Wicked Games (3 page)

So she took another swig of rum and Coke. She couldn’t get drunk fast enough. It was the only way she knew how to escape the feeling that everyone here was laughing at her behind her back.

When she arrived at his circle of friends, Carter held out his arm, beckoning her to his side and inviting her into the group. She handed him his beer.

“Mmm. Warm beer. My favorite,” he said to her, putting his cup to his lips. She knew he wasn’t criticizing her—he was just trying to be funny, or cute or something. But she couldn’t help but feel like he should have just said thank you.

His core group was all there. Jeff, of course, and Andy and Carlos and Reed. They were a multicultural group. Carlos was Cuban, Andy was African American (his mother was white and his father was black), and Reed’s real name was Ranjit—they called him Reed because he was so skinny. What bound them together was their sense of humor, goofball stuff—they loved Seth Rogen especially—and the fact that they were slightly smarter than their classmates.

“You doing okay?” he whispered to her, ducking his head toward hers for some small semblance of privacy.

She shrugged and adjusted the dress strap around her neck. “We’re here,” she said. “So . . . whatever.”

Carter smelled the alcohol on her breath—she could tell by the sour face he made, the sharp look of disappointment in his eyes—but he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, the two of them turned their attention back to the guys.

Jeff was a great mimic, and Lilah recognized that right now he was doing his Paco Bermudez imitation—thus the oversized glasses. He arched his back so he looked like he was sitting in a convertible, slowly bobbed his head, looking from side to side, and mumbled with a slight Latin accent, “Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Killer beat, man. Yo, that’s how we do. Yeah, man.”

Even though Carlos and Andy chuckled, Reed knocked the giant sunglasses off Jeff’s nose and frowned.
“That shit is so stale, dude. You need to broaden your range.”

Carter leaned in and whispered in Lilah’s ear. “Aren’t you going to miss this?”

“Yeah,” she said, trying to be cheerful. In truth, she looked forward to the day when Jeff made good on his promise to move to LA and try his luck in the film industry; then she and Carter could be alone, building a life together without the constant distraction of Jeff gobbling up all of Carter’s attention.

She went to gulp down some more of her drink and discovered that it was empty again.

Carter, who was always conscious, carefully attentive of Lilah at his side, watching her out of the corner of his eye even when he seemed to be giving all his attention to something else, noticed that she stabbed her cheek with the straw before finding her lips.

“Do Rollo,” said Andy, egging Jeff on. Rollo was the captain of the wrestling team, a legend around school for his excessive appetite and his exceedingly small brain.

“Me Rollo,” said Jeff. “Me eat. Me eat you.” He held his arms out Frankenstein-style and went toward Lilah with them, but then seeing that she wasn’t into the game, he stopped and said, “Man, you know? Sometimes I wonder. How’s Rollo ever going to survive once he’s got to be out there in the real world?”

Lilah didn’t hang around to hear the answer to the
question. “I’m going for a refill,” she said.

“You sure?” Carter said. “It’s going to be a long night.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Anyway, you’re the one who told me to have fun and relax. That’s what I’m doing.”

“It’s just—”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Carter said. “Go ahead, get your drink.”

“Thanks, I will.” Lilah could feel her face turning red.

Reed, who was quieter than the rest of the guys, and always attentive to the subtleties of what was going on around him, looked at her with his wide, dark eyes, confused. Jeff, seeing Reed look, started gawking at her, too.

“That’s right, drink up, dude,” said Andy, always ready to lighten the mood, even if he did so in all the wrong ways. “Par-tay! Par-tay! Par-tay!” To prove his point, he tipped his red cup to his mouth and guzzled his beer, spilling half of it down the sides of his chubby cheeks.

God. It made her want to die. And though she knew he hadn’t really done anything wrong, she couldn’t help blaming her boyfriend. “You know, we can’t all be perfect like you, Carter.”

“Come on, Lilah,” he responded. “I didn’t—”

But she’d already stalked off for more rum and Coke, determined this time to get the balance right—ninety-nine percent rum, and a splash of soda.

Twenty minutes later,
Carter and the guys were still hanging around on the deck and Lilah still wasn’t back. Though the party continued to swirl crazily around them, they’d moved into a lower key, sitting on the cushioned wooden platforms of the chaise lounges and feeling the sea breeze on their sweaty heads as they compared notes about their college-admissions statuses.

“Looks like I’m down to my safety school,” said Andy with a sigh. “Tallahassee, here I come.”

Jeff smirked and leaned back onto an elbow. “Tallahassee’s not so bad. Maybe you’ll come home next summer with a mullet.”

“At least I get to major in alligator wrangling, like
I’ve always wanted to,” said Andy, trying to laugh off his disappointment.

“Jeff can come out from UCLA. And I’ll drive down from Duke,” Reed said. “We’ll film you getting your arm bitten off. We’ll be like the next wave of
Jackass
.”

“Ha.” Jeff slapped the cushion next to him and fell over himself laughing. “The United Colors of
Jackass
,” he said.

Carter tracked all this with half an ear. Mostly he was wondering where Lilah had gone, and fighting the urge to go find her. He sat slightly apart from the guys, his chin on his forearm on the deck railing, gazing out at the water. It was calm out there tonight.

Noticing Carter’s mood, and wanting to bring him into the group, Jeff asked, “What role would Carter play?”

Carter smiled out of the side of his mouth. He ran his hand through his sandy hair and pulled his attention back to his friends. “I’d be the one who scientifically explained to you all the possible ways the alligator could kill you. Just so you’d know.”

“They couldn’t kill me,” said Andy, grabbing his belly with two hands and shaking the rolls he trapped there. “It takes a whole lot more than the razor-sharp teeth of an alligator to get through all this.”

They all laughed, and then one of those natural pauses in the conversation fell over them. They listened
to the
thwacks
of pool noodles on bare skin and watched the bikini-clad girls in the pool, doing battle with one another from the shoulders of Rollo and his wrestling buddies.

Reed was looking around, taking everything in as usual, his head bobbing on his thin neck like it did. Gradually, his attention settled somewhere up high above them. His wide eyes widened even farther. Touching Carter’s elbow, he whispered, “Don’t look now, but you might want to check out what’s happening up there.”

When he looked up, Carter couldn’t believe what he saw. There was Lilah, scrambling clumsily on her hands and knees over the curved terra-cotta shingles of the steeply angled roof, her white sundress streaked in places with thick, black grease. She appeared to be trying to raise herself up to stand from a sitting position, but Carter could see that she was too drunk to do this with any confidence.

“Jesus,” he said. He stood up and studied the stucco walls of the house, searching for a climbing path to the roof.

“Jeff, you seeing this?” asked Reed. “You might have a liability issue on your hands.”

Jeff and Andy both saw it now. They all stood up. They all craned their necks to stare at Lilah, three stories up on the roof.

“How’d she even get up there?” asked Carter. He
had both hands to the top of his head, holding his hair back as he tried to figure out what to do.

“There’s a ladder built into the wall around the side,” said Jeff.

Lilah had now managed to get herself into a standing position. Her sandals swung from one hooked finger, sometimes slapping into her thigh. She gazed out over the deck, swaying drunkenly as she surveyed the scene down there: the chicken fights in the pool, the clusters of people in the corners of the deck, the wet, tattooed guys in their knee-length, tropical-print swimsuits ducking in and out of the pool house. And of course, Carter and his friends, staring up at her as though they really cared. As though Carter really cared, she thought.

Her body tilted to the right until she lost her balance and lurched. She caught herself before she fell, but just barely.

Carter shouted up to her. “Lilah! Sit down.”

“No,” she shouted back.

“You have to, Lilah,” he said. “You’re going to fall.”

“I’m not gonna fall,” she said defiantly. “You don’t know. You don’t know anything.”

She stumbled again and took two stagger steps toward the edge of the roof before catching herself.

People were noticing. The kids in the pool had stopped their game. The girls had slid down from the shoulders of the guys and they were all staring up at her now.

“I’m gonna find a way up there, Lilah,” said Carter. “Just . . . sit. Okay? I’ll come help you down.” He turned to Jeff and whispered, “She’s totally bombed. Where’s that ladder?”

Jeff pointed to the alley between the pool house and the main house. “Around that corner.”

“I like it up here,” said Lilah. “I don’t want to come down.” She tried to do a little twirl to prove her point, but she stumbled again, two more feet closer to the edge.

The people inside had started streaming out the sliding glass doors and congregating below her on the deck. She could sense that she’d become the center of attention. She didn’t care.

“Please, Lilah. Sit down. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“I don’t have to do anything!” she shouted. “You don’t own me, Carter!”

He pushed his way through the throng of sweaty people gathered on the deck. They made a path for him. He was part of the show now.

“Just wait right there,” he called.

“Quit telling me what to do!” Lilah screamed.

Then, as though to make her point more dramatically, she reeled the sandals over her head and whipped them as hard as she could at him. They flew together toward the edge of the roof, one losing momentum almost immediately and plopping down to the rain
gutter, the other soaring out toward the mass of people gathered below her on the deck before falling with a splash into the pool. The sound made her smile.

She peered over the edge.

“You have to scoot up away from the edge, Lilah.” Carter was pleading with her now.

“I said, stop telling me what to do!” she screeched.

And then she reared up and leaped off the edge of the roof. Arms flailing at her sides, legs pinwheeling below her, her skirt billowing out around her, she flew through the air and landed in the pool with splash that cascaded onto the deck and drenched the three rows of people standing there with water.

People gasped. People clapped.

For a second people gawked at her floating there, waiting to see if she was okay.

She raised her head and shook her hair out. She looked at the clear black sky and laughed, and then she started sidestroking toward the shallow end of the pool.

When she reached the ladder, Carter was right there to help pull her out.

“Come on, Lilah,” he said, reaching out a hand for her to pull herself up with. “Let’s get you home.”

She scowled at him. “Just leave me alone.”

When he tried to take her hand, she slapped him away, so he stepped back and let her pull herself up out of the pool. Not knowing what else to do, he fished her
sandal, which had migrated toward the diving board, out of the water.

She grabbed it from him and staggered away through the crowd.

He took a step after her, ready to do what it took to calm her down and get her into the car and home, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

It was Kaily, Lilah’s old friend from the swim team.

“Don’t,” she said. “It’ll just make it worse. Me and Teresa were about to take off, anyway. We’ll get her home.”

“You sure?” he said.

“Yeah. You hang out. Have fun.”

Before he could he could protest, she was on her way, following after Lilah around the side of the house.

Whether or not he wanted to admit it to himself, it was the first time he breathed all night.

Reeling from everything
that had just happened, Carter needed some space to think.

He snuck through Jeff’s parents’ coral, Mexican-themed bedroom and slipped out onto their private deck off the side of the house. It was smaller than the back patio, just big enough for a Jacuzzi and a small glass table with a shade umbrella over it. The deck was on the second floor, but there was a staircase leading down from it to the grassy path that opened out into Jeff’s family’s private plot of beach. It was peaceful out there. The sounds of the party were distant and muted.

Sitting at the table, breathing in the warm sea air, Carter stared at the waves lapping against the sand, at
the half moon in the sky and the constellations around it, and tried to imagine a future for himself with Lilah. He couldn’t do it. Not tonight. This made him sad. It made him angry, too, but he tried not to think about this side of his emotions.

“Whatcha thinking about?” said a voice behind him.

He turned to see who was there. It was a girl named Jules Turnbull. She was leaning against the railing of the deck, holding a lit cigarette between her long, elegant fingers. The red skirt she wore hugged her hips, exposing the smooth skin of her abdomen, and her long, black hair hung loose down her back.

“Oh, you know,” he said. “Lilah and . . . matters of life and death.”

“Yeah,” said Jules. “That was pretty intense. It was admirable, though, how you tried to help her. I don’t know if I could have done that. It takes so much patience, when someone’s screaming at you like that.”

“I guess . . . ,” he said. He stared at his faded, green old-school sneaker for a second and then looked up at her. “It doesn’t feel admirable right now. It feels pretty hopeless.”