* * *
“Jesus—he’s choking!” Riley cried out suddenly.
Alice’s chair clattered to the floor as she jumped to her feet. Kait let out a bleat and started to rise as well, but Ben was already coughing and wiping at his face and waving them away. “I’m fine,” he tried to splutter before Alice pressed her water glass into his hands and made him drink. He could feel Kait’s eyes on him, and his cheeks burned as a little water dripped down his chin and soaked into the collar of his cabled sweater. “I’m fine, really,” he managed to say at last. “I wasn’t choking. I don’t know what happened.”
“But you were all red!” Alice said, still standing over him, one hand between his shoulder blades, worry-lines creasing her forehead. “And your eyes were starting to bug out. I thought…” She paused, looking around in confusion. “Well, I’m glad you’re all right.”
Ben looked from face to face around the table, then down at his hands. His right fist was clenched around the handle of his fork: The knuckles were white and taut, and his fingernails were biting into his palm. But he felt oddly numb, as though something thin and slow and warm had slipped down inside of him and curled, like a long pasta noodle, in the pit of his stomach. Even Alice’s hand on his back felt strangely feverish, but this thought seemed to come from a long ways off, like the hum of a distant motor. Finger by finger, he watched his grip relax until the fork clattered out on the table, but he could hardly feel the movement of his hand at all.
“Jesus,” he said at last. “I think that settles it. It’s time we got into something a little stronger than water.”
“Hear, hear!” Riley agreed, pounding a fist on the table. She rose and headed into the kitchenette, then began rummaging in the cooler. “Ben, do we have anything to open these with?” she called out.
“Ben’s got a corkscrew on his pocketknife—right, Ben?” Alice had moved around the table to stand behind Kait, her hands on the other girl’s shoulders. She kept leaning against Kait, and her hands kept straying downwards, threading fingers through Kait’s brown hair or scratching at her hairline or between her shoulder blades. And that smirk was back, twitching on Kait’s lips, almost invisible, hidden behind the bell of a headphone.
But Ben could see it. It was all he could see.
Look for the lie, Benji-Boy, said a voice from the rear of his mental theater—his father’s? his own? Look for the lie. Make her pay for it. And never stop making her pay.
“I’m glad you’re all right too,” said Kait, her eyes gleaming.
Ben nodded mutely, and Riley returned with a bottle of Yellow Tail in one hand and a box of beers under the opposite arm. “Ben? The wine screw?” she asked.
Never stop making her pay.
“What’s got you goofy all the sudden?” Riley remarked, thumping the drinks down on the table in front of him. “I swear to God, Ben, if you don’t make quick with that pocketknife, I’m going to go after this with my teeth, really, I will.”
A big grin had spread across his cheeks like a plague. “Guys…” he heard himself say, and suddenly a laugh shot out of him like a burst of gunfire. “Guys, I’m just… so… happy to be here with all of you.” And then the warm thing inside him wrapped great strong arms around him and pulled him down and down.
Chapter 5
House Rules
Riley drummed long fingernails against the table, watching Benjamin’s clumsy fingers fumble with the corkscrew. He was half-crouched, the bottle gripped between his knees, beginning to sweat a little along the hairline. Across the table from Riley, Kaitlyn had wet a forefinger in her mouth and was running it along the rim of an empty wineglass, producing intermittent whines and squeaks, while out in the den, Alice had some kindling piled in the fireplace and was starting to fool around with the starter fluid. Riley stifled a sigh and cast her gaze out the dark back window of the cabin, suddenly abominably bored.
Aw, shit, she thought, watching dim reflections lope and flex in the glass pane. These crazy kids are gonna hurt themselves out here.
An itch skittered across the back of her wrist, and Riley swatted at it idly as though it were a bug, weighing her options. The Yellow Tail continued to get the best of Benjamin, but she resisted the urge to yank the bottle from his hands and dispatch the cork herself. The look of grim determination on his face quickly giving way to frustration told her everything she needed to know: she could no sooner help him here than she could change his oil or fix his computer. So instead she folded her arms and leaned across the table conspiratorially.
“Benjamin,” she began in a low, insinuating tone, “don’t look now—but I think your girlfriend’s about to burn this shack to the ground.”
“Hrm?”
Benjamin looked up, his cheeks flushing mightily—the color of tomato-guts, Riley thought. All mashed up and left in the sink near the disposal. She had to squash a grin behind her hand to say, “Can’t you give her a hand or something? I’ll give this a go while you’re gone.”
She reached across the table for the wine bottle, palm up in supplication, and after a brief hesitation Benjamin slid it to her with a reluctant grunt.
“It’s not a shack,” he muttered under his breath, but Riley watched him tromp across the den and sink down next to Alice, placing a steadying palm against the redhead’s back. She could hear them murmuring to each other from across the room, his mumbling baritone mixing with her high whisper in a kind of domestic harmony.
They’re cute together, she admitted to herself. Real Norman Rockwell, and all that.
Turning away, Riley folded away the corkscrew attachment on Benjamin’s Swiss Army knife and flicked out the big main blade. “Corkscrew won’t do you much good,” she stage-whispered to Kaitlyn with a sly wink, “not unless you get rid of the wrapper first—but we won’t tell him that, will we?”
Kaitlyn wrinkled her nose but made no other reply, still running her finger around the rim of her wine glass. Riley shrugged and ran the point of the knife expertly around the neck of the bottle, tearing the wrapper off whole before rapping the point of the neck against the corner of the table and—thok!—popping the cork, easy as lying. She then cast a glance over her shoulder at the happy couple kneeling by the hearth, then pulled the bottle up to her lips and took four long swallows of wine.
The Merlot splashed across her tongue, and almost instantly she felt the stress-points throbbing at the base of her skull and along her lower spine start to unclot. The smell of burning wood began to waft across the room; Riley’s boredom faded into a kind of blue cheer, and she picked at the label wreathing the bottle. Though she couldn’t lay hands to hard proof yet, she was beginning to piece together why she had been strung along on this little shindig. She and Alice knew each other, sure—they’d taken two freshman classes together and been to maybe a dozen of the same parties up and down Frat Row—but they weren’t friends, not like Alice and this Kaitlyn girl were friends. And Benjamin she’d only met twice, in planning for this excursion.
But when Alice had texted her, begged her to drive up with them—you’ll love it Riley, I promise. Ben says it’s so beautiful in wintertime, plus we can get as drunk as we want, there’s nobody around for a dozen miles—she’d jumped at the chance, thinking maybe this time, this time it’s really going to happen, this time it’s all gonna come together.
But it didn’t take her long to tease out the truth. There was powerful tension here, knit into the air, hanging like fine filaments, ready to trip up, to ensnare, to sever. So it was smart, really, what Alice had done. Introduce a Riley into the equation—as a buffer, as a lubricant, as a slick silk liner between what Riley had quickly come to realize were warring factions. And, yes, it was a war. Riley couldn’t see quite yet where the battle lines were drawn, but you didn’t need to know the names of the generals to see the bombs falling. Or perhaps her intended role was simpler than that. After all: you don’t invite a party girl along unless you’re looking for a party.
Instant fun: Just add
Riley.
But it was just as well. None of her usual crowd were throwing her kind of get-together anymore, and the Omega Lambda keggers were getting a little grab-assy, even by Armistice College standards. Still, Riley wished she’d been given more warning that this was going to be a working weekend—or, at the very least, more time to prepare herself.
She stared across the table at Kaitlyn, who caught her looking and held her gaze. The girl’s brows furrowed, music shrieking from the fat blue headphones around her neck, but she would not look away. An expression fluttered across her features—Curiosity? Disgust? Boredom?—and Riley found herself wishing strangely that she could snatch that emotion away, press it down, examine it under glass with a microscope. The flash of anger she’d felt in the station wagon had long faded, and with the wine inside her Riley began to regret benching herself on the couch for the trip—or was it Kaitlyn she’d benched? She could see two Kaitlyns, now, one shimmering overtop of the other, and a piece of her yearned to apologize, to split open along the breastbone and say, here I am—another trembling soul, just like you! But instead she let a grin slide across her lips and reached forward, plucking the wineglass from Kaitlyn’s grip.
“I think this place is trying to destroy us, Kaitlyn,” she told her, pouring a half-glass from the bottle. “And the only defense is to get as wasted as humanly possible.”
She slid the glass towards Kaitlyn, who eyed it suspiciously. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it,” Riley added, waggling her eyebrows.
To Riley’s great surprise, Kaitlyn shrugged, snatched the glass up and drained it in one go, a dark streak trickling from one side of her lips when she set the empty glass down again. “Whatever,” she mumbled—but a smile bloomed on her face almost in spite of herself. Blossoms of color rose on her pale cheeks, and Riley watched with glee as her eyes glazed slightly as she peered across the common area at the couple crouched by the fireplace. “Damn, that’s… actually really good stuff.”
“And it gets better,” Riley promised. She stood, circumventing the table to stand beside the other girl. “Look,” she said, splashing a little more Merlot into Kait’s empty glass. “I know things started off weird here—but this sort of jamboree can be a whole lot of fun, if you let it. You’ve just gotta loosen up a little.”
Kaitlyn glanced down at the glass, then across the room: Benjamin and Alice had retreated to the leather sofa, and he had pulled Alice into his lap, his chin resting low on her shoulder. “I don’t feel loose,” she replied a little thickly.
Riley patted her shoulder, then grabbed the bottle off the table, starting towards the den. “You’ll get there,” she called over her shoulder. And when she heard Kaitlyn’s chair push back, she strode the rest of the way across the common area and tapped Benjamin on the back of the skull with the bottle.
“Whaddaya want?” he grumbled through a grin.
She took one last swig of Merlot, then handed him the now half-empty bottle. “There. Loosened it for you. I mean,” she corrected herself with a giggle, “you loosened it for me.” She could feel the wine starting to take her, egging her forward, but she pushed the feeling down—Not yet, honey, not yet—and watched him pour a half-glass for Alice, then himself.
“Drink up,” she purred. “We’re playing Truth or Dare.”
The next few moments passed in a kind of honeyed blur—not from the booze, but from sheer anticipation boiling her blood. Riley guided the other three into forming a circle , cross-legged on the rug in front of the hot fire, and while they were settling into position, she hefted the case of Budweiser onto her shoulder and brought it over to the hearth. She was almost giddy, a fact that annoyed her faintly, but the fact was:
Riley Loomis loved Truth or Dare.
She’d always adored the game, ever since her eleventh birthday party, the first time her parents let her have a sleepover for her school friends. But when she discovered alcohol in tenth grade (a bottle of ’99 Cabernet left out from one of her mother’s mommy-group functions serving as her date to the dance), her appreciation for the sport evolved. Through high school and into college, Riley found herself at party after party, walking alone in a sea of bobbing, faceless bodies. Again and again, she felt a kind of mask drop down over her face as the booze in her stomach—stolen from pantries or bought from gas stations or grocers with a good fake ID—took hold of her, and soon the stories Sober Riley heard of her drunken doings the night before began to scare her. Most of her associates had danced on a table or two after a few cans of PBR, but nothing like the tall tales the frat kings swapped like baseball cards over groupchat—screenshots of which occasionally found their way to Riley’s phone by way of a concerned friend.
But she couldn’t stop: either she’d worn the mask too long or the fit was too tight, but something had changed in the way people looked at her. Even her friends’ eyes seemed to slide over her, and boys’ glances always missiled in on the parts of her that talked the loudest. Even Riley herself felt changed—like her skin was crawling across her bones every second she didn’t have a beer in her hand or, later, a cigarette between her lips. So in time, Truth or Dare became less a game than a tool to her, a pry bar she could lever against her own failures of self, something to tear down the human walls that kept her at bay and uncover the faces that hid beyond them.
And Riley badly wanted to see the faces of her friends tonight.
“Alice asks first,” she instructed, popping the tab on her first beer. “Alice pooped last, so she goes first. House Rules.”
“You’ve got no way of verifying that,” Alice giggled, “and it’s not your house. But, sure. Ben—Truth or Dare?”
“Oh, God, Truth.” Benjamin shivered. “You’ve told me about Riley’s dares, and I’m not doing anything to a banana.”
Kaitlyn booed through funneled hands, but Alice swatted her playfully on the knee and asked earnestly, “How many years have you been coming to this cabin, Ben?”
Now it was Riley’s turn to caterwaul. “This is your first time playing, isn’t it?” she moaned. “Here’s a tip, girlfriend: never ask questions you know the answers to already.”
“But I don’t!” Alice protested, blushing a little. “I was curious.”
“At any rate, it’s a boring question,” Riley returned. “Drink. House Rules.”
Her rules were simple: no question was out-of-bounds, and no challenge was off the table—but simultaneously, no player should feel compelled to answer a particularly prying Truth or fulfil a dangerous or embarrassing Dare. The catch was, if you demurred, you had to take a shot of the strongest liquor at the party, or pound a beer, in this case. If you failed to answer truthfully or complete a dare fully and to the satisfaction of all—or, God forbid, asked a boring question for Truth, the greatest sin of all in Riley’s eyes—the same penalty applied.
Riley tossed an unopened can of Bud into Alice’s lap, who stared at it like Riley had tossed her a slug. “House Rules, huh?” she said.
Riley waggled her eyebrows at her across the circle and swigged from her own can. “I don’t makes ‘em,” she replied. “I just enforces ‘em.”
Alice shrugged and held the cold can against the hollow of her neck but didn’t drink. “How ‘bout it, handsome?” she asked.
Benjamin rocked back, looking between Riley and Kaitlyn into the fireplace. “That’s a tougher question than you think,” he began, casting his eyes towards the ceiling. The firelight flickered there, throwing warm light across the surface of the ceiling in rough, lively ways. “I’ve never asked my parents directly … but I’m fairly certain I was conceived here.”
Kaitlyn coughed, clapping a hand over her lips to avoid spitting a mouthful of wine, while Riley watched Alice flush mightily and collapse into nervous giggling. “I only meant, I’ve been coming here a long time,” Benjamin continued, going tomato-red again. “I didn’t mean—” But this only made Alice and Riley laugh harder.
“Please tell me it wasn’t my bed,” Kaitlyn d
eadpanned.
“Or this couch!” Riley smacked the seat at her back with a balled fist. “Christ—there’s probably not a safe sleeping surface in this cabin. The whole place should be condemned.”
Alice made a show of shaking her hands off as though they were covered in slime, then wiped them with exaggerated slowness on the back of Kaitlyn’s sweatshirt while the other girl squirmed away, trying not to laugh.
“That’s not what I meant,” Benjamin repeated, ducking his shoulders as though he would turtle his head and neck between them.
“Then what did you mean, Ben?”
Kaitlyn had fought Alice off at last and was leaning forward, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. Her head tilted coyly to the side, chin jutting, and Riley watched that same strange expression crawl slowly across her features. She seemed to be studying Benjamin, with eyes as hard and cold as marble. Riley felt recognition jolt through her. She’d seen this expression before—at a dozen or so late-night soirees, just before the first punch got thrown. Her shoulders and stomach tightened reflexively. Where had this come from? Riley wondered. How had she missed this building? Should she say something? Do something?
The Unwelcome Page 6