“You’re both lying!” Alexa’s fists were clenched into red and white nubs at the end of her arms, that were stick straight against her body. “Ryan would never — never — be with another girl. Ever! I’m the only one. The only one!”
A crowd had begun to form at the doorway. Jake was one of them, his phone was out, as were several others, recording Alexa’s freakout.
“Does Ryan know that?” Adria dared.
Alexa shoved Adria so hard she stumbled backward and fell, fortunately there was a giant pile of coats there to catch her. This time Alexa bolted in the direction of the front door, whipping her arms out, hitting and shoving at anyone else who got in her way as she left. A few kids followed after her, continuing to document her raging tantrum.
“Are you okay?” Jake helped Adria up.
Adria nodded. “She’s such a psycho.”
“Are you guys okay?” Jake asked us.
“Yeah,” Dominic let go of my arm. “Should we be worried about Ryan’s car?”
“Probably,” Adria said.
None of us moved to do anything about it though. Everybody just kind of stood there trying to figure out what to do next, before returning to whatever they’d been doing before Alexa’s tantrum. One of the kids who’d followed her out came back in and asked, “Does anybody know if she’s been drinking? Because she’s driving now.”
“She wasn’t drinking,” Adria said. “She never drinks, which is probably for the best.”
“Okay,” said the kid. “But she also stole Ryan Mather’s car.”
“Did you get it on video?” Jake asked.
“Yep,” the kid grinned.
“Dude, post that shit everywhere,” Jake said.
I couldn’t help but wonder if Julian would help me ditch the last term if he knew some psycho rapist was out to get me. Unfortunately the thought barely had a chance to form when the next cluster of ‘what the fuck’ hit the fan, in the form of a text from Kayley.
KayE: Help! I ducked up bad! Kims locked herself in a bedroom in the basement with that pervy Zack guy and she won’t come out!
“Well that’s a new one,” I said, mostly to myself as I texted back asking for a more specific location. “Adria,” I sighed, feeling the exasperation deep in the core of my being. “Apparently, my cousin has lost her mind and locked herself in a bedroom in your basement. Can you help me save her?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Adria reached for my hand, “Come with me.”
I texted Zack on route through the throngs of people.
KF: Are you locked in a bedroom with my cousin? Do you have a death wish?
ZR: Jeez, calm down. It’s not like that. I’m trying to help.
ZR: Help!
I wasn’t sure if that second text was a request or a reiteration.
Outside the bedroom Kayley was pouting and trying to explain herself to a very angry looking mob that consisted of Mika, Ambree and Claire. “It was just supposed to make her chill, you guys, I swear.”
Before I could even ask, I was seized upon by everybody talking at once. From what I could gather through all of them talking all at once, someone had brought some special brownies and Kayley had given one to Kimber, Blah, blah, blah, not the reaction they’d expected, they were all fine, only Kimber was freaking out, and now she was locked in a bedroom with Zack.
I knocked on the door.
“Go away!” Kimber yelled.
Zack mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out.
“No!” Kimber yelled. “None of them can be trusted.”
I rolled my eyes to Kayley.
Kayley pouted. “One day we’ll laugh about this, right?”
“Zack?” I called through the door.
A giant fist appeared over my head and pounded on the door. I hadn’t even realized Dominic had followed until that moment. I probably should have considering the way Ambree and Mika had gone batty-eyed and giggly when I arrived — when Dominic arrived. “Open the door, Zack” Dominic demanded.
“I would — I can’t really— Ouch!” Zack yelled back.
“Zack’s busy!” Kimber yelled. “Come back later.”
“I got this,” Adria retrieved a long nail from the top of the door trim and poked it into the hole on the knob to unlock the door.
As I started for the door Ambree, Kayley, and Mika crowded against me. “No, no, no. You three aren’t invited. Go wait over there,” I waved down the hallway.
“But—” Kayley started.
“Go,” I pointed down the hallway.
“Ladies,” Adria smiled and motioned down the hallway, “Let’s just let them handle this okay, it’s kind of their thing.”
I looked to Dominic, I was going to suggest I go in alone, but he just shook is head at me. “Okay,” I shrugged and he opened the door.
Kimber had Zack pinned in a chair. She was straddling his lap and intensely running her fingers over his face and through his hair. He was rubbing her back. It might have been easy to mistake for a passionate make-out session if not for Zack’s tortured expression.
“Hi guys,” Zack waved.
“Stop stopping!” Kimber growled.
“Sorry, sorry,” Zack continued rubbing her back.
“His hair feels so amazing Kitty Katterpants, you should come touch it.”
“Maybe later, Kimblet McNuggins,” I turned to Dominic. “This isn’t pot.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed.
“I’m pretty sure she got one of the extra special brownies.” Zack said. “They had sprinkles.”
“They did have sprinkles!” Kimber laughed and laughed and laughed some more.
“You gave her a Molly and Jane brownie?” Dominic scowled.
“No!” Zack was quick to defend. “It wasn’t me! I got nothing against doing them, but it’s take not give with drugs, you know?”
“Okay,” my hand went to my hip, “So how do you fit in to all this, Zack?”
“Innocently,” he said, his eyes on Dominic. I turned to see what he was seeing, Dominic looking scary. I liked it. Zack went on, “I was in the bathroom and she came bursting in crying and saying that she’d been poisoned, kept trying to make herself puke. Succeeded a little bit. I sort of got her calmed down and convinced that she wasn’t going to die and then it hit and she really began to freak out and other people needed the bathroom so we left there and she saw her friends who gave her the stuff and she freaked again and dragged me in here.”
“Kims? Is there a reason you’re violating Zack behind locked doors?”
Kimber stopped laughing, turned to look at me and very seriously said. “Because he’s my boyfriend and I love him.”
“But, he’s not your boyfriend, Sweetie.”
Kimber looked back at Zack and started to cry. “You’re not my boyfriend?”
“It’s okay,” he hushed her. “It’s okay,” he looked to me. “She asked me if I would be her boyfriend earlier and I said yes, it helped calm her down. Of course I’m your boyfriend,” he consoled Kimber. “We just haven’t told anybody yet, remember?”
Kimber wrapped her arms around him and hugged him as tight as she could.
“Can’t breath, can’t breath,” Zack patted her back.
“I don’t even know what to do here,” I threw my arm up in the air.
“Not much you can do,” Dominic said. “Keep an eye on her, she’s just gonna have to ride it out.”
Kimber had loosened her grip and started to laugh and run her hands over Zack’s face and hair again and then she started singing, “Kitty-Kat, Kitty-Kat. Kitty-Kat, Kitty-Kat,” growing ever louder each time.
Yep, this was definitely gonna be the night I got found out. “Yes, Kimbles and Bits?”
She turned to look at me, and then something behind me caught her attention and she screamed. It was Kayley, Ambree, Mika, and Claire inching their way through the doorway.
“No. No. No. No. No!” She hid behind Zack. “Stay away!” she screamed, pulling on Zack to cover her.
/>
I moved to cut them off.
“Kims, it’s me,” Kayley tried. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Zack, you have to save me, please,” she blubbered. “They’re trying to kill me. And then she’s going to eat the wolf babies before they can hatch!”
That comment sounds wildly insane to anyone who hasn’t read the book where they refer to werewolf babies births to non-werewolf mothers as hatching because the werewolf babies have a tendency to claw their way out. Oh, and spoilers, there’s this evil witch chick who tells the poor mortal girl that she can save her by cutting out her wolf baby before it’s born, but the evil witch chick really just wants to eat the wolf fetus in order to make her mojo magic stronger and destroy all the werewolves once and for all. So, having read the books myself, her comment was only mostly insane.
“Out!” I yelled at them, pointing the way
Kayley burst into tears.
Zack was assuring Kimber that he’d keep her safe, and Dominic’s stance suggested he’d make sure that remained true as I followed them out into the hallway.
“Where’d Adria go?” I asked.
“Somebody broke something,” Claire pointed down the hall.
“Kat,” Mika pouted, looking worried. “I promise, we had no idea this was going to happen like this. The rest of us had some, and we’re fine.”
“We’re basically fine,” Ambree interjected, her eyes were barely open.
“Did any of you have a brownie with sprinkles, or was that just Kimber?”
“They were different, weren’t they?” Claire asked.
“The ones with sprinkles also had X in them,” I explained. “So now she’s double paranoid, quadruple her normal anxiety levels, and can’t keep her hands off of Zack. Imagine if she’d run into someone who wasn’t as good intentioned as Zack, the pervert,” I added, because I wasn’t sure they were getting what I was insinuating.
Kayley started to sob, Mika and Claire were crying. Ambree was just staring at me, glassy-eyed. I glared at her, not sure I could let them off the hook unless they were all crying about what they’d done.
“But… she’s totally in love with Zack,” Ambree sounded confused. “She’d never go after another guy.”
If that was true it news to me, and it was coming from someone who was completely stoned out of her gourd, so I mostly ignored it. “But what if someone else, went after her? I’ve already had to intervene and stop somebody from trying to rape somebody else tonight. What if she hadn’t found Zack, what if someone else found her?“
The others started to cry more. Ambree looked scared. “There’s rapists here?”
“There’s also people who give their friends drugs without their consent.”
Kayley’s head popped up, alarmed and curious. She’d developed a case of the suck-ups, so now everything she said was broken between gasps and sighs. “Who’s. Doing. That?”
“You guys!” I yelled.
Kayley wailed.
“You need to go and find somewhere else, somewhere safe, to ride this out, okay?”
“Can. We. Sleep. Over. At Sara’s?” Kayley pouted with wide eyes.
“Sara isn’t even here, Kays.”
“Oh,” she paused to cry a bit. “Can we. Sleep over. At Ambree’s?”
I looked to Ambree and she gave me a thumbs up.
“How are you going to get there?”
“Can you?” suck. “Can you?” suck. “Can you?” suck, suck, sob.
I figured she was trying to ask me to take them, but at this rate, she was never going to finish the sentence on her own. “If I take you, who’s going to stay and look after Kimber?” I started, but then I had a thought. “Wait. Hold on.” I went back into the bedroom. Kimber was trying to pull Zack out of the chair he was sitting in and over to the bed. “How are things?” I asked the room.
“It’s fine,” Dominic answered.
“It’s not that fine,” Zack countered, his heels digging into the floor, his body tensed in an attempt to counter Kimber’s tugging. “But I’m handling it. It’s all good.”
“They want a ride to Ambree’s,” I pointed toward the door with my thumb. “She lives over by the Mall, but somebody needs to keep an eye on these two.”
“Hey,” Zack protested.
“No? You got this Zack? We can go?” I stepped toward the door.
“No no no! I didn’t say that.”
“I can take them,” Dominic offered.
“They won’t all fit in your truck,” I handed him my keys.
He gave my keys a once-over in his hand. “None of these are pepper spray,” he grinned.
I shrugged. “No. But if you squeeze the unicorn, it poops.”
“Gross.”
“It’s even more gross when you stop squeezing.”
As soon as Dominic was gone. Kimber stopped tugging on Zack and tiptoe bounced her way over to me, her hands going straight for my hair. “So soft,” she whispered. “Kat, do you have any condoms?”
“No. But that doesn’t matter because you’re not having sex with anyone tonight.”
“Because,” she continued, ignoring what I’d said. “Zack is the one, Kats. The. One.”
“Is he?”
“Yeah. But I jus’ don’ wanna have a baby right now. Know?”
“Oh, I get it. But remember, we have these rules: no sex when you’re intoxicated, and you are very intoxicated.”
“My heart’s being so fast,” she said, her expression dropping. “Why is it being so fast?” Yeah, she was saying being, not beating. “Am I gonna die?”
“No. I’m going to look out for you and keep you safe.”
“What about Zack?” she pouted.
I looked to Zack. His hair was sticking out in all directions, his shirt was mussed, the collar stretched to ruin. He sighed, exhausted. “I’m not going anywhere. You heard her, I’m the one,” Zack smirked, snapped his finger guns, and winked at me.
Kimber toddled back over to Zack, grabbed his wrists and set his hands on her boobs. “Can you feel how fas’ my heart is being?”
Zack laughed, nervous. “Uhm, not really.”
“You can’t?” Kimber’s alarm amplified. “Did it stop!?”
“No, it’s just that,” Zack squirmed and shrugged, “your boobs are kind of in the way.”
“You don’t like my boobs?” Kimber pouted.
“Your boobs are fine! They’re great, in fact. But your heart,” he pried his hands away from her boobs and set them higher on her chest. “Your heart is more in the middle. Here. And yeah, now that I can feel it, it’s beating pretty fast.”
“Being,” she corrected.
Zack nodded, confused.
When Dominic got back he started to hand me my keys and then pulled them back and said, “Oh, Damn, I forgot to put your seat back.” Then he moved like he was going to leave and go fix it.
I put my hand on his — on the keys. “Don’t worry about it, it’s two adjustments.”
“And the mirrors,“ he added.
“It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry I took so long. I stopped to check on Ryan. He’s still sleeping. Oh, and your car is parked by my place now.”
“Cool. And thanks. You don’t have to hang out here, you know.”
“Do you mind, if I do?”
“I don’t mind.” Why would I ever mind something like that?
Dominic decided to make himself comfortable on the bed, his back against the pillows, his legs crossed. I was too amped up to sit, so I wander paced and occasionally leaned against things. Dominic pulled out his phone and composed a lengthy text message I received a short while later.
I was so torn. As much as I wanted to pull out my phone and read it, I also didn’t, because I was pretty sure it was going to be bad. Other than the time I threatened to pepper spray him, and he got worried I might suicide, Dominic had never mentioned me — to me. And I hadn’t really cared fo
r the way he’d portrayed me. If he’d thought I was crushing on him then, what on earth did he think now? I didn’t want to know. Best case scenario I could imagine was his text saying how much this party sucked. He’d be right, of course, but it wasn’t Dominic’s accurate assessment of the evening I was worried about. No, it all boiled down to what he might say about me. Or what he didn’t say — because I wasn’t worth mentioning, or because he didn’t want to tell the girl he was falling for that he’d kissed someone else.
Dominic texted again, and again.
I ignored them, but kept fretting.
A little while later he said, “Hey,” and waited for me to meet his eyes. “She’s gonna be fine.”
I knew she was going to be fine. My angst had nothing to do with Kimber; because I’m a bad cousin like that. And, Zack had it covered. He’d draped a blanket over her head and convinced her she was invisible and she thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Nope. All my torment was about me — and him. Him and me. Ha! There was no him and me. But why did that bother me? I didn’t want a relationship. Did I? I mean, I didn’t think so but why was I so peeved?
Maybe it was because I felt like I knew him well enough to know that come Monday, with the new term and new classes, we’d most likely be nothing but people who nod to each other in the hall — and I’d probably be the only one nodding. Even if he did have kisses I’d never be able to get enough of, I wasn’t looking to be anything more than… whatever we were, and I didn’t want to lose his real life friendship completely.
Three hours later Kimber had come down enough, I figured I could take her home and let her sleep off the rest of her trip. It was only barely after midnight when I got her all tucked into bed. I eyed my own bed. I was exhausted, but not tired.
I pulled out my phone and stared at it, the text app notifying me of my awaiting messages from Dominic. It was weird how scared I was about what they might say.
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