Down With the Shine (4 page)

T
he next thing I know, I’m in the bathroom, where Larry is curled up next to the toilet.

“I wondered where you went,” I tell him, even though before this moment, I’d sorta forgotten he existed. To make up for that, I gently pat his head.

“I’m dying,” he moans.

“No, you’re not. It only feels like you are. Give it a day . . . maybe two. You’ll be fine.”

Leaning forward, Larry dry heaves into the toilet. “I should’ve listened to my mom.”

“Your mom who hates me? The one who told you to stay away from me?” The rage particular to moonshine rises out of me. “Screw you, Larry. Why don’t you call your mommy and cry to her, then.”

I am screaming, but somehow I still hear Larry say, “Sorry, that’s not . . . I just meant that she said not to
drink.” Except I can’t hear it, not really, because it’s like every demon I’ve held at bay my whole life has been released inside of me.

“Sure, Larry, of course that’s what you meant.” I stomp toward the door, but stop before slamming it behind me, wanting to see his face when I deliver my devastating last line. “You must think I’m as dumb as you are.”

I see Larry flinch right before the door slams closed, blocking him from view. I have never called Larry dumb before. It’s a thing with us. I think it all the time, but never say it. Except now I have. Before regret can sink in, though, the moonshine churns, propelling me through the crowd until I am outside. The air is wonderful and cool and also I am making out with someone. I realize at some point that it is Blake Graham.

“Hey,” I mumble, trying to remember something about him. Before I can say anything more his tongue pushes its way back into my mouth.

That’s the last thing I remember.

Then I am in a moving vehicle. Not belted in, but lying on the floor. I open my eyes and see the stars above me. My uncles’ truck, I think. But that doesn’t make sense. They’d be mad about the party and the moonshine, but coming to drag me away isn’t their style. I’m scared, but the truck shakes and shimmies and I pass out again.

The next time I come to is worse. I hear the sound of water. Bodies press against me on either side. I lift my head slightly, just enough to count the ten other people scattered around me in the truck bed. Seven guys, three girls, all splayed out, curled up, or lying prone. I recognize each of them. Like me, they are freaks and outcasts so low on the social ladder they should be ashamed of even
thinking
about Michaela’s party, much less attending it.

I slump back down and let my heavy eyes close once more. I’ve been tossed from the party and while I wish I could say someone made a mistake and that I don’t belong here, it’s not true. Who was I kidding? Did I really believe a few jars of shine were enough to change my life?

And then, as if the universe wants to make sure that I really and truly got the message, water begins to pour down. We’re all soaked in seconds. The deluge ends as abruptly as it began, only to be replaced by soap. I squeeze my eyes and mouth closed too late. From the spitting noises around me, I’m not the only one. Everyone’s awake and prepared by the time the scrubbers come down.

Yes, we are at the car wash. After getting watered down, soaped up, and nearly blown away by the drier, we finally emerge back out into the night. Before we can exhale a great big communal sigh of relief, tons of camera phones begin to flash around us as several of Michaela’s
buddies compete to capture the moment for posterity and Instagram. The cherry on top of all this is someone’s car radio cranked up and blasting out that old disco favorite,
“At the car wash, whoa whoa whoa.”

I pull myself into a sitting position in time to watch Michaela saunter toward us. Actually, there are two of her, I think. I squint, trying to bring her into focus, as she leans against the side of the truck and smiles the tight bitchy smile she’s known for; Dylan used to do an amazing impression of it.

“I wish I could say that all of you clean up nicely, but . . .” Michaela and her double both laugh.

“Bitshhhh,” I slur like an idiot. Michaela laughs again.

“Don’t try to talk, sweetie. You’ve got a lot of liquor inside you still . . . although it does look like some of it’s in your hair. Oh, and the cough syrup we poured in your beer is probably messing with you a little bit too.”

Furious, frightened, and more than a little betrayed, I try to take a swing at Michaela, but only manage to painfully connect my fist with the side of the truck. Michaela—and now with the clarity of pain, I can see the second girl is not a double, but Blake’s girlfriend, of course—gets another giggle out of this. I hate them both, but my eyes are so heavy, and if I let them close for a minute . . . just long enough to gather my thoughts . . .

I wake again, still groggy as hell and now dizzy too. At first I think I’m alone because all I can hear is my own heavy breathing. But there’s a hand wrapped around my ankle, and another slowly sliding up my bare leg. The heavy breathing isn’t mine. It goes along with the owner of those hands. I squirm, trying to shake him off.

“Don’t be like that, Lennie.” This voice I recognize instantly.

Walsh Weathers Junior. Otherwise known as W2, which is a nickname his family gave him when he was a baby. They own Weathers Chevrolet, and W2 comes to school in a brand-new pickup truck every month. That explains whose truck bed I’m lying in. The car wash too. Damn.

W2’s goal of feeling up every girl in our class is well known. Hell, he even brags about it. “The dykes, the fatties, the nerdies, the Jesus-lovin’ super virgins. I want ’em all.”

It’s gross. And parties full of drunk girls are his main hunting ground.

I know all of this, but for some reason it hadn’t even crossed my mind that he might try to cross me off his list tonight.

Because I thought I’d owned that party. I thought that maybe things had finally changed.

I’m an idiot, that’s for sure.

Most people would say that right now I’m getting exactly what I deserve. They said the same thing about Dylan when she went missing. That she’d hung out with trash like me and I’d led her to the biker bar where she was last seen. They didn’t know that the big fight we’d had was over me telling her to stay away from there. That the uncs had told me that place was bad news, and if they thought so, then it definitely was. Or maybe if people knew that, they’d blame her more. They would say she’d been looking for trouble. But I knew Dylan better than that. We were both looking for the same thing, and it wasn’t trouble. Despite her big house, beautiful mother, and heroic dead father, what Dyl and I both longed for was escape.

When she was still missing, I overheard a group of teachers whispering about how she might be “dead or worse.” I don’t know what’s worse than dead. Even now with W2’s hand slithering north of my kneecap, I wouldn’t prefer death. And I’m not going to lie here like I’m dead while he gropes me as if I’m his own personal blow-up doll.

Filling my lungs, I scream. One of his hands quickly covers my mouth. I wiggle and thrash until he removes it. For an instant I think I’m winning, until W2 squeals. “What the hell, Smith?”

I look up to see that Smith has W2 in a headlock.

Smith has come to my rescue. My eternal flame of hope flares to life once more.

And then Smith . . . laughs.

Laughs at me, lying there soaking wet and helpless.

“Not the plan,” he says, releasing W2.

All hope is fully extinguished as W2 whines, “But I didn’t get to the boobies yet. Come on, bro, ya know I need the boobies for the list.”

Smith and I were never friends, but he always treated me kindly. He probably knew I had a crush on him. One too many times he caught me staring at him, especially when we all sat basking beneath the summer sun beside their Olympic-size swimming pool. His bare chest, tan and muscled, water dripping down as he did pull-ups on the edge of the diving board . . . Of course, I stared then.

But that wasn’t the only time.

Or the worst of it.

No, that was a few months before Dylan went missing. She’d sent me downstairs to steal some wine coolers from her mom’s booze fridge out by the pool. Her mother knew we took them, but didn’t want to see us doing it, so stealth was important.

On padded feet, I snuck through the gigantic house until I reached the kitchen and sliding glass door that
opened to the backyard. At the other end of the house, an addition had been specially built for her mother’s office. It was mostly just a space to display the pictures from her days as a model, but that night Teena and Smith were inside and they were dancing. They looked so elegant together and . . . sweet.

I knew Dyl hated her mother, said she was twisted and strange. And Teena never seemed terribly fond of her daughter either. She was always happy to see me, though, when other mothers hadn’t even allowed me in the front door. Told me to call her Teena and sometimes even touched my hair and said things like, “Why do you and Dylan insist on looking ugly when you could be so pretty?” Okay, so maybe that wasn’t so nice, but it was more motherly than anything I’d ever heard from my own mom. And she was beautiful, so beautiful, even though she was years past her time as a model. I couldn’t help but romanticize her, and this scene with Smith fed right into that.

I imagined her teaching him the steps when he was just a little boy, wincing when he stepped on her feet. And as he got older, slowly showing him how to lead. I watched them finish their dance with a whirling turn, and I would’ve clapped if not for the wine coolers in my hands.

I kept watching, indulging myself with a wistful sigh, and so I saw the exact moment when things transformed into something terrible.

Teena took Smith’s face in both hands and kissed him on the mouth. It was not a motherly kiss. Not with her other hand trailing down his chest and seeking more southern territory even as Smith shoved her away.

A wine cooler slipped from my suddenly sweaty hands and smashed against the cement. I left it, and went running back inside the house.

I hid in the bathroom, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I decided not to tell Dylan anything, even though I had a feeling, from things she’d said in the past, that she wouldn’t be all that surprised.

Decision made, I opened the bathroom door and came face-to-face with Smith. He leaned against the wall opposite the door, arms folded over his chest.

“Hey, Smith,” I said. It was times like that when I was actually thankful for my upbringing in a family of lawbreakers. My face didn’t go red, my voice didn’t squeak, and my hand, raised in a casual wave, didn’t shake. “Were you waiting for the bathroom?”

“No,” he said. “I was waiting for you.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Why’s that?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked toward me, two
deliberate steps and then his hands were on my shoulders, propelling me backward into the bathroom until the bathtub pressed against the backs of my legs and I couldn’t go any farther. Still he leaned against me, so that I had to grab hold of him or fall onto my ass. I clutched at him and was about to say his name, demand he stop, when his mouth found mine.

He didn’t kiss me the way that a high school boy kisses a girl, hesitant and too moist or too dry and generally making it clear that he isn’t really interested in your lips, except that they give him an excuse to be closer to your boobs. Smith kissed me like he was trying to prove something. He made my mouth a roller coaster ride that did loop-da-loops and caused my stomach to jump and generally scared the hell out of me.

Like all roller coaster rides, it ended way too soon.

Just as I kissed him back, he pulled away. I was left grasping air, and then the shower curtain, trying to stay on my feet, but ending up in an ungraceful heap at the bottom of the bathtub. I stared at Smith, who stood in front of the sink with his back to me, taking a giant swig from a bottle of Listerine. He gargled and spat. Our eyes met in the mirror above the sink. I had a thousand words, but couldn’t get a single one out. Smith didn’t say anything either. His stare was almost hollow and as my senses returned I realized it
was whiskey that I’d tasted in his kiss.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

He turned and walked out of the bathroom. His feet pounded down the steps before he bothered to call out a reply. “Believe what you want.”

I’d figured he was referring to more than just my question, but I never had the guts to find out for sure.

“Let’s get this over with,” Smith says now, and I am lifted and flipped over so that I am upside down over his shoulder with my ass in the air. I close my eyes, fighting nausea and something else that feels like my heart breaking.

We walk long enough for me to hear the sound of gravel underfoot and to count only one set of footsteps. Wherever he is taking me, he is doing it alone. This, then, is my only chance for mercy.

“Smith, please,” I whisper. “Don’t do this.”

He stops, and I stupidly hope I’ve gotten through to him, but then he lowers me to the ground and I am lined up with the rest of the party rejects on a curb at the edge of a nearly full parking lot. I squint toward the squat brown building at the other end of the parking lot that seems to pulse with some sort of dark energy.

My stomach sinks as I realize this is the biker bar where Dylan’s car was found. The one where my father
and various other lowlifes have supposedly been spotted. And they are leaving us here, which means that one of us will have to go inside and ask to use the phone or else we’ll have to hike at least a mile down the road to the nearest gas station. It’s the perfect combination of clever and cruel. I look down the line of my fellow party evictees huddled on the curb. The ones who meet my gaze glare back. They know as well as I do that they’ve been dragged into a punishment meant for me.

Pulling myself to my feet, I lurch forward and grab hold of Smith’s shirt. “I had nothing to do with what happened to Dyl. Smith, come on, you know that. She was my friend. I—”

At last Smith’s eyes meet mine. “You what?”

I was going to say I loved her, but with Smith glaring at me I can’t get the words out. “She was my friend,” I repeat lamely.