Living with the hawk (4 page)

“Oh, real cute.”

“How come you have to do whatever he says?”

“Go to Hell.”

I could see I'd pushed it too far. I tried to look contrite. “Yeah, but the thing is, I wouldn't be drinking.”

“No kidding? Two weeks in grade nine and you're not a boozer yet?” He laughed, the sound raw and bitter. “You don't have to drink. You don't have to come either — if you're going to be a pussy.”

He'd never called me that before, but I knew where it came from.

“Maybe I'll go, maybe I won't.”

I walked out of the room, grabbed the door, ready to heave it shut behind me, but at the last second I held on and let it close with a gentle click.

When the show was over, Evan seemed happy to be heading home, told me no way was he going to come along to any football party, not when they'd cut him from the team, I'd have to go alone.

It was well after nine when I got to Warren Crescent. There were no sidewalks on the crescent, and the street was jammed with cars. I walked on the pavement, trying to pick out the house numbers, but none of them were lit up. It didn't matter though. As I walked farther, I could hear a throbbing bass from a large two-storey house where the crescent turned, the bass booming like the music in those cars you hear coming at you in the night long before you see them. The smart thing, maybe, would be to get out of here and go home.

They'd have the party in the basement, I figured, in the family room — a house this size was bound to have one — so I went around to the back door. The yard was dark, but in the light of a window across the alley I could see two guys sitting on the back fence. I waved at them, but they didn't seem to notice me. They each had a bottle of beer. I wasn't sure if I should talk to them or go inside — or maybe just take off.

I crossed a wooden deck to knock on the door, gave it a good pounding, but no one answered. No wonder, I thought, they wouldn't even hear me with that music hammering away inside. What the heck, might as well go right in.

I turned the knob, was starting to pull at the door, when it swung open, a girl falling into me, her red sweater like a flare in the sudden light from the landing, the music driving in my ears. She grabbed my shoulder, clung there, her breast round and firm against my chest. The smell of beer was everywhere. “Sorry,” she said and stepped away, off the back deck, missing a step, staggering as she hit the lawn.

“Doan mind her.” It was another girl I didn't recognize. “She's gonna walk it off.” The second girl stood a moment watching her friend, then abruptly spun around, almost stumbled back into the house. I hesitated, thinking that was all right, her breast against my chest, before I went gingerly down the stairs behind the second girl. The basement was packed, kids dancing, leaning on the walls, clustered in groups, two couches and three or four chairs clogged with kids. Lots of them I'd never seen before, boys and girls both. The room was dark and full of smoke, the only light coming from behind me on the landing.

“Where you think you're going?” A big guy pushed himself off the wall and came towards me. He wasn't someone from the football team; I was sure I'd never seen him before. “Asked you a question!”

I backed up a step, wondering what to say. The music stopped right then, the CD finished, I guess, and although I mumbled, everybody in the room must have heard me say, “I'm s'posed to be here.” Even then I knew it sounded stupid.

“S'posed to be here, eh? Who the hell says so?”

That one I could handle. “Vaughn. He said to come.”

“Who the hell's Vaughn?” He stepped into me, grabbed me by the front of my jacket, beery breath on my face.

“Leave him alone.” It was Jordan Phelps, his hand on the guy's shoulder, the guy wheeling around, ready to throw a punch, seeing who it was, backing off at once — no hesitation when he saw it was Jordan — the music on again, and he was gone into the crowd. I took a deep breath, the air thick with beer fumes, smoke and something sweet, sickening sweet — Lord, it was probably pot — and I couldn't help thinking, What would have happened if Jordan hadn't stepped in?

“Jeez, I thought he was gonna pound me. Thanks, eh?” I was doing it again, thanking Jordan Phelps. The thing was, I really meant it.

“Don't mind him,” he said. “Played last year, and he's missing it. Here, rookie, have yourself a beer.”

I shook my head. “I'm not much of a drinker.”

“Have a beer.” He thrust it at me. I watched the bottle dangling from his hand, red leaf on white label, beer slopping in the bottle, maybe half of it gone — he'd been drinking it himself — the bottle beginning to swing, like a pendulum, against my chest, away, against my chest again.

“Come on, have a belt.” The same guy who'd once stood up for Blake with some jerk forcing gin on him, and here he was, pushing beer at me, as if now it was the thing to do.

The bottle swung away, hit me in the chest, hard. I took it from his hand, raised it to my lips, swallowed, the taste so bitter I wanted to spit.

“Have fun, rookie.” He was smiling at me now. “I gotta get myself a drink.”

Okay, I thought, fine, I'll carry this beer around, but not another sip.

I watched Jordan walk over to a cabinet against the far wall, where a boom box was blasting out the tunes, a cluster of kids opening up to make room for him. He squatted down, pulled a beer from a case on the floor.

“Hi, Blair.”

I turned around. It was a girl from my geometry class at school, a little on the porky side, maybe, but real cute. Her name was Joan, I was sure of that, though her desk was way across the room from mine.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I live here.”

“You're kidding?” Bright response, eh? Sometimes I'm about as sharp as a wad of Kleenex.

“Vaughn's my brother.”

“I didn't know.” It was so early in the term I'd never heard her last name.

“He's really going to catch it when my dad gets home.”

I looked around the room. Even in the darkness, you could see empty beer bottles everywhere you looked, cheesies and chips on the floor, some of them getting ground into an area rug by the couch, dark liquid spilled on the tile in one corner of the room. “Uh-huh, the place is quite a mess.”

“He'll be grounded for a month,” she said. “You want to dance?”

“I'm not much of a dancer.”

“Who's going to notice here? Come on. All you have to do is shake.”

She grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me away from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. I managed to get rid of my bottle of beer, setting it on a divider by the stairs. Nobody would think a thing about it. The floor was so crowded, you kept bumping someone else, but I discovered it wasn't hard to dance, the beat so loud you kind of felt it, like a drum inside your torso, your feet automatically picking up the rhythm. She was dancing with me, just an inch or so away, looking dreamy-eyed, smiling up at me. Still, I felt like a nerd.

Later on, quite a while later, she stopped dancing, said something to me, but we were right beside the boom box, I couldn't hear a thing.

“What?”

“Got to go to the can.”

She pushed through the dancers, heading for a door in the corner of the basement. Feeling stupid, out there by myself, couples gyrating all around, I went after her. She turned the knob, but the door wouldn't open. Someone had beat her to it. She stood in front of the door, the music blaring behind us, and pretty soon, she was bouncing from one foot to the other, like a little kid who's really got to go, but all the while her feet kept perfect time to the rhythm of the music. I had to smile at that. She was about as sophisticated as a kindergarten grad, uh-huh, about as sophisticated as I was myself. After another minute, she pounded on the door. It still didn't open. Then the music stopped, the room hushed in the sudden silence between tunes, and behind the bathroom door we heard someone throwing up.

“I'm gonna pee myself,” she said. “Going to the upstairs can.” She turned and ran up the stairs.

I was left standing by the bathroom, alone again in a room full of drunks, and it was time to go, man, I wished I was somewhere else. At home, at school, anywhere but here.

That was when the bathroom door opened, the smell of vomit so thick I felt my stomach churn, and out came Neil Tucker, the other rookie on the team. He was staggering, his face a chalky white. “Gotta siddown,” he said. He bounced off a couple of dancers and collapsed into a chair, a girl I didn't know trying to escape from the chair, but slow to move, pinned under him for a second until she managed to squirm loose.

He'd walked right past me, so drunk he hadn't even seen me.

Time to get out of here, I thought, and started up the stairs. Laughter below me, shrieks, a girl yelling, “Look at all the puke.”

I was out the back door like a shot, the noise and stink, all the crazy people left behind, night air wrapping around me, cool and fresh, but there was laughter in the back yard too, half a dozen guys in a line, arms flung around each other's shoulders, all of them swaying slowly, side to side.

When I saw Jordan Phelps at the end of the line, Todd Branton and Vaughn Foster beside him, I should have known enough to keep going. But no, I was curious, wanted to see what was going on.

I stayed on the left side of the yard, crouching in the shadow of an overgrown caragana hedge, walking on the lawn where the grass would muffle any sound my footsteps made. It didn't matter. The guys were laughing so loud they wouldn't have heard me anyway. When I was parallel with them, I could see someone else — the girl in the red sweater, the one who'd fallen against me when I opened the back door, her breast an instant on my chest — she was sprawled on the grass in front of them, passed out, I guess, her sweater bright even in the dark yard. Just then a light came on in the house next door, and now I could see the guys looking down at her, still laughing, all of them with their dicks out.

They were pissing on her.

“Shut the hell up!” A man's voice, loud and angry. “Or I'm calling the cops.”

Their hands were at their flies then, stuffing their dicks inside their pants, but they were laughing still, gasping, hysteria throbbing in their voices as they bumped against each other and backed away. They turned around then and ran for the door.

The last one inside was my brother.

I lay in bed for hours that night before I finally fell asleep, and then it was tossing and turning, strange dreams that left me terrified and sweating, but I must have dropped into a deep sleep at some point because the floorboards in the hall outside my door always creaked, the sound like the squeal of a mouse having its tail stepped on, and some time that night my brother walked down the hall, across those boards, and I never heard a thing. For a while, later on, I guess, I was trapped in a cave, darkness everywhere and bats wheeling around, you could hear their wings beating the black air, but it wasn't a cave, it was a mine, and the shaft was shrinking, boulders tumbling down to fill it, the entrance blocked, detonations, rock torn from rock, everything collapsing, water pouring in, and my legs wouldn't move, they were pinned beneath me, more explosions, barOOP, barOOP, and I couldn't run away.

I tried to roll over, but my legs were caught in something, the sheet, the sheet twisted and damp, my pyjama collar soaked — I was in my own bed, but the explosions kept coming at me, barOOP, barOOP, the whole house shaking. The room was dark, but when I turned my head I could see numbers glowing inches from my face, the time on my clock radio: 4:03. BarOOP! A pause. BarOOOP! Louder yet, the sound from the wall behind the headboard of my bed. The bathroom wall.

And then I knew it was my brother vomiting. Well, let him suffer. He had it coming, pissing on that girl with all those other jerks. I could picture him on the bathroom floor, hanging on to the toilet bowl as if nothing else connected him with life, gasping for air, the stench of vomit all around him, heaving up the pain from deep within, dry heaves, and nothing coming, nothing but another string of phlegm. Then I heard my father's voice, a mumble through the wall, but Blake just kept spewing.