A few grunts of agreement and chuckles spread throughout the crowd and we begin. Lydia, to no surprise, insists on going first as Romo sits beside me and shakes his head. “Out of anyone to be best friends, she is the last person I’d envision you being with,” he comments.
“She’s not my only best friend. I have you too,” I state, leaning back in the grass. Lydia leans back in her chair cockily as she is dealt the first dare of the night—do a keg stand. I simply shake my head and watch her go, knowing that she’s always looked for an excuse to do this. Lydia turns toward me and sends an excited wink in my direction.
“You have a nice variety between the two of us,” he snorts and watches as the next person picks the safest option: truth.
“Do you come to these things often?” I ask, I stare off into the night sky and track a yellow blinking light across the sky slowly. It’s amazing how much brighter the sky appears when I am isolated away from an artificially lit town. Out here, there is nothing but open sky surrounded by trees and a single house.
“Where do you think I am when I text you and ask for a ride home? I don’t typically drink on my own.”
I furrow my brow. “But when I pick you up, there are never many other people around. It’s never a scene like this.”
“I ask you to pick me up once everyone is gone.” I shake my head and continue staring at the sky. “And I’ve been to enough of these bangers to know that an innocent girl like you should never pick dare in this game.”
I turn my head toward Romo and scowl. “I can handle myself,” I argue.
“Do you want to be dared to go skinny dipping with a handsy guy like McGee or James? Do you want to make out with some random dude—or maybe even chick—at this party? That’s what’ll happen if you chose dare, but feel free to test your ability to handle yourself.” Romo’s voice doesn’t escalate, but his face reddens and his voice becomes more protective with each word.
“Chill, man,” I say shaking my head. As predicted, as the dares come around the circles, most of the female dares are just as Romo predicted. Some are worse than he predicted and my anxiety builds tenfold with each person. Don’t get me wrong, I’m by no means an innocent little girl. I’ve made out with past boyfriends and lost my virginity to one, but making out with and being felt up by strangers is the last thing I’d like to do.
“I’m going to go and get a drink,” I tell Romo. He looks at me knowingly and nods his head. I knew he wouldn’t saying anything about wimping out—not tonight at least.
“I’ll just have them skip your turn.” I stand and walk away from the circle as discreetly as possible, but everyone is too enveloped by the game. Nobody even glances my way.
I’m almost in the clear when Lydia struts through the door, wobbling in her heels and evidently far from sober. “Hey, Jo. Did you take your turn yet?”
I wince at her loud tone and turn toward the group of people, expecting their eyes to be on me. When I realize that nobody but Lydia is paying attention to me, I take a deep breath and shake the tension from my shoulders. What was I thinking? Nobody cares whether I play truth and dare. It won’t impact the game in any way.
“No, I’m getting a drink,” I admit. Lydia doesn’t stand still while speaking to me. She wobbles to the left and then back to the right. It’s almost as if she can’t catch her balance, but I know it’s the result of too much alcohol.
“How do you like the party? Are you having fun?” She asks. Lydia expects me to say yes and then she’ll move on and continue having fun, so I play her game.
“So much fun,” I say with a smile. Lydia really is a good friend, despite her willingness to go to parties and have a good time. She may be selfish at times, but the moment I tell her that I want to leave, she’ll make it her personal mission to give me a good time. She’ll stand up for me through thick and thin, and no matter what, she’ll never leave my side.
“Great,” she mutters in an alcohol induced haze. I don’t know how much she drank, but it must have been a lot. The girl has a high tolerance, so she won’t get drunk easily. It takes quite a bit.
She walks away and I follow suit, going in the opposite direction. I try to avoid talking to too many people as I walk toward the drink table. My goal is to get in and out of the house as quickly as possible, avoiding many drunk encounters. As I walk around the bar, numerous conversations penetrate my ears and I try to avoid as many of them as possible.
But there is one thing that my ears refuse to ignore.
“Charlie?”
And almost instantaneously, I ease closer to the conversation sipping a newly opened water and listening to what the group is saying about my sister. “Isn’t she the weird seizure girl?”
“Yeah, the one that hangs out with the preps. She came into class today and acted like she was entitled because something’s wrong with her.” And I can’t help but step into the group of nobodies who dare insult my sister.
“Excuse me,” I say, pushing past a girl who scoffs as if I’ve injustice her in some way by nudging her. “So, Charlie is entitled, huh?” I ask, tightening my fist around the water bottle in my hands. “What has she ever done to you—any of you for that matter?” I ask, looking around at the people who were listening to his story as if they could relate to his absurd accusations.
“I ain’t got no beef with the girl,” a tall man in low riding jeans cuts in, backing away and giving me a full view of his exposed boxers.
“Me either, sweet cheeks,” the man’s African American friend says, following him away. A few girls wander away aimlessly, evidently trying to avoid confrontation. I’m tempted to stop all of them, but I turn my full attention to the trash talker.
“I’m just saying that the girl shouldn’t hang out with the preps. She’s just not good enough for that.” I can’t believe this guy is so bluntly degrading my sister.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m just saying that she doesn't matter enough. She’s sick and she’ll probably die before she can do anything anyways.” I don’t hold back. I clench my fist and drop my water bottle so fast, he doesn’t even have time to look at the floor before I throw my fist into his jaw as hard as I can. Rational thinking would have told me to aim for a softer area or at least correctly form my hand the way Romo taught me, but there was nothing rational about my actions. I swung and he went down. Hard. Months of weightlifting and football conditioning gave me all the strength I need for a hard punch and I am thrilled to cause him pain.
I watch in slow motion as he attempts to find his balance while handling the immense pain in his jaw, but I don’t see much of the scene before a firm hand grabs the crook of my elbow and yanks me away firmly and swiftly. It isn’t until we get out the front door that I see his face.
Hayden.
*****
Chapter 6
“Let go of me,” I yell at him, trying to pull my arm from his grasp. My pulse is pounding with anger and my skin is undoubtedly boiling at the touch, but that’s irrelevant. I need to confront the man who spoke ill of my sister, and one punch is simply not enough.
“I’m protecting you,” he states, releasing me only when we are far enough from the house to be unheard by another living soul.
“I don’t need anyone to protect me—especially someone I’ve hardly met.”
“We have met,” he states in a clueless manner.
“Hayden, I’ve spoken to you one time. That doesn’t give you any right to drag me away from a party in an ill attempt to ‘protect me,'” I chastise.
“I know when you’re in danger and I know that you need help. That boy would have fought back after you punched him.” Hayden’s wisps of black hair sway subtly with the slight breeze. His eyes are reeling and no longer still galaxies. In fact, it looks as if the colors are shifting in a way that the world changes. From this close, I notice small stars lining the inner part of his eye and am temporarily mesmerized. His eyes are mimic the furthest parts of the sky. “Your safety is
my biggest concern.”
His words shake me from my trance. “My safety is of no concern to you. I don’t know why you’re convinced that you need to protect me, but you don’t.”
“You do not understand, Jo Leigh. I am here to protect you,” he repeats.
“You’re crazy,” I mumble, turning away from him. He once again grabs ahold of my arm and attempts to pull me back to him, but I yank away immediately. “Just leave me alone, Hayden. I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but this isn’t how it works here. You don’t just pull a stranger away from their life and claim to be protecting them.”
I laugh and turn away from him, walking back in the direction of the party. “Jo Leigh, you don’t know what’s coming,” he explains.
“Yeah, and neither do you.”
I expect to see the guy in the same spot that I punched him, but he’s not there. It comes as a great relief that I don’t have to face him, though his friends glare at me with malicious eyes and burned egos. In the heat of the moment I dropped my water bottle and I notice it teetering around the floor, but I instead grab another and head toward the back yard.
“What took you so long?” Lydia asks as soon as I take a seat beside her in the grass. Romo looks at me curiously.
“Nothing. I just got a drink and talked to the new kid for a few minutes,” I say, excluding the incident between those two.
“Wait, the new kid is here?” Lydia asks with a squeal. She stands up quickly and her beer sloshes all over her top.
“I think he left,” I say without a moment’s hesitation. I think I was the reason he left.
“Why did he leave? He could have had so much fun,” Lydia whines, sitting back in her seat. It’s almost our turn for truth and dare again and I take a step backward when people turn to me.
“Sorry, guys. I’m just watching this time.” A few people mumble rude words and some just look at Romo, who is on the other side of me. He and Lydia must have swapped seats when I was gone.
“Truth or dare?” a nameless player asks. At this point, it’s far too dark to make out faces.
“What kind of question is that? Dare,” Romo shouts, pounding his chest like some sort of caveman. I will never understand the amount of testosterone a male has and why they act like immature idiots the moment they come together.
“I’ve got a good one,” someone from the other side of the circle shouts. “Seven minutes in heaven with Jo,” I scoff and shake my head.
“Hell no,” I retort. “Absolutely not.”
“Jo,” Romo says pleadingly. “I’ve never turned down a dare.”
Now you know what they say—peer pressure is bad and is never the answer. It’s said that peer pressure should be avoided at all costs, but with a friend like Romo who would do anything for me, the least I can do is spare his reputation. I sigh and nod my head “Let’s go,” I groan. Romo’s face perks and he rushes toward me.
“Thank you so much, Jo,” he says, wrapping me in a tight hug. When his mouth is within centimeters of my ear, he blows out a breath of warm air. “Don’t worry,” he whispers. “We won’t do anything and nobody will know the difference.”
I pull away and the darer leads us in the direction of a small garage. I didn’t notice it before, but it’s not far from the house—just across the front yard. Romo opens the front door and leads me inside before the darer closes the door and locks it from the outside. “Think there’s a light in here?” I ask, feeling around blindly.
“I don’t know, but don’t turn it on. They can see inside and they’ll know we’re not doing something sexual,” Romo says. I can’t see anything, but I hear him sliding down what sounds like a wall and taking a deep breath. I don’t know where to find a wall, so I sit where I am standing.
“What do we tell them? Can’t we just say that nothing happened? I mean, seven minutes in heaven is just supposed to give two people who are into each other an opportunity to make out.”
Romo doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Well yeah, but it’s insinuated that ‘seven minutes in heaven’ translates to a not so secret make out session. We can just tell ‘em that we did that.” I shrug and then realize that Romo can’t see me and mumble a few words of agreement. “So why were you talking to Hayden? I didn’t think you knew him.”
“We both know that was a lie,” I say, wrapping my arms around my knees. Romo looked incredibly too protective to believe what I told my sister. “I met him in town before he came to the school. He’s a little bit odd.”
“I could have told you that and I’ve never even spoken to the kid.”
“It was so weird,” I begin. I need to tell somebody what happened and get reassurance that I’m not officially losing my marbles. “He got hit by a car and the car just drove off, so I took him to my house so mom could look at him. Before he got in the car, he was oozing blood all over my seats. I have a stain to prove it. But then, when we got there, it was healed. Blood was everywhere, but he was perfectly fine. He ran off.”
“Wait, you drove a random stranger to your house?” Romo asks.
“That’s not the situation at hand here. Romo, he healed in less than ten minutes.”
“That is the situation at hand, actually. It’s not possible for someone to heal that fast, but it is possible for a strange guy to pull a gun and try to kill you because you were trying to be nice,” he shouts. “And it’s very possible for you to be kidnapped and molested. What were you thinking? You don’t just pick up random guys on the side of the road and drive them to your house! You call 911 and leave. Maybe bring the dude flowers if you’re really attached.”
I stare at the concrete beneath me—or the flooring which I assume to be concrete—and listen to Romo huff about my stupidity. The silence is interrupted by a bang at the door and I wonder if our time is up. It feels like we still have a few minutes, but I could be wrong.
I am closest to the door when it opens and I stand tall, trying to decipher who is walking into the room. The field that once seemed dark now looks completely light in comparison to the dark shed in which I’ve been sitting. The larger form walks toward me violently and I take a small step backward, unsure who is approaching me.
“Punch me again, bitch,” the guy snaps. I vaguely hear Romo tell the man to cool down, but I am more concentrated on the hard push that comes from the guy’s anger. I’m not expecting it, so I go to take a large step backward and trip over thin air. If it was an empty garage, I would be able to catch myself easily, but when I fall back and my hands touch the ground, the back of my head slams into something that I didn’t realize was there.
I lose my grip on reality for a moment—maybe I pass out. I just know that when I close my eyes and reopen them, Romo is on top of the guy, pummeling him as though he deserves nothing less than death. “Romo, stop,” I mumble, but the ache in the back of my head only worsens as I speak. I reach for where I hit my head and grab ahold gently, flinching at the tenderness. Something draws my eye outside the garage other than the many party-goers.
I can almost swear that I see Hayden looking directly at the shed from across the yard, but I could be wrong. I can hardly focus on anything around me, including the decreasing sounds of Romo’s fight. Instead, I embrace falling into—or maybe back into—unconsciousness.
*****
Chapter 7
“What were you thinking—getting into a fight like an uncivilized child?” Mom asks as soon as she enters my hospital room. I just finished dressing and am sitting on the bed. I wince at her loud tone.
“I’m sorry. He was talking about Charlie,” I reason, knowing that like me, Charlie is my mother’s weak spot.
She sighs and walks in my direction slowly. “Are you okay? Other than a few stitches and a concussion, of course.”
“Totally good,” I say, holding my head in my hands. I must have been unconscious all night and mom was in the same hospital without realizing. Even worse, it wasn’t until I was already awake and dressed that she saw Romo in
the hallway and found out.
“Honey, let me see your chart,” mom says, reaching for the exposed chart at the end of my bed.
“Mom, I’m fine,” I say, halting her movements. “The chart will only tell you what you already know. Minor head trauma and three stitches. I wasn’t prescribed anything and I’m free to go home whenever someone can drive me, which just happens to be now.”
“I’m taking you home,” she says, even though Romo has planned on taking me home since he brought me here unconscious. Since waking up, all he’s ranted about is the huge bloodstain I left in his backseat, but I think he’s just happy I’m okay. “I’m off work and I was going to have you watch Charlie so we could run some errands today, but I’ll let your dad know that you’re coming with us.”
“Mom, I’d really rather not go anywhere today. You know, the concussion and all.”
“Honey,” Mom starts. “We have to go run these errands and we can’t leave you home alone. Plus, you are in no condition to watch Charlie, so you should tough it out. I wish there were any other way.”
I shrug my shoulders and accept what she’s saying, knowing that I don’t have a choice in the matter. Worst case scenario I get sick and pass out again, but I can only hope that doesn’t happen. The last thing I expect is for dad to walk in the room.
“Dad?” I ask, completely shocked. “I thought you hated hospitals.”
It’s rare that he comes to visit Charlie when she’s hospital bound, and the only time he has ever stayed is when she was in critical condition. “Well, I heard that you got into a fight and I thought that was important to ask about.” Romo walks into the room and grabs the back of his neck. When he lifts his hand, I notice that they are red and raw. Mom is oblivious to them, but dad looks at them approvingly.
“It wasn’t a big deal, dad. I basically just lost my balance and fell.”
Eternal Rains: A Dystopian Trilogy (BOUND Book 1) Page 3