiny tank top, it certainly seems like a distinct possibility. Kris should be mad—I know she’s mad—but Bella’s energy is infectious. Soon we’re both smiling and nodding. Bella catches us in another double-hug-sleeper-hold before running back into the mass of shadow-bodies, shouting, “See you two
la-ter
!”

BOOK: Underneath Everything
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