The Wrong Side Of The Tracks (Leighton) (4 page)

"I got
to get going; I promised some people I'd pre-game with them before the game tonight.  But I'll be back in a few hours."  Alex tried to hide her disappointment.  She smiled and nodded, trying to fight her lost-puppy face. 

"You wan
t to come with?"

"I can't my Mom's here," she felt ridiculous even saying that.  She knew if her Mom wanted
to see her though and she was on the other side of town, she'd never see daylight again for the rest of the school year.  And that wasn't a chance she was ready to take. 

"Here put your number in my phone I'll text you when I get back."

Alex nodded and saved her number in Kenzie's contacts.  She took her phone back and started to walk back around the tent, she turned around and put her hand on her hip and called, "And tell your friends to be nice to you or I'll kick their asses!"  Then she turned and walked back into the crowd moving down Main Street. 

As she watched her wild hair disappear into the crowd she felt her phone start
vibrating in her back pocket.

"Hello?"

"Hi! We're going out to lunch to celebrate Donavon's game, I told Mrs. Rollins to keep an eye on you.  Are you going to stay for the rest of the games?"  Her Mom was leaving her here, ALONE?!  Alex ran to Main Street and spotted Kenzie's curls disappearing into the crowd, "I'm staying, I can't hear you! I'll text you," she yelled into her phone over the parade music and then dropped it into her purse.  She ran towards Kenzie, and caught up with her. 

"Can I still come with you?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yeah, it'll be awesome!"

They headed down Sherman towards the same woods Alex had cut through to get home.  Her heart
bumped loudly in her ears, the anticipation of going into The Boxes was killing her.  Kenzie was so busy asking her a million questions about Leighton Prep and her friends there that she didn't seem to notice how nervous she was.  They split another cigarette as they strolled through the red and orange leafed path.

"Where are we hanging out?"  Alex was scared Kenzie's friends weren't going to like her and she didn't want to be in someone's house where she wasn't welcome.

Kenzie was rapidly texting, "Umm. We're having a bonfire.  At Lost Creek.  Then we're going to the game," she answered distractedly.

That explained why the strip of woods seemed so much longer than when she had cut through it.  If they were going to The Boxes they would have been there by no
w, they were going to the swimming hole.  Alex took a long drag of the cigarette and inhaled for the first time, she tried to ignore the scared feeling that was starting to creep up on her.  What was she doing?  She was about to go to a REAL party with no adults, in the middle of nowhere, with strangers, and no one knew where she was.  A tiny part of her wanted to text Cam and let her know where she was just in case something happened, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. 

"My friends
are getting the provisions right now, what do you want to drink?"

Alex had never drank except for the wine
cooler incident, she was scared to name a drink because she didn't know what was in any of the names she did know, and she was afraid of pronouncing it wrong.

Afte
r a moment she answered, "You know I'm probably just going to hang, not drink.  I got to go home after the game and I'm going to be grounded for eternity if I smell like alcohol."

"What? No! You have to drink, just crash at my house and go home in the morn
ing after you sleep it off. Pleaaaaase! It's freaking LVL, and probably the last bonfire of the summer, just stop worrying and live it up. Besides, when we're old and sitting in our rocking chairs talking about the good ole days, don't you want to be like ‘Remember that crazy bonfire we went to the day we met at LVL?"

Alex took a deep breath and texted her Mom and told her she was going to sleep at Cam'
s, then said a silent prayer that her Mom didn't say anything to Mrs. Rollins. 

"Pleaaaaase,
please, PLEASE," Kenzie squealed.

It was kind of bitter-sweet, like she was getting secret revenge on Cam.  She'd use her for an alibi, and have WAY more fun than she would have had with her and her army of drones.  Kenzie was right, she was in high-school now,
and it was time to stop stressing the consequences and make some memories.  And so far the only high-school memories she had made were sitting in classrooms with strangers a year older than her and getting dissed by her "best-friend." That was about to change.

"Oka
y, but promise me you're not going to get me drunk and like leave me somewhere."

"I wouldn't do that to you, or anyone. 
My friends and I aren't from Leighton Prep, we have hearts."

Alex laughed, "We have hearts
too!"

After a brisk fifteen minute wal
k, Alex could hear the creek water flowing, blended with laughter and music.  She could smell the smoke before they rounded the bend and actually saw the fire.  There were about ten guys and five girls sitting on coolers next to two old Ford Explorers.  As they approached the group Alex hugged her Prep hoodie tight to her chest, suddenly feeling self-conscious. 

"Guys, this is my new partner-in-crime Alexandra.  She goes to Leighton Prep, but she wanted to hang out with the cool kids today."  Everyone laug
hed at Kenzie, and said hello or waved simultaneously, then went back to whatever they were doing.  Alex scanned the guys quickly, the boy from the woods wasn't there; she would recognize his hair anywhere.  Her disappointment faded quickly as she accepted a plastic red cup from one of the girls Kenzie was chatting with.  She chugged the drink enthusiastically, letting the warm fuzzy feeling blend with her adrenaline high.

Three red cups later she had learned everyone's name and age, although if you asked h
er in five minutes she probably wouldn't be able to tell you.  She played an intense round of beer pong partnered up with Kenzie on a make-shift table, a sheet of plywood held up by two camping chairs.  Two of the boys had stripped to their boxers and raced across the creek and back while everyone cheered for them and placed bets on who was going to return first.  Alex was amazed at how nice everyone was to her, no one was ignoring her or giving her dirty looks, and everyone's smiles were genuine.  She was caught up in a whirlwind, everything was happening so fast.  In just five hours she had lost her best friend, ditched her dream guy, made a new best friend, taken up smoking, and wound up at the craziest party she had ever been to. 

As evening crept up
on them, Alex and her new friends piled into the backs of the two explorers and headed to the Varsity game.  Being the two most petite girls her and Kenzie climbed over everybody and sat on the floor between the back-seat and the window giggling and passing a two liter of coke mixed with rum back and forth.  For the first time in hours Alex pulled her phone out of her purse, three new texts, all from her Mom.  Cam hadn't even texted her and asked her where she went. 

A tiny wave of reality swept over her, "Wait," sh
e laughed hysterically and Kenzie stared at her waiting for her to finish. 

"My friends can't see me."

"Ohhh, you're too embarrassed to go out in public with us?"

"Duh,
shut up. No, I told my Mom I was with Camryn.  If I roll up with a bunch of kids from Leighton High everyone is going to be talking about it, and word is going to get back to my Mom."

Kenzie nodded in agreement, "We need a disguise."  She started going through one of her friend's gym bag that had been thrown in the back of the car with them
.  Alex giggled hysterically as she tried to wrap a wife beater around her head as a scarf.  When they arrived to the game they had pulled their selves together a little bit, and settled on one of the guys' oversized black hoodies.  Even with her hoodie underneath it, it still fell right above her knees and the hood engulfed her whole head.  Everyone made jokes as they made their way up the bleachers telling her not to trip on her shirt and asking her how much weight she lost on Jenny Craig. 

Alex stole a
few glances over to Camryn and her posse, they sat rigid and sober in the exact same spot she had left them hours ago.  They waved their pompoms and stood up and clapped properly, unlike the group of Leighton High students she was sitting in the middle of. They sang songs that didn't make sense, stomped obnoxiously on the metal bleachers, and fought over whose turn it was to yell obscenities into the bullhorn.  The game itself was a blur, half the time Alex wasn't even sure who was winning, nor did she care.  One thing she was positive of, this was turning out to be one of the greatest nights of her life.

After the game they rode back to the boxes in one of the old Explorers, Kenzie climbed out the back and Alex fell out behind her.  She focused hard on pla
cing one foot in front of the other as she followed Kenzie up the stairs to her house.  She was too inebriated to notice that she was in The Boxes, not just in The Boxes but about to sleep in The Boxes.  Her main focus was not embarrassing herself or having another wine cooler fiasco.  She tried to bite her tongue, but her mouth kept blurting out apologies for how drunk she had gotten. 

"Please don't tell anyone," she slurred.

Kenzie laughed, "Tell who what? That you're drunk? We know you're drunk, we’re all drunk. It's LVL!"

S
he froze when Kenzie turned on the kitchen light and looked around; reality was starting to set in.  She always wondered what it looked like inside The Boxes.  They walked into a huge open square room.  The corner nearest the front door was a small kitchen, without even a table, just a refrigerator, stove, and one wall of cupboards above the sink. The rest of the open space was filled with two couches, a recliner, coffee table, and television.  The wall closest to her was the two windows you could see from the other side of the tracks.  The two other walls both had two closed doors. 

Kenzie gestured towards the closed doors, "That's my bedroom, and that's my brother's.  If you need to go to the bathroom
, that's over there, next to my Mom's room.  My brother is gone so you can sleep in his room, or on the couch.  I only have a twin bed and I'm a bed-hog, trust me you don't want to sleep with me."  The whole time she talked she was stripping off her shoes, hoodie, and jeans, and dropping them like bread crumbs as she led her to her to the closed doors.  "If you get up in the morning and see my Mom, don't worry she's cool, she won't bother you. And yea that's the tour; sorry I got to go to bed I have the spins.  If you're hungry help yourself." 

Kenzie left Alex drunk and confused standing in the doorway of her brother's bedroom.  She desperately wanted to run home and climb in her own warm bed, but that wasn't an option.  She knew she wasn't in the right state of mind to get home safely, a
nd even if she did what would she say to her parents?  If she were able to hide how much she drank, they would still want to know why she was running around Leighton in the middle of the night and not at Cam's house.  This was the price she had to pay for all the fun she had, she was going to have to suck it up and crash in this strange place until at least daylight.  She used the flash-light app on her I-phone and shined it around the bedroom.  She could see a full size mattress on the floor in the corner with a Bob Marley fleece blanket thrown over it.  She groped her way to the mattress in the dark and collapsed, barely managing to kick off her boots after she had lay down.

She settled into the lumpy bed, and began to try to replay the whole day in her mi
nd.  This was how she relaxed herself every night when she got in bed; it was frustrating though because there were so many pieces of her memory that were blank from the day.  She fell into a semi-conscious sleep, she was still alert of her surroundings but her eyes were closed and her body was lifeless, she was physically exhausted.

She felt her eyes open and her breathing stop before she realized what was going on, she had woken up because someone had slammed the front door.  Was Kenzie or her Mom going s
omewhere?  She heard the kitchen light switch on and a crack of light emerged through the partially open bedroom door.  Someone had just come in, not left.  She heard a cough, and it was definitely a man's cough.  Maybe it was Kenzie's brother; she had never asked where he was or when he would be back.  Should she get out of his bed?  She could hear his footsteps getting closer to the door.  She closed her eyes and draped her arm over her face and laid still, maybe if he seen her sleeping he wouldn't even bother her and would just crash on the couch. 

Alex could sense his presence hovering in the doorway and heard a tiny creak from the door hinges.  She breathed heavily mocking a sound sleep, and opened her left eye a crack to see wheat he was doing.  Then
she seen them, those big bouncy spirals of black hair outlined from the kitchen light.  The mystery boy from the woods was Kenzie's brother!  There was no way he didn't hear her heart pounding out of her chest.  If Kenzie's brother was anyone else he probably would have crashed on the couch, but there was no way the mystery boy would.  His menacing laugh echoed in her head, he'd probably kick her out of his bed, and the whole house for that matter.

Panic started to come over Alex as he entered the
bedroom; he dropped his tee-shirt on the floor on top of her boots at the foot of the bed.  What was he about to do?  She wanted to jump up and apologize for being in his room, but she was frozen with fear and still drowsy from drinking.  She felt his weight on the mattress as he crawled into bed next to her in nothing but a pair of black mesh basketball shorts, a strong aroma of alcohol struck her nose, he was drunker than she was.  Any fear she had felt evaporated, the situation changed from scary to awkward.  Did he even realize who she was, or was he completely unaware that there was someone even in his bed?  After a few moments his breathing had slowed and deepened, she laid in the dark next to him devising a game-plan to get up and get her boots and go lay on the couch without waking him up.