Melvin gave him a look, said, “Hell, no,” but the kid announcer wouldn’t let up. He started chanting, “Nin-ja skills! Nin-ja skills! Nin-ja skills!” getting everyone else to join in. Finally one of the pool cues was handed to Melvin and again he just stood there, like he wasn’t going to do anything, until suddenly he started spinning the cue around, the stick going so fast it was almost impossible to see. The crowd exploded into cheering and clapping, and then the stick was taken away and he was given three knives.
Chad nudged me, said, “Eminem here is fucking crazy.”
But we watched for a minute or so as Melvin juggled the knives. He put one in his mouth and then balanced the two other knives on his arms, the end of their handles resting in the crook of his elbows. He held them both there, his arms at ninety degree angles, looking like he had his hands up. He turned around slowly, for everyone to see, then dropped his arms. Gravity pulled the knives down, their blades racing for the plush carpet, and Melvin caught them at the last moment, dropped the knife out of his mouth, caught it with his foot, then carefully kicked it into the air, began juggling all three again.
“I swear to God,” Chad said, as we turned back to our game, “some circus is missing its clown.”
So then we were playing again, and Traci had just sunk the ball in my cup. I had grabbed it and was draining the warm beer inside, when all at once I realized something bad was happening upstairs. I set the empty cup back on the table. I looked around. I felt buzzed, and thought that was the feeling, but knew at the same time it wasn’t. It was the same sensation I’d had at Jack Murphy’s place; the same one I’d had at the gas station where I’d seen the Celica.
“Chris, you okay, man?” Chad was more buzzed than me, plus a little high, but he still actually seemed good enough to know something was up. He stood there, holding the ping-pong ball out to me because it was my turn. I just stared back at him, my mouth opened, as if asking whether he felt it too.
Then before I even had a chance to say anything, someone came running down the stairs. Nearly everyone glanced up; even Melvin Domstorf stopped his juggling act. Rich had taken two steps at a time and then stopped at the bottom. He scanned the entire basement until he spotted us and waved us over.
“What is it?” Chad asked, over the continuous beat and the few people who were still talking.
“Fucking Jeremy,” Rich called, nearly out of breath, and Chad didn’t hesitate, he dropped the ball on the table and started forward. I followed. Seconds later we were upstairs and headed toward the front door. The music was still pumping dance, especially loud in the living room, where the expensive chairs and couch and coffee table had been moved so that kids had space to dance.
Right before we walked outside we passed the stairs leading to the second floor—and that pang of ice shot through my soul again, trying to direct me up the steps. I hesitated, actually shivered, and glanced up there.
Chad shouted, “Hurry up, Chris,” and I kept going forward.
A few people were at the top of the driveway. Rich got into a jog that increased to a sprint. Both Chad and I matched his pace the best we could. Then we were there, standing with John and Tyler and Sean and two other kids I didn’t know but who didn’t look as if they were at the top of the preppy scale. Even in the dark I saw how flushed John’s face had become. Actual tears brimmed in his eyes. At first I didn’t understand why until Chad whispered, “Holy fuck,” and I looked at the Firebird.
Someone sure went at it hard and without any care at all, except maybe with the hope to get back at John Porter and his friends for what they’d done to him. All the windows were busted out. The tires were slashed. The dark cherry finish had been desecrated by something sharp. There was hardly a space that hadn’t been destroyed, except what had been scrawled near the front, right under the shake-hood scoop.
Richard muttered, “That fucking son of a bitch.”
John stood motionless, staring down at his baby. I’d tried imagining before just how much time and effort he’d put into this car and couldn’t come up with anything then, but now I saw how much it hurt him, how much it shattered him inside. Three years, day and night, all gone.
One of the kids I didn’t know shook his head. “Those assholes have no fucking respect.”
I’d assumed that their old friend Jeremy was involved, but obviously there were more, most likely Jeremy’s compadres, too. I wondered just how much bad blood there was between all of them, how some simple prank could be retaliated with something as terrible and destructible as this.
But the destruction only went so deep. What had been written on the hood went even deeper. Carved in long straight letters, someone had written this:
YOUR MOMMA MIGHT BE DEAD
BUT SHE STILL GIVES GREAT HEAD
For a moment no one spoke. The only sounds were the faint music from the house and the infrequent traffic out on road. John continued staring down at what was left of Bambi. His face was still flushed. Tears were still in his eyes but he hardly seemed to notice.
Tyler placed his hand on John’s shoulder. Didn’t say anything.
Finally John acknowledged the tears and wiped his face. He looked at each of us, then turned to the kids I didn’t know. “When did they leave?” he asked, his voice low and steady.
“Like five minutes ago. We just got here and saw them finishing up.”
“And who did that?” Pointing at the words.
“Who do you think?”
John nodded, more relaxed than I could have imagined, and turned back to the car. “Chad, get your Jeep started. We’re going after the fuckers.” Then to the two new kids: “And Frank, about graduation, if we get out of this thing in one piece, I think we should do what we talked about. Really give those assholes something to remember.”
Everyone was silent for another moment. An image flashed through my mind the space of a heartbeat, completely unbidden, but before I could even blink Chad had begun moving toward his Jeep, his keys already in hand. John, Rich, and Sean followed. I started to take a step forward, too, but Tyler shook his head and said, “This ain’t your fight, dude,” and turned and followed his friends.
I watched as they climbed in. John sat in the passenger seat, silent and staring ahead, as Chad backed out and pulled onto the road. I wondered just what was going through his mind. I thought maybe I could sense it but I couldn’t. Instead I still had that feeling, that ice in my soul pulling me back to the house.
And so I turned.
Stared at the brightly lit house, at the windows on the second floor. I knew the one on the far right was where I had to go, the only window whose room was dark inside. Whatever was happening, I didn’t have much time before it was over.
Chapter 23
Someone had split a beer on the carpet just inside the front door.
A brunette in tight jeans knelt over the puddle with a roll of paper towels, while a lanky redheaded kid with a goatee leaned watching against the wall. Neither of them said a word to each other, but still I knew what was happening between them. I knew their names (the guy Bobby, the girl Ashley), their birthdays (his in August, hers in March), their favorite colors (green, yellow), everything. I knew that Bobby was pissed at Ashley for talking to a guy named Tom a few minutes ago out by the pool. He had stalked off when he saw the two of them, Ashley with her hand on Tom’s arm, laughing at something he’d just said. She saw Bobby take off and followed, calling after him to wait up, but he kept going. Through the kitchen, through the living room, past the closet bathroom where kids were inside doing lines of cocaine. The music accompanied the rage beating in his head. Then he stumbled and dropped his cup of beer. He stared down at it, muttered, “Aw fuck, look what you made me do,” and Ashley had taken it as an opportunity. She stopped him, put her hands to his face and told him that there was nothing going on between her and Tom, that they were just friends, that she loved Bobby with all her heart—and how really, in her soul, it was all a lie.
How I knew a
ll of this I had no clue, just as Ashley now finished dabbing up the mess, I had no idea how I knew what she was going to say next.
“See, Bobby,” she said, standing and touching his arm, “everything—”
“Can be fixed,” I whispered.
Neither of them had noticed me until then. So far I’d been just another faceless kid at the party, just another horny teenager trying to get lucky before graduation came and this uninhibited life of sex and drugs and alcohol came to an end. But now that I spoke and called attention to myself, I’d invaded their little space, whatever privacy they had, and Bobby didn’t look happy about it at all.
“What the fuck did you say?”
For a moment I almost told him. About how I knew their names, how many times they’d made out and had sex in their relationship so far and until they broke up in the next seventeen days, how many times Ashley threw up a week after eating her meals. About how the only reason I knew what his girlfriend was going to say was because it had been my mom’s favorite saying.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head, and when I turned and started up the steps I heard him mumble something under his breath. He wanted to kick my ass, wanted to shove his foot right up my crack, but then Ashley intervened and told him don’t, to just let it go. I ignored them both and continued upstairs.
The lights were on in the hallway. The carpet was white, the wallpaper baby blue. Pictures hung between each closed door. The Rowes were a handsome family, Mr. Rowe looking to be in his early fifties, with a strong chin and intelligent eyes, his wife probably in her forties, her face well rounded and her dark hair thick and long. Denise, their only daughter, was obviously either seventeen or eighteen now, but the pictures along the wall showed her throughout the years. One when she was about four years old, standing in a white dress beside a tree; another when she was in middle school, her face a little pudgy as she smiled and flashed braces; another still when she had reached high school, wearing some kind of formal black dress before her prom or homecoming—she’d had lost the pudginess in her face, had lost the braces, and had become a rather attractive girl.
That chill became an ice pick and pierced my soul. I turned toward the source: the only room with its lights out at the end of the hallway, its door closed. I knew without a doubt whose it belonged to.
I started forward, realizing that whatever was happening had already begun and I might be too late to stop it, when I heard low moaning and panting coming from the door on my right. I stopped. Thought immediately about Grant Evans and why I’d beat the shit out of him in front of everyone during lunch.
I turned and opened the door.
There were only two of them. The lights were on and he was taking her from behind, and while her moans sounded like she was in pain I could see from the contortions on her face she was in ecstasy. With every hard thrust he gave, her large breasts jiggled back and forth. I didn’t share the same connection as I did with the couple downstairs, so I had no idea who they were. But then I noticed the guy was starting to look over at me and I quickly said, “Sorry, wrong room,” before closing the door.
I continued on to Denise Rowe’s bedroom. A few feet before her door I stopped. I reached for the knob—and once I touched it I saw the girl in my mind, I saw her entire life, and I knew just what I was going to find once I opened the door. A part of me wanted to shout for someone to call an ambulance, to call 911, but I kept telling myself it was impossible for me to know for certain, so I opened the door and stepped inside.
I smelled perfume and flowers and at first I couldn’t find the switch on the wall. When I did three gold-painted lamps came on simultaneously, each in separate corners. I saw her at once on her bed, her body motionless among an array of stuffed Winnie the Poohs and Piglets.
“Denise,” I whispered, and started forward.
She lay on her back. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open. She wasn’t dead yet; her chest moved almost imperceptibly, reminding me of Joey in his deathbed. Then, after a few more steps, I saw the brown plastic bottle resting just outside her opened hand—and I knew it was empty and that she didn’t have much time.
I quickly backed out of the room and sprinted to the door I’d opened only moments earlier. I banged on it hard, shouted, “Call 911, someone’s overdosed!” and then ran back to Denise’s bedroom.
Her chest still rose and fell, but it was happening now even slower than before. I approached her bed, unsure of what to do next. I thought about the fastest way to make her throw up when I realized she should be awake first, so I sat on the bed and leaned over her, slapped her cheek to try to wake her up.
She only moaned and turned her head away.
Footsteps sounded at the door and a low harsh voice said, “What the fuck is your problem?” When I looked up I saw it was the guy who’d been railing the blonde. He was obviously some jock, looked like he played football with a chiseled face and gel in his short highlighted hair. He had his jeans on, wore sandals with no socks, and was in the process of buttoning his silk designer shirt when he saw Denise.
“Call 911,” I said. “Now.”
He stood staring for a just moment longer, his eyes wide, then seemed to forget about his shirt and disappeared. I heard him shouting something out in the hallway and then my attention was back on Denise. I slapped her face again, not too hard but not too soft either, and I tried talking to her, tried getting her to come to. At that moment I had no clue how many Valium had been in the bottle, but I knew it was enough to stop her heart.
“Denise, come on, wake up.” I stared down into her face. Her skin was soft and creamy, and the place where I’d slapped her was turning red. Her mouth was still open and I could hear her breathing, but it was faint and seemed to be getting even fainter. “Come on, Denise. Goddamn it, wake up. Wake up!”
She wouldn’t respond and just lay there, already lifeless in my arms. I opened my mouth and started to ask her why, when suddenly I knew the answer.
I’d known the instant I stepped into her bedroom.
Her parents were loving but strict, and as all good parents went, they only wanted what was best for their daughter. After all, that was why they’d paid more to have her transferred to Elmira High School, where Mr. Rowe had attended so many years ago and which he believed would be the best place for his daughter. But still, no matter how much and how hard Denise tried, it was never good enough in their eyes. They were the Rowes, one of the wealthiest and most respected families in the county, and their daughter was either going to be a lawyer or a doctor, no ifs ands or buts about it. Denise, while she appreciated her parents’ enthusiasm about her future, wanted to be a social worker, a topic she had regrettably brought up one night two years ago and which resulted in her parents flipping out. Later, when she reviewed the events in her mind, she thought they would have reacted better had she told them she’d become pregnant by a heroin junkie.
Five months ago she was accepted into Cornell University, her father’s alma mater, and every day they told her how proud they were of her. Despite their varying views in the past and her foolish idea of social work, her parents had forgiven Denise and now thought they knew everything there was to know about their daughter’s life—when, like most parents, they hardly knew the truth. And the truth was ever since their spat about her future career choices she’d begun hating them, wanting to do whatever she could to hurt them. She’d begun to let her grades, which were normally very high, slip on purpose, as she began hanging out with what her parents would no doubt call the wrong crowd. She started going to parties where she drank and smoked pot and had sex. She was having the time of her life, until just last week when she learned that because she failed her History final she would not be graduating and would have to take summer school. She’d been so flustered and desperate she had actually considered asking her teacher, old Mr. Granato with the harelip, if he would pass her if she gave him a blowjob. But in the end she had chickened out and went home, where she cried herself to sleep. So f
ar she had kept it from her parents, even when they hugged her goodbye before leaving for her father’s business trip, and she knew what kind of wrath she would be forced to bear once they returned and found out.
So Denise Rowe, believing she had no options left, decided to take the easy way out. Have a large party, invite all the popular kids, then pop an entire bottle of pills while it was happening, and not only would she not have to face her parents, but then she would forever be remembered too.
But it wasn’t her time just yet and that was why I was here, why I’d been called to this particular room on the second floor of this particular house. I sensed the sadness and desperation in her soul, and I knew that deep down Denise Rowe did not want to die.
Footsteps sounded again at the door. Only this time it wasn’t the jock with the sandals and expensive shirt, but a girl wearing a black halter-top and glasses. She paused in the doorway, her eyes finding Denise on the bed, and her hands went immediately to her face. She started screaming, “Oh God Denise no not Denise my God!”
The Calling Page 18