by Sarah Dessen
It did not take long to find the source of the noise. On the edge of our front porch, a flowerpot was broken into pieces, dirt spilling out in all directions. The likely culprit, a heavyset guy in a U T-shirt and some Mardi Gras beads, was stumbling back in the direction of the party next door, while a group of people on the porch there applauded, laughing.
“Uh-oh!” a skinny guy in a parka yelled at him, pointing in my direction. “Watch out, Grass. You’re busted!”
The big guy turned sloppily, and looked at me. “Sorry!” he called out cheerfully. “You’re cool, though, right?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant, other than I was probably going to be needing a broom and a trash bag. Before I could answer, though, a redheaded girl in a puffy jacket walked out into the side yard between our two houses, holding a beer. She popped the cap, then handed it to him and whispered something in his ear. A moment later, he was coming back my way, holding it out like a peace offering.
“For you,” he said, doing a weird almost curtsy and practically falling down in the process. Someone hooted from behind him. “My lady.”
More laughter. I reached out, taking the can, but didn’t respond.
“See?” he said, pointing at me. “I knew it. Cool.”
So I was cool. Apparently. I watched him make his way back to his friends, pushing through the pack and going back inside. I was about to pour the beer into the bushes and go look for that trash bag when I thought of the house on the other side, with the sad, older couple, and reconsidered. My names always chose me, and what followed were always the details of the girl who would have that name, whoever she was. Beth or Lizbet or Eliza wouldn’t ever have considered joining a party of strangers. But Liz Sweet might be just that kind of girl. So I ducked back inside, grabbed my jacket, and went to find out.
“Jackson High?” The blonde at the keg rolled her eyes, sighing dramatically. “You poor thing. You’ll hate it.”
“It’s a prison,” added her boyfriend, who was in a black T-shirt and trench coat, sporting a hoop hanging from both nostrils. “Like the Gulag, but with bells.”
“Really,” I said, taking a tiny sip of my beer.
“Totally.” The girl, who was small and curvy, wearing the meteorologically incongruous outfit of slip dress, sheepskin boots, and heavy parka, adjusted her ample cleavage. “The only way to survive is with a deep sense of irony and good friends. Without either of those, you’re screwed.”
I nodded, not saying anything. We were in the kitchen of the white house, where I’d ended up after making my way through the crowds packed on the porch and in the living room. Judging by the décor—U Basketball stickers covering the fridge, stolen street signs on the walls—the residents were college students, although many in the assembled crowd were my age. In the kitchen, there wasn’t much except the keg, which had crumpled cups all around it, and a beat-up table and chairs. The only other décor was a row of paper grocery bags, overflowing with beer cartons and pizza boxes, and a cardboard cutout of a bodybuilder holding an energy drink. Someone had drawn a beard on his face, big nipples on his chest, and something I didn’t even want to look too closely at on his nether regions. Nice.
“If I were you,” the blonde advised as another group of people came in from the side door, bringing a burst of cold and noise with them, “I’d beg my parents to enroll me in the Fountain School.”
“The Fountain School?” I said.
“It’s, like, this totally free-form alternative charter school,” the guy in the trench explained. “You can take meditation for gym. And all the teachers are old hippies. No bells there, man. They play a flute to recommend you switch classes.”
I didn’t know what to say to this.
“I loved the Fountain School,” the blonde sighed, taking a swig off her beer.
“You went there?” I asked her.
“We met there,” the guy said, sliding his arm around her waist. She snuggled into him, pulling her parka closer around her skimpy dress. “But then there was this, like, total Big Brother–style shakedown and she got kicked out.”
“All that talk about respecting others and their choices,” the girl said, “and they have the nerve to search my purse for drugs. I mean, what is that?”
“You did pass out in the Trust Circle,” the guy pointed out.
“The Trust Circle,” she said. “Where’s the trust in that?”
I glanced around, thinking it might be time to look for other conversation options. The only other people in the kitchen, though, were two guys taking tequila shots and a girl leaning against the fridge having a weepy, drunk conversation on her cell phone. Unless I wanted to go outside, I was stuck.
The door banged open again behind me, and I felt another burst of cold air. A moment later, the girl in the puffy jacket who’d been responsible for me getting my beer was stepping up beside me, pulling a bottled water out of her pocket, and twisting the top off.
“Hey, Riley,” the girl in the slip dress said to her. She cocked a thum me. “She’s new. Starts Jackson on Monday.”
Riley was thin with blue eyes, her hair pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her neck, and she had silver rings on almost every finger. She smiled at me sympathetically and said, “It’s not as bad as they’ve told you, I promise.”
“Don’t listen to her, she’s a misguided optimist,” the guy said. To her he added, “Hey, you seen Dave yet?”
She shook her head. “He was having a big sit-down with his parents tonight. I’m thinking they maybe didn’t let him out after.”
“Another sit-down?” the blonde said. “Those people sure can meet, can’t they?”
Riley shrugged, taking a sip of her water. Her lipstick, a bright pink, left a perfect half-moon on the bottleneck. “I think he was hoping they’d decided to loosen up a bit,” she said. “I mean, it’s been two months. The fact that he’s not here, though, doesn’t bode well.”
“His parents are so overprotective,” the blonde explained to me. “It’s crazy.”
“Like the Gulag,” her boyfriend added. “But at home.”
“Seriously. The kid is on the straight and narrow his entire life, and then one night, he’s just unlucky enough to get busted with a beer at a party.” The blonde did a combo cleavage adjustment–eye roll, a move it was clear she’d perfected. “It was one beer! Even the court just gave him community service. But in their eyes, he might as well have killed someone’s grandma or something.”
“Hard-core,” her boyfriend agreed.
I watched as Riley took another sip, then consulted her watch. As she did so, I noticed she had a tattoo on her inner left wrist, a simple black outline of a circle the size of a dime. “Okay,” she said. “It’s nine forty. We leave here at ten thirty at the latest in order to make curfew. No exceptions, no disappearing. Capisce?”
“You are such a mom,” the blonde complained. Riley just looked at her. “Capisce,” she said finally.
“Ten thirty,” the guy said, then saluted her. “Got it.”
Riley gave me a smile, then walked back into the living room, picking her way over to the sofa. There, a dark-haired guy in an army jacket was gesturing wildly, telling a story to a couple of girls gripping plastic cups, who looked to be hanging on his every word. I watched her as she sat down on his other side, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, and listened as well.
When I turned back to Gulag guy and Trust Issues, I found them suddenly—and passionately—making out, his hands sliding under her jacket. I glanced at the girl at the fridge, still weeping, and decided to head outside for some air.
On the side porch, people were smoking and shifting around in an effort to stay warm. It was a cold, crisp night, the stars so bright they seemed close enough to touch. Without even thinking about it, I started looking. One, I thought as I found Cassiopeia. Two was Orion. Three, the Big Dipper. Some people step over cracks, knock on wood, or toss salt over their shoulders. I never let myself look up at the night
sky without finding at least three constellations. It just made me feel safer, more centered. Like no matter where I was, I could find somthing I recognized.
It was my mom who had taught me about the stars. She’d been an astronomy minor in college—one of the many surprises about her, actually—and my dad had bought her a telescope for their five-year wedding anniversary. She kept it on the small deck outside their bedroom, and on clear nights we’d huddle around it together, her finding the constellations and then pointing them out to me. “One,” she’d say, and point to the Little Dipper. “Two,” I’d say, and find one of my own. Then we’d both look hard, hard as we could, for another. Whoever found and named it first was the winner. Because of this, whenever I saw the night sky, no matter where I was, I was reminded of my mom. I wondered sometimes if when she looked up, she thought of me, as well.
Whoa, I thought as I felt a lump rise in my throat. Where did that come from? I’d only had about four sips of beer, but clearly, that was enough to threaten entirely too much nostalgia. I was just setting my can down when I saw the blue lights.
“Cops!” a voice yelled from behind me, and suddenly, everyone under the age of twenty-one was in motion. People from inside came bursting out the door, while those on the deck jumped the rails or pounded down the steps, taking off across the lawn into the darkness. I saw a couple of people dart across my porch and around the other side to the driveway, while still others took off down the street, their purses and jackets flapping behind them. One skinny girl with braids, wearing earmuffs, was not so lucky, getting corralled by an officer who was coming up the walk. I watched as he led her by the arm to his car, depositing her in the backseat. There, she slumped against the opposite window, putting her head in her hands.
“You!” A bright light flashed across me, then slid back right into my eyes, making everything invisible beyond it. “Stay right there!”
My heart started pounding, my face suddenly flushed despite the cold. As the light grew brighter, closer, shaking slightly with every step the cop took toward me, I had to make a choice. Mclean, Eliza, Lizbet, and Beth all would have remained still, following orders. But not Liz Sweet. She bolted.
Without even thinking, I ran down the deck stairs, hit the grass, and started across the muddy, frozen backyard. The light and the cop followed me, catching an arm here, a foot there. When I reached the thick row of bushes that marked the beginning of my own yard, he yelled at me to freeze or else. Instead, I plunged through them headfirst, crashing out the other side.
I landed on the grass, then immediately sprang to my feet to keep running. “Hey!” the cop bellowed, as the bushes began to rustle, the flashlight dancing above them. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop right where you are. Now!”
I knew I should do just that: he was close behind me, and I’d never make it to my house before the light hit me again. But in my panic, I scrambled forward anyway, even as I heard him coming through. I took one running step, and another, then suddenly felt a hand close around my left arm and yank me sideways. Before I even knew what was happening, I’d tumbled over a low wall on my left and was falling again. This time, though, I landed not on something, but someone.
“Umph,” whoever it was said, as together, we toppled down what felt like a flight of stairs, although it was suddenly too dark to say for sure. A second later, I heard footsteps, scrambling, and then there were two bangs, like doors slming shut. Wherever I’d landed, the bottom was flat and everything smelled like dirt. Plus it was dark. Really dark.
“What the—” I said, but that was all I managed before I was shushed.
“One sec,” a voice said. “Just let him get by.”
A beat later, I heard it: a thump- thump-thump noise, slowly growing louder, from overhead. As it grew closer, a yellow light appeared. When I looked up, I could see it, spilling through the cracks between what was, in fact, two shut doors above us. “Damn it,” I heard someone say, over a few huffs and puffs. Suddenly, the doors rattled, rising up slowly, before being dropped back down with a thud. Then the light was retreating, back the way it came.
In the silence that followed, I just sat there, trying to catch up with everything that had just happened. Sleep, crashing flowerpot, beer sips, Gulag, blue lights, and now . . . what? It occurred to me I should probably be nervous, as I was not only underground, but also not alone. And yet, for some reason, there was an odd calmness around me, a sort of familiarity, even in the midst of all this strangeness. It was the weirdest feeling. I’d never experienced anything like it.
“I’m going to turn on a light,” the voice said. “Don’t freak.”
Of all the things to say to someone you’ve just pulled down into some dark place with you, this was probably the worst. And yet, a second later, when there was a soft click and a flashlight popped on, I was not at all surprised to see my neighbor, the porch crasher, sitting beside me in jeans and a thick plaid shirt, a knit cap pulled down tight over his long hair. We were at the bottom of a short flight of stairs that led up, up to a set of doors, latched with a hook-and-eye closure.
“Hi,” he said, all casual, like we were meeting under the most normal of circumstances. “I’m Dave.”
In the last few years, as I’d been traveling with my dad, I’d had my share of new experiences. Different schools, various kinds of cultures, all new friends. But within five minutes, it became clear that never in my life had I ever met anyone like Dave Wade.
“Sorry if I startled you,” he said as I sat there, openmouthed, staring at him. “But I figured it’s better to be surprised than busted.”
I couldn’t respond at first, too distracted by my surroundings. We were in what appeared to be a basement, a small space with wooden plank walls and a dirt floor. A single, worn lawn chair took up most of the square footage: a stack of books was beside it, another flashlight propped on top.
“What is this place?” I said.
“Storm cellar,” he replied, as if this was of course the first question you’d ask after someone pulled you underground. “For tornadoes and such.”
“This is yours?”
He shook his head, reaching to put the flashlight on the ground between us. As he did so, a moth fluttered past, casting weird shadows. “It’s part of the house behind mine. Nobody’s lived here for years.”
“How’d you know about it?”
“I found it when I was younger. You know, exploring.”
“Exploring,” I repeated.
He shrugged. “I was a weird kid.”
This, I believed. And yet, again, I was struck by the fact that not once during this entire incident had I been scared. At least not by him, even before I knew who he was. “So you just hang out here?”
“Sometimes.” He got up, brushing himself off, and sat down in the chair, which creaked. “When I’m not crashing on your back porch.”
“Yeah,” I said as he sat back, crossing his legs. “What, do you not like being at home or something?”
He looked at me for a second, as if weighing his response. “Or something,” he said.
I nodded. The digging and going underground might have been kind of weird. But this, I understood.
“Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I was just coming out and saw the lights, then heard you coming. Actually, grabbing you was kind of an impulse move.”
I looked up at the doors again. “You have good instincts.”
“I guess. You know what’s weird, though? I just put that hook and eye in last week. Lucky thing.” He squinted up at it, then turned back to me. “The bottom line is, you don’t want to get arrested for drinking under age. It’s not fun. I know from experience.”
“How do you know I haven’t been already?” I asked.
He studied me, all seriousness. “You don’t look like the type.”
“Neither do you,” I pointed out.
“This is true.” He thought for a moment. “I rescind my earlier statement. You could ve
ry well be a delinquent, just like me.”
I looked below me again, taking in the small, tidy space. “This doesn’t really look like a den for delinquents.”
“No?” I shook my head. “What were you thinking? Junior League? ”
I made a face, then nodded at the stack of books: in the thrown light, I could barely make out one of the spines, which said something about abstract geometry and physics. “That’s pretty heavy reading material.”
“Don’t go by that,” he said. “I just needed something to prop the flashlight on.”
From above us, I heard a sudden burst of music. The cops, apparently, were gone, and the party was starting up again with whatever legal stragglers remained. Dave got up, climbing the stairs, and popped the hook, then slowly pushed open one of the doors overhead and stuck his head out. Watching from below, it occurred to me he looked younger somehow: I could easily picture him as an eight- or nine-year-old, digging tunnels in this same backyard.
“Coast is clear,” he reported, letting the door drop fully open, hitting the ground with a thud. “You should be able to get home now.”
“I’d hope so,” I said. “Since it’s only, like—”
“—fourteen feet, seven point two inches, to your back deck,” he finished for me. I raised my eybrows, and he sighed. “I told you. Weird kid.”
“Just kid?”
Now, he smiled. “Watch your step.”
He climbed up the stairs out onto the grass, then turned the light back on me as I followed him out, offering his hand as I neared the top. I took it, again feeling not strange at all, his fingers closing around mine, supporting me as I stepped up into the world again.
“Your friends were at the party,” I said. “They were looking for you.”
“Yeah. It’s already been kind of a long night, though.”
“No kidding.” I slid my hands in my pockets. “Well ... thanks for the rescue.”