Ink and Ashes (15 page)

As soon as she left, I said, “Apparently Avery told Katie we could have the party here.”

Avery was sprawled on the floor in front of the TV. He rolled to his side. “Dad said we could hang out here with our friends, right?”

“Avery!” Parker said.

“What?” Avery said. “It’ll be fine!”

For so many reasons, this was a bad idea. Our parents were going to kill us if they found out. Dad had wanted us to stay home so we would be safe, and now we were potentially inviting trouble to our front door. I put my hands on my hips. “What if the person who sent me the box ends up at our house?”

“We’re not inviting anyone we don’t trust,” he said. “And if something happens tonight, we’ll know it’s a student, and we’ll have a smaller pool of suspects.”

And possibly a dead bunny—you know, if we had a bunny. “You’re unbelievable,” I said.

Avery put a hand to his heart. “Thank you.”

Parker stood up and stretched. “It’s probably too late to cancel, right?”

“Everyone already knows the party’s here,” I said. “But I still think we should cancel.”

“Even if we do, people will still show up,” Parker said. “And since there’s no stopping this, we might as well get ready.”

I couldn’t call the party off when my brothers were working against me. “Fine. But we need to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

“I think you should keep
four
eyes out for anything suspicious,” Avery said.

To avoid fratricide, I walked into the kitchen.

MOM BOUGHT A
set of outdoor furniture years ago, but no one ever used it, so it was usually pushed up against the back of the house. Parker, Nicholas, and Fed set up the matching patio chairs on one side of the copper pit and the bench with the backrest on the side closest to the house. Forrest and I set up a small table outside next to the patio chairs with stuff to make s’mores. Avery said he was supervising.

When Katie returned, I thought I should set some sort of ground rules since this party seemed to be happening whether I agreed or not. We stood in the entryway, and I gestured to the french glass doors directly to my right. “This is my dad’s office. If anyone goes in here, we are dead.”

“Gotcha.” She tilted her head. “Let’s tape a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign to the doors to be sure.”

I swept my hand to the left. “This is obviously the living room, and if you continue down the hall to the left of the stairs, you’ll find my parents’ bedroom. We should probably put a sign there too.”

“Good idea.”

Within an hour, the house filled with a mixture of people from the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams and a handful of others. Nicholas, Parker, Avery, and Forrest scattered to different rooms to hang out with people they knew—everyone except for Fed, who clung to my back like a dryer sheet.

The two of us sat on a couch in the family room, observing others mingling around us. Maybe I had been more worried than I needed to be. I could either sit around and be paranoid, or I could take control over my life. “Fed, how about we both try to get dates to the Halloween dance?”

“I thought you were going to help me.”

I’d been thinking of girls I could set him up with but hadn’t come up with the perfect match yet. “I will, but maybe you can put some of the work in yourself.”

He rubbed his round nose with a knuckle. His big, brown eyes dropped. I sighed. Those eyes almost made me cave, but I needed to show some tough love.

“Our chances will probably increase if we split up.” I stood up and pulled him off the family-room couch, nudging him forward with a hand on his back. “See those girls over there?” I pointed to a group in the kitchen. “Go talk to them.”

With all these people, there should be an opportunity to ask someone to the dance. It was easy to push Fed, but not so easy to push myself.

Fed yanked the front of his ball cap down, hiding his eyes, and skulked off to join Parker, who had everyone around him roaring with fits of contagious laughter. I hadn’t been paying attention to what Parker was doing, but as long as he kept his shirt on, I wouldn’t die of complete embarrassment.

And he did remain fully clothed. But the laughter grew as I walked into the kitchen, where he stood on top of the island and started doing orations with his butt by squeezing his rear cheeks in sync to his version of the Gettysburg address. The back pockets of his board shorts flapped.

I about-faced toward the living room and pretended I was an only child. Nicholas caught me and draped his arm around me.

“What are you doing?” I managed to shove his arm away.

His eyes flickered around the room. “Making sure you’re okay.”

“Can you please make sure I’m okay from farther away?” The room was crowded, and I had to shout so he could hear me.

“Of course.” But he didn’t move.

Why did he have to do this? Even if I was still a tad bit anxious, the last thing I needed was to give everyone the impression that I couldn’t take care of myself in my own house.

“The thing that happened today isn’t a big deal,” I said, even though I couldn’t get rid of a nagging feeling I’d had since I’d looked into the box.

“Jury’s still out on that one,” he said. “There’s a reason your dad didn’t want you to go out tonight.”

“He didn’t want Parker or Avery going out either, and I don’t see you hovering over them.” I gently tried to wriggle away from him. Not that there was anyone here I was interested in, but a couple of cute guys had left the kitchen looking disgusted when Parker started his butt-show, and hey, I liked a man who didn’t care for my brother’s gross humor. If I could work up the courage, I could talk to one of them. “Just give me some space.”

“I will. Promise.”

But he wasn’t listening, and his arm remained around my shoulders. “You know I can take you down any time.”

“Yep.” He smiled, unaffected, and went to join Parker.

I was serious, though, and began calculating some of my signature self-invented martial arts attacks. Lanie spotted me standing in the corner seething. She threw both arms around my stiff body, her strawberry-blonde hair whipping me in the face. I patted her on the back awkwardly. I hadn’t seen most of the team since the accusation of cheating had happened, and it was embarrassing to talk with them about why I wasn’t making it to practice.

She wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with ravens on the front and black soccer pants, as if she had come straight from practice. Releasing me, she said, “Coach told us you missed your meeting today.” Her mouth formed an exaggerated pout. “We need you on the field.”

“Yeah, uh, I wish that hadn’t happened.” I tried to relax my face, but it was hard to mask how stupid I felt. Even with the whole eyeball incident, I would have stayed if I had been in the right frame of mind to remember the meeting. “It’s unfortunate.”

She opened her green eyes wide, sparkles of glitter reflecting off her freckles. “Grab a drink and join us. We’re all outside on the patio,” she called out as her ponytail disappeared through our back door off the kitchen.

I hesitated. After all, I
hadn’t
cheated. These girls were my friends, and none of them had been weird toward me since the accusation. I grabbed a bottle of water off the counter and exited after her, eager to get as far away as possible from Parker and his fan club.

A small group of girls from my team huddled around the copper fire pit in the middle of the deck. A cool breeze caught the hairs on the back of my neck, and I hurried to join them. Utah deserts might be warm in the fall during the day, but at night the temperature drops. That fire looked so inviting.

Lanie flopped next to her boyfriend, Roarke, draping her long legs across his lap, and started kissing him. One thing I did
not
miss about my team was the PDA.

“Hi, Claire!” said Kimi and Mika, huddled under a blanket on a picnic bench across the fire. The glow of the flames danced in their dark eyes. Everyone stared at me, taking their attention from Lanie and Roarke.

Ashley sat next to them in a camping chair, concentrating on toasting her marshmallow.

“Hey.” I sat in the middle of an empty bench at a right angle to them. I smiled awkwardly at everyone. Where to start? I hadn’t talked to most everyone on the team since I was benched except to say hi or wave at them in class.

As the awkward moment dragged out, the back door flew open and Fed burst through. Avery swaggered close behind in his skater shorts. He wore a black T-shirt underneath a large, half-buttoned flannel shirt and a tough-guy scowl on his face. He surveyed the group and went back inside.

Fed clunked his lanky body next to me. His eyes wandered to Lanie and Roarke, who were a tangle of hands and had yet to come up for air. Not that I knew for sure, but I didn’t think I could do that if I knew people were watching.

I looked across from me and remembered I was supposed to be helping Fed, too. “Hey, Fed, do you know Ashley Cheung?”

Why didn’t I think of this earlier?

Ashley took her marshmallow from the fire and glanced up.

“Ashley, this is Fed.” I put my arm around Fed. “Ashley was that girl from
Avatar
last year for Halloween.
The Last Airbender
, not the movie with the blue people.”

“Katara,” Fed said, entranced.

“I was thinking you could take her to your house and show her your collection of . . . stuff like that,” I said.

“I’d love that,” Ashley said. She popped the marshmallow in her mouth. Fed asked her about her costume, and Ashley said something about using long strips of blue cellophane and wrapping them around a wire frame so it looked like she was bending water. Soon Fed was leading her inside the house to find a quieter place to nerd-talk.

Nicholas filled the empty space next to me as soon as Fed was gone, before Kimi could even open her mouth, probably to ask me when I was going to come back to practice.

With a smile at Kimi, I turned to Nicholas. “You promised,” I whispered through my gritted teeth.

He shrugged his oversized shoulders and gave me an innocent look. “Parker told me what all that eyeball stuff meant,” he said in a hushed voice. “Do you really think I’m just going to brush that off?”

“I’m in my own backyard, surrounded by girls on my soccer team. I think I’ll be fine,” I said.

He sighed. “Fine. I think I hear some girls calling my name anyway. Let me know if you need anything.” He adjusted his Seahawks hat and went back into the house.

“So when are you coming back to the team?” Kimi asked.

“As soon as I meet with the principal next Friday,” I said, “and I prove that I didn’t cheat.”

Kimi grabbed two skewers leaning against the chair and handed one to Mika. They both grabbed marshmallows from the bag and skewered them.

“Everyone knows you wouldn’t do that,” Mika said as her marshmallow caught fire. She yanked it out and blew out the flames.

“I hope so.” A few girls from the team had mentioned they didn’t think I had cheated, but I didn’t know what the rest of the school thought. Either they didn’t know or didn’t care. But the other teachers must have heard about it by now. Would they always wonder if I was a cheater even if I was found innocent?

The back door opened, and Mumps walked through. He strolled to the bench and sat next to me. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, stretching his legs in front of him.

He was wearing a button-down shirt, which seemed out of character, but then I realized I didn’t know him well enough to know what he would or wouldn’t wear. I mean, I’d seen him before in class but hadn’t really paid attention to him. I didn’t even know his real name.

“I’m still not clear why you rejected me,” he said, pulling at his chin.

Caught off guard, I stared at him for several seconds before I could muster, “I thought Nicholas put you up to it.”

Mumps smiled. “Okay, I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t my bad body odor or something that scared you off,” he said, laughing.

My shoulders relaxed. “I think it might have been your breath.”

“Touché.” He leaned back. “Are you telling me that if I brushed my teeth . . . ?”

“I might be willing to reconsider,” I said and laughed.

“I’ll remember that.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an imaginary notebook, writing with an imaginary pencil. “Personal hygiene.”

I laughed again.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“I can’t think of anything.”

“Okay, because I asked this girl to the Halloween dance, and she said no,” he said, feigning confusion. “Can you believe it?”

I giggled. “You should really avoid those mean girls,” I said. Who was inhabiting my body right now? I never giggled.

He picked up his imaginary notebook and wrote some more. “Avoid mean girls.”

I took a deep breath, not wanting to offend him, but needing to say it. “I’m kind of embarrassed to say this, but I don’t even know your real name.”

“Calvin.” He wrote in his notebook again. “Make sure they know my name.” He leaned back and put his arm behind me, resting it on the back of the bench. “But you can call me Mumps. It sounds a lot more professional.”

He put the imaginary pencil behind his ear. “Let me try this again.” He held out his hand for me to shake, and I accepted. “Hi. My name is Calvin, and I brush my teeth.”

Mumps had me laughing so hard that I forgot for a moment about the eyes, the cheating accusations, the dark SUV that could be following me. From the corner of my eye, I caught Forrest standing by the door. I didn’t know how long he’d been there, but the strained expression on his face gave my heartbeat a start. I pulled my hand from Mumps’s hand, which I’d continued to shake for far too long.

Forrest motioned with his head for me to join him.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to Mumps. “Can you excuse me for a second?”

Mumps grinned. “You sure make a guy work hard to keep your attention.”

I smiled. Talking with him had been so easy. “I’ll be right back.” I stood and walked past Forrest into the house.

Instead of going into the kitchen, I took a detour into the garage, where it was quieter. He closed the door behind him.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Chase is here,” he said. “I don’t know who invited him.”

“He needs to leave.” Heat rose up my neck.

“I agree,” Forrest said. “I just thought you should know.”

I opened the door, marched inside, and started searching.

Chase stood in the front door, arguing with Katie. He had one hand in the pocket of his khaki pants and was using the other to gesture. The white golf shirt made him look even more like an entitled brat.

Katie stood blocking his entrance, both arms folded in front of her chest. She was as tall as Chase, and as our goalkeeper, she wasn’t afraid to face a challenge. I weaved through the crowd in the living room until I made it to Katie’s side.